I heard about the arrest in Granollers of cyber-criminal Sven Olaf Kamphuis from a friend in Cornwall. Even though the drama was played out in a street not five minutes from my house, we knew nothing about it until reading the Guardian article from May 20th. It described how a 35 year old Dutch man with bushy eyebrows tried to mastermind an internet attack from the back of an orange Mercedes van bristling with antennae and solar panels. He had rented rooms in Carrer Figueres, a street off Carrer Girona and parked his rather obvious van outside a local bar.
Granollers, according to the journalist Giles Tremlett, is a ‘nondescript town 15 miles from Barcelona’ and this epithet spurred me into starting to write this blog. I have been planning it for months and as we are now suddenly on the map, it seems a good time to offer another view of the town.
Bar Javis, is now famous for playing a small part in the arrest when the owner’s son took a photo of the strange van parked outside. “Not a lot happens in this street” said the owner ” but it was so huge that it blocked out the light from our bar”
I walked round there last night to take a look, accompanied by Bonnie my border collie.
It isn’t the prettiest street in Granollers and I can’t imagine popping into the bar for a coffee any day soon but it is now a landmark and this is how it looks.
Related articles
- Hacker becomes talk of town (elpais.com)
- Top News: The man who ‘nearly broke the internet’ (guardian.co.uk)
