Barcelona has generally been unsafe for some time, but this last month has seen an explosion in violent crime.
This is due principally to the behavior of persons belonging to specific immigrant groups, whose hostility towards local people and institutions would seem to betray some cultural and ethnic resentment.
The surge in violence included the killing of a young man during the traditional Mercè festivities, armed robbery in the street, the stabbing of tourists, and the forced entry of a crowd of Morocco supporters into the Barcelona stadium where the national football teams of Chile and Morocco were facing off.
In this context, it should be noted that Catalan separatist groups, such as Esquerra Republicana, have been supportive of large-scale African migration into their region, partly because these migrants do not speak Castilian and can therefore, it is imagined, be enculturated into a future monolingual Catalonia. It is also the case that Catalan separatism tends towards typically deconstructivist, postmodern-leftist narratives, and so prefers migration from non-European derived cultures.
