Pepe, the man in the wheelchair who killed a thief in Barcelona's Bon Pastor neighborhood, will be able to await trial in freedom. This Thursday a judge agreed to release him provisionally, as his defense requested, and this afternoon he left Brians 1 prison, where he was admitted on April 7 and spent nine days incarcerated.

Every day, people who have already served their sentences are released from prison, and this is usually not news, unlike the release this Thursday of an inmate from the Ponent penitentiary center. He was already known in the 80s for his robberies and has spent half his life behind bars. He served a sentence for killing two people, including an agent while fleeing a robbery, and also for shooting an ex-policeman who died months later. After five months of freedom, he returned to prison for a robbery, and this week he regains his freedom. Now, the workers who have treated him in prison have warned that they see a risk of him reoffending, among other reasons because he has not wanted to follow any treatment program.

A witness in the case investigating the alleged mistreatment of a baby by a couple has testified that the man was shaking the infant's crib violently. According to legal sources consulted by ARA, this is the woman with whom they shared a room at Vall d'Hebron Hospital, where the medical staff referred them after they had visited four other health centers in the days before the couple's arrest. The same woman alerted hospital staff that the child was not being well cared for, all just hours before the child abuse protocol was activated.

The comedian Jair Domínguez faced this morning the trial promoted by Vox against him. The far-right party reported him for an alleged hate crime for having said that

A group of six specialists in home burglaries will sit on the dock at the Barcelona Court starting this Monday. They are accused of a dozen raids in which they allegedly used different techniques to open doors, leaving almost no trace. According to the Public Prosecutor's description, they operated with a "scrupulous division of roles" where some were "experts in selecting targets" by marking or watching apartments, others opened doors with specific machinery or by creating false keys, acting "like a kind of craftsman," and finally there was an "operational group" that entered the home.

A few hours after the jailing of Pepe, the man in a wheelchair who killed another when he tried to rob him, some neighbors of the Bon Pastor neighborhood in Barcelona claimed that he should be released and justified that he had only defended himself. Pending the investigation's progress to clarify what exactly happened, legal experts consulted by ARA agree on the complexity of applying the criminal figure of self-defense, which can eliminate all responsibility in a homicide. "Whether Pepe acted in self-defense or not will be the star topic of the trial, which will be held with a popular jury," anticipates criminal lawyer Olga Arderiu.

The Bon Pastor neighborhood of Barcelona is still in shock over a crime that shook the community five days ago. En Pepe, a man with mobility and respiratory problems, allegedly stabbed a young man who had stolen a chain from him, and the thief ended up dying. The man has already been taken into provisional prison, a judicial decision that has outraged part of the neighborhood, which justifies it as self-defense and denounces that En Pepe is in a delicate state of health.

The defense of the baby's father, who is being investigated for alleged abuse and sexual assault by his parents, has requested new medical tests to determine the origin of the injuries for which he remains hospitalized. His lawyer, Montse Antolino, explained in statements to ARA that she has presented the investigating judge with a medical report signed by a private physician stating that the man carries a gene related to muscular dystrophy and collagen deficiency. The defense now requests clarification as to whether the baby also carries this gene and if it could be the cause or trigger of the injuries.

15% of judge and magistrate positions in Catalonia are vacant. Of the 871 positions, 132 are unassigned, in addition to other circumstances such as medical leave or permits. Therefore, the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) has requested this Wednesday that the Ministry of Justice and the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) urgently convene extraordinary competitive examinations, beyond the average of 120 annual positions typically offered for the entire State. Given the political announcements to create more judicial positions –91 for Catalonia this year– the president of the TSJC, Mercè Caso, has demanded that what is needed is more judges to fill these posts: "Otherwise, we will have chairs, but not enough judges to fill them".

