OK, no medals were won and those that participated didn’t do too well in the competition. However, Motril Fencing Club was applauded for their efforts especially in light of the fact that they are the only club in Andalusia who do not receive any funding and don’t even have a training ground.

http://clubesgrimaciudaddemotril.blogspot.com/

Plums and Ambulances
Police operation Ciruela (Plum) successfully dismantled one of Granada’s main drug rings, sending its 14 members to prison.
The gang were very well organised and used quite a novel method for moving drugs from safe house to safe house: they used an ambulance.
The gangs undoing commenced in August when the Guardia Civil, during a routine road check, intercepted a car carrying 327 kilos of hashish, just outside Cijuela. The town’s name looks like a misspelling of the Ciruela but that is not the case; you can find Cijuela on a map just next to Granada airport.
During the investigation, the Guardia Civil discovered that the Policia Nacional and the Customs police were after the same culprits, so they joined forces and shared notes – surprisingly, this is the first time that there has been this level of co-ordination between the three law-enforcement agencies.
This combined effort lead to another bust, this time in Deifontes (North of Granada on the way to the province of Jaén). The operation bagged 300 kilos of hashish. Joining the dots between the two busts, the combined police effort managed to obtain a court order to intercept telephone calls between suspects, which in turn lead to the final blow against the gang.
The nationalities of those arrested are Spanish, Bolivian and Moroccan and their ages ranging between 24 and 36. The drug operation was organised from Morocco, using a Spaniard in Granada to organise this end.
The biggest surprise amongst the confiscated possessions was a fully decked out ambulance that was kept in the garage of one of the properties belonging to the gang. Using this transport, they were able to sail past police road checks without being stopped.

Doctor Attacked
Doctor Alberto Puerta received a beating just outside the hospital door, where his assailants had waited for him to finish his shift. Doctor Puerta, during the three months that he has been working at Hospital El Clínico in Granada, has demonstrated together with fellow hospital workers against the increasing number of attacks on hospital staff and to show his support for the victims of this kind of aggression. Not surprisingly, he is on sick leave, recovering from his injuries.
Not one to be cowered by events, he immediately made a statement before the press: “The bruising still hurts and I’m taking something for the swelling,” he explained before continuing with, “If we do not denounce these attacks publicly, society will not be aware of the violence suffered by this sector.”
On the day of the attack, he had been on duty in the Casualty Department, where a man recognised him as the doctor who had attended his mother ten days before. On that occasion she had been brought to the Casualty Department and from there had been sent to the Intensive Care Unit, having been seen by several doctors. However the woman’s son only remembered that Doctor Puerta was the doctor on duty that day and who had first attended to his mother.
Upon being recognised, the son insulted the doctor, shouting at him, before kicking him in the thigh. Things calmed down and the Doctor went back in, brushed himself off, changed into his street clothes and decided to take a walk settle his nerves. Big mistake, because this time, the assailant was waiting outside for him and this time accompanied.
“They were waiting outside for me: the relative that attacked me before and two more family members. They surrounded me and took turns at laying into me,” explained the Doctor. Fortunately, the Local Police, who had been alerted by passers by, turned up and stopped the attack.
“You never think that it is going to happen to you. You take part in demonstrations against attacks on work colleagues without really thinking that one day it will be your turn,” he confessed.

Polite Hold Up
Two hooded individuals burst into a hairdressers, one of whom was brandishing a firearm – it could be a replica, but who is willing to take the chance? One moment you’re having you hair cut and the next it is standing on end!
During the first few seconds nobody spoke until one of the hooded men said the obvious: “Hand over all your money!” I say ‘obvious,’ because they obviously hadn’t come for a haircut … but situations like this require a certain amount of protocol, don’t they? He could have said, “I have a gun and it says that your money is mine,” but who would like to risk a victim spoiling the drama of the moment with “Bugger me – a talking gun!”
No, our robber stuck to the tried-and-trusted, “hand over the money,” but added the words “Por favor.” In fact, his tone could have been described as apologetic.
Nobody moved, just exchanged glances between them; stunned by the devastating effect of the word, “please.” So he repeated his ‘request,’ because the grammatical structure certainly wasn’t a ‘demand.’ “Give me the money, please.” This caused even more uncertainty.
The seconds were ticking away and before long somebody, somewhere, would have alerted the police. So the courteous two, turned round and scampered.
Subsequent police investigations turned up a suspect: a mere adolescent who was hooked on drugs. He comes from a ‘problem’ family in a ‘problem suburb’ of the city but despite his hard-bitten environment, he was just too polite for the trade.

