The blanket top returns to settle in the center of Barcelona after the Covid
Friday August 12. 22 hours. Barceloneta Metro Station. Suddenly, while users, especially tourists, enter and leave the lobby, a pitched battle breaks out at the turnstiles between a group of peddlers and members of the Urban Guard. The agents have just evicted them from public roads, where after years of Covid, they are trying to settle back down.
The images went viral a few days ago and showed the members of the group, inside the station and hiding behind the ticket control doors, throwing objects, harassing the agents, who ended up backing down, and causing destruction in the subway. luckily for the image of barcelonaScenes like this are, for now, atypical in the post-Covid era, although they threaten to reinstall themselves in the Catalan capital.
Years before the pandemic turned everything upside down, there was a time when his presence, and his continual stampedes from tense police operations, became commonplace. All this due to the inaction of the municipal government of Ada Colauthat since I came to the mayor’s office in 2015 it allowed the manteros to gain, never better said, ground in the city, which had a knock-on effect. They came to be encrypted 700 in the city and, after years of complaints, in 2019 the approach to the problem was changed and it was minimized.
“Tourism has returned and they are constantly trying to re-settle but the Urban Guard is very much on top of them, at least here,” he tells ABC from Friends of the Rambla. The avenue, in effect, had been one of the favorite territories for the manteros years ago. There it was easy to see dozens of street vendors invading it and offering magnets, fans, Barça shirts and counterfeit top-brand sports shoes. Tourists who wanted to enjoy the avenue had to go around them.
His favorite spots were the areas of paddles either Drassanesits extremes and where the avenue is wider and they have more escape routes if the Police appear, or the Lyceum, a much narrower section and where they will be more camouflaged among the floods of tourists. All three points also have Metro stations. “They used to use it in their day to day to flee or relocate along La Rambla, but this year, as there are stops canceled due to works, they do not have this resource either,” add the voices consulted.
“At the moment they are less, they have nothing to do with what we had seen,” declare the spokespersons of the Rambla. The same happens in other tourist areas of the city, such as the port, Paseo Juan de Borbón or Montjuïc mountainwhere their neighbors and merchants see that the problem timidly looms but, again, with total impunity.
Although the perception on the ground is this, the city council avoids details if the interventions with the group are increasing. The Urban Guard acts, municipal sources point out, to prevent the street vendors from “searching” on public roads. From the consistory they are summoned to assess the phenomenon at the end of summer. TMBwho usually lives with the group in its facilities when sheltering from the Police, declines to comment on the matter, while Renfewhose station catalonia square It was at specific moments the great underground focus of the manteros, it has not had them in its halls again.
“We have returned to cat and mouse game that are persecuted”, they remark from the Union Section of the Urbana of the CSIF union, whose spokespersons confirmed to ABC that the “encounters occur again continuously.” In addition, they regret that “it is difficult combat this phenomenon when we have to work at the same time against the crime that is increasing in the city and when, on top of that, we have lost institutional support».
They have a similar opinion from the union SIP-Fepolthose who are responsible notice an increase “galloping” of manteros. «And his attitude is the same: appropriate yes or yes the space. They feel supported and know that we are in the spotlight for what we do and how », assures ABC his spokesperson, Jordan Rodriguez.
Both sources, who agree that street vendors are aggressiveremember that commit various crimesby exercising an activity without a license, by going against the intellectual property or by being organized as mafias and even having the space that corresponds to each one marked with adhesive tape, something visible in Juan de Borbón. For them, part of the solution would design comprehensive devices in which all affected police forces and institutions work side by side. Now, however, Urbana is the only one in charge of dealing with the collective. “If you wanted, the phenomenon could be controlled. But it seems obvious that they do not want to fight the blanket top. It is his great political lie, ”they sentence.