For two nights, Pepe has been lying in the infirmary of Brians 1 prison, outside Barcelona. He is 66 years old, moves in a wheelchair, depends on an oxygen machine to breathe, and suffers from several chronic illnesses.
On Sunday afternoon, he went outside, as he did every day, to sit in the sun near his home in Bon Pastor, a working-class neighborhood in Barcelona. His wife was watching him from the window.
A few minutes later, according to the family and witnesses, a young man approached him from behind and tried to rip the gold chain from his neck.
It was over in seconds. Pepe later told police that he panicked, believed he was suffocating, and thought he was going to die. He then pulled out a small pocket knife he usually carried “to cut fruit or food,” according to his wife, and stabbed the attacker once in the chest. The young man, aged 18, died shortly afterwards.
Since then, Pepe has been behind bars.
On Tuesday, the investigating judge in Barcelona ordered Pepe held in pre-trial detention without bail, following a request from prosecutors. The decision has triggered a wave of outrage in his neighborhood. More than one hundred residents gathered outside his home demanding his release, shouting “We are all Pepe,” “It was self-defense,” and “Freedom for Pepe.”
Those scenes capture the anger driving the case. In Bon Pastor, many say this is no ordinary criminal case. They see an elderly, disabled, and seriously ill man imprisoned after defending himself during a robbery. They also see something broader: a growing feeling that insecurity is increasing and that the people who end up paying the highest price are not always the ones who committed the crime.
Paqui, Pepe’s wife, says he never sought a confrontation and never tried to flee. She was the one who called the emergency services. “He was terrified. He thought they were going to kill him,” she said through tears. Their children point out that Pepe suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, liver cirrhosis, and a neurological condition. He needs oxygen permanently.
“Risk of flight?” one of his sons asked bitterly during the demonstration. “He can barely breathe.”
The dead teenager, born in Algeria, already had a record for theft and robbery, according to police sources. He was unarmed. That fact is one of the reasons why prosecutors and the judge believe the case may involve excessive force rather than clear self-defense.
Spanish law sets three tests for self-defense: an unlawful attack, a necessary response, and a degree of proportionality. If the attack was only aimed at stealing a necklace, killing the robber may be considered disproportionate. But if Pepe genuinely believed his life was in danger, the legal interpretation changes.
This is not the first time that a case like this has sparked public protests in Spain. Similar demonstrations have followed other incidents in which residents believed that someone acting in self-defense was treated more harshly than the criminal. Whether or not that perception is legally accurate, politically it is becoming increasingly powerful.
Catalonia records more crime than any other region in Spain in absolute terms. In 2024, authorities registered more than 510,000 criminal offenses, equivalent to around 64 crimes for every 1,000 inhabitants. Since 2017, overall crime in the region has increased by more than 20%.
That is why the case of Pepe has gone far beyond one courtroom and one neighborhood in Barcelona. For a growing number of Spaniards, the image of an elderly man behind bars after surviving a robbery has become a symbol of something larger: the belief that the state is slow to protect and quick to punish.
