Express kidnappings: shall we talk, Parlon?
1. The data will say that crime is falling in Catalonia. Nothing new, we already know this. The official figures always arrive cooked up by great chefs of institutional communication who prepare them to smell good. Whoever is in charge, it is a common practice. As much as claiming that the perception of risk goes one way, amplified by social media, while reality is much less dramatic. The other communicative habit of those in power is to label every serious event as an isolated case. And, therefore, the general public – those who go through life in good faith, which we are still the majority – should not worry because, mid-morning, on Balmes Street in Barcelona, at the corner of a Spanish police station, a man shoots another in the brain, kills him, flees on foot, and leaves the gun at a bus stop. Then they console us by saying that it was “an isolated case” and, therefore, we should not worry, because it was not a random homicide that happens to just anyone, but rather the murderer knew very well who he had to execute. That's fine then, we can breathe easy now.
2. Neither should we be worried, then, if we are driving on the AP-7, at around 7:30 in the evening, and we see that near Montornès some men dressed as police officers (it turned out to be a disguise) pull a man out of a car and, in a rough manner, make him get into another one and take him away. We knew it was a kidnapping because someone, from another car, recorded the action, posted it on social media, and the traditional media had no choice but to broadcast it. If not, would the Mossos have informed us about it? In that case, the Minister of the Interior, Núria Parlon, reassured us all by saying that the investigation pointed to a matter of “public drug health.” After that, not a word has been heard about that case since.
3. However, since then, in this autumn where express kidnappings seem to be a trend, we have heard of a man from Fontanals, in Cerdanya, whom two men forced into a car. He appeared bruised and beaten inside a trunk. On the same day, in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, four men kidnapped another person at their doorstep. Once released, he did not want to explain to the Mossos why he believed he had been kidnapped, nor even if he had paid the ransom. In the same week, in Calella, in the Maresme, another case with the same modus operandi. They pull you out of your car and force you into another. Once released, the Mossos do not speak of kidnapping but of “illegal detention”. The semantic difference, however, does not exclude a single bit of suffering.
4. Let us swallow that the kidnapping in Fontanals was an isolated case. The one in Santa Coloma, another. The one in Calella, too. Once it may be, twice perhaps it is a coincidence, but three times is already a tradition. And in Catalonia, since the beginning of the year, we have records of up to twelve express kidnappings. About the latest one, in Sabadell, a friend who experienced it in her home parking lot this week warned me. Close to two in the morning from Tuesday to Wednesday, the Mossos thwarted a kidnapping and arrested three of the four suspected criminals. The other one fled in an AudiSQ8 with French license plates, down the street. Who did they want to kidnap? Was it another revenge between drug trafficking clans? Was it a drug debt? Should these mere clues, leaked by the police, let us sleep peacefully if we have never had anything to do with this underworld that seems so widespread? And what if we talk about it, Parlon?
5. To stop this spiral, what does Sílvia Catà, the new head of the Mossos, intend to do, she who has identified that the production and export of marijuana in Catalonia have brought us a lot of mafias, guns, and organized crime? More than one kidnapping a month, of this kind, is not the best data for the Catalonia we want. That you could be kidnapped, even if it is for a few hours, even if it is by mistake, must be quite annoying.
