The Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) kill a man after he killed his brother and injured five officers in Calldetenes.

Calldetenes (Osona)The Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) this morning shot dead a man in his 50s who had barricaded himself in his home with a gun and was holding two of his brothers and his mother hostage in Calldetenes, Osona. In fact, the officers acted after hours of unsuccessful negotiations with the attacker, and after he had already killed one of the brothers and wounded the other with a bullet. The residents of Calldetenes had no idea what would happen this Tuesday: the attacker is from a long-standing family in the town, whom everyone knows. In addition to the two fatalities, the shooting left five Mossos d'Esquadra officers injured, three seriously.

Even the director general of the Mossos d'Esquadra, Josep Lluís Trapero, went to the scene this afternoon. At 1:30 p.m., the garage door of the two-story house where the shooting took place on Folgueroles Street was still half-open, and officers were still gathering evidence. The scene contrasted sharply with the seemingly idyllic location: the house where the incident occurred is right in front of a field with the Pyrenees Mountains visible on the horizon. There are hardly any cars on the street, and a rooster could be heard crowing in the distance. A few meters further on, however, there is a small cemetery.

"Around midnight, I heard clap, clap, clap, and I thought, are we still on the Sant Joan firecrackers? But then I realized those weren't firecrackers," explained a neighbor on the parallel street, Jacint Verdaguer, who prefers to remain anonymous. He, like everyone in Calldetenes, also knew the attacker. "They are a family of five siblings: three singles who lived with their mother, another who lived with his wife and children in the house next door, and another who lives in Roda de Ter," he explained. What he couldn't believe was that one of them had ended up shot. "It was a normal family."

Catalan police received a call early this morning that a man had barricaded himself in his house with a firearm and was holding several members of his family inside. When the first officers—a citizen security patrol—arrived, the attacker opened fire on them, according to police sources. The Mossos d'Esquadra special intervention group (GEI) was then also activated, and attempts were made to negotiate with the man, without success. According to police sources, the attacker maintained a "hostile" and "violent" attitude at all times and "ignored everything," raising fears for the lives of the detained family members.

"When it was just getting light, we heard 'tatatán, tatatán, tatatán, and it was all over," the same neighbor summarized, reproducing the sound of the exchange of gunfire between the man and the Mossos d'Esquadra, in which he was killed. When the officers entered the home, they found the body of one of the brothers, while the other was wounded. The elderly mother, on the other hand, was reportedly unharmed.

Hunting shotgun

"At six in the morning, I wanted to leave the house, but the Mossos d'Esquadra stopped me. The street was full of police cars and ambulances," another local resident recounted. He, too, didn't understand how the attacker had gotten to that point. "The father of the family, who passed away years ago, was a hunter. I suppose they must have had hunting rifles at home," he added, justifying his access to a weapon. Several neighbors also acknowledged that the man used drugs, but even so, he had never gotten into trouble. His name was Ángel, and he worked as a bricklayer.

"Just yesterday, I saw him here in the afternoon having a carajillo," says another neighbor sitting at the bar of the Sukipà bar. "He told me that sometimes he had work, and other times he didn't, but that was it. It's incredible how things can change in a few hours."

The Calldetenes Town Council has declared three days of mourning and suspended all planned events in the municipality, including the Encadira't festival performance scheduled for this Wednesday. "Calldetenes is a town of 2,700 inhabitants, and those affected are well-known people. We are very distraught and shocked," explained the mayor, Miquel Riera. The investigation into the events has been handed over to the Criminal Investigation Division of the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan Police).