In the coming weeks, 34 Supreme Court magistrates will decide whether anyone can judicially intervene against the decision of an adult person who has medical approval to receive euthanasia. The Prosecutor's Office has already conveyed its position to the court: it believes that close family can do so as long as they have an "intense bond" with the affected person, not just a biological relationship. The response that the full Supreme Court eventually gives will set a precedent in a debate that has been open in the courts for a few months and has gained prominence especially with the case of Noelia Castillo, the young woman from Garraf who received assisted death at the end of March, after 20 months of judicial proceedings. The case that the Supreme Court will hear is another, that of Francesc: a 55-year-old man who, after three strokes and a heart attack, suffers serious sequelae in his mobility and speech. Since July 2024, his euthanasia has had judicial approval as well as medical approval and that of the Commission of Guarantee and Evaluation of Catalonia (CGAC), but it has been stalled by a judicial appeal from his father. In fact, his case is what motivated the resolution of the Superior Court of Justice (TSJC) in which the magistrates validated that a family can take an euthanasia approved by doctors to court. The Generalitat, which represents Francesc's interests, appealed against this resolution of the TSJC and, therefore, the Supreme Court will now review it after evaluating the arguments of the administration and those of the Public Prosecutor's Office.

The new court for violence against children and adolescents in Barcelona has received around 300 cases in its first quarter of operation. This court has been functioning since January 1st in the Catalan capital and among the crimes it has most handled are those related to child abuse and sexual assault on minors, according to judicial sources told ARA. In fact, it is responsible for investigating the case of the baby who remains hospitalized for alleged mistreatment and sexual assault by its parents. mistreatment and sexual assault allegedly by their parents.

On July 20, 2010, Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (ICV) said goodbye to the historic headquarters it had on Ciutat de Barcelona street, next to City Hall, to move to a much larger and more modern one –inside, not outside– a few minutes' walk away. In Rellotge passage, with access from a gate on Escudellers street, the eco-socialists were there until 2019, when, drowning in debt, they had to resort to bankruptcy proceedings to liquidate the party that was the heir to the PSUC. In the midst of the real estate bubble, that new headquarters had cost 7.5 million euros –including a significant renovation–, financed mainly by CaixaBank. Seven years later, that building that ended up condemning the party is for sale on the real estate portal Building Center –CaixaBank's real estate subsidiary– for 1.75 million euros. It is no longer owned by ICV, but by the same financial institution, which has taken possession of it due to the impossibility of selling it during the bankruptcy proceedings.

New blow from justice to Catalan in schools. This Monday, the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) has ordered the provisional execution of the ruling it issued last September, in which it annulled a dozen articles of the decree to protect Catalan in schools. A norm that Pere Aragonès's government approved in 2024 and that only a month later the courts suspended it, which is why it had never been applied. In fact, sources from the Department of Education have assured that Monday's ruling will not mean any change in the day-to-day of Catalan classrooms.

Two inmates from the special closed-regime department (Dert) —the isolation area— of Brians 2 prison attempted to escape from the center early Sunday morning. Penitentiary sources explained to el ARA that the two inmates spent between two and three hours in the attic duct of this department after leaving a cell by dismantling the light fixture, which gives access to the technical floor of the department, where the electrical and water system installation is located. The inmates were able to make this move without any alarm being triggered, the same sources add. For its part, the Department of Justice highlighted that the center's officials thwarted the escape attempt.

The Public Prosecutor's Office warned that the Badalona City Council failed to fulfill its obligation to provide emergency assistance to the homeless people it evicted from the former B9 high school. Specifically, it lacked a protocol for assisting the homeless through municipal services and also failed to apply the established methodology for such situations, which would have involved offering support to those affected, referring them to available residential resources, and providing follow-up care. In a document signed on March 10, the prosecutor warned the court that authorized the eviction that the council had not acted in accordance with its orders. When endorsing the eviction of the occupants of B9, the judge of the Administrative Court No. 11 of Barcelona specified that, given the vulnerable nature of the situation, it was necessary to take "the measures stipulated in the municipal services' protocol for assisting the homeless and provide them with emergency social assistance." Following this order, Following the eviction, the Public Prosecutor's Office asked the city council to clarify what measures it had taken to protect vulnerable people. who lived in building B9. The City Council's response, as described by the prosecutor, was "a report that essentially states that such a protocol is lacking." The council also pointed out that "they would not be obligated to do so under current legislation, but that they use a methodology for situations involving homelessness, social exclusion, and housing emergencies."

