Everything was fine. The food. The treatment. The attention. The services. Until the tourists left at the beginning of autumn. "From one day to the next, we went from being good families to bad families," explains a Syrian woman who is part of a large group of asylum seekers residing in Malgrat de Mar and who denounce the feeling of "abandonment" they have experienced since October. They claim to have found cockroaches in the food, to have been given flowery and expired food, to have had fleas in the rooms, for the heating not to have worked for months on one of the floors of the hotel where they are staying, for the hot water to have constant problems, and for being denied money to buy clothes or transportation tickets that they are entitled to.

The Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) have arrested the owner of a cleaning and waste management services company in Malgrat de Mar for labor exploitation, document falsification, and irregular hiring. The arrested man, a 47-year-old resident of Blanes, employed several workers without contracts and also employed some with other people's documentation. He imposed average working hours of 90 hours per week for only €850 per month. The Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) have also filed charges against three of his employees for the same offenses. The company provided services in several municipalities in the Barcelona and Girona regions, including Malgrat de Mar, Tordera, Santa Susanna, Vidreres, Maçanet de la Selva, and Fogars.