Vicious criminals have been targeting operators in Barcelona this week
Everyone loves Barcelona. Who can resist those mysterious Gothic backstreets, each laden with Catalonian history?
Or the grandeur of the city squares? The palace? The tapas? The beautiful Spanish women/men? The press office at Mobile World Congress?
It's wonderful that MWC takes place in this exquisite city. But as we all know, Barcelona has a crime problem. And this year it burst from Las Ramblas into the Fira centre itself.
Operators have complained to me of muggings and confidence tricksters, of protection rackets and scams.
Apparently there are two main culprits. One calls himself Jobs. Skinny bloke who hides behind a suspicious beard. Jobs is rarely seen in person, but sends his minions undercover to scout for him in the shadows.
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One operator told me: "This Jobs bloke approached me with a magic box that he promised would make me rich. But when I got it home it drained my bank account and sucked up all the data in my network.
"I can't believe I fell for it, but I suppose I was flattered. He told me I'd be the only one of all my friends to have a magix box, but everyone's got one now. I suppose the only good thing is that they're all getting screwed too."
The other master criminal is called Schmidt. He's far more cocky than Jobs, and even turned up at the Fira even though his gang was all over Hall 7 handing out free sweets.
One brave operator stood up to him, asking him where all his minutes had gone.
Schmidt just smiled and carried on stroking his cat.
The crimes have been so bad that the operators have got together and formed a vigilante group called the Wholesale Applications Centre. Trouble is, no one really knows what it does. And there is already another crimefighting gang out there called the JIL.
When we asked JIL what it thought of 'the whack', it said: "Wankers".
It's all very sad. Some Fira regulars have simply surrendered their valuables to the villains in the hope of a quieter life. Mr Motorola said: "I got tired of looking over my shoulder all the time. I just let Schmidt have all my handsets instead. I had to. They were going to stop me coming here otherwise."
Mr Nokia even booked a room off site in an attempt to avoid the mayhem. It didn't work. "We brought all our guests back to our digs and there was nothing there," said a Mr Vanjoki.
"No N901. No N98. We had nothing to offer anyone except an old OS we had in a drawer somewhere."
Predictably there are now constant rumours that the show will move to another city.
The operators want to re-locate to an emerging market where they feel more in control. Somewhere safe and free of crime.
Like Lagos.
