How the crime neighborhood of Manresa fights to break the "bubble" of insecurity

ManresaThe pace of customers at the newsstand is so high that it even defies the grim omens for the future of paper newspapers. The newsagent serves the clientele with familiarity, so much so that in some cases just by seeing them he already knows which newspaper they will choose. Faced with the question of how Manresa is one month after the murder of Carles Vilajosana, which opened a strong debate about security in the city, he finds part of the answer on the front page of ARA, which highlights how the debate on housing marks the pre-election campaign. Housing has been a problem for years, although it has now exploded suddenly, he reflects, in the same way that the crime in Manresa has suddenly evidenced – and even exaggerated, he says – problems that have been there for a long time.

He, who works at dawn distributing newspapers, admits that the atmosphere some nights generates mistrust, with drunk and drugged people in the city center. At those hours he would not let his mother leave the house, for example. He also focuses on groups of conflictive youths. Right now, the police have identified in the city a group of about twenty youths, many of them minors, in a situation of high vulnerability and risk of criminal behavior. In fact, the four arrested for the Vilajosana crime were part of this group. However, beyond this, the newsagent regrets that the debate has become so polarized and denies that security, apart from these points that can generate insecurity for some profiles, has worsened.

The mourning ceremony

After the murder of Vilajosana, a group of residents from the Les Escodines neighborhood, where the crime was committed, organized a mourning ceremony. The basis for this act was a WhatsApp group with 150 neighbors, but it ended up being massive, with a thousand people lighting candles in memory of the victim. They also wanted to flee from the "politicized manipulation by the far-right" that was made of this case, explains Bernat Marquilles Holgado, a resident of Les Escodines. He is one of the twelve volunteers who, following the tribute to Carles Vilajosana, began meeting every 15 days to address the neighborhood's grievances.

One of the main conclusions after two meetings is that they are worried about "the image and the feeling of insecurity, which seems to have been growing" and which they do not share. "On TV they said that you couldn't go out into the street after eight in the evening; it really scares us neighbors to see these messages," he laments. They believe that an "insecurity bubble" has been inflated. A bubble that is not felt by Joan and Mercè, a married couple over eighty years old who move with two walkers through the city center, where they have always lived. Has the city changed? "Yes, of course, a lot." And is there more insecurity? "We don't notice it." But there are neighbors, more than one, who say they go to dinner in the center by car because they feel uneasy about returning on foot.

"This does not prevent people, especially the elderly, from feeling insecure in the face of the changes the city has experienced. It also does not mean that there are not a few hot conflict spots, such as specific highly dysfunctional families and drug dens. But one must speak with precision, and we cannot let specific focus points generate a vision of the neighborhood and the city that does not correspond to its entirety," states Marquilles. After some complicated years, crime data in Manresa are beginning to fall: conventional crime in the capital of Bages recorded a decrease of 14.6%, double that of Catalonia (7.6%), during the first half of 2026.

The City Council announced on Friday that it wants to expand the Urban Guard staff to 120 agents—there are currently 100—within two years. The mayor, Marc Aloy, announced in a press conference two calls for ten positions, scheduled for January 2027 and January 2028. However, while these additions are not yet finalized, the City Council has asked the Interior Department to incorporate 15 agents from the common pool "immediately." According to Aloy, the measure aims to reduce the sense of citizen insecurity, which he admits has grown following the fatal stabbing in Vilajosana.

Social distance

Marquilles explains that in Les Escodines they have detected that one of the factors that have increased the feeling of insecurity is that there is increasingly "more isolation and distance" between neighbors who do not know each other, in addition to an increase in "poverty on the streets". "When I go to the square, I don't ask myself why there are immigrants, I ask myself why there aren't other families playing," he says. In fact, the volunteer group wants to organize more neighborhood activities, such as popular lunches, so that neighbors get to know each other better.

They are also trying to help the homeless in the neighborhood. Marquilles says that Les Escodines is one of the most urbanistically degraded and economically affected areas of Manresa. He points out that in recent decades, the poverty seen on the street has been growing, and that it has combined with the increase in "social fragmentation and individualism". He believes this combination has helped increase the feeling of insecurity, also due to the "discomfort" of some with living alongside this poverty or the presence of migrants.

The newsstand owner in the center and the elderly couple believe that Manresa continues to be a town. On a Friday morning, the terraces are full, there are customers in the businesses, and people greet each other on the street. Some neighbors lament that these scenes are not repeated when the sun goes down.