Foto: chris8800

Thieves like to get rid of bags fast. A 20-something male walking or cycling with a nice lady’s handbag draws attention.

In Barceloneta it seems the thieves have a handy drop-off point where bags can be deposited for assessment or later collection.

(Barceloneta, the district, constantly features here on ”Robbed in Barcelona”.)

Our contributor picks up the story:

“Last summer I was going up Carrer Andrea Dória and was close to the beach; a guy passed me on a bike with a lady’s bag that he had stolen. By chance, I was speaking on my mobile phone to my girlfriend, who was walking on the same street a few blocks behind me. I asked her to watch where this Maghreb guy with the bike went. The guy stopped the bike in front of  a bar, he went inside and left five seconds later without the bag.

Just then I encountered the couple who had been robbed and they were with the police. I told them to go to the bar. I didn’t go with them to avoid problems, but my girfriend watched the police and the couple going inside the bar and leaving a minute later with empty hands.

My conclusion: The guy left the bag inside the bar, in a place where the police cannot access without a warrant. From that moment on we had little doubt that the owner was hiding bags, probably to get some of the profit from the robbery. We had even less doubt some days later when we saw her going to the trash with another bag, dumping all the (uninteresting) content and then returning to the bar with the bag.

Now that we are more alert we often see suspicious guys standing at the front door, with their bikes, laughing and shouting, but always very alert and always on the phone to their friends. Sometimes they vanish at a second’s notice, then come back again, but it could be minutes or hours later.

The police know who they are, a policeman even commented that they know the set-up, but they can’t/don’t do much…”

It has developed a reputation over the years as being dangerous for foreign-registered vehicles.

Let’s take a sorry tale posted by a mobilehome driver and user of the UK website “Out and About Live“:

I was on the AP7 Autopista just past Barcelona and not long after leaving a Service Station to refuel, a French registered car passed me with the driver and passenger frantically waving and indicating me to pull over. As I had a back box on the rear I wondered if they had spotted something wrong with that. They pulled directly in front of me and reversed their car back to me.

Two lads (mid 20′s) approached and said “parlez vous francais” to which I replied “non” and then one in very broken english told me there was a problem with my o/s rear wheel. Of course I got out to look but could see nothing wrong. Then he began to let air out saying it was too high. I told him to stop immediately what he was doing and that I would check myself at the next Service Station. His colleague seemed very agitated and I noticed he had one hand in his pocket the whole time.

They then returned to their car but as they drove off I saw a third youth sitting in the back. When they had pulled me over I had only seen two people, driver and passenger.

As they drove off I looked to the back seat of my van where to my horror I saw my jacket containing two wallets with cash had gone. I realised then what had been done.

They had everything……….cash, credit and debit cards, Passport, Driving Licence and all photo id. I lost the lot. And it probably took no longer than three to four minutes.

If you visit the above link you’ll quickly discover that there are many many experiences similar to this and there is an intense sense of anger regarding the disinterest shown by police authorities.

You want to see how crimes like this are done? Here are a few videos:

If you want to get a sense for the amount of money, jewellery and electronics stolen in this way, have a look at this:

The problem persists today.

Foto: Wolfgang Baumann

Enrique Figueredo penned an article in a recent La Vanguardia, which told a torrid tale…

A street battle between youths of Dominican origin and the local police, in the environs of Barcelona’s Pou de la Figuera and Mercat de Santa Caterina.

Since the article above was written, a noticeable peace has descended in the district – impacting local Moroccan activity as well – and we wrote about that here.

The article above goes roughly like this:

The tension between the different protagonists in the locality is high. Back at the start of May there was an episode on the street between young Dominicans and police, which demonstrated the ongoing difficulties with security in the area, something Óscar Aybar, president of the association of shopowners on Sant Pere més Baix describes as, “having exceeded all limits, and having spread fear in the district.” 

The incident commenced when a group of police dedicated to stopping street crime encountered a young Dominican male who they wanted to identify. The situation intensified and the young man fled. The police took chase and caught-up with the young man who by now had found a group of his friends who attacked the police. The young man was arrested. Soon after a judge released the boy and admonished the police for their actions. Although the arrest was revoked, it wasn’t lost on anyone the seriousness of a group of youths attacking police officers.

Following the incident, the distance between the two sides has widened. Nearby at Santa Caterina market it is easy to see groups of people of Dominican origin and close-by, amid the pedestrians, plainclothes policemen.

