Marta Vergés is a lawyer specializing in minors, but she has two very clear red lines. The first is that she only represents minors whom she has to defend; she never brings accusations, because she says she feels "unable" to accuse a teenager. However, she never defends the same teenager twice. All the young people she helps know this condition, which she uses to encourage them not to reoffend: "When defending a minor, there is a very high degree of hope for social reintegration, and that is what I love about my job," she explains.

Since the beginning of the year, the situation in a building on Muntaner street in Barcelona has forced the police forces to pay special attention to it. For months, residents have called 112 dozens of times and the Mossos d'Esquadra have intervened up to 49 occasions. The main reasons: on the one hand, arguments, threats, and incidents that make residents feel unsafe and, on the other hand, alleged drug possession. However, as ARA has learned, ongoing police investigations have not been able to confirm that there is a drug den – where drugs are sold and consumed – nor is there any report of the property being occupied.

They knew thoroughly how the electricity market in Spain works and took advantage of its own "security mechanisms" to defraud it. The fraud exceeds 61 million euros, according to Red Eléctrica's calculations, and there are 93 affected companies that are now trying to obtain compensation to recover the money they lost with this deception. The National Court will try this network between October and November, which operated from Barcelona and Madrid and was supervised from the Sarrià office where the businessman Esteban Roig worked, whom the Prosecutor's Office identifies as the director of the entire structure and requests that he be sentenced to sixteen years in prison. Sixteen more people are also accused, who could face sentences of between nine and six years depending on their degree of involvement.

Lourdes Reyzábal is the president of the Raíces Foundation, which has been working for years to defend the rights of migrant minors. Also in Ceuta, where this Tuesday the Spanish government has raised to 70,000 the number of people who crossed the border from Morocco. Despite the return of the majority, there are still a thousand children and adolescents in care.

With just a blood sample, a pioneering machine from the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Catalonia (IMLCFC) provides very specific information about what a person has done in the hours prior. The chromatograph's screen shows which substances are present and in what quantity of caffeine, drugs, alcohol, or psychoactive substances, for example. Through this technology, many more components can be detected than others – including the most unusual drugs – and their quantity can be much more precisely determined; this is especially useful information in cases where it must be clarified whether a person has committed a crime under the influence of drugs, as it can lead to a sentence reduction, or to prove whether chemical submission has occurred in a sexual assault case.

At sunset, police and military order various groups of young people to turn back and return home. To Morocco. They are just over eighteen years old. The oldest, thirty at most. They are some of the last migrants remaining in the streets or hiding in the mountainous areas of a Ceuta that has experienced the worst migratory crisis in recent history. In just 48 hours, more than 50,000 people (mostly Moroccan citizens) have entered Spanish territory irregularly. Some, swimming around the breakwater; others, crossing the border post on foot. Waves of people have filled the narrow streets of a city of less than 20 km². This Friday, however, the flow has reversed.

First ruling in Catalonia justified by the European Court of Justice's decision on linguistic immersion. If in June the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) dismissed the lawsuit by families from the Turó del Drac school in Canet de Mar against the 25% of Spanish, now another school in Maresme is affected by this same decision. The High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) has used the Strasbourg decision for the first time among its arguments to resolve a dispute about the language of instruction, and has done so to rule in favor of a family from the Institut Escola El Pi Gros in Sant Cebrià de Vallalta, who were requesting more hours of Castilian Spanish.

Illegalities in waste management do not always involve an international trafficking like the one uncovered last week coming from France. Often the route is much shorter and offenders do not even need to change counties to achieve economic benefits at the expense of endangering the environment and human health. This is the case of the network that operated between two companies in Badia del Vallès, a landfill thirty kilometers away, and land in Cerdanyola del Vallès, now owned by the Consorci del Parc de l'Alba. The defendants are awaiting trial.

A Barcelona social court has validated the dismissal of Carmen Macías, the former compliance officer of Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) who reported that she was fired in retaliation for an internal investigation into mobbing that involved three executives. The ruling, which ARA has consulted, declares the dismissal to be procedent and states that it occurred after a subordinate of Macías reported her for harassment. This ruling validates the dismissal in terms of labor law, but does not resolve the criminal proceedings, with three senior officials under investigation, which was opened following Macías's complaint of workplace harassment.

The woman investigated for allegedly abusing her baby, who was admitted to the ICU at five weeks of age, has once again explained herself to the judge this Thursday. The woman has denied at all times that she intervened in any aggression and has also maintained that she never saw her husband abuse him. Although her internet history shows that she was worried about the man's attitude, with searches like "my partner doesn't like the baby" or "my partner doesn't treat my baby well", his defense insists on distinguishing between having detected mistreatment and having noticed that the man was mistreating the child due to lack of skill or affection. During her statement, the woman affirmed that, "if I had seen it, I would obviously have gone to the police", according to legal sources.

