CRIMINAL offences in Spain have fallen this year across the board – particularly violent or aggravated robberies, which have gone down by nearly a fifth.
According to figures released this week by the country's police forces, crime as a whole in the first nine months of 2014 decreased by 4.3%, and theft involving physical assaults by 18.4%.
Statistically, violent crime has historically been very low in Spain, with most murders and cases of attacks causing serious injury being of a domestic nature – perpetrated by partners and ex-partners, and more recently, by children against their parents, including minors has been seen far more often.
But random rape, murder and assaults, even on the street at the dead of night, is rare in most parts of the country and expatriates from elsewhere in Europe often comment on how much safer they feel in Spain walking around in the dark than they did even in daylight in their countries of origin.
Although much less common than in other countries in the EU, crime – even violent – still exists, as it does everywhere in the world, although in Spain it is more likely to involve bag-snatching than knife attacks.
Based upon figures as at the end of September, crime rate was 4.46 per 100 inhabitants, or a total of 1.587 million compared to last year's 1.659 million offences.
This does not only relate to burglaries, theft and assault, but also those considered a civil offence such as insulting a police officer or refusing to show ID or be breathalysed.
Burglaries have been steadily increasing since the start of the financial crisis, but in the last year went down from 96,427 in total to 92,055 over the same period – a drop of 4.5% - whilst aggravated robberies fell by 10.1% and car thefts by 12.1%, from 37,113 vehicles stolen in the first nine months of 2013 to 32,622 from January to September 2014.
The decrease in murder cases was much less, by only 3.3%, or 238 people killed compared to 246 in the same period last year.
And drug-dealing fell by 5.8%, petty theft, bag-snatching or shoplifting by 6.4% from 595,572 incidents to 554,527, and malicious damage by 4.1%.
Only in two regions has crime gone up year-on-year – in Navarra, by 17.5%, and in Cantabria, by 1.5%.
The greatest decrease in criminal offences has been seen in the Spanish-owned city-province of Ceuta on the northern Moroccan coast, by 9.1%, followed by the Balearic Islands and La Rioja, where crime has gone down by 7.2% and then Andalucía, which saw a drop of 20,000 offences, or 6.9% between January and September this year compared to the same period last year.
Aragón and Asturias saw crime reductions of 5.9%, just ahead of Extremadura's 5.7% and Castilla-La Mancha's 5.5%.
Spain's largest cities also saw a decrease in criminal activity – by 3.8% in Madrid, 2.6% in Barcelona, 2.2% in Valencia, 4.9% in Sevilla, 13.5% in Málaga, 10.2% in Bilbao and 5.9% in Zaragoza.