The debacle continued until a follow-up operation took place on May 18th where 70 agents from the Mossos d’Esquadra, Guardia Urbana and Cuerpo Nacional de Policía stopped and identified 152 individuals. You can read more about that in our article here.

Anecdotally we’ve been hearing that Dominican thieves in the Pou de la Figuera and Mercat de Santa Caterina area particularly favour gold and especially gold chains, and we provide some background stories here and here.

Foto: Chris8800

A Dutch citizen has submitted to us her account of how her gold chain was stolen from around her neck in Barcelona in September.

It shows the methodical approach applied to stealing from tourists and the impunity with which these teams operate.

Behold:

“In the old city, I had a drink at an ecological restaurant with my husband and daughter (18) on our first day in Barcelona. When we got up and walked away, a young man approached and was going to pass about two metres to my right.

I looked at him and saw he was nervous. So I kept on looking at him.

As he was passing he suddenly ran at me, grapped my golden necklace and pulled hard. Luckily the necklace gave way at once.

It made us all very angry and as he ran away we all started running after him, but then stopped realising it was not a wise thing to do.

He stopped some distance from us and he handed the necklace to another guy. They gathered into a larger group who were all looking at the necklace, while they kept a watch on us.

We went back into the restaurant but no one there seemed to be very surprised. They told us to go to the police at Placa Catalunya.

As we walked away my daughter told me she had seen the group of guys walking past the terrace earlier, and that membersof this group had stood for a time in each corner of the restaurant. Meaning, if I had walked in another direction another guy would have snatched the necklace from me.”

Gold chain snatching isn’t new. We’ve written about it before.

Foto: burningmax

“I couldn’t wait to leave Barcelona and get home.  Shame on you, Barcelona, for allowing your beautiful city to get SO bad that the reputation that precedes you is the prevalence of pickpockets.”

So ends the account by ‘Datacenter Dude’ of his visit to Barcelona for a conference aroundabout October 16th, 2012.

While in the city, a prostitute attempted to rob him after he exited Shoko night club. The woman successfully relieved him of his wallet however he managed to take it back from her, but only after he had hit her full force on the face with his fist.

Datacenter Dude makes it clear that his is not proud of what happened. He is full of remorse. His education taught him never to hit anyone, man or woman. However, his actions did save him from being robbed.

If you want to read more about what took place, visit his blogpost here.

Foto: Iglesias Pilarin

The publication El Periódico ran a piece on Friday October 19th revealing that passports stolen from tourists in Barcelona are being used by Al Qaeda.

Passports stolen here are sold by street thieves to a Barcelona-based group specialising in the sourcing and supply of international identity documents.

The group was recently broken-up by Spanish police, according to the article, after one of their operatives was detained in Barcelona airport with 100 stolen passports. He was minutes away from boarding a plane destined for Greece. The passports were destined for an Al Qaeda cell based in Germany.

Detainees amongst the five-strong Barcelona-based group included Moroccans, Algerians and Belgians. Arrests took place in the Barceloneta district of Barcelona, popular with tourists for its proximity to the local beaches, a robbery hotspot.

We wrote a blogpost pertaining to this back in December 2010, when El Periódico ran another piece – with video – on the topic.

Foto: Chris8800

I took a long walk around Barcelona on Sunday. Two hours, maybe more.

Six months ago I would have seen a few robbery attempts, a few successful robberies, a few guys casing their next target and a few other things to ruffle the feathers.

But not recently.

In fact, it has been weeks if not months since I have seen anything similar to bag snatching or pickpocketing.

Last week I saw two guys who fit the bill, I watched them, then found that within 30 seconds they were in the custody of two plainclothes police.

There are different flavours of police on the ground these days, motorcycle cops, local police, national police and those small little Seats you see the undercover guys driving around in.

Have things improved?

What do the locals think? Please give your feedback below.

UPDATE:

At the time of writing this update (21:08CET on Tuesday, October 16) there are 10 comments below. In addition we’re going to display below a screenshot of six comments from our Facebook group. The consensus is that no, things are not improving.

Foto: Fernando Rodríguez

Continuing a display of contempt for society, robbers have turned their attention to the public bicycle system in Barcelona. It is under attack as evidenced by a trio of tweets issued by bicing, the company that runs the service.

The three tweets sent on August 27th show that bicing has identified that thieves are putting coins (or similar) inside the anchoring slots at the return stations and when a bicycle is returned – though the user believes they have returned it correctly – the bicycle can be extracted again by the thief.

