Jewelers in Catalonia have a WhatsApp group which has been buzzing in recent days. Photos of two men on a shopping spree across the country have been circulating. They entered a shop in Manresa on March 17th. The owners describe them as "polite and friendly," saying they wanted to buy jewelry for their parents. They spoke Spanish and English. As the jeweler displayed all the pieces on the table, they surreptitiously—as can be seen in the video—started taking jewelry. While one looked, asked questions, or tried on a piece, the other would grab it. "I didn't notice anything. And when I watch the video, I don't understand how I didn't see it," admits the woman who served them.

This Sunday, we have a special dossier with tips to prevent burglars from entering your home during the holidays, one of the dangers that accompanies every summer. We'll analyze the case of second homes and the effectiveness of alarm companies.

He modus operandi It was always the same, and the plot was perfectly calculated. They would escape from Catalonia for three to five days. They hid, sometimes spending the night in forests until they found the right moment to climb up and break into empty homes in the area. To get around, they used vehicles with duplicate license plates to throw investigators off the scent.

There is a certain pride among Italian grave robbers who dedicate themselves to clandestinely and illegally excavate the subsoil of the sites. They even write biographies. Luigi Perticarari claimed that he was so proud of his work that he even taught it to his children: "My children are proud of me too. My little daughter wrote that her father was a tombarolo (as the looter of the sites is known in Italy) and brought home many Etruscan vases." Pedro Casasante was another tombarolo who asked the state to be made a senator for life for his discoveries and, when asked in an interview if he worked at night, he laughed. "We can do it during the day. We pretend to be construction workers and drive the excavator," he said.

The workday starts early, so early that there are three hours left until sunrise and tourists are still entering the nightclubs of Port Olímpic. It's 3 a.m. this Thursday when one of the first robberies of the day is reported in Barcelona. At the exit of a nightclub, an IWC Portofino Chronograph watch, valued at €6,000, is stolen. The number of property crimes is declining—the lowest rate of thefts in the country since 2017—but the pace remains frantic, with 23 thefts every hour in Catalonia, and almost half that number, 10, in Barcelona. People tend to calculate the costs and benefits of an action. Such as choosing a night job (more sleep, fewer meetings with friends, but more money) or buying an electric car (more expensive, but fewer emissions and less money on gas). Thieves don't live in a world apart, and those who started their workday so early calculated that the cost of being caught was much lower than the profit they achieved in two minutes of work.

The conversation takes place on a boulevard in Barcelona's Raval district, where he admits he has stolen many times. He is known in the neighborhood for being one of the most professional experts in the art of Ronaldinho. It's not about kicking or juggling a ball, but rather about approaching a person's leg and making strange movements to cause stupefaction and, above all, distraction. The moment the victim is not looking, he takes advantage to steal their cell phone. "Do I steal? Yes. Is that wrong? Yes. But I'm not violent and I don't hurt anyone," he repeats more than once during the conversation.