Police search the old Palma prison: one arrested and 160 people identified

PalmThe National Police searched early Wednesday morningformer Palma prisonPolice have arrested one person and identified 160 others, as confirmed to ARA Baleares by security sources. They added that the arrested individual committed a property crime. The police operation was described as "a typical search, the kind carried out to determine the population density of the facility. Individuals are identified to verify they have no outstanding warrants or criminal records," explained sources from the National Police. However, this is not the first time security officers have visited the former Palma prison to identify its residents. But this time, unlike previous operations, the police did not issue any eviction notices, according to some of the prison's inhabitants who spoke to this newspaper.

According to police sources speaking to Europa Press, the search was in response to complaints from neighbors in recent days, who identified the former Palma prison as a "hotbed of crime." Aurora, who has been living in the prison's former kitchen for nearly five years, said that the National Police asked for their IDs and refused to explain why. "We went to the Red Cross to get food, and when we came back, they asked for our IDs and wouldn't let us through until 10:00 a.m.," she said. However, she is grateful that the police came to the facility because there have been "a lot of fires and a lot of problems" lately, according to Aurora. The residents of the former prison have no windows and, to keep warm, they light fires wherever and wherever they can. When Aurora arrived four years ago, "there were about 150 people; now there are almost 300 of us," she said. The increase in residents at the old prison has also led to problems of coexistence among them. Upon entering, it's easy to see who has lived there for years and who has arrived more recently, because the former reside in the buildings where the staff lived or in the larger spaces, while the latter occupy small areas, such as the first floors of the control towers or the facilities that were formerly cells. Furthermore, the location of each resident within the prison also determines how difficult they are to manage. They have established a clear zoning system for where they consider "troublesome" individuals to be located. In fact, there are areas they try to avoid, such as the one at the back on the right, where they say the police are called every night because of fights.