A terrible and painful silence surrounded the Horta neighborhood of Barcelona yesterday afternoon. The temperature plummeted in the section of Paseo Universal where, in the early afternoon, the Barcelona Fire Department knocked down the basement door of number 47 and had to take a step back due to the presence of city gas. Inside, three bodies. The father and his two children aged 7 and 10.
A chilling and terrible story that moved the residents of this neighborhood who yesterday were swirling around the bar of the Paqui cafeteria trying to remember who the man was and the faces of the two children. There were few doubts about what could have happened and that the Mossos d’Esquadra are now investigating.
In the early afternoon, some neighbors, including Isabel, who works in the cafeteria, heard the screams of a woman. A neighbor of number 47 had seen her holding her mobile phone shortly before, at the doors of the building, shouting: “But why doesn’t anyone know where she is? I just don’t understand why no one hangs up on me. It’s because I don’t know where my children are.”
Not fifteen minutes later, the same neighbor saw how the Guardia Urbana cut off traffic in the street, which was filled with trucks, an ambulance from the Barcelona Fire Department and vehicles from the Emergency Service and the Mossos d’Esquadra.
So the Firemen managed to ventilate the room and secure the scene, the first cops from the homicide squad and also from the scientific police arrived. After a short while, the judicial entourage also arrived with the judge on duty and the coroner. They could only certify the death of all three.
Once again, and it is repeated too many times for the collective horror, it was the mother who sounded the alarm. Her ex-husband should have handed over their two children to her on Sunday after the Christmas holidays. Not only did he not do it, but the rascals also didn’t go to their first day of school after the January holidays on Monday.
The firefighters found the home completely sealed, with the windows and doors closed and the city gas keys wide open. Last night it was very early and rushed to specify what could have happened in the house. But the police, as well as those around the victims, did not rule out any hypothesis, from the accident to the possibility, too many times reality, that the father murdered the two sons and then committed suicide.
Few neighbors knew the man, he had moved to the basement of the building just three years ago during the pandemic. The neighbors of the estate – some of them evicted from the estate after the event – have told La Vanguardia how it was common to see the creatures playing in the backyard of the house and the mother going there on Sundays to look for the bear.
Little by little, in front of number 47 of the promenade, cut off from traffic by the Urban Guard, neighbors and some tenants of the property who were evicted from the property as a precaution began to gather.
Technicians from the gas and electricity company entered the home to confirm that there was no risk to the rest of the people. Some preferred to look for alternatives in a night that would be long for scientific police work. Through the curtains of the downstairs windows you could see them working. Camera flashes lit up a terrible scene.
The neighbors thought about what could have happened to the rest of the property if the woman did not raise the alarm. The gas continued to escape, to the risk of all the neighbors.
