The Mossos d'Esquadra said TikTok posters and QR codes directed people to messaging channels linked to the Barcelona disturbances. Police say two girls aged 14 and 17 administered groups used to coordinate participants. The unrest took place in central Barcelona on 24 October, involving about 500 people, according to Reuters and the Guardia Civil. Police said Blocus used social-media accounts and online channels to exploit student protests as cover for looting and violent acts.
The minors are suspected of helping plan calls to loot shops and publicising them ahead of the disturbances on 24 October. The Mossos said the groups were created to help participants coordinate. Catalan police figures cited by Reuters put arrests linked to the disturbances at 132, including 83 minors and 49 adults. The arrests followed a joint investigation by the Catalan police and the Policía Nacional, under the coordination of the Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office’s section for minors.
The two arrests bring to ten the number made across Spain between Friday and Sunday in connection with Blocus. Three people were arrested in the Valencian Community and three in Catalonia. Two were detained in Tenerife. There was one arrest each in Andalusia and the Basque Country. Authorities’ investigations into alleged organisers and promoters also reached Barcelona and Valencia, as well as Tenerife. They extended to Bilbao and Málaga, too.
Those cases include the arrest in Picanya of a man Spain’s Interior Ministry described as Blocus’s alleged founder and principal promoter. The Guardia Civil detained him on Friday, and a judge ordered provisional imprisonment. Two men aged 18 and 21, arrested in Barcelona as suspected coordinators, also remain in custody. A judge is investigating one of them for public disorder and criminal organisation, the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) said. The proceedings follow the earlier Barcelona remand of an 18-year-old linked to the group.
The two newly arrested girls live in separate counties, Maresme and Bages. Their arrests also stand out against the profile of earlier cases in Barcelona: of the first 130 people arrested there over the disturbances, only six were not men. In a separate report on the Barcelona arrests, Catalan police told Reuters that minors accounted for 83 of the 132 people detained in connection with the unrest.