New incident with metro works in Barcelona. This Wednesday night, an explosion followed by a fire occurred at the metro works in Plaça de Sants, leaving eight people injured, all men. Two of the affected are in serious condition, three in less serious condition, and three in mild condition. Nine units from the Barcelona Firefighters and eight ambulances from the Emergency Medical System (SEM) were dispatched to the scene of the accident. This Thursday morning, a large flare-up continues to burn in the area while emergency teams work to control the gas leak.

The Mossos d'Esquadra have arrested a second person presumably related to the fatal shooting of a minor in Parc de la Pegaso in Barcelona. This was announced by the Minister of the Interior, Núria Parlon, during an appearance in Parliament. Specifically, the minister assured that this Tuesday the "alleged hitman" of the victim, a fifteen-year-old adolescent, was arrested.

The same day that the ban on smoking on bar terraces takes a step forward, Barcelona has made public two pioneering judicial rulings that will disqualify for one year establishments that do not comply with municipal regulations on tables that bars and restaurants have in public spaces. Specifically, two terraces on La Rambla that had a license but have repeatedly failed to comply with the regulations have had their licenses revoked and will not have the option to recover them for a period of one year.

The pediatrician from the Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona who raised the alarm about child abuse in the newborn who was later admitted to the Vall d'Hebron ICU has testified before the judge that the child's anal injuries are not the result of a single action. Legal sources indicate that this doctor also traveled to Vall d'Hebron to treat the child when he was transferred there, as it is the reference center for child abuse and sexual violence. The pediatrician's testimony coincides with that of the pediatric surgeon who already testified in court in June.

The pediatrician of CAP Roger de Flor in Barcelona who attended the baby who was hospitalized for mistreatment at only five weeks old has stated before the judge that three days before being admitted to the ICU, the infant did not have the severe anal lesions that were detected at Vall d'Hebron. The doctor and the nurse from this CAP who were attending the child explained that they saw him on March 13, just three days before he was admitted to Vall d'Hebron Hospital, which ended up activating the child abuse protocol.

The figure of 46,000 tons of waste from France illegally dumped in Catalonia that came to light this Monday could end up being anecdotal compared to the total number of kilos of garbage that could be revealed when the investigation is over, according to sources close to the case. The dumpings of the so-called Franger case, which the Guardia Civil has explained so far, mainly affected the municipality of Sant Esteve Sesrovires, in Baix Llobregat. However, sources close to the investigation consulted by ARA add Rubí (Vallès Occidental), Riba-roja d'Ebre (Ribera d'Ebre), and Pujalt (Anoia) to the provisional list of affected municipalities.

The Prosecutor's Office has withdrawn at the last moment the accusations against the former health officials who were accused of "discriminating" against National Police and Civil Guard officers in the covid vaccination plan. The accusation affected former ministers Alba Vergés and Josep Maria Argimon, former Secretary General of Health Marc Ramentol, former CatSalut director Adrià Comella, and former services director Xavier Rodríguez Guasch.

Court-appointed lawyers are receiving more attention, but precariousness means fewer and fewer professionals are willing to participate in this service. Across Catalonia, the exodus has been halved, coinciding with an agreement to improve remuneration, but the figures have not improved in the Barcelona demarcation, where the Bar Association of Barcelona (Icab) warns that the loss of professionals is 20% in the last decade. Xavier Batlle and Núria Astorgas are two of the professionals who have not wanted to abandon this task. Despite having the same job, they are court-appointed lawyers in two completely different specialities: minors, whose activity in Barcelona has increased by 10% in the last semester, and second chance, a mechanism that allows good-faith debtors to cancel their debts and which has grown by 23% in the last six months.

The Barcelona Court of Appeal has sentenced a mossos d'esquadra (Catalan police officer) to 21 years in prison for sexually assaulting and humiliating a young woman with a severe disability, whom he met because she was his stepson's girlfriend. The two young people had met in a center for people with disabilities, and they used to spend time with each other's families to the point where the victim and the accused lived together approximately half the week. The court convicts the officer for a crime of pornography by taking advantage of the girl's trust and for a crime of continued sexual assault by abusing the girl's mental disability.

It is the turn of the former Minister of Health Alba Vergés to explain herself at the trial for the vaccination against covid of the National Police and Civil Guard officers stationed in Catalonia. In her statement, she focused on explaining that they always followed the criteria set by the Interterritorial Council of Health on the vaccination strategy, even when it was decided to prioritize AstraZeneca doses for people between 55 and 65 years old. This, she clarified, did not prevent essential worker groups – such as police officers, healthcare personnel, or teachers – from continuing to receive doses, but it had to be done "as vaccines became available." In fact, when directly asked, she denied giving any order to delay vaccination for the officers.