Wave of burglaries targets rural houses and farms in Vélez-Málaga
Residents of Valle-Niza and Almayate denounce the attacks on their homes by "hooded men with sticks and bars" which they say have been happeneing regularly for six years
Rural areas of Valle-Niza and Almayate Alto, which form part of the municipality of Vélez-Málaga on the eastern Costa del Sol, once again experienced a night of tension on Saturday 14 March with the presence of four hooded individuals who broke into private properties, including a house with an elderly couple inside.
According to Esther Ruiz, a local resident whose house was burgled in 2020, "We have been fighting against this scourge for six years: when they don't touch avocados or mangoes, they touch the houses," Ruiz said, adding that the thieves break wire fences and avoid the roads to raid the isolated farms.
Local residents were warned by security cameras and messages shared on WhatsApp groups when the hooded men were spotted in the area of the dry riverbed and organised themselves to watch the houses. In a property inhabited by two octogenarians, the daughter activated the alarm from Vélez-Málaga, deterring the assault, although the intruders had already forced their way in. "We were all watching, with more than twenty neighbours in the street and stationed in the houses," Ruiz told SUR.
Images from the security cameras of the neighbours' farms, to which SUR has had access, show four individuals wearing balaclavas and armed with sticks and other tools.
"You can't ask an 80 year old to send the location; the roads were destroyed by the rains."
"The police do what they can with what they have, but we need a unit specialised in rural areas like the Guardia Civil's Roca," said one resident in Valle-Niza, criticising the constant changes of patrols and the problems of geolocation in scattered areas. "You can't ask an 80 year old person to send the location; the roads and rivers were destroyed by the rains and complicate access," they added. "We need rural guards like they have in Frigiliana."
This latest wave adds to a problem that has plagued the area since the beginning of 2020, with recurrent incidents in Valle-Niza, Almayate, Benajarafe and Chilches, among other rural areas. In December 2023 a 47-year-old man was beaten by three hooded men who demanded the contents of his safe, suffering serious head injuries.
"Weapons, sticks and iron bars"
Ruiz warned that criminals have lost their fear: "They used to enter when the houses were empty, but now they do it with the residents inside, with firearms, sticks and iron bars." She added that "more and more residents are getting gun permits and buying shotguns or pistols to defend themselves", fearing that "one day we will go from being victims to executioners".
Ruiz is trying to promote the creation of a rural association which was stopped by the pandemic and is looking to ally itself with others in Axarquia municipalities such as Torrox and Nerja.
The National Police were present at the time and complaints have been filed, with more pending when checking several farms for damage to wire fences. Government sources in Malaga have said that there have been more than 2,000 officers deployed in the area since 2018, but recognise the complexity of monitoring large areas.
The geographical isolation generates fear of an escalation similar to drug trafficking, where "they have better weapons than the police", according to Ruiz. The residents are calling for a reinforcement of surveillance and more preventive measures, while they are organising themselves in networks such as WhatsApp groups in this new wave of assaults in the rural areas of the Axarquía.
