Even before I arrived in Barcelona, I had heard the crime horror stories. Tourists robbed left and right on busy streets, scammed while innocently participating in surveys, and pickpocketed on crowded metros just steps after exiting the airport. After scouring internet forums for these tales, my parents begged and pleaded with me to leave my software-loaded laptop at home for this trip–and now, I realize it may have been for good reason.

I have approached the warnings with what I’ll call paranoid skepticism. I’ve walked down the main tourist drag, La Rambla, clutching my bag like toddlers’ lips on a weaning pacifier. I listened patiently as roommates and co-workers described being purse-snatched while switching straps from shoulder to shoulder or dropping change on the ground–surely, those being targeted were in some way waving flags to their offenders, making the robbery less random and more understandable. Or, rather, that was my optimistic conviction.

Then came Elaine*. My co-intern from Toronto is 21, slight-framed, outwardly coy and the last person I would expect to open the door of the office with the look she had on her face today. That look is blank, that of an oscillating mind still clouded from the previous night. The look of abandon after one wakes to a bedroom missing all valuable possessions and no recollection of where–or how–it all went.

From what she understands, she was blindly targeted at the neighborhood bar. Being “roofied” in the United States most commonly means a night of college-age sexual abuse. In Barcelona, it meant being robbed of a laptop, camera, phone, iPod, wallet, and the landlord’s computer–an afterthought, surely, as they traipsed out of blacked-out Elaine’s room, marveling at their ability to manipulate, follow and abuse.

It’s easy to point the finger at Spanish law. Pickpocketing and violence-free robberies are labeled as “hurtos” here–essentially, unless the robbery exceeds about $500 or involves violence, offenders won’t be charged with any crime at all. Recently, a few Barcelona pickpocketers were jailed after 500 “convicted” robberies–and those 500 are only the ones where they were tracked down. In Elaine’s case, her robbery exceeds what would be considered insignificant, but with no memory of her offenders, the crime or her items’ serial numbers, she remains helpless.

That’s not factoring in her landlord’s reaction. After stating that it had been a “long seven years” since the house had last been ransacked and putting the blame squarely on Elaine’s dazed shoulders, she went straight to the police, using her Catalan status, mastery of Spanish and position as landlord to her advantage.

Elaine came home from work to a lawsuit not against her perpetrators, but her.

My silent paranoid skepticism has evolved into a deafening, seething, paranoid rage.

* – name has been changed