Tarragona It was only eight days, but they were so intense that in the neighborhood of Campclar, in Tarragona, the fear still lasts. Last March 3, a young man of only 19 killed a Maghreb man in the middle of the street by stabbing him several times. The confrontation had started the evening before, on Saturday, when both had a fight. According to the residents of the neighborhood, the argument started because the young man was smoking a joint in front of a portal and a man from the Maghreb scolded him. The scene ended in punches. Later, the Maghreb, accompanied by a friend, found the boy and beat him up. It was the next morning when the young man, armed with a knife, took revenge and stabbed to death the man with whom he had fought. The victim was 35 years old.
As often happens in poor and forgotten neighborhoods, the news spread. Everyone knew who the culprit was and the Maghreb community began demonstrating every day to demand that the Mossos d’Esquadra arrest the boy, who had gone into hiding. The nightmare lasted eight days. The anger over the killing was not enough with the protests and they burned dumpsters almost every night. “In a single day, shots were heard in the afternoon and at night… It was as if the devil had come to the neighborhood,” explains a still frightened neighbor. “This neighborhood is worse than life,” he says. According to ARA, the victim’s entourage entered the home of the alleged murderer, who lived with his mother, but no one was home at the time. They also entered the brother’s house, but he was not there either. In the neighborhood, or at the Mossos police station a few meters away, they don’t even want to think about what would have happened if they happened to meet. It was the family of the alleged killer who contacted the police, who convinced them to have the boy surrender voluntarily. “If he doesn’t turn himself in, we’ll kill him,” said a 17-year-old boy from the neighborhood, of Maghreb origin, this Monday. The boy’s entire family disappeared from the neighborhood and have not yet returned.
The escalation of violence led to fears of a confrontation between the Maghreb and gypsy communities, but even the mayor of Tarragona, Rubén Viñuales, held talks with representatives of the two groups to try to prevent it from escalating. One detail helped to calm spirits: the father of the alleged murderer is a gypsy, but the mother is Paia, which in slang is known as quincaller. “When these things happen, you have to ask for justice against whoever did it, but not against the whole family or the whole gypsy ethnicity, when the boy is not even a gypsy,” explains Emilio González, representative of the Gypsy Federation of Tarragona and Terres of the Ebro González, who is a neighbor and merchant in the neighborhood, even believes that the family should be able to return, although it is an option that the neighborhood does not even consider.
This Wednesday, one month after the homicide that has tensed the whole neighborhood, the Local Security Board meets in Tarragona, at the request of the mayor Viñuales. At the meeting, where everything that is happening in Campclar will be analysed, there will also be the Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, as well as the representatives of all the police forces, firemen and rural agents. What is very clear to everyone is that “the problem of Campclar goes beyond the police sphere”, according to Mossos d’Esquadra sources.
A sixth without a lift
Campclar is one of the population centers in the Ponent area of Tarragona and has 11,331 inhabitants. This small neighborhood was created during the 60s from the industrialization of Tarragona and was nourished mainly by Spanish emigrants. From the 1980s, the construction of flats promoted by the company Adigsa (currently Agència de l’Habitatge de Catalunya), which depends on the Generalitat, accelerated. Throughout all these years, the Generalitat built different developments and built 1,222 public housing. Tenants had the right to buy, and 58% of all this housing stock has already passed into private hands. The other 42% is still owned by the Generalitat. The maintenance of these estates is correct in some cases, but in others it is absolutely precarious. “I live in a sixth floor and we haven’t had an elevator for more than two years. There is a 95-year-old neighbor who can no longer leave the house, and it’s hard for me too because I’ve had heart surgery and suffered a stroke “, laments Montse Domingo. As he explains, he has reported this situation many times to the Housing Agency, but they still haven’t resolved it. There are also flats that don’t even have a balcony. “It is very difficult to intervene because you have to reach agreements with a majority that is already privately owned,” explains Marina Berasategui, Secretary of Housing of the Generalitat. All of this means that the neighborhood has very run-down estates, some of which don’t even have a door.
“It is necessary to take a more comprehensive approach, taking into account the management of people and also the physical intervention in the housing stock”, defends Berasategui, who recalls that a maintenance service is being tendered to adapt up to 23 buildings (338 homes) of the neighborhood. As he points out, 67% of the rehabilitation tasks that will be subsidized by the Generalitat are in Tarragona. “All of us must do our part to make a safe and livable neighborhood,” says Berasategui.
Behind all the neighborhood’s problems is, of course, the drama of poverty. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics for the year 2020, the average annual income per home in Campclar is 14,983 euros, which places this neighborhood among the poorest 1% of the entire State. The Tarragona City Council assigns more workers and social educators than the social services law determines, and despite the shortages they do a titanic job: “The containment they do is a lot”, assures the municipal councilor of Social Services, Cecilia Mangini , which asks for more funding from the Generalitat to be able to offer more services.
In 2007, Campclar benefited from the neighborhood law, and between the City Council and the Generalitat they invested 15 million euros to improve the town planning of the neighborhood and create public spaces and facilities. It was also home to the Mossos d’Esquadra police station, the largest in all of Tarragona. The proximity of the police station means that the police reaction is faster and the operations are constant, but drug trafficking is the order of the day. “In this very square they sell drugs to 12-year-old children,” says Morad, who says he has never seen the neighborhood so degraded. The sale and consumption of heroin has also plagued the neighborhood for years.
“This neighborhood is very good. In reality, if you do your own thing, everything is fine. But if you look for problems, you will surely find them,” says a neighbor, while his chain link, inside a small cage, begins to sing.
2024-04-16 21:59:20
#doesnt #deliver #kill
