“No, don’t publish our address, please, because we live in a house, and there aren’t that many around here, and we don’t want to make it easy for thieves either. the Three Towers, between indignant and afflicted. We have a dog, we have an alarm, we have security glass… but three Saturdays ago, late in the afternoon, they took advantage of the fact that we had gone out for a walk in Pedralbes and jumped over the fence, climbed up to a small balcony on the first floor and they slipped through a window. They removed the frame so they could remove the safety glass!”
“I’m sure they had been watching us,” she continues. “Otherwise, how would they know the dog wasn’t home either? And they knew what they were doing. Before the alarm went off and the security company notified us, they had time to take some jewelry and watches and some money, and my daughter-in-law’s wedding ring! Things that they can move without attracting attention on the street. ..”
“And the Mossos d’Esquadra, well, very well. They arrived immediately, very kindly, and they verified that there was no one in the house, that everything was in order, that there was no burglar left inside… and then the scientific police also came, but it can be seen that these thieves are very professional and They’re wearing gloves and everything and they don’t leave any prints or anything. I am 70 years old and I have never felt insecure in my neighborhood, ever, but now… Now I go out to buy bread and I tell myself to see what happens”.
Concern about the assaults on homes is entrenched in the upper part of Barcelona. Neighbors on this side of the city, with some 200 communities of owners who are trying to coordinate in the face of this problem, are asking the administrations to provide more resources to the Mossos and the Guàrdia Urbana so that they stop the happy thieves of floors. The police operation arranged at the end of last year stopped them dead in their tracks for a few weeks. After the progressive rise in assaults on homes in the area in previous months, Christmas passed in a rather placid way. In barely a month, from mid-December to mid-January, the Mossos arrested 25 alleged criminals of this type, mainly in the Tres Torres neighborhood. The problem is that a good part of them was later released.
Sources from the Generalitat police stress that the latest cases are specific and that at the moment there is no upturn in this type of crime. The sources also point out that the special arrangement for this Christmas lowered its intensity, “but we continue to have a uniformed and plainclothes presence in all the neighborhoods of the district, with special attention to the Tres Torres neighborhood. We perform daily data analysis. If we detected a significant increase, we would put a more forceful device into operation again ”.
Albert Batlle, deputy mayor for Security and councilor responsible for the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district, acknowledges that there are some cases that cause concern. “But we keep our attention on these neighborhoods. The increase in home robberies suffered last year is controlled ”, he specifies.
A neighbor from Sant Gervasi-Galvany says that, fortunately, “that weekend, a few weeks ago, my husband, the girls and I were out of town. Apparently the thief climbed up the gas pipe, through the back of the building up to the fifth floor! And so, well, he entered three floors, one after the other, quietly, for an hour and a half, until he was startled by a neighbor’s alarm, when she was trying to enter another house. He then he walked away ”. It wouldn’t be midnight yet.
This neighbor, who also prefers to remain anonymous, adds that the community of owners of the building has already covered the pipe in question so that no one can climb up it again. “We have also put an alarm on the floor –he continues–, and we are going to put another perimeter shared with the neighbors who live next door. But the uneasiness still remains. I don’t know how long this discomfort will last, this impotence, this restlessness… And, well, they also took some jewelry that belonged to my mother, who passed away five years ago around this time, and also my engagement ring… and that Well, I guess it can never be fixed.”
