The assault of around 70 people on Sunday morning in the Barcelona metro was a birthday party, in a countercultural, alternative, hooligan attitude... It is not the first time that the basements of the city have hosted this celebration. At least this is how a few people close to these circles explain it.
And the truth is that this birthday party has very little to do with the well-studied incursions of crews in use, of more or less organized groups of graffiti artists, such as that of the station in October 62 of arrivals in large number expressly from the center of Europe. In fact, Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) is investigating what happened last week as a simple act of vandalism, like any other everyday hooliganism.
The seventy assailants broke into the Jaume I station at 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 rough scrawls on the platforms and corridors of the infrastructure, and also in some wagons. That does not reach the category of graffiti. They are very rudimentary tags, the simplest graffiti that can be done. Afterwards, many of the participants in the parade moved to Passeig de Gràcia station and marked other convoys with aerosol or markers. All this slowed down the service of lines 2 and 4 for about ten minutes. The damage bill is close to 135,000 euros.
The deputy mayor for Security and the president of TMB, the socialists Albert Batlle and Laia Bonet, also reported yesterday that the Mossos d'Esquadra and the Urban Guard are investigating the facts, trying to identify those responsible for all this. "We condemn and regret these events", they emphasized.
It's been a few weeks since social networks have been swarming with invitations to the party. The slogan was more or less "we'll ride it big". Then, the date and location of the meeting was still unknown. The ads in question have already been deleted. Recordings of what happened, however, are still circulating on a few private accounts.
Apparently, the honored and the relatives and acquaintances are mainly people from here, from Barcelona, and the truth is that some of them left their adolescence behind a few years ago. In any case, it is very possible that other people were added to the organization.
The most crowded edition of this birthday party was in 2016. Then, they listened to hip-hop music, sang rap and danced breakdance. People brought portable speakers and loads of beer cans. That time, the revelry spread to a few stations in the city center. The graffiti arrived as graffiti is the fourth leg of this urban culture.
Then the damage bill was much lower than this weekend. But the ease, the dissimulation and the bar with which they mounted that Sarau already eight years ago left the City Council itself in evidence. Many citizens lamented that in Barcelona you can do whatever you want. So, TMB opened an investigation into the incident and during several weekends the Urban Guard deployed a special security device. The sarau was so loud that many attendees did not dare to repeat it. Some years, at least, it was celebrated. In reality, the latest edition seems quite simple. Not a single note of hip-hop can be heard in the videos.
