To say that the deployment was impressive is an understatement. An army of inspectors of all the existing modalities landed on Thursday night in the Gulf triangle of Poblenou and, guarded by the Barcelona Urban Guard, audited around thirty public venues. A forceful new strategy designed and promoted by the municipal manager, Albert Dalmau, dubbed "multi-inspection" and which is part of the Endreça Plan, which, as its name suggests, aspires to "fix" the city to make it safer, more convivial, social and inclusive.
The Sant Martí one was the second operation. And it won't be the last because, in Dalmau's words, "these performances are here to stay". A warning to boaters who on Thursday saw, startled, how inspectors knocked on the door of their shops, bars or clubs without warning and, one after the other, put the locals on their feet.
The Raval was the area chosen for the first of the operations that are carried out in two phases, the night and the daytime. The place and the establishments are selected based on the "heat maps" that quantify all the types of incidents that have to do with the misuse of public space, which generate bad coexistence, discomfort, dirt and insecurity. Specific areas with a high concentration of premises that also generate neighborhood complaint calls to 112.
In this first operation in the Raval on October 27, 14 premises were inspected at night and 15 other establishments during the day. 132 events were held and during the day five premises, mostly butchers, were closed as a precaution, due to food safety.
Sant Martí was chosen for the second plan and two journalists from La Vanguardia joined in Thursday's operation. Confidentiality is essential to guarantee the success of a device in which more than a hundred people participate, including the Urban Guard, the Mossos d'Esquadra and the inspectors, in addition to the highest political leaders of the district, with the councilor David Escudé in charge. Only a few people in charge of managing all the documentation needed for on-site inspections and coordinating so many people from such disparate services knew the selected sites. And it was also decided to access the establishments in unison, trying to prevent word from spreading and that violations could be resolved before the inspection.
The meeting room of the Sant Martí Urban Guard police station was too small for the first information session of the intendant and chief officer of the device, Diego Calero. Chairs were missing for the hundreds of assistants including uniformed and plainclothes policemen and the inspectors. There was the DSI, the direction of the inspection services of the Barcelona City Council, with its head, Eva Mur, on the street with them; inspectors from the district, from the Urban Guard, technicians from the Public Health Agency, labor inspectors, environmental inspectors, inspectors from the Municipal Institute of Finance, from the Fire Department and, in case someone was missing, inspectors from the Treasury the Tax Agency.
The meeting point that served as an advanced command center was the central courtyard of the Mercado dels Encants, which gave up its facilities. From here, the inspectors moved on foot in groups guarded by plainclothes urban guards, with a reinforcement of patrols from the neighborhood and the UREP to give more security to the actions.
The night was very long, no incidents were recorded and it caught all the local managers off guard. Someone had time to lower the blinds of others also in their name to avoid problems.
There was no need to stop the activity, except for the two premises that were sealed by the Public Health technicians for food safety, the Andalusia bar and the Dixi 724, the rest of the clientele hardly even found out what was happening.
At the Sonora venue, a guitarist did not move from the stage between jugs of beer that went from table to table, while the young man in charge did not reach out looking for the documentation that was being requested one after another. At the Wolf nightclub, just to mention a few of the premises, an inspector congratulated the owner: "Never in all these years have I seen such exemplary waste management in a space with so many bars".
Albert Dalmau already said it: "There are many more who comply than those who find it more profitable to pay the fines and not do it right".
It must be said that those in charge of the premises are already used to inspections. Day or night But not that they all suddenly come to you at once and, above all, that the gentlemen from the Tax Agency appear who usually go there when there are suspicions of money laundering or tax crimes and who for the first time joined together in a device of these characteristics. What were they looking for? Nothing in particular, but to check that both the billing and the use of the dataphones were correct.
