Tie your trappings down, farmers told, as robberies rise

On the table, the officer views a list of stolen items. In half a year, farmers of the Alt Empordà district, near Girona in Catalonia, have lost hens, sheep, copper, machines and motors. "But in today's meeting, what they are most concerned about is theft of iron," says Alfons Sánchez, police chief of Figueres in the Alt Empordà area, who meets farmers' representatives every two months.

"We are warning people to be careful, because they may take anything from a motor to a fence," say Toni Casademont and Josep Arnall of the farm unions Unió de Pagesos and JARC, respectively. The wave of theft in rural areas has led them to ask the regional government's interior department head, Felip Puig, for more police control.

Joan Pujol has suffered thefts of iron, which the unions attribute to the rising price of this metal. A man stopped in front of his farm at Vilamacolum one afternoon, entered the property and took 15 swine-box doors, electric cabling, five heaters and other objects. Business was already bad and this young farmer says his accounts do not square. "If you can't work them out, they send you bills to help you decide," he says.

He has now decided to close the farm, which he had ready for fattening 1,500 pigs. He is getting used to being robbed. "Two or three times they have taken animals. They kill them here and take them away, I suppose to eat them themselves." But this time, fixing the damage will cost some 12,000 euros. "And they will get maybe 300 euros selling the stuff." The heaters to keep the animals warm cost 600 euroseach. Pujol kept them in a shed.

This is one of the things that the Mossos d'Esquadra regional police force are working at with the farmers: better security. Tools, tractors, motors — everything is attractive amid rising metal prices and hard times. "If you leave things unprotected, they are easier to steal. We are getting them to take more measures," says Sánchez.

Two and a half years ago he set up a pioneering system with farmers based around the town of Roses. At a meeting, anyone can put a list of his recent losses on the table, and optimum routes are designed to attempt to catch the thieves. This is the exclusive task of six policemen, who in 12-hour shifts patrol these zones of low population density.

"Thefts give you a bitter feeling," says Jaume Teixidor, who explains that, in the cherry-picking season, hardly a day goes by when he does not meet some residents of his town, Figueres, heading to "have a dessert" among his 3,000 cherry trees. Not long ago, 200 kilos of cherries were stolen.

Teixidor says he knows who is taking his harvest. "In Barcelona repeat offenders steal wallets. Here they take animals and fruit, which is what they have to hand," observes one of the officers. Meanwhile, the man who raided Pujol's farm has already been arrested after a neighbor identified him as the resident of a nearby village. He has a record of many previous theft convictions, but Sánchez says farm thieves come from all kinds of backgrounds.