Barcelona crime

Barcelona has a lot of crime. My impression about crime risk comes from the number of people I meet that have directly had problems with crime.

One guy I met on the Bike tour sort of got scammed. On the main street of Barcelona (Las Ramblas), there is this big guy playing with this little white ball and hiding it under one of three boxes. You guess which box and you double? your money. Anyway this guy from Australia (Alex I think was his name) KNEW he shouldn't play this game. He KNEW it was a scam. Anyway he was CURIOUS.

Alex figured he would put down 5 euros and see if he could win. As he pulled out his wallet he was surrounded by about 4 guys. They all started yelling at him in Spanish and as he fumbled through his wallet, they snatched a 50 Euro bill and put it down on the match 'for him'. He lost. Alex REALLY doesn't like telling this story.

In the hostel I met a young girl from Conneticut (Adira). Her story starts when she was sitting at the bus or train station with her bag on her side. Some guy then approached her and showed her a piece of paper with an address on it. He spoke to her in Spanish while she looked at the paper and told him in English that she did not know about it. He kept pointing to the piece of paper. And then stormed off.

Adira then noticed that her bag - the one with her passport, wallet etc. had gone missing. She started yelling and asking people where it went. Across the way from her were two 16ish year olds who pointed left... I am not sure if the guy doing the talking took the bag or his partner walked behind and lifted it while she was talking. Anyway Adira is furious at the guys who across the way saw this all happen... Like it is a form of entertainment in Barcelona.

Going to Spain I wanted to try some Tapas, so I asked the guy at the hostel to recommend a place. Actually I did try tapas on my own a couple nights before but paid an awful lot for a few greasy snacks. So I figured he might know better.

Turns out that night the hostel was arranging a tapas and flamenco dancing and bar tour for pretty cheap. The tapas were cheap (but crappy), the Flamenco dancing was ok (the male performer and the female singer were excellent) and the bar was pretty cool too. But all of this is just background to give you the idea that we were travelling in a group of about 20 from two hostels. That night 4 women walked home together to the hostel from the bar.

On their way back there were two guys that started to follow them. At one point one guy asked for a light from one of the girls. She gave him one. When the four reached the front of the hostel, the guy that got the light tried to grab the purse from the girl that had given him the light. He yanked and tried to break the small chain that was around her shoulder, but could not.

So he threw her on the ground. Meanwhile the other girls in a state of shock tried to hold onto this attacker. He was able to grab the purse and run off with it. The girl on the ground lost her purse which had a borrowed digital camera, wallet etc. She was also furious at her friends for not being able to help her. They were all pretty upset that night. (I had met the girls, but did not find out about it until the next morning).

There are guys that just hang around on Las Ramblas waiting for tourists to make a mistake. According to our tour guide, the guys doing the ball game have about 14 (he said 14 I don't believe it) people that are pretending to play the game while others are scouting for police.