In the early hours of September 1st, the fatal stabbing of Carles Vilajosana shocked the city of Manresa. The improvement in police statistics over recent months was shattered by this tragic event. Marc Aloy (ERC), the mayor of the capital of Bages, disagrees with the image projected in the last two weeks of Manresa as an unsafe city, although he does not hide at all the seriousness of a problem whose solution requires the involvement of other institutions.
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How is Manresa’s return to normality going?
We are recovering from a very extraordinary and very painful situation. The city is stunned because we are not used to suffering a crime of this nature. There is a lot of pain. These days we have seen how people needed to express that pain, to take to the streets. There have been several gatherings, some organized by entities and neighborhood associations and others whose organizers are not very clear and which have been instrumentalized by the far right.
And what has been the City Council’s response?
Those of us who have the responsibility to lead an administration, in this case, the Manresa City Council, cannot stand idly by. The citizens need us to give explanations, to be objective, and to address the relevant bodies, the Government of the Generalitat, the State Government, the justice system, the Parliament, because we cannot solve an issue like this only with the tools available to city councils. It is likely that laws need to be reviewed and judges also have a very large responsibility because, ultimately, they are the ones who end up deciding what measures must be applied. People do not understand that the minors arrested as alleged perpetrators of this homicide had a long criminal record, had been in juvenile centers, and were on the street at that moment. What the citizens do not understand, I do not understand either, but the application of specific measures to minors does not depend on a mayor but on a judge.
Judicial responsibility
“People do not understand that the minors arrested for this homicide, with a long criminal record, were on the street”
Has this tragic event polarized Manresa’s society?
We are nine months away from elections and some are using this event politically in a horrible way. This is the case of Aliança Catalana
Only Aliança Catalana?
The main opposition party, even knowing that the minors arrested were nationals, made a video calling for deportations if they were foreigners. We must be responsible for what we say and do. But the use that Aliança Catalana is making of these events is blatant, placing certain people at the gatherings to shout and point to the mayor and Sister Lucía Caram as responsible for the situation, and last Wednesday, in the middle of a demonstration of grief, announcing precisely that same day their candidate for the municipal elections.
Less than a year to the municipal elections
“The political use that Aliança Catalana is making of these events is blatant”
Some, surely opportunistically, claim that what happened that night was foreseeable.
Homicides do not happen in Manresa, it is not frequent, and therefore we are facing a shock situation. It is a very serious fact and, moreover, allegedly perpetrated by minors. The organizers of Wednesday’s gathering had been inactive for the last three years and, in any case, are members of the Table for Security, Civility, and Coexistence that we created in 2023, where we have been explaining not only the security measures we are adopting but also the social work we do with some young people who worry us, young people who increasingly exercise more significant violence, as well as our concern about the use of knives. It is essential to weave a national pact against knives. It cannot be that our teenagers have such easy access to a knife and that we normalize that there are young people who walk the streets with knives. If young people with such an extensive criminal record had not been on the street, this crime would not have occurred. Everyone must assume their responsibilities, and the one who dictates the measures is not the mayor or a security force, but the judge.
The main security problem
“We have a profile of young people left to their own devices who roam the streets, consume all kinds of substances, and commit minor crimes and, as we have seen, crimes that can become very serious”
Had there already been complaints about the behavior of young people of this profile?
I would say it is the most important problem we have in terms of security. We have a profile of young people, usually from very broken families, without family role models and with high school absenteeism, who are left to their own devices, who roam the streets, consume all kinds of substances, and commit minor crimes and, as we have seen, crimes that can become very serious. It is a challenge we have as a society: alarms cannot fail to go off in the Department of Education when a young person does not attend class. And when one of these young people has committed serious crimes, measures must be taken because otherwise, a sense of impunity is generated. Whoever does it must pay, and must pay quickly.
Therefore, the response cannot be only police-based.
It has to be police but also social, educational, and housing-related. We are talking about young people who in many cases live in misery, have nowhere to live, and have been abandoned by their families. Without a very effective administration, with support from juvenile justice and a good, very systematized mediation device, it is very difficult to monitor these cases. Since 2023, we have been working on a table where we manage all these cases with a significant level of success, with young people who had committed minor crimes and whom we managed to stop committing them but, I insist, on this occasion there was a judicial decision and a young person who should have been in a juvenile center was on the street.
