Less than a week after the discovery of parts of the body of an allegedly murdered German in a garbage container in Barcelona, the police in the Spanish metropolis arrested two murder suspects.
The two men are 31 and 51 years old, said the Catalan police Mossos d'Esquadra on Monday.
The nationality of the 50-year-old victim was initially only revealed by the media on Monday.
This information was confirmed to the German Press Agency by the police.
Parts of the dismembered corpse were found last Tuesday by a scrap dealer in a container on a busy street in the posh Eixample district - right in front of the building where the German, according to the caretaker, had lived in a rented apartment for many years.
There they found "various clues that link this place to possible violent death," the police said.
According to media reports and statements from neighbors, those arrested are a 31-year-old from Ukraine and a 51-year-old Irishman who have only been living as subtenants with the German for a short time.
They are said to have put the upper body and other body parts in a suitcase and thrown it into the container.
The Catalan police initially did not say which region in Germany the man came from.
The two suspects were brought before the judge on Monday.
This ordered pre-trial detention for the 51-year-old, as the Catalan judiciary announced in the evening.
The younger man was released subject to conditions, it said.
But his passport was confiscated.
He is therefore not allowed to leave Spain and has to report regularly to the judicial authorities in Barcelona.
The caretaker of the building told the newspaper "La Vanguardia" about the allegedly murdered German: "He was a very discreet and friendly man." The discovery of the body caused great excitement and concern for the residents of the street, the paper wrote.
After the arrests, there is relief.
For the time being, nothing was known about the possible motive for the crime.