Multiple recidivism and other phenomena
The Senate has approved the law on repeat offenders, championed by Junts and adopted by the PSOE government. This law, which had already been passed in the Congress (it will now need to return for final approval), is proudly presented by Junts as a major achievement of the current legislature. It is framed as a tool to combat petty crime, understood as a phenomenon closely linked to immigration. Therefore, it includes a significant tightening of immigration law, with new requirements for obtaining a residence permit, as well as the typical increase in penalties, such as three years in prison for petty theft, etc.
A few days ago, Elisenda Alamany, number 2 of ERC, starred in a video in which she appeared in front of a 24-hour supermarket, one of those businesses that are usually run by immigrants, stating that, if she were mayor of Barcelona, she would stop granting new licenses to businesses that represent "the replacement of our businesses, the replacement of our businesses, city."
Both the rise in petty crime and the proliferation of 24-hour supermarkets are not diseases in themselves, but symptoms. They are not causes, but effects. If you'll allow me an anecdote, a couple of months ago my wallet was stolen on the Barcelona metro (I recovered it, along with the documents it contained, thanks to the good offices of the TMB security staff: when the job is done well, there's no harm in saying so): I mention this because, if the thief had been caught with nothing, he would have gone to jail. Neither I nor society would have been spared. As for the Pakistani, Chinese, and other businesses typically run by immigrants, the vast majority are simply doing their jobs and trying to earn a living, and often those who speak ill of them the most are the first to become regular customers.
The closure of our most traditional businesses usually occurs for two main reasons: a lack of generational succession or the inability to pay rents driven by real estate speculation. Like immigrants who commit crimes, these situations arise as a consequence of an economic model based on mass tourism: this is the real problem, but it's easier to criminalize immigrants than to question such a lucrative sector as tourism, which shows no intention of self-limitation or decline, but rather the opposite (Alamany did mention the "tourism monoculture," but emphasized the "replacement" of some businesses by others). This is true, as he points out economist Miquel PuigThe wages earned by immigrants in the tourism sector will likely not cover the costs of the public services they will consume. But this has a solution: higher wages. Meanwhile, the fact that Catalan center-right and center-left parties, along with employers, are so easily swayed by the far right does not bode well for the common good.