A year ago, a thousand inhabitants from all ends of Barcelona came together in the center of the city to say enough to insecurity and incivism. Tsunami Veïnal gathered them before the "degradation" that he saw "increased as never" in 2018, embodied in "narcoactivity, street fights" and more revelations. The platform was supported by about twenty entities. Now articulate a quarantine. This Saturday he shifted again the shout of the neighborhoods at the gates of the City Hall and the Generalitat, after a summer with protest pans and restlessness fueled by a dozen stabbing deaths.

"I am not proud when they tell me that we have grown," confesses Manel Martínez, spokesman for the movement, which yesterday gathered half a thousand people. Claiming to be able to walk without fear, they demanded from the Government and the Consistory more police presence on the street, tighten penalties for recidivism and incentives that move away from illegal sale and criminality to vulnerable groups

Tsunami Veïnal's first march epitomized the criticism in Ada Colau. The platform highlights now that it is apolitical and tries to urge the mayor equally, the Minister of Interior, Miquel Buch, and different institutions. Yesterday, a megaphone in hand, a spokesman stressed that the demonstration was “exclusively” from neighbors and requested that politicians who could meet in it be removed, at which point the municipal leader of the PP, Josep Bou, withdrew from the protest.

"We say to politicians that it is time to act now, because if there have been spooky and terrifying cases this summer we do not want to think about what it will be like next year if we do nothing," Martinez warns, emphasizing that Tsunami Veïnal runs away from alarmism, ultras speeches -in the demonstration it was ensured that no xenophobic slogans infiltrated- and the citizen patrols.

Jordi Giró presides over the Association of Neighbors of the Port Olímpic, with about thirty leisure venues where two murders have been committed in less than a month . He warns of the «conflict situations» that he blames on the accumulation of night offer, which is expected to be drastically reduced from 2020. «We detected a rebound in robberies with violence for a year and a half. It is concentrated between the subway and access to the leisure area, ”he says. A police device has been activated since a boy was beaten in July. Giró did not remember an equal one in six years.

Entities consulted detect a shift in the Colau executive since the PSC assumed security policies, entrusted to councilor Albert Batlle, former director of the Mossos d'Esquadra. "There is greater vigilance and that lowers the tension," said Francisco Abad, president of the Besòs Neighborhood Association, regardless of the demonstrations that have swept the neighborhood in recent weeks against theft and drug sales. “There was an increase in drug addicts when narcotics were closed in the Raval, but a cleaning team goes through the morning and afternoon from August 1 to withdraw syringes. And after seven o'clock in the morning, a cleaning team, inspectors and urban workers raise drug addicts where they spend the night and clean, ”he says.

«We have hope, but people are impatient. You can't see the increase we were asking for ”, urges José Manuel Sánchez, president of the Association of Neighbors of the Zona Fòrum, with recurring discomfort from noise and bottles. «Batlle has experience and tries to put peace between the City Hall and the Department of Interior. We ask you for preventive actions in dark spots, but you have removed before the manteros that those who carry a knife, ”Martínez, a resident of Barceloneta, tense in the last summers:« We have been forced to go with grandparents to take the pension to Bank, there are people who accompany their wife or daughter to catch the bus if it is early, there are fights with a knife and not precisely with a knife ... It did not happen before ».

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  • Barcelona
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