The Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) have arrested eight young people, seven of them minors, for assault and public disorder at a mosque in Manresa. The youths belong to the city's Maghrebi community and, according to police sources, were criticizing worshippers for attending the mosque or for observing Ramadan. They are believed to be young people who were upset with these religious practices and reacted violently. However, the Mossos describe the incident as more a matter of antisocial behavior and vandalism than a religious confrontation. The oldest of the group is 18 years old.

"Manresa cannot have an open door to the ocean and welcome everyone indiscriminately and without control". "We have to be able to say enough". "Manresa is saturated". "We have imported a model of delinquency from the Third World". "It cannot be that Catalonia has been the country that in the last 25 years has received the most immigration". "Manresa must be a more prosperous, safer, more ours, more Catalan city". The first three sentences were said by Ramon Bacardit (Junts). The last three by Sergi Perramon ("Avanç Nacionalista).

Just over a month. That's how long it took Junts and Avanç Nacionalista to reach an agreement to run in coalition in Manresa's municipal elections. The pact was made public this Friday and officially signed at noon at the Celler del Bages, with the presence of the two leaders of the parties: Junts member Ramon Bacardit and far-right councilor Sergi Perramon. This is the first municipal coalition between Carles Puigdemont's party and a force openly opposed to immigration. Both sides were keen to reach an agreement as soon as possible to form an alternative to the ERC government a year before the elections. Now it remains to be seen whether representatives of the former PDECat will also join, with whom they are also in talks, even though they are part of the current municipal coalition government with ERC and the PSC. Bacardit is expected to be the mayoral candidate on the unified list, with Perramon as number two, in a coalition that will operate under the Junts umbrella, bearing in mind that for Carles Puigdemont's party this was a red line and that Avanç Nacionalista is a new local training, which should collect signatures to be able to put up a fight.

Tempting offer from Aliança Catalana in the heart of Catalonia. And doubly so. And rejected once again. Sílvia Orriols' party proposed to Manresa councilor, Sergi Perramon, to be the candidate in the capital of Bages. If he accepted the proposal, Perramon would also be the candidate for Barcelona in the next Catalan elections. The councilor, who had run for the Front Nacional de Catalunya (FNC), from which Orriols split, has once again rejected the offer, as he himself confirmed to ARA. "Jordi Coma called me on behalf of the president on the last day of the year and I rejected it," he says, referring to the party's advisor in Parliament. The leadership has declined to confirm the information, when questioned by this newspaper.

Fifty kilometers to reach a trial in Manresa: that's the distance that defendants, victims, witnesses, and lawyers from the Osona region have had to travel for more than six years. It wasn't until this week that criminal trials resumed in Vic, with a temporary solution in a basement on Ronda Camprodon, meaning those involved in the proceedings no longer need to travel to the Manresa courthouse, where public transport connections don't always make it easy to arrive on time. "Many lawyers have had to act as taxi drivers for their clients," explains Rogeli Montoliu, dean of the Vic Bar Association. "It's like a doctor who lives in Vic and has to go to the Hospital Clínic to perform surgery and have to take the patient in his car because the patient is also from Vic and has no other way to get there," criticizes Montoliu, who is also president of the Catalan Bar Council (Cicac). The lawyer asserts that over the years it has been "very common" for a hearing to be postponed because someone was unable to attend, and in this regard, he emphasizes that these trials—which deal with crimes such as theft, robbery, or traffic offenses—often involve "people with limited financial resources" who lack the means to attend. The trials now being held in Vic include crimes committed throughout the Osona region, and in fact, hearings have been scheduled in the new courtroom for the past three months to ensure it can be used normally from day one, according to sources at the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC). However, they add that for some time there will still be some cases tried in Manresa because they were already scheduled there and because with only one courtroom it would have been impossible to handle all the pending hearings.

The same thing that happened in Terrassa has happened in Sant Vicenç de Castellet. The same pattern, the same modus operandi: Carles Sallés Ballbé would put his hand under the swimsuits of children between the ages of 7 and 11 while they were swimming in the pool and touch them inappropriately. In Terrassa, he was caught and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in 2016 by the Provincial Court of Barcelona. This spring, he was released from prison and settled in Sant Vicenç de Castellet. Just a few months later, while still on parole, he was caught again: six families reported him on August 28 for sexually abusing girls between the ages of 7 and 9.

Nationalist Advance. This is the name of the new party that Sergi Perramon, a councilor from the Nationalist Group, presented this afternoon at the El Voilà Café-Theater in anticipation of the upcoming municipal elections. The councilor, who distanced himself from the National Front of Catalonia (FNC) a year after the elections, asserts that he wants to create a "center-right" platform to become the leading force or at least be able to form a government. Shunning party labels and remaining unbranded, Perramon aims to form a grand coalition with Aliança Catalana, Junts, or Impulsem, but one that will not involve any absorption. The fundamental debate, however, will be whether this new party operates under the umbrella of these existing formations. "We must be generous," the spokesperson repeatedly emphasizes, noting that the political space he represents is currently "too fragmented" to aspire to unseat ERC. It's no surprise that up to three lists could be presented if there's no agreement between Avenç, Aliança, and the FNC, which, taking advantage of its electoral rights, could also put up a fight. The capital of the Bages region is one of the strongholds of the far right. In the last elections to the Catalan Parliament, Aliança and Vox together garnered 16% of the vote.

Only five months into the mandate, some two thousand people gathered in the center of Manresa to protest incivility and crime following a mass brawl between young people of foreign origin. Almost two years later, a similar incident has not occurred again, and things are calming down, although the capital of Bages is the 23rd city in the country in terms of crime. This sense of insecurity has catapulted the far right in Manresa and, in turn, has caused Junts to toughen its rhetoric, as it has done in other towns where inequalities bring social problems to the surface. The figures speak for themselves.

Agents from the Civil Guard, the National Police, and Customs Surveillance have dismantled a criminal organization that sexually exploited women in vulnerable situations throughout Spain. In a joint operation, police forces freed 162 victims in different parts of Spain and made around thirty arrests. Although the group was based in the Valencian Community, it had begun to expand to other territories, including Catalonia.

Throughout the office it is represented in a multitude of sizes, materials and colors. The vice president of Tous, Rosa Tous, puts for theCompanies Along with a giant esparto grass version of the bear that has become the quintessential icon of the Catalan jewelry brand. Founded by his grandfather over 100 years ago, the Manresa-based company has surpassed €500 million in turnover for the first time and aims to continue strengthening its brand worldwide.

In front of the current political context of disenchantment and decline of the independence movement, municipalism is joining forces to try to refloat the path of national sovereignty. The city councils of Girona, Manresa, and Vic, together with the Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI), are calling on all elected officials from the country's local councils to participate in the first National Meeting of Elected Officials of Catalonia on May 31st in the Girona capital: a day of debate and reflection that aims to establish...