The eight people arrested last Saturday accused of burning a Guàrdia Urbana van, vandalizing five banks, a Zara and an NH hotel have three elements in common: they are anarchists, squatters and all carried the same dark ocher-colored Bic lighter, according to police sources explain.
The Mossos believe that the group (five Italians and one Italian, one French and one Spanish) was actually made up of more people, between 12 and 16. “Some carried out the action, others directed it and others controlled it.
We were not lucky enough to catch them all together ”, they point out.
In the search of the Canet de Mar and Mataró ships, the police found six more people, who have not been charged.
"That tells us that we are not misguided," add those same sources.
The judge decreed his entry into prison on Wednesday accused of attempted homicide (there was a policeman in the van who was unharmed), attack on the agents of the authority, public disorder, damages, illegal demonstration or assembly and belonging to a criminal group.
On video, the sequence of the van fire VIDEO: ATLAS
The main evidence against them is the testimony of the agents who arrested them.
"The police see the action, until it happens and then stops it, without losing sight of it," they explain.
They also have recordings, they hope to obtain relevant data from the DNA analysis of clothing items and fingerprints, and they have hard drives, USB drives and mobile phones intervened in the records.
In the squatter movement environment, the Catalan police are accused of preparing a montage against the group.
In a statement signed, among others, by the CGT, they assure that "the discourse of the Pandora and Piñata operations is repeated: anarchists, violent, with books and adhesive tape."
They refer to two investigations by the Mossos against anarchist groups that were shelved.
"They are burning my van!"
Prison for eight anarchists accused of burning a Guàrdia Urbana van
"They are no longer adolescents," say sources from the Mossos, about the profile of the detainees, between 23 and 35 years old, but with the majority touching thirty.
“They are people formed ideologically in the world of anarchism, with a solid discourse.
They know why they burn, why they attack and why they paint the A for anarchy.
They don't do it out of mimicry ”, these same sources add.
And they put as an example that before burning the Urban Guard van they painted an A. "It is a way of proceeding from the most radical, more insurrectionary anarchism," they say.
"There are many graffiti, but in an action like this, they do not usually stop to paint before burning."
The detainees have no antecedents in Spain, but they have been identified on numerous occasions.
Only one of them has a request from a court in Valencia.
The Mossos are waiting for information from Italy and France.
Most of them are assisted by lawyers linked to social movements, less the Spanish, defended by Cristóbal Martell, known for having clients such as Leo Messi or Jordi Pujol's eldest son, among others.
The detainees are part of two very different squat houses, which on Thursday appeared empty.
Five of them live in the Nabat social center, in Mataró, which has been occupied since mid-2018. "They even have a gym, with things hanging from the ceiling, but they were covering the windows and you can't see anything," describes Asunta, one of the neighbors of the macronave, who recalls that years ago she belonged to the Flor Hispania flower company.
The iron gates are locked tight and no one answers the bell.
Through a crack you can read ACAB (all cops are bastards) painted on the entrance and an A for anarchy.
A pirate flag and what appears to be a police baton hang in one of the windows.
In Canet de Mar is La Kanka, a house that is also an old industrial warehouse, in this case of the well-known Pulligan clothing brand.
Its residents arrived in September, according to all those consulted, but it was not until a month ago that they made themselves known in the neighborhood.
"They had like a party in which they reported the occupation, they fixed the garden," says a worker in the area.
During the pre-election campaign of 14-F they also hung banners in favor of abstention.
Even the Local Police showed up at the scene and accused them of having torn up posters from the town.
A graffiti artist from the municipality who has gone in several times to paint the complex, which includes a poorly preserved modernist building, assures that "they did not have much relationship with anyone."
The detainees live in the old house of the doormen of the factory, the only thing habitable.
“A couple of colleagues came to paint and a guy came out with a machete.
He told them they couldn't go in to paint, ”he recalls.
"This is not your typical squatter house that you can be proud of," he adds.
Sources of the squatting movement, who ask not to be identified and insist that they only speak on behalf of themselves, assure that the environment of Nabat and La Kanka is very different, and they doubt that the detainees of the two houses can form a single group, united.
The order of preventive detention for the eight defendants attributes them to being a criminal group, and ensures that they acted in a coordinated manner.
"Some films are made ...", criticize those same sources, who above all doubt the accusation against one of the detained women: artists, dedicated to
underground
music
,
the circus and street theater.
They are credited with spraying flammable liquid on the Guàrdia Urbana van.
Their social networks have been filled with insults towards the security body.
The Mossos deny that the detainees expressly arrived from Italy to participate in Pablo Hasél's protests.
The person who most, they indicate, has been in Catalonia for at least four years.
They are still finishing charting everyone's path.
"They were here because of the pedigree
of Barcelona, its reputation as an open, cosmopolitan, Mediterranean city and, from time to time, as in other European cities, of riots in the street ”, police sources explain.
Regarding the fact that the majority are Italians, they point to the deep-rooted tradition in the country of "combative anarchism", and recall different episodes of parcel shipments with explosive devices to Catalonia and the rest of Spain.
"In this case, it is not something so sophisticated," they clarify.
And they even point out that the person who sprayed the flare with flammable liquid that he threw at the Guàrdia Urbana van was at risk of burning himself.
"The way he throws the solvent out, he's three seconds away from it going up his sleeve."
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