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By USA Herald Staff

The transatlantic legal battle over the June 24 boardwalk robbery of an American businessman outside the Sofitel Barcelona Skipper has quietly moved into a new phase — one that will unfold not in a Los Angeles courtroom, but in the criminal courts of Catalonia.

While the civil action against Accor S.A., its Spanish operating entity, Accor Management US Inc. and hotel general manager Matthias Bernard grinds toward its first responsive pleadings in the Superior Court of California and the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the criminal side of the case — the hunt for the men who allegedly wrenched a $51,400 Rolex Sky-Dweller from the plaintiff's wrist in less than two seconds — has been placed in the hands of a Barcelona firm with a national profile in Spanish criminal practice.

The victim confirmed this week that he has retained Joaquín Sugrañes and his colleague Alba Roura, of the Barcelona criminal law firm Belmonte & Sugrañes Abogados Penalistas, to act as acusación particular — the private prosecution role that Spanish criminal procedure allows a victim to exercise alongside the public prosecutor. The engagement dovetails with the €100,000 reward the businessman announced last month for information leading to the identification and apprehension of the robbery team.

In a statement provided to USA Herald, the businessman — who has otherwise avoided public comment while the California pleadings are being served — was unambiguous about the choice.

"Joaquín Sugrañes and his legal partner Alba Roura are the quintessential professionals. This upcoming week we expect to identify the robbers and start the prosecution."

That timeline, if it holds, would represent a striking acceleration for a case that began as a two-second street theft on a boardwalk where, by most contemporary rankings, such thefts number in the thousands each week.

A Barcelona Firm With a National File

Sugrañes has practiced exclusively in criminal law since 2012, beginning his career at Cuatrecasas — one of the largest law firms in the Iberian Peninsula — in its economic criminal law group before founding his current partnership. He is recognized by the international directory Best Lawyers among the best criminal lawyers in Spain, and is ranked by the independent Spanish ranking EMERITA LEGAL among the country's 100 best lawyers, a placement based on case outcomes and client references Belmonte & Sugrañes.

His academic profile reads as one built for exactly the kind of file the Sofitel case has become: a law degree from the University of Barcelona, a master's in Criminal Law and Criminal Sciences from the University of Barcelona and Pompeu Fabra, a postgraduate in Economic Criminal Law from Abad Oliba CEU, and specialization certificates from the Barcelona Bar Association in Jury Court and Penitentiary Law. He practices in English, Spanish and Catalan — a combination that matters in a case whose principal witness is American, whose defendants are French and Spanish, and whose surveillance footage was seized by the Mossos d'Esquadra.

It is also worth noting, in a case in which the Mossos are central to identifying the perpetrators, that Sugrañes has represented numerous Mossos d'Esquadra officers in high-profile matters — a working familiarity with the Catalan police force that few Barcelona criminal practitioners can match.

Alba Roura, his partner on the file, brings the second seat in what colleagues describe as a firm that runs its complex matters in pairs — one lawyer building the evidentiary architecture while the other manages the procedural front. The pair have handled defense and prosecution work in criminal proceedings of "any nature," according to the firm, appearing before police stations, courts and tribunals throughout Spain.

Why the Private Prosecution Matters

To American readers, the retention of a criminal firm by a victim already pursuing a $5 million civil action may look redundant. Under Spanish procedure, it is anything but.

The acusación particular is a right that has no true analog in U.S. practice. It permits the victim, through counsel, to sit alongside the Fiscalía — the public prosecutor's office — throughout the investigation and trial, filing briefs, requesting evidentiary measures, questioning witnesses, and seeking penalties independent of the state. In complex property crimes with international dimensions and stolen goods likely to have crossed borders within hours, that parallel role is often decisive.

It is also the mechanism most likely to convert the €100,000 reward — announced with much attention last month — into an actual arrest. Reward money attaches to information; private prosecution converts information into filings a magistrate must act on.

The California Case Continues in Parallel

Nothing about the Barcelona engagement blunts the California civil suit. The Los Angeles complaint, filed June 29 by Reid A. Winthrop of the Winthrop Law Group in Newport Beach, seeks damages of not less than $5 million plus punitive damages under California Civil Code § 3294, and names Sofitel general manager Matthias Bernard in his individual capacity — an unusual step that survives, if it survives, on the strength of a single sentence Bernard is alleged to have said in defense of the hotel's decision not to warn guests about a pattern of luxury-watch robberies at its own front door: that signage of that kind "would not match the décor".

If Sugrañes and Roura succeed in identifying the robbery team in Barcelona in the coming days — as their client publicly expects — the evidentiary consequences will run in both directions. A criminal prosecution in Catalonia will produce sworn statements, surveillance interpretation, and modus operandi evidence that a Los Angeles jury may hear against the hotel on the foreseeability question at the heart of the premises-liability count.

The two files, in other words, are one file.

What Comes Next

Sources familiar with the Barcelona side of the matter say that a formal complaint (querella) is being finalized and that coordination with the Mossos d'Esquadra's specialist unit on organized street crime is underway. Video obtained from cameras on and around the Sofitel property is understood to capture the practiced handoff between members of the team as they moved away from the scene.

Neither Sugrañes nor Roura commented for this article. Their firm has declined, as it typically does, to discuss the specifics of an active matter.

The Sofitel Barcelona Skipper and Accor S.A. have not publicly addressed the Barcelona criminal engagement. A summons has issued in Los Angeles. Discovery, in due course, will follow.

As the plaintiff put it, in the only public statement he has made since retaining Spanish counsel: "This upcoming week we expect to identify the robbers and start the prosecution."