Ten days after the tragic crime, what is happening in Manresa?

ManresaBoth of them work in the same business, live in the same town and are no more than ten years apart in age. The first one says it is evident, undeniable, that the city's landscape has changed. Like practically that of all cities. But she does not believe that there is more insecurity. "I live peacefully. But perhaps my colleague will not tell you the same," she comments as she leaves the establishment. Her colleague, of foreign origin, assures that there is a lot of insecurity, that her mother was mugged recently. "And have you seen what is happening in Ceuta?", she says indignantly while pointing at the television, which at that precise moment shows a close-up of the mayor of Manresa, Marc Aloy.

José María walks down a slope in the old town of Manresa. He says that a while ago he fell to the ground and laments that, at 82 years old, his legs sometimes fail him. Is there more insecurity? He responds that, for him, no, but that it is subjective, that it depends on whether things have happened near you or not. It is a good definition of the concept of perception of insecurity, which is "personal". But there are also various voices that claim that security has decreased.

Marc Aloy opens the door to his office. It is located on the second floor of a town hall that was built in the 18th century and preserves the pomposity of the era, but is reached by a modern and renovated staircase. A building that has changed as the city's landscape has also changed. Aloy laments the tragic death of Carles Vilajosana, a man known in the Bages region who was murdered with a bladed weapon during the local festival; a crime for which four minors have been arrested. The mayor also laments that this crime has been "magnified": "It is an exceptional event that we have had the misfortune to have happen in our city, but it could have happened in other places," he states.

This Wednesday, more than a thousand people demonstrated to demand more security in Manresa. The slogan was "Manresa says enough again," as a similar demonstration had already been called in 2023 when a fight, again between minors, put the debate on security at the center. Since then, their Instagram account had had no activity. On Monday, various popular movements in the city held a press conference to ask that security be addressed from a comprehensive and community-based vision.

In the same city, two workers coexist who have totally opposite opinions. There are boys living there who explain that they no longer go out partying as much because they do not like the night atmosphere or the drugs that are moved there. A young man supports this message and says that robberies with bladed weapons are common by groups of young people, and that sometimes he even feels like when he lived in South America. Also living in Manresa are Fatima, who works cleaning the Urban Guard police station, and Hamza, who has a bar with impressive views of Montserrat. They say they feel safe and, moreover, not at all discriminated against: "I have never had any racist comments made to me." Just in front of Hamza's bar passes Carme, 73, who links an increase in insecurity to the presence of more immigrants, who she claims make her feel "disgusted." 21.9% of the population of Manresa is foreign, a percentage above the Catalan average, which is 18.74%. Some neighbors claim that for years there has been a significant pull factor for immigrants.

"I believe we were in a good moment. In July we held the Camins festival, which was an extraordinary success, and the town festival was one of the best I can remember. Every day I went to sleep with the feeling that it had gone very well. And three hours later they wake you up with this tragic homicide," explains the mayor. The neighbors, above all, focus on groups of troubled youths, some of whom are of Maghrebi origin, who cause insecurity and also engage in robberies, sometimes armed with knives. They are young people, in a vast majority, born and educated in Catalonia, raised in vulnerable environments, with a strong component of school absenteeism. Children of second generations who have experienced a family reunification that has not worked. Right now, the police have identified in the city a group of about twenty young people, many of them minors, in a situation of high vulnerability and risk of criminal behavior. In fact, the four arrested for the crime of Carles Vilajosana were part of this group – in this case, three of them have Catalan surnames.

The data

Often, a police source shares an anecdote that also helps to understand perceptions of safety. She was stationed in a town where there were very few crimes, but a group of thieves carried out several robberies in just a few weeks. At that time, the feeling of insecurity was extremely high, she recalls, but the crime data for that place remained among the lowest in the country. She explains this to remind us that people's feelings and the data do not always go hand in hand, and that this does not mean that one of the two must be right.

During the first quarter of 2026, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior, 1,179 criminal offenses were committed in Manresa, 7% less than in the same period of 2025. The entire last year closed with a slight increase of 2.3% in crimes, but with significant drops in violent robberies (46% less) and public brawls (18% less), but also increases such as vehicle thefts, which doubled. The results, which were shared this April at the city's latest Table for Security, Civility and Coexistence, created in 2023 and involving municipal, social, municipal agents, the Public Prosecutor's Office and juvenile justice, concluded that Manresa currently stands at 50.3 incidents per 1,000 inhabitants, ten points below the average for Catalonia. At the time, the city council celebrated that for the first time since 2021, crimes were decreasing. It was also noted that since 2021, violent robberies have dropped to a quarter (from about thirty per month to six or seven). This first decline also means that in recent years the data had not been positive.

The crime occurred following a fight between the group of youths and the victim's group. The Mossos arrested two minors that same day, one of them considered the perpetrator of the stabbing. The other was on supervised release after leaving a juvenile center in the middle of summer, a decision that is being criticized by the city council. This week, two more minors turned themselves in to the police. The way the City Council has found to fight against these cases is precisely this multidisciplinary table. In the first year of the initiative, the mayor assures, they managed to ensure that 35 youths did not reoffend. Even so, he asks for more measures, such as more funding from the Government to place mediators or a faster juvenile justice system that is more involved with the youths, the same from the Department of Education. In fact, juvenile delinquency is one of the main concerns of the Mossos d'Esquadra throughout Catalonia.

In the case of Manresa, residents point to a degradation of the city's old town, which is where the most vulnerable families at greatest risk of social exclusion have ended up, and where there are more squatting incidents, unlike in other cities, where all of this tends to be concentrated more in peripheral neighborhoods. With the neighborhood plan, the City Council will allocate 12.5 million euros to rehabilitate the historic center. Be that as it may, this combination also means that the place where, on paper, more social life should take place is also the one that concentrates the most problems. There are families from other towns, such as Berga, who explain that before, when they were looking for a big city with shops or to have a social life, they used to choose Manresa, and now they opt for Vic. The degradation of the oldest neighborhood is a generalized opinion.