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Police swoop in on Barcelona shop selling Harry Potter fakes

Spain’s Guardia Civil dismantled a massive operation that produced and sold fake Disney and Warner Bros brands, including dozens of items relating to the Harry Potter franchise.

Police swoop in on Barcelona shop selling Harry Potter fakes
Everything in the shop was fake merchandise.

A Barcelona shop which supplied the kind of products Harry Potter readers might expect to find in Diagon Alley was raided by police last week for exclusively selling knock-off copies from China.

Gryffindor house scarves were on sale beside Ravenclaw banners and a glass case offered up a selection of wands that could have come straight from Ollivander’s wand shop itself.

But an investigation by a fiscal and borders team from the Guardia Civil discovered all the products offered in the shop were counterfeit, although they were being sold as official merchandise with a price tag to match.4

“This raid was part of a wider operation against fake goods which are arriving by sea and other routes mostly from China and being sold in Spain,” said a spokesman from the Guardia Civil.

The raid on February 27resulted in the seizure of 9,592 counterfeit products with an estimated sale price of more than €300,000.

The owner of the shop, a 38-year-old woman with Spanish citizenship, has been arrested.

 

  

CRIME

Dutch woman arrested over shooting of right-wing Spanish politician

A Dutch woman was arrested in the Netherlands in relation to an attack on a right-wing Spanish politician who was shot in Madrid, Spanish police said on Tuesday.

Dutch woman arrested over shooting of right-wing Spanish politician

Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a founder of Spain’s far-right Vox party, was shot in the face in broad daylight near his home in the upscale Salamanca neighbourhood on November 9 by a motorcycle passenger.

Long a supporter of the Iranian opposition, the 78-year-old Vidal-Quadras has accused the Iranian regime of involvement in the shooting.

Four people had already been arrested as part of the investigation into the shooting, but the suspected gunman — a French national of Tunisian origin with several previous convictions in France — remains at large.

“A woman was arrested in Holland for her alleged participation in the financing and preparation of the attack on Vidal-Quadras,” the national police said in a brief statement.

Police said she was detained after Spain issued a European arrest warrant.

Vidal-Quadras was a member and then vice-president of the European Parliament between 1994 and 2014.

He was also a former head of the centre-right People’s Party in Catalonia.

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