On September 19, the residents of the 'Les Sureres' urbanization in Mataró (Maresme) undauntedly attended the rescue of a man kidnapped in a house occupied by a criminal gang. The captive spent several days on Fluvià Street and was able to escape to tell what happened, which was tangible proof that organized mafias establish their operational residences in unoccupied houses in urbanizations.
As a result of the investigation, the police, with the help of neighbors, have been able to verify that Les Sureres, an urbanization far from the urban center of Mataró, has become a center where organized gangs arrive and raid homes, often belonging to banks. and financial entities and try to go unnoticed. An attempt, which in the eyes of the neighbors does not occur since "it is not normal for high-end cars and individuals who do not speak Spanish to enter and leave an occupied house."
According to investigation sources, the kidnapped man was part of a rival clan of those who kidnapped him to collect a debt related to drug trafficking. There is speculation that it could be the Albanian and Romanian mafias. The impunity that allows them to move through the urbanizations and the laxity of the legislation to occupy towers and houses make Mataró an ideal place for their operations center.
The residents of 'Les Sureres' have organized themselves after these events to demand more surveillance and security. They point out houses that have been occupied in a coordinated manner by criminal groups and farms, warehouses and industrial businesses intended for the cultivation of marijuana, as well as drug distribution warehouses. “Mataró is an important point in drug trafficking on a European scale,” say the residents of Les Sureres.
The same mafias, when they stop using the house they have occupied, try to trade and sell the keys to other criminal groups so that they can settle in the occupied house. “They sell them the keys” they point out. The situation in the urbanizations is of maximum tension, as the neighbors explain with examples such as that of a neighbor who "a foreign group with balaclavas and weapons attacked his home." They had chosen the wrong home and were looking for another one that had a marijuana grow.
The situation in the urbanizations and specifically in 'Les Sureres' is unsustainable. “We cannot leave our cars on the street because we run the risk of them being stolen.” They are often visited by petty thieves, related to mafias, who do not hesitate to steal what they can from their homes, such as copper heating pipes. But another fact that worries them “is that there are armed people stationed at the entrances” to the urbanization.
Although the residents of Les Sureres claim to show full support for the police work, they understand that the situation is beyond them. Proof of this is the occupation of the house where the individual was kidnapped at the end of June, which a few days later was occupied again and, despite the alarm going off, the police came to certify “that it was a completed occupation.” which did not allow immediate eviction.
Another criminal modality that is often found in the urbanizations of Mataró, after a massive occupation of homes, is the blackmail to which the owners are subjected. “A neighbor who has the tower as a second home for the weekends, if she did not want to have problems she was forced to pay 3,000 to vacate it” the same sources detail, a full-fledged extortion.
For all these reasons, the residents of Les Sureres have decided to mobilize and take action by publicly putting pressure on the political class, the police forces and the judicial authorities to urge them to impose measures to “act forcefully and quickly” in the occupations. and at the same time that they instruct actions to “eradicate the mafias that are based in Mataró.”
Mataró, despite attempts to penalize illegal occupations, continues to be one of the paradises for specialists in home invasions. According to police data, the capital of Maresme has 760 occupied homes per 100,000 inhabitants, 69% more than the average for Catalonia.
