The judge interns the two minors arrested for a deadly stabbing in Manresa

The judge ordered this Wednesday evening the internment in a closed regime for the two minors arrested for the violent death of a man in Manresa. For one of the adolescents, in addition, therapeutic treatment has been decreed. Both are charged with a crime of homicide. The juvenile prosecutor had already requested this afternoon as a precautionary measure the admission of the two arrested individuals.

The Mossos d'Esquadra arrested these two minors, aged 15 and 16, on Tuesday for their connection with the fatal stabbing of Carles Vilajosana, 45, a resident of Castellnou del Bages, who was found dead in the street during the main festival of Manresa. The case has shocked the Bages region and, in the face of xenophobic messages that have been spread from social networks and the political sphere about the migrant origin of the two boys, the Minister of Interior, Núria Parlon, has stepped forward to explain that they were born in Barcelona and live with their biological families, and not in any reception center. One is from a Catalan family and the other, from abroad.

The minister recalled that the police investigation remains open to clarify the circumstances of the events and whether there are more people involved. In an interview on Catalunya Ràdio, Parlon insisted that the minors have families and specified that one of them has Catalan parents and the other has immigrant parents, although both young people were born in Catalonia. She also remarked that the detainees were not unaccompanied minors nor did they live in any juvenile center. Regarding the messages spread by Ignacio Garriga (Vox) and Sílvia Orriols (Aliança Catalana), Parlon criticized that a "very serious" and painful event is being exploited to "generate hate" by making "opportunistic and xenophobic" associations, and added that these are behaviors that must be addressed in the political and social sphere.

In fact, the mayor of Manresa, the republican Marc Aloy, has also asked that the family's pain not be exploited to fuel partisan debate, while condemning the crime "categorically and without hesitation". Together with the Minister of Justice, Ramon Espadaler, the mayor participated in the minute of silence called in solidarity with the victim's family and announced that the City Council will appear as a popular prosecutor.

The death has caused deep shock in Manresa. Yesterday, Tuesday, people linked to Aliança Catalana called for a demonstration that gathered about 500 people, with slogans that falsely linked the detained minors with unaccompanied migrant minors. This Wednesday, the city council organized a minute of silence, in which the sister of Vilajosana and representatives of the city's Islamic communities also participated. The victim's circle has also called for a demonstration at nine in the evening.

The racist messages following this crime have also been met with a response from the Manresa Popular Movement, which in a statement lamented the death of Carles Vilajosana, who was well known and loved in the city. While rejecting the violence in the city, it warned: "We will not allow what has happened to be used by the far-right to generate even more violence against other neighbors and communities in the city, who have nothing to do with what has happened".

From the Manresa Popular Movement, Marc Garcés assures in a conversation with ARA that it is premature to make assessments about insecurity or not in the city in the midst of "very hard and delicate days, where the right thing to do is to stand together as a city and be by the side of Carles' family and friends". He adds that the Manresa Popular Movement has been "working for a long time to weave social ties in the neighborhoods" and recover associative spaces "to resolve problems between neighbors", but declines for now to make political assessments regarding the crime due to the possibility of generating alarmism and to "prevent those who want to take advantage of Carles' death from doing so". In this sense, he reproaches the response of Aliança Catalana and Vox "for taking advantage of it politically and electorally".

A "not exclusively police" solution

During her speech, Parlon insisted that security forces are working to remove bladed weapons from public spaces, and stated that the police must do their job through investigation and arrests. However, she noted that in a case like this week's in Manresa, the resolution cannot be "exclusively through police tools," and called for "reflecting on what is happening to us as a society." "Faced with the most worrying violence, this will require other approaches that are not exclusively police-related," she said. After recalling that the two arrested individuals had families, she referred to "educational" or "family" variables to be part of the solution.