On June 30th, the period for which it was extended to exceptionally enable, in July of last year, a second duty court in Barcelona dedicated exclusively to minor crimes expired. Where is the problem? the reader may wonder. It is possible that this other information helps to better understand what was coming if that court had been closed as intended. To this day, every time a mosso d'esquadra or an urban guard denounces the alleged perpetrator of a minor theft offense (loot less than 400 euros and no detainee), the suspect is summoned to a speedy trial in March of 2024. You read that right. Subpoenas ten months ahead that show various realities.
First, that justice loses the ability to be fast with these delays. Second, that there is a clear rise in crime that is confirmed by statistics kept in office drawers until after the elections. And third. If that second court had been closed, the risk of delays of more than a year would have been too high and the cases would prescribe.
In recent weeks, the situation has led to coordinated movements by those responsible for the Mossos and the Barcelona Urban Guard, which have produced results. Yesterday, the dean of the courts of Barcelona authorized to keep that second court open, without a date for its closure, in order to reorganize and alleviate the agenda of signaling and to avoid possible prescriptions.
The magistrate Cristina Fernando Montalvà has also given instructions to increase the capacity of these two courts, and that they go from 20 to 24 daily trials, according to sources current to the measure have confirmed to La Vanguardia.
With the current 40 daily trials, which are 200 weekly, 800 monthly and 9,600 annually, there is no capacity to reverse the situation of saturation in the indications. Only last year, without counting the criminal increase in this first quarter of the year, 11,267 trials for minor crimes were set.
In recent months there has been an upturn in criminal activity linked to theft in Barcelona. The statistics closed a splendid 2022 in terms of criminal containment, but in the first quarter of 2023 the rise in complaints is increasing. Even so, the daily average of reported thefts in the city of Barcelona in the first four months of the year is 276 reports. A high figure, but one that is still 25% lower than that of 2019.
La Vanguardia already carried out an x-ray of the operation of the duty courts dedicated to thefts carried out by habitual pickpockets four years ago. In 2018 there was only one court, unlike Madrid, where there have always been three. At that time, that court held 30 trials a day. The Governing Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia demanded that the Ministry of Justice, the General Council of the Judiciary and the Ministry of Justice set up a reinforcement court to alleviate the progressive delay that was accumulating and that meant up to eight months late.
It cost a lot, but that second court was set up in 2019 with great success, but it was eliminated again during the pandemic due to the drop in crime and it was activated again in July 2022, but provisionally for a year that takes two months and that it has already been decided to keep.
There is another element that worries both police officers and the judiciary. When the delay to judge a misdemeanor exceeds twelve months, the offense prescribes. Impunity is total and collective failure.
The so-called immediate trials had the particularity of being held after a maximum of fifteen days. That is what the law says. Due to the type of crimes that they prosecute, it is usual that in the period of time that elapses until the day of the trial, the defendants accumulate other arrests and convictions for similar acts, and that they end up avoiding the action of justice. Other times what happens is that the victims are foreigners and when the trial is held they are no longer in Spain.
