Xavier García Albiol has again turned night-time security into a campaign argument about immigration. At a rally in Terrassa on Saturday, the PP candidate in Catalonia linked robberies of young people leaving nightclubs to immigration, singled out people from the Maghreb, and asked voters to back the extension of the so-called “Badalona model” across Spain.
The issue is not whether theft worries people on a night out. It is whether a candidate can make such a broad link between origin and crime without providing the data needed to support it. elDiario.es reported that Albiol said immigrants commit most thefts in Catalonia and said that young people leaving nightclubs were being targeted for their phones and wallets. The supplied material reports those statements, but contains no crime statistics supporting them.
That distinction matters. A serious safety policy can address specific offences, locations, times, repeat offending and failures of prevention. Making the origin of a diverse population the central explanation shifts attention away from that work and toward a generalisation. Albiol’s qualification that not everyone who has arrived from abroad commits crimes does not answer the problem created by assigning a broad criminal role to a particular origin.
It is also unclear what taking the “Badalona model” nationwide would involve. The supplied report does not set out the proposed national measures, their legal basis, cost or operational limits. Asking voters for a mandate for an undefined formula makes its likely effects harder to assess.
Albiol is entitled to advocate tougher security policies and compete for younger voters. But when the message identifies people from the Maghreb, the responsibility to explain the evidence and the actual measures becomes greater. Public safety needs precise answers; a campaign should not replace them with an origin-based category.
Sources
- elDiario.es · Source date: 2026-11-14
Independent editorial content. WUA is not affiliated with any political party. 2026-11-14