Every day an average of ten home burglaries are reported in the city of Barcelona. An oscillating figure that varies depending on the month and the activity of a crime specialized precisely in accessing homes, when no one is there, and forcing any access. This past weekend the victim was the vice consul of Qatar in Barcelona. A diplomat living near Turó Park who, after spending the weekend away, discovered on Sunday night that her house had been broken into and robbed.
The diplomatic representative approached the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi Mossos d’Esquadra police station yesterday to file the complaint and make a first estimate of the value of the stolen products. To the first police officers who approached the home on Sunday night, the victim told them that she had to carry out a more detailed inspection of the interior of the apartment, but that the first thing she had seen was the forced safe.
The safe was on a shelf in one of the rooms and had been manipulated, opened and evidently emptied. Inside, according to the victim’s first statements, he kept half a dozen high-value luxury watches, and several pieces of high jewelry, rings, earrings, bracelets and necklaces with diamonds and other precious stones set in gold.
The home lacked an alarm, but it did have a video surveillance system that recorded two individuals, men, searching the rooms in search of valuable objects. The building, with concierge service on weekdays, also has a surveillance system with security cameras that recorded the exit of the two thieves through the main door of the block.
The thieves gained access to the diplomat’s home by climbing down from the community terrace, which they gained access to by forcing a wooden door and a gate. As soon as they reached the victim’s private terrace, they managed to move the sliding aluminum glass doors without difficulty and enter the interior of the house.
This is not the only assault on a relevant home that the police from the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi investigation unit have on the table. On Epiphany Eve, while his Majesties were going through the houses leaving gifts, others not so magical accessed a home in Tres Torres and entertained themselves with a safe that on this occasion was built behind a closet.
The thieves had to have relevant prior information that would assure them that no one would access the home that morning, because they must have spent hours until they managed to literally break the safe in half with the help of a radio.
As in the case of the vice consul of Qatar, Reyes’ victim reported that the safe kept cash and a large amount of family jewelry of great economic and, above all, sentimental value, in addition to high-end watches. At the time, El Caso published images of the safe literally split in half and the tools used by the thieves abandoned on a bed.
Just a year ago, and in the same district, but on very specific streets, those same police officers intensified their arrests of apartment thieves after several neighborhood protests. Those operations resulted in 25 detainees, of which only one was imprisoned, and the return to calm in the district.