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.

After years in which fewer and fewer lawyers were interested in the free justice service on the duty roster, the trend is beginning to change. The Bar Association of Catalonia (Cicac) had long ago linked the precariousness of work in this service with the decrease in registered lawyers, and now notes that this loss "is moderating significantly" although it continues to advance. All this coinciding with an agreement to increase by 11.2% the remuneration that lawyers receive for each action, such as advising a detainee at the police station and when they are brought before the court.

Six years in prison for sexual assault, degrading treatment and threats. This is the sentence that the Barcelona Court has handed down this Tuesday to the man who was tried for sexually assaulting Yaqui in April 2021, and which is included in a sentence to which the ARA has had access. At that time, she did not have papers and was looking for work as a caregiver on the Milanuncios portal. The man, who was 68 years old, contacted her and took her to an apartment in El Prat de Llobregat making her believe that she was going to a job interview. There he sexually assaulted her. After the assault, the convicted man warned the victim that if she reported him he would have her deported.

Yaqui does not want her full name published or to be recognized in any image because she has not explained to most of her environment what she experienced in an apartment in El Prat de Llobregat in April 2021. At that time, she did not have papers and her only option to find work was to advertise on the internet offering to take care of children and the elderly. Today, the Barcelona Court is judging a man who contacted her using a false name and made her believe that he wanted her to take care of his mother. But once in the apartment, he allegedly sexually assaulted her and threatened her with deportation, according to the indictments of the Prosecutor's Office and Yaqui's lawyer.