Fans of the Spanish TV series “Paper House” do not cease to admire such large-scale robberies committed by its heroes.
But real life is also full of major robberies, which they don’t stop talking about. And here are the most famous Spanish cases.
The biggest bank robbery
Let’s go to Barcelona in 1985. On August 15, a gang from Rome robs one of the most important banks in Barcelona. Through a tunnel 300 meters long, which was built by them, they reached the vault, from which they took a total of 36 million euros in cash and gold bars. The crime was planned for 5 months. To put it into action, we had to rent a room nearby, gradually tunneling through the water channels. Many years later, everyone who studied this case, including the police, called the participants of the crime highly qualified specialists in the world, because it is very rare to do everything so thoroughly. Does it resemble a “Paper House”?
“Dioni’s Revenge”
Another grandiose robbery of Spain happened because of revenge, so it was even called “The Revenge of Dioni”. Dioni worked for Candi security company in Madrid for more than 20 years, having worked his way up from a security guard to an armored van driver. One terrible day for him, he was demoted, and he decided to take revenge in a big way. On July 28, 1989, when the armored van was at the stage of collecting money, Dioni pretended that his leg hurt so as not to get out of the van. When his colleagues went to collect the money, he got behind the wheel and left, taking 2 million euros. The van was later found abandoned in the same place where he parked his car on the morning of the same day. He managed to fly to Brazil, but his happiness did not last long. After 2 months, the criminal was detained.
The robbery of the Balaguer Museum
One of the most famous art critics and thieves, Rene Alphons van der Berge, better known as Eric “the Belgian”, stole more than 6,000 works of art in his entire life. On January 30, 1981, he managed to break into the Balaguer Museum, located in Barcelona, and steal a work of art worth more than 24 million euros. They say Eric owned one of the most enviable collections of works of art in the world, because after the theft he could not sell them in any way and kept them for himself. By the way, he never told how he managed to get into the museum.
The theft of the Purple Diamond
Barcelona, 2020. The gang decided to rob a Swiss millionaire according to an unusual scheme: they approached him with a desire to buy a diamond, and at the time of the meeting they stole it. It all started with the fact that a fake gem expert entered the room of a 5-star hotel and there, together with the owner, evaluated the diamond, forcing him to believe that there were buyers for him. Under the pretext that she forgot to attach the seal, she managed to replace the box with a diamond. Then she asks for a few minutes to call the buyer, and leaves the hotel without any problems. After half an hour of waiting, the owner opens the box and is horrified to discover the absence of the jewelry box. Eventually, a few months later, the entire gang was arrested in France.
