In the image, young people outside the nightclubs on the Barcelona promenade.Albert Garcia
Friday at five in the morning.
Eva was with her friends on the terrace of the Cocoa Mataró nightclub when she suddenly noticed a puncture in her left leg.
She went to the bathroom and there she found that she had the mark of the needle.
She recognized it because she had been seeing wounds like that on social networks for days.
“I got very nervous and dizzy.
Crying, I told a security guard what had happened to me and he didn't believe me," says the 18-year-old.
A sudden wave of punctures to women in entertainment venues has raised alarm and keeps young women on alert.
With Catalonia (with 23 complaints) in the lead, the phenomenon has spread throughout Spain, with a dozen complaints in the Basque Country, followed by Andalusia and other communities, such as Castilla-La Mancha, Asturias, Cantabria and the Balearic Islands.
Traces of liquid ecstasy have been detected in only one case,
in the analyzes of a child under 13 years of age.
The police do not know the intentions of the perpetrators, and there have been no sexual assaults or robberies, and there is no record of any detainees.
The phenomenon of punctures to women (in Catalonia, of the 23 victims, only one is a man) in nightlife has arrived in Spain after a European tour.
It was detected months ago in clubs in Belgium, France, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
The British Parliament even carried out a report, dated April, where it analyzed the wave of complaints for punctures, mainly women, in the fall of last year, with 1,382 cases between September 2021 and January 2022 in nightlife and parties. .
In France, more than 800 complaints have been filed until June 16, according to data from the General Directorate of the National Police (DGPN).
In Spain, the police suspect that they are facing the same phenomenon: random punctures without traces of toxins in the blood, or specific reasons or, so far, arrested,
Andrea (fictitious name) is 22 years old and is from Cádiz.
Last Saturday she decided to party with her best friend in Puerto de Santa María, as she usually does, but this time it was different.
“I asked my friend to come with me to the bathroom, we always go together.
As we were walking through the crowd, she grabbed my arm and yelled at me that she had been poked.
I didn't know how to react, I couldn't believe it”, recalls the young woman.
"She saw that the boy who pricked her was dressed in black and had a syringe in his hand," she says.
Andrea pulled her friend away from the crowd, they told the waiters and they closed the place.
Soon four police vans arrived with an ambulance, and when the medical teams were already attending to her friend, another girl arrived crying because she had also been pricked.
In Andalucia,
Women victims of needlesticks often report similar episodes, characterized by dizziness and vomiting.
Eva, who suffered the puncture in a disco in Mataró, did not hesitate to go to the Can Ruti hospital in Badalona.
“They did tests, urine tests and kept me under observation until I was better and they discharged me.
The same day at night I was vomiting and they admitted me again, ”explains the young woman, who tested negative in everything.
Like her, Eva knows other girls who played that same day.
The Government of Catalonia has launched a protocol, which urges women who suspect they have been punctured to alert the entertainment venue and go immediately to a health center, always accompanied.
There they will perform blood and urine tests to detect any drugs.
The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, has expressed his concern about the increase in cases of punctures and has called on citizens to "be alert, report and isolate" the perpetrators, in the face of attacks that are causing "anguish and insecurity" .
“This is not a question of women when they party, this challenges us all”, insisted the Catalan president, who has branded the practice “absolutely execrable”.
The Catalan Minister of Equality and Feminism, Tània Verge, has already announced that it is being considered that nightclubs register men before entering their establishments.
But until this and other measures are approved, the counselor has insisted on remaining calm and following the action protocol that they have articulated.
“You never imagine what will happen to you.
Nor to anyone around you, ”confesses Andrea, whose friend suffered the puncture in Cádiz.
She only had a little fever and discomfort, but she assures that the other girl collapsed as soon as she received the puncture from her.
In the emergency room they couldn't tell them what they had injected.
They did not know if it was a new drug, and they explained that they would probably be able to detect it after a few hours, after repeating the tests.
“I am very scared.
The next day, when I went down to the beach, I was looking at everyone because I was afraid they would prick me, ”she laments.
In Catalonia, the Mossos d'Esquadra continue to investigate case by case, reviewing security cameras and trying to find the perpetrators.
They do not rule out that they are tourists from France, where the punctures have caused alarm in recent months.
Most of the twenty complaints accumulate in the same town, Lloret de Mar, in Girona.
"Perhaps they do it for fun," lament police sources, faced with a phenomenon that anguishes women and also researchers, for fear that it will get worse.
To the point that a young woman has gone to the hospital believing she has been the victim of a puncture, but after the examination, the doctors have ruled it out, police sources say.