A 42-year-old man and a 43-year-old woman have been in pretrial detention since last Friday, accused of habitual abuse, serious bodily harm, and sexual assault against their son, a child just over a month old, who has been placed under the guardianship of the Catalan government. The couple was arrested last Wednesday, March 18, and appeared before the Barcelona court specializing in violence against children and adolescents last Friday. The judge ordered them held in pretrial detention without bail, as explained this Monday by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC). Among the arguments put forward by the prosecution to request the parents' imprisonment were the risk that the abuse would continue and the possibility that the arrested individuals might choose to flee given the severity of the penalties they face. The prosecution also saw the risk that the parents could "violate the child's legal rights." For all these reasons, he requested pretrial detention and the suspension of parental rights as precautionary measures.

Over the past year, a new specialization has emerged in the courts, focused on investigating crimes in which the victims are children or adolescents. This has raised several questions about the limits of its jurisdiction and remains a source of disagreement between the judiciary and the Public Prosecutor's Office. The law that designed this specialty It did not specify, for example, whether sexual assaults against girls should fall under these new courts or under those specializing in violence against women, to which The same judicial reform assigned jurisdiction over all sexual offenses.The reform also failed to stipulate who should handle cases of sexual assault against girls reported years later, when the victims are adults, as a Barcelona judge has now raised in a ruling obtained by ARA. Within the judiciary and the Public Prosecutor's Office, there were differing opinions in this debate. On the one hand, some argued that sexual violence against girls should be investigated by the same courts that handle sexual assaults against adults. So far this year, as a result of this same reform, courts specializing in violence against women have jurisdiction over all sexual violence, not just domestic violence, as was the case previously. On the other hand, other legal experts warned that this would mean that sexual assaults against minors would have to be referred to different courts depending on whether the victim was a boy or a girl: boys would go to juvenile courts and girls to courts specializing in violence against women. Another argument in favor of leaving all cases in the hands of the new child abuse courts is their specialization and the fact that they utilize resources such as the Barnahus, where children can be interviewed by psychologists and educators in a less hostile environment than a courtroom.

The Barcelona Prosecutor's Office has closed the torture investigation to the activist and philologist Blanca Serra, the first victim who went directly to the Prosecutor's Office for Historical Memory and not to the courtsThus, she is recognized as a victim of Francoism, and this is done for the first time based on the 2022 Democratic Memory Law. Blanca Serra and her sister, the historian Eva Serra – who died in 2018 – were detained at the Via La7 police station in 1982. The investigation concludes that during their arrest in February 1977, they suffered "torture perpetrated in a context of crimes against humanity." The Public Prosecutor's Office adds that the Political-Social Brigade arrested them solely for their political activity opposing the dictatorship and that they "inflicted physical and psychological violence on them to obtain information and a confession, which caused them traumatic aftereffects." All of this occurred within a context of persecution and political repression established by Francoism, the Public Prosecutor's Office adds in a statement.

The Parliament cannot require drivers to prove an intermediate level of Catalan, but at most an elementary level. This is the response given by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) to the request of Convivencia Cívica Catalana, which asked to annul the bases of a call for positions for these official vehicle drivers who transport high-ranking officials of the Generalitat. Specifically, the Spanish nationalist entity wanted to eliminate the requirement for candidates to demonstrate a B2 level of Catalan.

Montse says she's only ever doubted her job security once. It was two years ago today, when a colleague sent her a WhatsApp message alerting her that an inmate had stabbed Núria López in the kitchen of Mas de Enric prison and then committed suicide. "At that moment, you do think, 'Holy crap, where am I working?' I thought it could happen to me."