There are too many dead people who have not been visited for a long time, have not cleaned the niche, lit candles or brought flowers.
The Mossos d’Esquadra are investigating more than 160 grave desecrations that have occurred in the Montjuïc cemetery in Barcelona in recent months. Looting to steal jewelry and gold from the deceased could be much higher. Some cemetery workers have unofficially assured La Vanguardia that the number of niches violated could exceed 300, although the director of Cemeteries, Miquel Trepat, denies this last fact.
It is shuddering just to think that someone would be able to break the slab that protects a niche to rummage through human remains in search of jewelry and gold teeth. But the theft is the only motive that justifies a wave of desecrations such that on July 3 a member of the legal team of the public company that manages the cemeteries filed a complaint at the police station of the Mossos d’Esquadra de Sants- Montjuïc. The aforementioned person in charge gave a statement and estimated the number of assaults at 160.
Since that day, the Sants investigation unit has been in charge of investigations that are not turning out to be easy. And not precisely because they are not working. They follow several lines that, for the moment, do not give the expected results.
Since the start of the wave of desecrations, which those responsible for the cemetery place between May and July, the Catalan police, in coordination with the Barcelona Urban Guard, have carried out two joint night operations to try to find the assailants red-handed. The Sants citizen security patrols frequently circulate outside and inside the cemetery, attentive to any suspicious movement.
On July 10, a joint team of plainclothes agents from the two bodies entered the cemetery, using drones with thermal cameras to try to detect any movement, which did not occur. Investigation is especially complicated. As Miquel Trepat reminds this newspaper, Montjuïc is over 150 years old, is home to more than 175,000 graves and covers 57 hectares with nooks and crannies and dead-end streets that make police work difficult and encourage hiding or going unnoticed.
The last robbery on record was reported on July 18. The following day, those responsible for the cemetery alerted the Mossos of the desecration of some thirty niches. Since then, the workers of the compound have not detected any more open graves.
It is difficult to specify when this thief or thieves began to plunder niches. And it’s complicated because there are many tombs on Montjuïc that are in very poor condition. The oldest, without a tombstone or anyone to pamper them, were closed at the time with a slab that in the 60s was made of very poor quality concrete. A material that over time has been cracking. Hence, the first desecrations went unnoticed, because it was thought that the slab had broken due to the passage of time or even due to the vibrations of the heavy machinery of the works that have been carried out in the cemetery.
But as new violated niches were detected in some areas where the workers perfectly remembered having seen them well, the alarms went off. Someone was desecrating niches, removing human remains in search of pieces of gold, jewelry or even watches with which the deceased was buried.
Nowadays, practically no one buries their loved ones with pieces of value. Burying the dead with their jewels has been reduced to a few cultures, such as the gypsy, which does maintain the tradition. Not one of the many pantheons of gypsy families on Montjuïc has been violated, the same sources say. The desecrated are mostly old and without a tombstone.
Trepat showed “concern” about some events that he described as “isolated” because of what it means for some families to whom the incidents have begun to be communicated. The cemetery has sent certified letters transferring the facts and a few have replied. “Neither the holidays nor the seniority of the niches help us. Hence, some letters have already been returned because the senders do not even exist. The director of Cemeteries ensures that so far all the families contacted have been “understandable” and “grateful” for the information.
Cemeteries is part of the conglomerate of public companies Barcelona Serveis Municipals (BSM). On its official website you can see the security services contracted for all the cemeteries in the city, including Montjuïc, which only has two private security guards during the day and one at night, both from the Clece Seguridad company. But Trepat assures that in recent weeks security has been exceptionally increased with another three private security guards and the provisional placement of new surveillance cameras in strategic locations. It is hoped that, over time, they will be installed permanently.
Police work has been intense. The Mossos have already verified if any of the numerous workers of the enclosure or of the different companies that operate in the cemetery have carried out in the last weeks any sale of jewelery in an official establishment. And the truth is that they found one. But the suspect ruled himself out after confessing that the material he sold in a jewelry store corresponded to several gold pieces that he found in a niche that he was authorized to clean after the term of stay expired and he had to move the remains to the ossuary.
Investigators have been able to better coordinate with cemetery workers each time they discover a new desecration. They no longer touch the niche and await the arrival of the scientific police of the Mossos, who, for the moment, have a palm print on a desecrated grave.
Another of the lines that was investigated was that of two Serbian citizens who forgot several dental pieces in the hostel room where they were staying. They checked the data and also discarded it.
