A video shows the latest incident that reflects the current law and order problem in central Barcelona. This time the victims are a couple of Japanese tourists who were violently assaulted this week, by a group of six youths in El Born neighbourhood, in the heart of Barcelona's old city.
The six young men mugged the Japanese man in order to steal his mobile phone, as people who witnessed the attack explained.
Highly violent
The violence of the assault caused the tourist to fall to the ground. The panic on the face of his partner, also Japanese, is visible in the video.
The six youths, one of them on a bicycle, had been following the couple, and when they saw that the mobile phone might be an easy target, they threw themselves on its owner. After wresting it out of his hands, the group ran away through the narrow alleyways of El Born.
The couple have laid a complaint and the Catalan Mossos d'Esquadra police, who have all the images, have opened an investigation.
Police sources have told El Nacional that the youths who appear in the video are "well known" by the police in this city crime hot spot and are also sought in relation to other violent incidents. A similar assault one night in April in another central Barcelona neighbourhood, the Raval, was also captured on video (link in Catalan).
Lawlessness in Barcelona
On Friday a man suffered a heart attack after being attacked by a person who wanted to steal the watch, also in the Raval district. As well, in less than 24 hours, police have been informed of two sexual assaults, one against a 22-year-old Belgian tourist, and another sexual attack on a minor in the Port Olímpic area.
Other incidents in recent days have included a knife wound received by a security guard in the Barri Gòtic area after he acted against one of three teenagers, of a foreign nationality according to police, attempting a robbery in Carrer Duc (link in Catalan). In the same area, minors aged between 12 and 14 were found sleeping rough on Wednesday.