A specialist unit of Madrid’s municipal police has identified 1,466 people in connection with unauthorised graffiti in just under three years, according to the city council. Sixty-three people were investigated. Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida visited the unit on 11 November and was briefed on its work.
According to the municipal report, the department for the protection of urban heritage handled 802 cases and 875 complaints. There were also 628 reports. Police submitted 190 investigation reports to examining courts and a further 17 concerning damage to protected or culturally significant buildings to the environmental prosecutor’s office The categories may overlap and cannot be added together to give a total number of cases.
According to the city, the unit has around 30 officers. They work in shifts around the clock and operate throughout the city. Their duties include photographing graffiti, recording its locations and mapping areas particularly affected. Together with police handwriting and drawing experts, they examine possible authorship. They also search publicly accessible social networks and collate reports from the city districts.
However, identifying a person is not the same as securing a conviction. Nor does the number of investigations show how many cases ended up in court or what their outcome was.
Places affected, according to the city, include the Plaza de la Villa, the memorial to the victims of the Mauthausen and the Museo de América. In connection with graffiti at the museum, ten people were investigated on suspicion of damaging historic heritage, according to the city. The report gives no information on the outcome of these proceedings.
The municipal cleaning service is also involved alongside the police. Specialist teams remove graffiti following reports from the public and regularly inspect places where it frequently appears. According to the administration, the police unit coordinates with the cleaning department and the city districts.
The city council attributes a deterrent effect to this approach. However, the figures presented do not in themselves show how much illegal graffiti has decreased or what contribution the police unit has made to that change.
Editor: Mira Cadena (Article created with AI assistance).