The murder of Nuria López, the cook at the prison in Tarragona, has unleashed the anger of prison workers, who accuse the Generalitat of leaving them unprotected. From the surprise at the beginning when they learned about the crime, it went to indignation and from there to anger, to the point that the prison workers decided yesterday to block access to the prisons for the whole day, so that they prevented staff from entering and left many prisoners unable to leave their cells due to lack of cash. In total, almost 5,000 were closed during the day. At the last hour of the evening the unions decided to lift the protest during the weekend, but to keep it active only a. On Monday they intend to resume the protests. The Generalitat has created a crisis committee to follow the evolution of the conflict.
The night shift staff had to work all day yesterday because the morning staff did not relieve them. The same happened with the afternoon ones. The night guard has fewer men, and for this reason the prisons could not function normally. There were five penitentiary centers where there was an absolute blockade: Brians 1 and 2 (Sant Esteve Sesrovires), Lledoners (Sant Joan de Vilatorrada), Ponent (Lleida) and Mas d’Enric (el Catllar). The rest of the prisons, such as Puig de les Basses (Figueres), Quatre Camins and the Youth Center (la Roca del Vallès), operated at half throttle, without activities, but with the inmates able to move around the module. In the afternoon, the visits of family members and the departures of prisoners on leave were planned, which could not be carried out.
For some time, prison officials have been asking the Generalitat for improvements in the security of the centers due to the increase in assaults. The death of Nuria, the cook at the prison in Tarragona, at the hands of an inmate, they say, is the sad outcome of a growing violence that has been reported for some time. Yesterday, workers blocked access to the centers from early in the morning. They set up barricades by burning tires, tree branches and stones. They demanded the resignation of the minister of Justice, Gemma Ubasart, and the secretary of criminal measures, Amand Calderó. Both tried unsuccessfully to open a dialogue with the unions to restore normality in the prisons. At 2 p.m., Justice had called the unions to a meeting, but they stood up and announced that they would continue with the blockade as long as they could.
In an emergency press conference, both Calderó ruled out resigning and urged the unions to reflect and be aware of the consequences of their actions. “We understand the labor demands, but there are inmates who have not been able to leave their cells since yesterday, and this increases the tension and may pose a risk to the workers who develop the service”, warned the minister. Ubasart asked the unions to resume dialogue and differentiate the labor claims from the incident that cost the life of the cook at Mas d’Enric. In addition, he announced the opening of a classified information whose conclusions he expects for next week and which will make it possible to clarify how the crime occurred and determine why an inmate convicted of killing a woman with a knife on 2016 was in the kitchen with access to sharp objects. “For more than four years, the prisoner had been working in the kitchen with normalized behavior,” explained the secretary of penal measures.
Iulian Odriste, 48 years old and of Romanian nationality, was serving an eleven-year prison sentence for killing a woman in Valls in 2016. He cut her throat with a kitchen knife after an argument. On Wednesday afternoon, in the prison kitchen, he took the head of this service to the cold room and stabbed her in the neck. Then he cut her jugular himself. The inmate had been dismissed in December after a violent argument with another inmate. He was removed from the kitchen, but returned shortly after.