It’s unclear if the bicycle user is thereafter fined for not returning it correctly or how bicing deals with the issue. We expect however the individual suffers, as usual. Making this more likely is that while bicing is a superb initiative, they are complete disasters at managing their service.

Still, it’s further evidence that nothing is safe in this city, even that which is anchored down and locked.

Thanks to D from our Facebook group for pointing us to this story.

Foto: Amy Gahran

It’s not just the tourists that suffer.

El Periodico ran a story recently about the 1,565 motorcycles that have been stolen in the city of Barcelona in the seven months to the end of July 31st 2012.

That’s seven per day.

The article runs with a short video, which can be viewed in all its glory, here:

The girl in the piece explains that she goes to the trouble of parking her moto in front of popular shops such as Mango, because she knows that they have cameras in place and it might offer some more security to her motorcycle. The two guys in the piece explain the locks required to keep their motorcycles safe.

The article itself notes that Barcelona is the Spanish city with the largest number of stolen motorcycles.

Supposedly one in every seven people who live in Barcelona has a motorcycle. A staggering statistic.

The article also reveals: “”Most of the bikes stolen are sent abroad, mainly in Morocco. Many others are broken up and its parts are used as replacements,” said police inspector Pere Guillén.

Most popular amongst thieves are the Honda SH and Yamaha XP 500 simply because they are more common, meaning their parts are worth more on the black and grey markets. A stolen motorcycle is worth about €1,500 on the black market.

It has been eight years in Barcelona, almost to the day, but I’m off back to Scotland. Not because of the atmosphere and robberies, which I’ll come to soon, but because of the economic situation.

It has been fun, though clearly this issue which really needs addressing for good is going to leave a stain on the city. I suppose every society, every culture and every city has its underbelly, and Barcelona’s is crime, just as my native Edinburgh has alcoholism and drug addiction.

I knew Barcelona well as I was brought up here, just after the head bummer from El Ferrol kicked the bucket and this country finally made strides into the 20^th Century, it was the 70’s mind. Barcelona was a cosy city, lively, at the heart of not only Catalan life, but Spanish and Latin-American culture. It had the publishing houses, the advertising houses, the confidence.

It also had appalling crime. With the 80’s drug issues it had bank robberies, armed robberies and disgraceful ghettos within its heart and periphery. We knew the names of the local thieves, they were close to mythical; Juan José Moreno Cuenca “el vaquilla”, Juan Diego Redondo “el Malo Diego” an Iberian form of John Dillinger. Criminals in the broader sense of the word, part of the history of transition into democracy in Spain, part of that process which even today is so imperfect. About the same time you had mafia, (both local and Italian), Basque separatist bombs, fascist gunmen, a fascist coup d’état, left wing bombers, the country was a mess.

The Raval, Barceloneta and Poble Nou you didn’t go to. Not spoilt little rich kids like me, or my school pals. Nou de la Rambla, was at times the only road in that side of Las Ramblas without mud. Las Ramblas too, it had it all, cafes, prostitutes, drug dealers… it still has, it’s just lost the live animal stalls. The Raval still has some of the old bunch, barmen who have seen the 70’s and 80’s. The stories they tell, of chasing after junkies who had tried to assault them with a knife, later in the 90’s with syringes.

Jump to the late nineties and the post Olympic hangover. Barcelona set itself on the world stage with greater confidence, but I don’t think we Barcelonins knew where the hell we were going. The city had improved. Of that I am certain. The crime we used to endure back in the bleak all days, whether from the old dictatorial regime, or from the drug crazed 80’s was invariably violent, sometimes lethally so. But time was running against us. The country was centralising, dynamism taking the ‘puente aereo’ to Madrid. We just took an easy buck I feel, (I was already living outside Spain), and went for mass tourism (not a criticism, it was just done badly).

And crime, well it’s always been a bit of a joke here, even under that old Franco fellow. We Spaniards (I’m ½), tend to see petty acts of larceny as ‘ser listo’ ‘picaresca’. Its not a ‘crime’ as that in Spanish implies the loss of life, (therefore murder), it’s not even petty delinquency. Our legal system, maybe because we wanted a clean break from the old regime, maybe because its in our character, is ‘garantista’ that is to say, it stacks its rights heavily on the side of the accused, or the convicted criminal. So yes, arrested thieves walk away, regularly.

