Pizzas, paellas and seafood served by slave waiters in Tarragona

The website of the La Sirga restaurant, on the seafront of Torredembarra (Tarragona), boasted that it had an extensive menu of Italian and Spanish dishes, that one of its cooks had worked in a restaurant in Italy awarded a Michelin star and that that his work in the kitchen was “innovative and creative while faithful to tradition.” It offered seafood dishes, pizzas, pasta dishes, paellas and a weekend menu for 28 euros. However, a joint operation by the National Police and the Civil Guard in which 180 agents participated has revealed that the white tablecloths, tall glasses of wine and sea views shown in the photographs hid a much less glamorous reality. : an alleged human trafficking plot that allowed this establishment to have waiters in a regime of almost slavery who were forced to work up to 15 hours a day on Mondays and Sundays and were sometimes only paid 20 euros at the end of the month. There are two other restaurants and an ice cream parlor in the same town and La Riera de Gaià involved.

All of them have been closed by court order after 12 of the alleged members of the plot were arrested on April 8 after 46 of their victims were identified, most of them hospitality students in Colombia who arrived in Spain deceived, according to reports. this Friday the Ministry of the Interior. Those arrested - three of whom have been placed in provisional prison by order of the head of the Court of Instruction 9 of El Vendrell - are accused of the crimes of belonging to a criminal organization, trafficking in human beings for the purposes of labor exploitation, favoring immigration, illegal detention and document falsification.

The one baptized as Operation Napoleon-Aguazul began last October, after several Colombian citizens reported to the police stations in Alicante and El Ejido (Almería) that they had been brought to Spain with a false promise of work in restaurants on the coast. Tarragona, where they had suffered labor exploitation. These testimonies were joined by others collected in National Police and Civil Guard offices in the province of Tarragona that coincidentally pointed to the same restaurants, which had in common being owned by a couple formed by a Spanish woman and an Italian. “From the first moment we were surprised by the high number of complaints. Normally only two or three arrive and in this case we had more than a dozen,” say sources close to the investigation.

The investigations made it possible to verify that the plot controlled the trafficking process from the first phase, the recruitment phase. This was carried out in Colombia, where people linked to it went to hospitality education centers to cajole students with a paid job in Spain. Specifically, they were offered a contract of four hours a day and two days of weekly rest, vacations and a salary of 500 euros per month. The selection process included a job interview via video call in which the candidates spoke with the restaurant managers themselves. When they accepted, the organization offered to manage all the documentation necessary to travel to Spain, from plane tickets to visas - which in many cases were for tourism and not work -, including medical insurance, lawyers and procedures with the consulate. The network assumed the cost of all this so that, in this way, the victims contracted a debt.

Once in Spain, the working conditions did not comply with what was agreed. The days were often 12 hours a day, although sometimes they reached 15. Weekly breaks were granted on rare occasions and they were never able to enjoy vacations. The scheme deducted the debt incurred from their salary, so that some months they only received 20 euros. Furthermore, those who had arrived with a tourist visa were forced to enroll in training courses to regularize their situation as students in two academies in the town of Tarragona - whose owners are among those arrested - and they were forced to pay significant amounts for them. of money although they were never actually taught.

The accommodation, for which they were also deducted money, was in four apartments in Torredembarra, where they slept crammed into bunk beds and were constantly monitored with a video surveillance system that the ringleaders controlled from their own mobile phones. If they fell ill, they were prevented from taking medical leave and the scheme provided them with medication so that they could continue working.

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Finally, on April 8, agents from the Central Unit of Illegal Immigration Networks and Documentary Falsities (UCRIF) of the National Police and the Organic Unit of the Judicial Police (UOPJ) of the Tarragona Civil Guard proceeded to arrest 11 people in Spain. One more, the owner of the restaurant, was arrested in Italy. They also carried out searches in the homes where the victims were housed - which at that time were occupied by 18 people -, in two homes of the alleged ringleaders and in the four hospitality establishments, which have finally been closed by order of the judge.

The agents seized two detonating weapons, 22,295 euros in cash, two mobile phones, two laptops, a vehicle, a hard drive recorder, surveillance cameras and abundant documentation. Among those arrested, in addition to the couple who own the restaurants, are the woman's two daughters, a recruiter, the premises' accountant and several restaurant managers. Sources close to the investigation highlight that, although so far there are 46 victims identified, they do not rule out that more may appear in the coming weeks. “We believe that the plot had been operating for seven years,” these sources point out, adding that while the agents were carrying out the searches, some people approached the scene to report that they had also been exploited at work by the plot.

On the website of a popular platform where users comment on their impressions of restaurants and entertainment venues, a client of La Sirga called this establishment just a few days before the police operation a “pretentious beach bar”, “very expensive”. , with “minimal” portions and “laughable” seafood platters, and of which only “the treatment of the staff” stood out, in reference, precisely, to the waiters who were allegedly exploited in a slavery regime serving pizzas and paellas.

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