Crime in Raval, Barcelona: Leave Your Bling at Home

Just one more word of advice before moving through or moving to Raval: Leave yo´ white track suit with gold stitching at home before struttin' 'round here.

After two months of Raval living and walking at all hours of the night and day, I was beginning to pass off the locals' warnings as some kind of xenophobia. All the immigrants I had met and interacted with in Raval, whether they were from India, Latin America, Africa, Asia, or the Mideast, seemed far friendlier than the native Barcelonans.

However, I have recently been informed by a fellow American from the United States that she has been robbed twice on the streets of Raval, but then again, not all of Raval's residents are immigrants.

The news totally stunned me. Then I thought for less than a second; my friend is a very nice young lady and some of the most amiable company there is to find, but she does walk around like she just ran up her credit card at Saks 5th Avenue.

I, on the other hand, look like I haven´t bought a new pair of pants that I wear almost everyday in almost a year.

So, I do advise that you leave your starched and shiny and quite bad-ass-looking white track suit with gold lace stitching at home, although you would be the coolest looking cat at the shoddy subterranean discotheques.

I should add: my friend was neither shot nor stabbed nor badly beaten.

Another friend back in the good ol´ United States was walking through a relatively nice neighborhood with brand new half-a-million dollar houses up the street when two assailants grabbed for him. He didn't think before punching one in the face. The other ran off. When he looked down to what kind of punk would try and mug him, he saw a 14 or 15-year-old kid with a serrated pocket knife. And that was in the lovely little city of Charleston, South Carolina.

But knives are used in Raval. Some friends that live on a very busy street with many bars and restaurants said a woman who lives in their building was mugged with a knife very late the other night. The mugger cut her as she tried to open her building's door with so much desperation that she broke its glass panes.