Dozens of families approached the Montjuïc cemetery in Barcelona yesterday to check the condition of the niches and graves of their buried relatives. It was a procession that lasted practically the whole day. "We read in La Vanguardia that they had desecrated graves and we ran away to be calm", explained a couple, without getting out of the car and towards their grandparents' niche.
The information advanced yesterday by this newspaper about the wave of desecration of niches in the Montjuïc cemetery caused great consternation and concern to the City Council's caretaker government team.
Those responsible for Cementiris de Barcelona, the municipal company that manages all the city's cemeteries, commissioned an "audit" at the beginning of the crisis on the security that Montjuïc currently has.
The scams became known in June and the last one, with around thirty niches affected, was reported on July 18. Since that day, no more violent grave has been discovered. Those in charge of the cemetery went to the Mossos d'Esquadra de Sants police station on July 3 and presented a complaint in which they numbered 160 desecrated niches.
However, yesterday there were not a few cemetery workers who, like last week, unofficially insisted to this newspaper that the number of graves violated is "impossible to calculate" and that there is a "black figure" important waste and looting that takes place in the face of the "generalized lack of control" that reigns in an installation spread over 57 hectares.
The director of Cementiris, Miquel Trepat, denied again yesterday to the newspaper that there are more looted niches than those reported. And he recalled that, as the desecrations have been discovered, the management of the facility has sent certified letters to the families to communicate the facts and make themselves available.
"We trust the investigation being carried out by the Catalan police and we hope not only that the events will not be repeated, but that they will be able to identify and arrest the perpetrators", he indicated.
In terms of security, the City Council has reinforced private security in Montjuïc with the presence of three more guards for the entire site. In addition, it has temporarily placed surveillance cameras in strategically important locations for investigators that those responsible for the site hope to be able to install permanently.
The Citizen Security Police of the Sants police station maintain plainclothes and uniform patrols inside and outside the precinct. And the district's Urban Guard has also incorporated the Montjuïc cemetery into the patrol routes.
"We hope to see the results of the audit to improve the security of the site", indicated Trepat.
The thefts were discovered in June and at first went unnoticed, because it was believed that it could be due to the poor condition of the roofs of the oldest niches in the cemetery. However, the same workers at the site found that some niches they had under control had been violated and the coffins had been moved.
The Mossos de Sants research unit has been working on a particularly complex issue since July. No line of work is ruled out. Nor from suspicious acquaintances of the cemetery's day-to-day life to simple opportunists who jump the fence and act at night, with the presence of a single watchman for the entire site.
Looters are only interested in dental gold pieces and jewelry that some families buried their dead with years ago. A practice that practically no one follows anymore, with the exception of people who previously, before they die, expressly ask to be buried with some very special jewel for them.
