"We cannot wait for more things to happen to take action." With these words, the chief commissioner of the Mossos d'Esquadra, Sílvia Catà, summarizes what is happening with youth gangs in Catalonia: they are smaller groups than in the 2000s, much more heterogeneous and flexible, with less presence than back then, but they exist. And, for the first time, the Catalan police are providing figures on the phenomenon. According to the Mossos d'Esquadra's calculations, there are a thousand young people in the orbit of these gangs and approximately half can be directly classified as members. This data is the result of months of research, with more than 600 diverse sources consulted, ranging from a police report of an incident to an informant. All of this has led the Mossos to create the Proa, a specific plan to fight against youth gangs. This Thursday it was presented within the force and it will be launched in November.

The crime scene is the Parc de les Planes, in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat. On March 28, two groups argued and the confrontation ended in gunfire, with a 28-year-old man dead and another young man wounded. In another case, the crime scene is once again a park, the Pegaso park in Barcelona. On July 4 a 15-year-old boy who was with his little brother at this point in the Sant Andreu district was shot to death. What these two incidents have in common is that all the detainees –three youths in the first case and also three youths in the second– were linked to youth gangs.

The Director General of Penal Execution in the Community and Juvenile Justice, Jesús del Cacho, has resigned after two years in office. The Government appointed the new director, criminal lawyer Paz Vallès, this very Tuesday.

The classroom is filled twice every morning and twice every afternoon. They are "more or less" constant groups. The teacher explains that being in a prison, and even more so in the one for Young Offenders, leads to "a lot of mobility". "It's not easy to sustain a group, but when it happens, truly beautiful things emerge," he says. As he speaks, about a dozen boys are progressing on their projects. Some are drawing, some are painting with brushes, and others are making sculptures from cardboard sheets. Like the rest of the inmates at the Young Offenders prison, they are all adults, but under 25 years old.

"The kids who come in are getting worse and worse. I have poly-drug addicts. I don't have the necessary training to treat any of these addictions," laments a worker at a juvenile justice center who asked ARA to remain anonymous to avoid reprisals. In the last year, he has seen psychotic episodes, minors addicted to psychotropic drugs, and various mental health conditions for which he is unprepared. However, he explains that he has had to do it anyway, since the center doesn't have enough resources to guarantee professional care.

The murder of a social worker in a juvenile justice floor in Badajoz The death of three of the admitted children has inflamed the spirits of Catalan professionals. This Wednesday morning, they gathered outside their workplaces, and in the afternoon, they did so in Barcelona's Plaça de Sant Jaume, at a gathering organized by the College of Social Educators of Catalonia (CEESC), which attracted nearly 200 people. "We're not surprised by what happened in Badajoz," exclaimed a professional who works at a shelter, the "funnel" through which abandoned minors pass under the guardianship of the Directorate General for Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA) before being referred to the final resource. "We've normalized many complicated situations, assaults, and threats," asserted Noèlia.