Can the riots of Saturday in Barcelona repeat themselves? Blocus announces new calls this weekend

BarcelonaCould the riots that Barcelona experienced this Saturday happen again? While the circumstances of the call, which brought together hundreds of young people in the city center to loot dozens of shops, are still being investigated, alerts of new calls are arriving this weekend in the Catalan capital and other cities in the State. What is known, for the moment, is that social media has been the method to gather the young people, many of them minors, who took part in the disturbances. The operation is called Blocus, and it uses Instagram and TikTok, as well as WhatsApp and Telegram groups, to summon mass movements.

The company Golden Owl, specialized in artificial intelligence, disinformation, and digital manipulation, has published an investigation into the riots that began in Barcelona and focuses on a possible expansion of coordinated violence. Specifically, Blocus has announced a second wave of calls in various cities on October 31st and November 2nd, and another national one for November 30th. The Mossos d'Esquadra are already monitoring all these calls.

The most immediate risks are concentrated, according to the report, in Madrid and Barcelona during the night of the Castanyada (Halloween): times and meeting places have already been announced. However, it seems that several members participating in the groups organizing the disturbances have proposed bringing the call forward to the day before, the 30th, because there will be less security and more stock in the stores. Therefore, it seems the idea is to repeat the mass looting.

Golden Owl has studied a group in question, the owner of which announced that he knew that the police had infiltrated the chat and that the network "would make a separate group" so that the police forces could not access the information. The same user claims to be from Sabadell.

Specific shops

The same investigation points out that on social networks, users point to stores like Rolex, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, or Hermès on Passeig de Gràcia as targets for looting. When a group member asks where to steal iPhones that "cannot be tracked," the chat owner replies: "At MediaMarkt." Additionally, they ask users to bring "heavy objects."

Regarding additional calls, those on November 2nd seem to be linked to Terrassa and Algeciras, and the nationwide campaign on November 30th is focused on 12 cities: Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, Vitoria, San Sebastián, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Málaga, A Coruña, Santander, and Pamplona. Furthermore, it seems the network is expanding, and accounts and groups associated with Badalona, Oviedo, Gijón, Elche, and Murcia have been detected. The evidence ranges from operational instructions to regional branches.

The Golden Owl report compiles more than 10,000 items from Blocus discovered across 7 different platforms and 18 posters from organizing users, and conducts a live inspection of the coordination group to explain how it recruits participants and how far these calls intend to go.