Caught them

I think you know by now that I really do not like graffiti. I was therefore delighted to read that the police in Torrevieja have caught another three youths who claim responsibility for 6,000 pieces of graffiti; the youngest being only 13 years old. In total the police have now identified the four worst offenders who account for 10,000 of these acts of vandalism.

Nothing escapes the attention of these "artists". It isn’t just walls on vacant plots of land where they spray; they cover the walls of peoples houses, shop windows, window blinds, traffic lights, rubbish bins, doorways, lifts even trees. In fact the only place I don’t recall seeing any graffiti is on churches.

Torrevieja police reckon there are three gangs that rival each other to produce most of the graffiti at a cost of thousands of Euros to the city. To combat the problem, the city have employed a gang of ten people on a clean up which started in December. In the first five months of operation, they have managed to clean up two thousand items starting on Calle Ramon Gallud.

Fortunately, once cleaned up, the graffiti has not returned. As I said in a previous post. if you remove it as soon as you see it, then that tends to nip the problem in the bud.

As I also said, the problem of graffiti is not so acute in Bigastro but it is still there and needs to be tackled sooner rather than later because left unchecked, it will get worse.