The judicial investigation into the case of the baby from Barcelona who was admitted to the ICU at five weeks old with signs of severe abuse and sexual assault, allegedly at the hands of his parents, is nearing its end. This Wednesday, a nurse from Sant Joan de Déu and several workers from the Hospital del Mar testified in court; they had attended to the minor a few days before he was hospitalized, when he still had no evident injuries. In fact, all the professionals agreed that they did not suspect any abuse, as a pediatrician and a nurse from the CAP Roger de Flor had already explained. In parallel, the Mossos d'Esquadra have proposed to the court to analyze the geolocation of the mobile phones of the two suspects, both the father and the mother, in the days before the child's hospital admission. The injuries are being investigated as an attempted homicide because they posed a risk to the child's life.

One of the headlines left this Thursday by the Roger Español case trial has to do with the interpreters who were in the courtroom, unable to translate the lawyers' questions from Catalan to Spanish. The lawyers for the private and popular accusations, exercised by Irídia, Òmnium and the ANC, ended up self-translating or questioning the police directly in Spanish after up to two interpreters could not do their job, a fact that the entities have denounced for "violation of linguistic rights". But how could this situation have occurred?

Francesc Augé, the man who has been waiting two years for euthanasia because a judicial appeal stopped it, is hospitalized after a suicide attempt last weekend. The Generalitat authorized the assisted death in August 2024, which the patient requested after three strokes and two heart attacks that left him with significant movement and speech impairments. Despite having the approval of the Guarantee and Evaluation Commission of Catalonia (CGAC), his request became stalled due to a judicial appeal filed by his father.

Prisons are resorting to all options available to accommodate more than 9,500 inmates, a figure that accounts for 95% of the system's total capacity. Saturation in many modules affects the day-to-day life of prisoners and staff, and the prison sources consulted by ARA agree that having more people in the same space encourages more tensions and conflicts. "There end up being more tense situations over things you wouldn't even think about outside of a prison. For having to queue for breakfast, because someone else finished the milk... When there are many, small tensions are harder to see and can trigger incidents," a prison educator explains to ARA. "There is more movement, more cunning, and the ratio of professionals remains the same," she adds.

At the Figueres prison, there are inmates sleeping in the infirmary instead of the usual modules because there is no room for them there, and in the last week, a dozen inmates at Lledoners were serving isolation sanctions in the admissions module, where they normally only place those who have just arrived at the prison. These are two of the situations that different prison system workers have explained to ARA, all with the same reason: there are more and more prisoners, and the space in the prisons is the same. Five years ago, there were 1,800 fewer prisoners than now, which means that the prison population has grown by 23% and the prison system is approaching its limit. According to public data from the Department of Justice, right now the prisons are at 95%: on August 31, there were 9,597 prisoners and the total capacity of the system is 10,016.

Assaults within Catalan prisons have skyrocketed in the last ten years, in parallel with the increase in the prison population and a staff that is not growing at the same rate. According to data from the Department of Justice accessed by ARA, 265 workers have been assaulted since the beginning of the year, while in 2025, 677 assaults were recorded – 699, according to unions – five times more than a decade ago. In the same period, incidents among inmates have also doubled to 1,983 last year (see graphs).

It is the first specific plan on peace justice in Catalonia and its implementation allows for the deployment of new justice offices in municipalities provided for in Organic Law 1/2025 on measures regarding the efficiency of the public justice service. The plan also foresees expanding groups of peace courts to improve this service in more municipalities and strengthening citizen attention, especially in those towns that do not have a judicial office. The objective is to streamline the management of procedures and facilitate access to justice from proximity. 

A judge in Barcelona is investigating the development company Spacek XXI and its administrator, Ramon Triquell Monfort, following a complaint accusing him of hiding assets to avoid paying a debt. Triquell was responsible for a network of real estate companies to whom various clients accuse of delivering unfinished homes in Barcelona and various developers accuse of non-payments, as ARA explained last April.

A court in Mataró is investigating two nursery school workers from El Masnou for the death of a child only five months old in April 2024. Although the case was initially dismissed pending the baby's autopsy, this forensic review concluded that the child died due to respiratory failure, according to sources close to the family, and the court ordered an investigation into whether there had been negligence by the nursery school.