Of course, other societies, and this is a very globalised world have within them organised groups of people who live off such legal technicalities. By this I mean what back in the 90’s I watched on a Panorama or World in Action special, it could have been TF1, groups of ‘professional’ thieves from the Balkans, brought into Germany by mobsters to steal. I presume some, if not many still operate there. But these people however despicable are not mugs, so it follows that they would, ultimately send their damned miserable lackeys here, like some latter day Fagans. Others I presume just drift here. Essentially the legal system still thinks many people steal out of necessity, unfortunately, that is rarely so.

I lost track on the amount of pickpockets, bag-snatchers, Romany flower sellers I’ve seen plying their trade in and around La Ribera and its environs since 2004. I’ve never really given it too much thought. Naturally, and being somewhat stupid (old school concept of justice) I have chased after some of these scallywags, or in general given as much assistance as possible to the victims as was in my power. Other times it’s been a bit more personal, in February 2007 they climbed over a 9 foot wall into my patio, they took a hell of a lot of my wife’s possessions including a work laptop, (that hurt), I was luckier. Since then the Patio when we are not in looks like the outside of Carstairs or Barlinnie. Not nice, but then, security is never pretty (I remember living in Egypt).

I don’t know to what extent this is just Barcelona. Valencia is similar; I’ve seen snatchers there too. Seville, Málaga, and then there’s Madrid. More rural areas can be more relaxed (Castillian pals laugh at me in Valladolid always holding onto my coat when we are at a bar). The point I suppose is that the country still hasn’t made the full journey. We went to the other extreme. The old Spanish criminal, who was not a jovial fellow regardless of some poetic licence that is carted out, probably the result of nostalgia for that period, but he was a character firmly rooted in a more isolated Spain. Arturo Perez-Reverte, the author of the Alatriste novels, a more articulate and literate Jeremy Clarkson type polemicist, waxed lyrical on the old ‘trileros’, con artists of the old ‘shell game trick’. One had retired, and spoke to him in a bar in Barcelona. “Its not the same now, these guys come in from the East, and they just work at it like I’ve never seen before. I can’t compete with that”.

That possibly is the problem. There will always be home-grown crime, naturally. There are plenty of Spanish criminals, and though I have no figures to hand, I would suspect they still form the majority. But its this new breed, its like industrialised fishing. Barcelona is now a mecca for tourists, and people with no scruples know this. They have the fences ready, they have distribution lines prepared, and they ‘work’ at it. There are plenty of images ever so often in the press of whole tables covered in laptops, necklaces, mobiles, money, cameras, next to the ubiquitous placards with ‘Policia Nacional’, ‘Guardia Civil’, ‘Mossos d’Esquadra’ etc.

And of course there’s that ineffectual, tired, and wholly inadequate thin blue line (green if G. Civil). There are overworked and stressed bailiffs, prosecutors, some judges. A creaking understaffed, overworked, underfunded and positively demoralised legal system, who simply can`t do much more. That, more than anything else is the problem. If you doubt any of this, a Saturday night at Nou de la Rambla police station should do the trick, (they need interpreters). Friends I grew up with liked our legal system, they though back where they were from was too harsh (the USA). In recent reunions, I notice, that attitude has changed, hardened. Fine, maybe it’s just age, maybe though, it is that feeling that criminals in Spain just don’t get punished, ever.

It is the barefaced cheek of it all, certainly. Helping an Iranian couple, (scientists), back in 2011, I wonder what they made of it all. The security guard that was trying to help just told me in Spanish. “In get threatened by these thieves all the time. They say, ‘you can’t touch me. I’ll throw you on the line with a metro car passing. I make more money than you, I have good lawyers.’” I suppose that sort of sums it up.

Spain got rich quick after the regime died out. It didn’t address some vital areas, I don’t know if it ever will. Whatever it does though, and considering the loons in charge of the asylum in Madrid now, (and the Generalitat), it probably doesn’t have the money, or in the case of more high flying thieves I doubt it has the inclination to do anything about it, (in no particular order; Felix Millet, the King’s son in law and probably his daughter too, the UDC part of the ruling coalition in Catalonia, the PP in Valencia, the Junta in Andalucia are all guilty to greater or smaller degrees of fraud, nepotism and yes, out and out theft).

It’s a darn shame I would stay, Barcelona, despite it all is one of the best places in the world, if you can get a decent job mind. Good luck to you all. Stay safe and be careful.