In the Barcelona metro, no one remembers ever encountering an organized action of such magnitude. Up to 62 graffiti artists coordinated the morning from Monday to Tuesday to force their way into the Vall d’Hebron station and paint all the trains that were there ready to serve the metro line 5. Fourteen of them ended up being arrested by the Mossos, the rest escaped, although some have been identified despite the hoods, masks and caps with which they tried to hide.
The large group of vandals forced their way into the premises by breaking the metal shutters to access the station while it was still closed. Once inside, they tore down the validation barriers, painted over the CCTV cameras and headed straight to the platforms where the convoys were to spray paint them in no time. The images from the cameras that failed to cover up make visible a sequence of events in which it is shown that it was nothing improvised. Everyone knew where they were going, what they had to do and where they wanted to leave their mark.
Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) has filed a criminal complaint against the 62 participants in the attack by the organized gang. It is estimated that the damages exceed 50,000 euros. “We cannot allow these kinds of attacks to take place and, for this reason, from TMB we will act with the utmost force and determination, using all the tools at our disposal to prevent situations like this from happening again”, he warned the president of the public company, Laia Bonet. Through a statement, TMB particularly thanked the security guards, who are in high numbers precisely at this station because it is the access road to the Sant Genís garages, one of the most desired points, where there are the new units of line 3, which still smell like new and are the object of desire of railway fans, as well as graffiti artists.
Bonet regretted that “these acts of vandalism endanger the physical integrity of the metro security guards and, at the same time, create a great harm to the public because they degrade an essential service such as public transport and generate a total expenditure of public money unjustified”. The most obvious effects were suffered by users of metro line 5 throughout yesterday morning. Since four trains were left unused, the frequency of passage in the morning rush hour was longer than usual, and this resulted in certain agglomerations above usual at the time of greatest demand.
Yesterday’s large-scale attack has raised a growing concern in the sector. “There is an upswing after years of progressive decline”, says the director of the FGC Operadora, Oriol Juncadella, in his capacity as coordinator of the Observatorio del Civisme del Civismo del Transport Ferroviari, an organization in which operators from all over Spain participate and where they share strategies to deal with a chakra to which they have to set aside a larger budget item than they would like. Renfe had to spend more than 10 million euros last year as a result of 1,490 attacks by vandals on its railway facilities in Catalonia. All over Spain, the bill rises to 25 million. Even so, the situation is better than in 2018, when the worst figures were recorded.
TMB, for its part, assures that it has halved the square meters painted during the first half of this year compared to the past. Juncadella states that there are “fewer attacks in number but with more force and with repeat offenders”. The attack suffered by the subway responds to the current dynamics regarding this issue, which long ago left behind the clandestineness and stealth of the old school to move to an exhibition on social networks with a component violent that incorporates the confrontation with the security guards as another part of the highly planned action.
All in all, the sector is celebrating a toughening of sentences to create jurisprudence with gangs of repeat offenders. “Sentences are being handed down with prison sentences included due to the high amount of damage caused by the attacks”, celebrates the coordinator of the civic observatory, who appreciates that the judges are getting more involved after many years considering these attacks as a simple lack of damage.
