The assault of about 70 people early Sunday morning in the Barcelona subway was a birthday party, in a countercultural, alternative, hooligan style... It is not the first time that the city's subways host this celebration. At least this is how a few people close to these circles tell it.
And the truth is that this birthday party has very little to do with the highly studied raids carried out by usual crews, by more or less organized groups of graffiti artists, such as the one carried out at the Vall d'Hebron station in October of last year by 62 letter painters arrived largely and expressly from central Europe. In fact, Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) is investigating what happened this weekend as a mere act of vandalism, like any other everyday hooliganism.
The more or less 70 assailants burst into the Jaume I station around one in the morning, all at the same time, so that no one could stop them, and at full speed they left a trail of crude graffiti on the platforms and corridors of the station. the infrastructure, and also in some wagons. That does not qualify as graffiti. They are the most rudimentary tags, the simplest graffiti that can be done. Then a good part of the participants in this party traveled to the Passeig de Gràcia station and marked other convoys with spray and/or marker in hand. All of this stopped the service of lines 2 and 4 for about ten minutes. The bill for the damage is around 135,000 euros.
The Deputy Mayor for Security and the president of TMB, the socialists Albert Batlle and Laia Bonet, also reported yesterday Monday that the Mossos d'Esquadra and the Urban Police are investigating the events, trying to identify those responsible for all this. “We condemn and regret these events,” they both stressed.
For a few weeks now, there have been calls for this party on social media. The slogan was more or less let's ride it really hard. So the date and location of the meeting was still unknown. The ads in question have already been deleted. The recordings of what happened, however, still run through a few private accounts.
Apparently the honoree and his people are mainly people from here, from Barcelona, and the truth is that some of them left adolescence behind a few decades ago. In any case, it is very possible that other people joined the organization. The largest edition of this birthday party was in 2016. Then they listened to hip hop music, sang rap and danced break dance. People brought portable speakers and lots of beer cans. On that occasion the revelry spread to a few stations in the city center. The graffiti came hand in hand as graffiti is the fourth leg of this urban culture.
So the bill for the damage was much lower than this weekend. But the ease, the self-confidence and the audacity with which they set up that party eight years ago left the City Council itself in evidence. Many citizens lamented that in Barcelona one can do whatever they want. So TMB opened an investigation into the matter and for a few weekends the Urban Police deployed a special security device. That party was so famous that many attendees did not dare to repeat it. Some years it was not even celebrated. In reality, this latest edition seems very simple. In the videos you don't hear a single note of hip hop.