The Supreme Court has set compensation of 2.5 million euros for Ahmed Tommouhi, who spent 15 years in prison, wrongly convicted because he was mistaken for another man who had committed a dozen sexual assaults and whom he physically resembled. Now justice establishes that the State will have to compensate for this error with compensation.

The Commercial Court number 2 of Palma has forgiven a debt of 57,269 euros to a couple who had emigrated to Germany to "rebuild their lives", after applying the Second Chance Law.

More than 6,000 people participated on Sunday in a silent march in Florence, a municipality of just over 6,000 inhabitants located near Toulouse (Occitania). It is the town where Lyhanna, an 11-year-old girl, lived with her parents and brother. The police found her dead last Thursday, allegedly murdered by the father of one of her best friends, a 41-year-old man. The family had reported her missing three days earlier.

The Prosecutor's Office has "no doubt" about the "unequivocal evidence" against the parents of the baby allegedly mistreated and raped in Barcelona. Sources from the Prosecutor's Office stated this after Tuesday's hearing at the Barcelona Court, where the defense of the child's mother distanced herself from the father's to try to get him out of prison. Both the public prosecutor and the private prosecution from the Generalitat have requested that the couple remain in provisional prison. In contrast, the lawyers defending the man and the woman separately have requested that they be allowed to await trial at liberty.

"Since the accident, I couldn't stop thinking about how he was, because I didn't know what had happened to him, whether he would live or not." Carlos Roberto Hernández recalls that the car windows shattered into pieces and scattered around him. Before he had time to wonder what had happened, he saw a person fall next to his car, on Carrer Mallorca in Barcelona, right in front of the Sagrada Família. The one who had fallen was Javier, who was on a motorcycle, and he collided with his car, which had braked suddenly. The motorcyclist broke three finger tendons and needed up to four operations after the accident. Even today, he hasn't been able to return to his job as a plumber and doubts if he will ever be able to work again.

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".

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.

A few weeks ago, the Ministry of Justice announced a "historic" expansion of the judges' staff to be created this year 500 new places across the country, 91 of which are in CataloniaHowever, the distribution of these new positions remained to be determined. The Spanish government's initial proposal failed to gain traction with either the Catalan Ministry of Justice or the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), which have now submitted identical amendments. "We anticipate that these proposals will be considered by the Ministry," stated the Catalan Minister of Justice, Ramon Espadaler. With these 91 new judicial units, Catalonia will increase from 871 to 962. Most will be new positions in ordinary courts, but the number of judges in the provincial courts will also be increased. Lleida and Tarragona will each gain one more judge, Girona two, and Barcelona fourteen—six for the criminal divisions and eight for the civil divisions. A new judgeship will also be created for the TSJC.

The Catalan Minister of Justice, Ramon Espadaler, argued on Thursday that the government's proposed 2026 budget will be "the budget for decongesting" the courts. Presenting the budget to a parliamentary committee, the minister asserted that it will help reduce waiting times for justice "so that citizens notice the system is working better." The Catalan government's proposal, which will face a comprehensive amendment from the ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia), allocates €1.392 billion to Justice out of the €49.162 billion budget for the entire Generalitat (Catalan government), €254.2 million more (22.3%) than in the last budget approved in 2023. "Justice," the minister argued. Almost 90% of the funds will be allocated to the administration of justice and the prison system, with the remainder earmarked for democratic memory and religious affairs. Specifically, 46.6% of the department's budget is allocated to the administration of justice, and this area will have a particularly strong impact. the agreement to create 91 new judicial positionsThis represents a significant increase compared to recent years, with a total of 65 new positions created over the last decade. Both the judges' salaries and those of the civil servants under the Ministry of Justice will be funded by the state budget, but the Catalan government (Generalitat) will be responsible for the salaries of civil servants employed by the Catalan administration, which it estimates will create approximately 300 new positions. These new positions will also necessitate some construction work to house the courts, and the department has yet to finalize its economic impact. Projects related to judicial buildings are also ongoing. the works of the Tarragona Justice Forum –scheduled for 2028 with a total cost of €94.2 million–, the new Barcelona Provincial Court –currently in the archaeological excavation phase– and the new courthouses in Martorell, Santa Coloma de Farners, and Falset. An additional €20.7 million is earmarked for renovations and expansions already underway in courthouses in various municipalities, €24.6 million for work in other buildings, and €1.3 million to improve waiting areas for victims.