At least during these last few days, these neighbors have not been finding any drugged person lying sprawled in the doorway of their building. The pressure from the Mossos d’Esquadra and the Guardia Urbana is intimidating the drug addicts who months ago took over a residence in a building on Muntaner Street at the height of Mallorca Street. At least during these last few days, they stopped scaring, insulting, and threatening those who were in the common areas.
Read more Restrictions worsen the funding conflict in the Costa Brava
“The other day, just this week, my daughter was coming out of the elevator and ran into one of these people in the doorway,” says one of the neighbors of this building in the Eixample. “And my daughter got quite a scare because the man ran into the elevator at full speed, looking down, towards the floor, sneaking away… But my daughter saw that on the other side of the doorway there were two plainclothes police officers with their walkie-talkies, watching everything that was happening.”
“Before they insulted you for anything, and now they hold the door for you,” say those in the stairwells
These police officers are from the Guardia Urbana and the Mossos d’Esquadra. These days, the Generalitat police are sending plainclothes officers to this area, their agents specialized in repeat offenders. The investigation unit of the Eixample police station also participates in these operations. Additionally, the presence of uniformed patrols around the building is helping some of the occasional visitors to this troubled area prefer to have their parties elsewhere.
“Last night they argued in the early hours in the apartment, started banging and shouting – the neighbors of this building continue detailing – but the truth is that since all this came out in the media and we have quite a few police around the building, they are trying to be much more discreet, not to cause the ruckus they used to make. Well, they reconnected the electricity after it was cut off, quickly, but…”
Read more Corsican terrorism resurges and threatens the French who settle on the island
The fact is that although after so many months of hell euphoria did not break out on this stairwell, the neighbors do show at least some expectation, even hope. In September they will submit the appropriate request so that the City Council asks for the eviction of this residence. In any case, some trust that in the meantime the heir family members of the recently deceased owner of this apartment will appear. “We already tried to contact them several times, but they ignored everything…”
We are talking, the neighbors say, about a lawyer from a good family, from the upper part of the city, with real estate investments mainly in the Eixample, who in recent years fell into hell in an exaggerated way and filled this four-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment with people also with many problems… until one afternoon at the end of April he left in a hurry. A few hours later, the door of this apartment was broken down and the lock was changed.
Also read
“I also ran into them in the doorway, Thursday afternoon, coming back from work, with the Algerian and the Italian, the two who are in charge in the apartment… and I was very scared, because if you told these people that bicycles can’t be left in the doorway, they would respond with insults and threats, for anything, and this time the man opened the door for me and held it! And then two more appeared, rushing up the stairs, also looking down.”
Read more Italy receives, despite everything, more immigrants than Spain
