A thousand police officers saturate the streets and identify dozens of repeat offenders.

The sense of impunity is sometimes demonstrated with small gestures. Such was the case this Friday afternoon of a nineteen-year-old repeat offender with twelve prior convictions when the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) arrested and searched him on Barcelona's Rambla del Raval. While waiting to be searched, he lifted his shirt and said, smiling and sarcastically, that he was carrying a gun. It was a plastic gun, enough of a toy that no officer would be surprised. However, he ended up losing it, and it will end up destroyed at the police station. This scene took place amidst a massive identification of people by the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police), the National Police, and the Guardia Urbana (Urban Guard). They found drugs, but no one was arrested. It was all part of the police's new offensive against repeated offending., which not only seeks to stop, but precisely to end, the feeling of insecurity felt by residents and the impunity felt by thieves like the nineteen-year-old repeat offender. In 2024, in Barcelona alone, police arrested 452 repeat offenders who committed up to 9,114 crimes.