‘Exhaustion’, ‘anger’ and ‘fear’ are the feelings of several residents of the Vinyet and Terramar areas of Sitges, with a number of people reporting ‘recurring thefts’ in these neighbourhoods for various months.
After coordinating through a WhatsApp group and collecting signatures to present them to the OAC, a video shared this past week on social media showing one resident who’d been a victim of a robbery with physical assault, also raised alarms.
The underlying problem, beyond the thefts and muggings, is that the residents claim they know where the suspected thieves are. Multiple witnesses say they are located in the shacks that have been built on various plots in the Granja 2 area – years ago known as the Sellés Tennis Courts.
In this area, between Paseo Vilanova and the railway, at the height of Carrer de la Riera Xica, there are visibly vulnerable families, with dependent children, who are doing their best to survive in a hostile environment. At the same time, however, there is a group of about ten men aged between 20 and 40 that the neighbours describe without hesitation as ‘repeat offenders’.
Some of the witnesses have suffered robberies first hand, others have seen the suspects carrying them out, and have recognised them through the images from video surveillance cameras that they have installed in their homes.
They claim that the alleged thieves make notes on their cell phones about the homes and vehicles they are targeting, and which homes are empty at certain times.
A feeling of ‘desperation’ has begun to spread among part of the neighbourhood, and although they have met on two occasions with the local council, the Local Police and the Mossos d’Esquadra, the general feeling is that there is little room for improvement. ‘They tell us that we cannot have fixed patrols in this area and, in the best case, if they are caught, the judge will release them immediately,’ said one resident.
Some residents have gone so far as to go to the shacks where the alleged thieves live and, in exchange for money, ask for the return of stolen items. Some have managed to recover mobile phones, electric scooters or bicycles with payments of up to 500 euros.
Others, with less luck, have seen via the GPS incorporated in their devices, that their stolen property was already being used in other neighbouring towns or even in the Moroccan city of Nador. One family decided to put their house up for sale after suffering four burglaries – some whilst they were inside the property – in just the last year.
The growing despondency and insecurity have caused some residents to start considering ’emergency solutions’ outside the institutions and security forces, such as hiring the company Desokupa to dismantle the camp where these alleged thieves live, or even organising citizen patrols at night to maintain round-the-clock vigilance. If there are no changes in the coming weeks, the residents are also considering holding a demonstration.
Police response
Residents of Vinyet and Terramar met with council representatives and the police on 13 March at the Local Police station. The Mossos said that criminal acts in this area of Sitges had decreased compared to other years, while local councillor David Martínez reiterated that, despite these episodes, Sitges is a ‘safe’ town and that the residents now have a new mobile app, ‘Sitges Alert’, to communicate more quickly with the Local Police. It was also pointed out that the land illegally occupied by the suspected thieves is privately owned and, therefore, the police cannot enter it without a court order. The Local Police and Mossos claim that they are monitoring the situation and that they have increased vigilance in the neighbourhood since the first meeting with residents’ groups.
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