What do you ask of the Generalitat and the State administration?
We have a juvenile law from the 1990s and the last revision was in 2000. Since then, society has changed a lot. And this also applies to repeat offenders. Laws must adapt to these changes. It is time to review the juvenile law, the repeat offender law, but above all, it is time to enforce the laws. When we have a collapsed justice system and trials are held after two years, we are not enough. This year, for example, we have had a wave of container burnings, 50 in a month and a half, and the same person burned them. We have arrested her three, four, five times, but she does it again. If there is no quick deterrent, that sense of impunity that citizens do not understand increases.
You have made some complaints that, despite your willingness, you cannot increase the Local Police staff
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Yes. Manresa has grown by 13,000 inhabitants in the last 20 years. With the cuts of 2012-2013, we had to reduce the Urban Guard, as well as the body of civil servants of the Manresa City Council. The replacement rate is very low, and they have not allowed us to increase the number of Local Police officers. A city that has grown by 13,000 inhabitants needs more schools, more services, more civil servants, and more urban guards. It is a recurring complaint from many mayors of city councils that have sound finances, that have economic resources, but cannot hire more agents. We generate a surplus but are not allowed to spend more. If a city council is capable of managing its finances well, it should be able to reinvest that money in improving public spaces, schools, hiring more staff. And this is a torment we have suffered every year for a long time.
Claim to the Spanish Government
“We have sound finances, but we are not allowed to hire more local police officers”
Most security and coexistence problems are rooted in social inequalities. Where is it a priority to invest so that the gap does not widen?
The growth of Catalonia and Manresa is a consequence of the arrival of many people from other countries who have come to seek a better life, a future for their children. The laws have not favored integration. And we are talking about different cultures, languages, and religions, a great complexity that makes it more necessary than ever to activate all social cohesion mechanisms. And all this has happened during a period of major cuts in education, social services, which are only now recovering.
Does a city like Manresa have the capacity to absorb such a large migratory movement as in recent years?
The average foreign population in Catalonia is around 20%. We are at 22%, and there are municipalities that reach almost 50%. I believe the country must be able to respond to its citizens and is capable of doing so when it can offer good social services, in education or health, but it is evident that economic resources have not increased at the same pace as the population and there is much work to be done.
Manresa has always been a city with a strong identity. Is it at risk of losing it as a result of this strong migratory contribution?
In Manresa, we have done very important integration work, in schools and, for example, through interreligious dialogue. And it pains me that after so many years of work and coexistence, everything could be broken by such an unfortunate event as we have suffered and by the hate speech and racism that far-right groups are injecting.
That could be a determining factor in the 2027 municipal elections
I don’t know if it will be decisive, but it is clear that it is already being exploited. All polls indicate that the far right is growing, especially at the expense of the Catalanist center-right that governed this country for so many years. And I think it is terrible that this is happening. We have to fight hate messages, the stigmatization of certain groups.
Unfounded rumors
“I assure you that in Manresa no one walks around with katanas on the streets”
Can we conclude this interview with a positive message about your city?
Manresa is a city with a very important economic fabric, with a strong industry throughout history. A city capable of generating jobs, with a good healthcare system, with 4,000 university students, a strong cultural heartbeat, with many sports entities, a city with history and a living city, with many people eager to improve it every day. Nothing can make us lose this direction and the desire and enthusiasm to make a city of coexistence, peace, and that leaves no one behind. The image of an apocalyptic city that some want to sell of Manresa has nothing to do with reality. Who will come to shop in Manresa if there are those who say you cannot walk peacefully through the city? That is a lie. Or, as some say, that there are people walking around with katanas on the street. I assure you that no one walks around with katanas on the street. And that does not mean that some may not feel insecure. Security is one of the most important public policies because without security there is no freedom and, therefore, we have to activate all possible mechanisms so that everyone feels safe walking the streets of their city.
