“No, don’t publish our address, please, because we live in a house, and there aren’t that many around here, and we also don’t want to make it easy for thieves. Let’s see if above gives them to come, to others! -explains a resident of the Tres Torres neighborhood, between indignation and grief-. We have a dog, we have an alarm, we have safety glass… but three Saturdays ago, late in the afternoon, they took advantage of the fact that we had gone for a walk around Pedralbes and jumped the fence, climbed up to a small balcony the first floor and they sneaked in through a window, removed the frame to be able to remove the safety glass!”.
“I’m sure they had been watching us – this neighbor continues -. Otherwise, how were they to know that the dog wasn’t home either? And they knew what they were doing. Before the alarm went off and the security company alerted us, it gave them time to grab some jewelry and watches and some money and my daughter-in-law’s wedding ring! Things that can be moved without attracting attention on the street…”.
“And the Mossos d’Esquadra, then very well. They arrived right away, very friendly, and checked that there was no one in the house, that everything was in order, that there was no trace left inside… and then the scientific police also came, but you can see that these thieves are very professional and they wear gloves and everything and they don’t leave marks or anything. I’m 70 years old and I’ve never felt unsafe in my neighborhood, never, but now… Now I go out to buy bread and I say to myself ‘let’s see what happens'”.
The restlessness at the wheel of home invasions is taking root in the upper part of Barcelona. Residents on this side of the city, from around two hundred communities of owners who are trying to coordinate because of this problem, are asking the administrations to provide more resources to the Mossos and the Urban Guard, so that they just stopped the damn flat burglars. The police operation arranged at the end of last year stopped them in the dark for a few weeks. After the progressive upsurge of home invasions in the area in the previous months, Christmas passed in a rather placid manner. In just one month, from mid-December to mid-January, the Mossos arrested 25 suspected criminals of this type, mainly in the Tres Torres neighbourhood. The problem is that much of it was later released.
Sources from the Generalitat police stress that the latest cases are specific and that there is currently no uptick in this type of crime. The sources also indicate that the special device this Christmas reduced the intensity, “but we continue to have a uniformed and civilian presence in all the districts of the district, with special attention to the Three Towers. Make a daily analysis of the data. If we detected a significant increase, we would again start a more forceful device”.
Albert Batlle, deputy mayor for Security and councilor responsible for the district of Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, acknowledges that there are some cases that cause unease, “but we keep our attention on these neighborhoods. The increase in home burglaries suffered last year is under control.”
A resident of Sant Gervasi-Galvany explains that, fortunately, “that weekend, a few weeks ago, my husband, the girls and I were out of town. Apparently the thief climbed through the gas pipe, through the back of the building to the fifth floor! And so he entered three floors, one after the other, calmly, for an hour and a half, until he was frightened by the alarm of a neighbor, when he was trying to enter another house. Then he left.” It wouldn’t be twelve o’clock yet.
This neighbor, who also prefers to remain anonymous, adds that the community that owns the building has already lined the pipe in question so that no one can climb into it again. “We have also installed an alarm in the apartment – he continues – and we will install another perimeter alarm shared with the neighbors who live next door. But the uneasiness is still there. I don’t know how long this discomfort, this helplessness, this restlessness will last… And well, they also took some jewelry that belonged to my mother, who died at this time of the year five years ago now, and also my engagement ring… and that I suppose can never be repaired”.
