Cristina Rubio Barcelona

Barcelona

Updated Friday, March 15, 2024-02:26

  • Events The murderer of the Mas d'Enric cook cut the throat of a prostitute "brutally" in 2016 and was sentenced to 11 years in prison

"We crossed the red line."

The murder of the cook at the Mas d'Enric prison, in Tarragona, at the hands of a prisoner who later committed suicide has generated a strong controversy in Catalonia and has uncovered the case of thunder.

Prison officials

,

tired of the increase in incidents over the past few years, have erupted over one of the cruelest murders in living memory.

"It is the chronicle of a death foretold," laments Alberto Gómez, coordinator of CSIF Prisons in Catalonia and official since 2007, in statements to this newspaper.

"We have been denouncing this situation for seven years, attacks have increased by more than 300% since 2016 and we warned that nothing would change until something as regrettable as this crime happened."

«We hoped that we would never have to encounter this situation, but unfortunately that has not been the case.

“It has been a tragic event and, yes, it is a red line,”

this official admits.

"Tempers are heated," he acknowledges about a case that yesterday generated a strong protest from the main prison unions.

A unitary concentration at the doors of the Ministry of Justice of the Generalitat that showed the discomfort of a group that demands the immediate resignation of the

head of the Government, Gemma Ubasart,

and the secretary of Criminal Measures, Reintegration and Attention to Victims,

Amand Cauldron

.

Also more measures, personnel, resources and ending the "failed" prison model of the Department of Justice.

In fact, in yesterday's demonstration the Mossos d'Esquadra charged to prevent the officials from occupying the headquarters of the department as a sign of protest and shouts of "murderous counselor" were even heard.

A proclamation that was repeated before Ubasart herself at the doors of the Mas d'Enric penitentiary center.

The prisoner who killed a cook in this prison on Wednesday and then committed suicide, Iulian, had "brutally" slit the throat

of a prostitute in April 2016.

A murder committed after giving her numerous stab wounds, which he confessed to the local police of Valls and for which he was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Iulian, of Romanian origin, met the woman in 2015 and hired her services on several occasions.

The two had numerous meetings and he fell in love with her, according to the Prosecutor's Office brief.

It was then that he asked her to give up her prostitution and she refused.

In April 2016 they met again in an apartment in Valls and, after an argument over not letting him see the photographs on his cell phone, he killed her.

Specifically, he attacked her with knives, caused numerous wounds and then slit her throat.

In fact, the court described the attack as “brutal” at the time.

After entering preventive detention, he was sentenced to 11 years in prison - the Prosecutor's Office requested 20 - with the mitigating circumstances of drunkenness and confession to the police.

The spokesman for the UGT prison union in Catalonia, Xavier Martínez,

yesterday called it an "anomaly of the system" that the prisoner who murdered the cook was working

with knives having been convicted of a murder with a knife, and insisted that it is something that can be reproduced in any other penitentiary center.

Alterations fired

Aside from the "tragic" crime of Mas d'Enric, the truth is that attacks on officials inside Catalan prisons do not stop growing: "More than one worker is attacked daily."

It is the diagnosis of the current state, a bad x-ray, which leaves worrying data year after year.

And 2023 was no exception: 582 prison officers were attacked in Catalonia's prisons, which recorded up to 703 incidents in 12 months.

Figures from the Department of Justice of the Generalitat, which the CSIF recently put on the table in a report in which it states that

last year there was a daily average of 1.6 workers attacked

.

By prisons and apart from what happened in Mas d'Enric, Brians 2 is one of the prisons in the spotlight due to the conflict of its inmates with 110 incidents throughout 2023. The table is led by Brians 1 - where found, for example, Dani Alves - with 156 attacks in total, and the Quatre Camins youth prison occupies third position with 82. All three are in the province of Barcelona.

"Because of the few inmates there are, many incidents are recorded," Gómez clarifies about this latest penitentiary center, a prison with 307 prisoners according to data from the Generalitat.

Also very worrying is the increase in

sexual assaults

"on colleagues" - "they are always on women," Gómez clarifies - going from 6 in 2022 to 17 last year.

"They are attacks of all kinds, from harassment to inmates who masturbate in front of the officials or try to touch their private parts."

A “chilling” increase, in his words.

From the CSIF, they also ask for more coercive measures such as

"aerosols or taser guns" to "defend ourselves",

something that the other unions also demand.

Regarding the use of aerosols, a resource that several unions have repeatedly put on the table, the Generalitat ruled out its use in December 2023 after having studied it.

Once the Justice has evaluated the "comparative data and empirical evidence" of the reports, it has decided not to authorize their use "with the objective of protecting the physical integrity and health of professionals and inmates, and guaranteeing their rights," the Executive then assured.

«

We are not agents of authority

, they attack us and nothing happens.

"It doesn't mean any increase in their sentence, it's free," Gómez says about another of the prison officials' demands.