Father Acquitted
It must have been hell for this man, who was wrongly accused of sexually abusing his own 2-year-old daughter. The 37-year-old father, M.A.T.B., quite apart from the social stigma, had been forbidden from seeing his daughter for the last six years. If that weren’t bad enough, he has since been diagnosed with cancer of the colon and of the skin. Now he is understandably attempting to sue his wife for falsely accusing him.
He had already reported his ex-wife, long before this also started, of preventing him from seeing his daughter, something that his defence lawyer used to emphasise the fact that the ex-wife’s accusations of his sexual abuse of his then 2-year-old daughter had ulterior motivation.
The whole case hinged upon some scratches on the child’s genital area, which the mother had noticed after a weekend stay with her father. It turned out that the scratches had been caused by the child herself as she had a type of ringworm infection.

Parking Changes
The City Hall of Granada has announced that they will do away with side-by-side parking and replace it with parking-in-line areas. They also intend to make the maximum speed limit in all the city’s streets 30 KPH.
The reason behind this parking-alignment decision is because the City Hall considers that side-by-side parking is dangerous and causes many accidents, as driver have to back out into the flow of traffic…
Of course, as many locals have pointed out, existing parking will be reduced by around 50%, to which councillors have pointed out that there are plenty of public underground parking facilities. There’s a coincidence!
As an editorial aside, the obvious should be pointed out: the diagonal lines in these parking areas are painted facing the wrong way – it’s as simple as that! As they slant toward the on coming car, it is far to easy to drive front-first into the parking space, and far too much bother to reverse back into it. If the lines were painted sloping away from the oncoming traffic then it would be impossible to park nose first and very easy to reverse into, thus being able to drive straight out with full visibility.
I pointed this out once to my Spanish driving instructor – he thought I was mad.

Mary Anguish
It soon strikes you, upon arriving in Spain and getting a little linguistic grasp of the Spanish, that local women have pretty ridiculous names, ranging from a list of ache and pains to the begetting of children by remote control. I refer, of course, to the María Dolores, the María Angustias and the María Concepción Inmaculadas. We won’t even go into how many Marías’ there are…
But that’s all changing and has been for a while. María Angustia is quietly dying out, to be replaced by Chenoa, Elisabeth, Jennifer, Tania, Jessica, etc – thanks to the midday romantic soap operas. Things have changed so quickly that there are only 2,255 María Angustias in the whole of the province of Granada. That, by the ways, means that five out of every 1,000 Granadina women. You won’t find many females under 40 with that name and the reason that this is so important is because La Virgen de la Angustias is the Patron Saint of the City; i.e., if you were going to be called Mary Anguish, it would be in Granada! Hell, I even went out with a María Angustias for seven years!

Incompetence Made Plain
The A-92 is falling down. This flagship of motorways, built with European funds, was to be the pride and joy of Andalucía, joining the regional capital, Sevilla to Almería – linking Western and Eastern Andalucía. It was the beginning of the 80’s and the autonomous regional government of the Junta de Andalucía had only been in existence half a dozen years – everything was bright and shiny. To top it all, Spain was being admitted into the European Union and a river of funds was beginning to flow into underdeveloped Andalucía… and it all went to their heads.
Back then, in a country that until recently had lived obediently under Franco’s Regime, the idea of regional politicians having all that power and all that money was very intoxicating so out came the sturdy chequebooks and grand projects rolled off the approval desk, deaf to technical realities. In other words, politicians, who had up until then been submissive citizens in a totalitarian state, where now God and little disposed towards engineers spoiling their Pharonic development schemes – and that was the case of the A-92.
When the geologists and surveyors told the socialists (the socialists have ruled Andalucía the whole of Junta’s existence and governed Spain since 1982 barring eight years) that it was silly to route the new motorway along the existing main road and that a much more sound route should be found, the politicians sat, imperiously in their lofty offices and took no notice. Consequently, the A-92 inherited all the defects of the old main road.
Now, almost 30 years on, depressingly large sections of the motorway are disappearing under a crumbling embankment or slipping down hillsides. The A-92 costs millions to build and has been costing millions to patch up, but these prolonged rains are causing the inadequacies of the design to really devastate public coffers – and the worst is not over, because when the sun comes out and the earth dries, God knows how much more will be destroyed.
Back in February 2001 over a million cubic metres of earth and rock gave way, causing motorway to be shut down on the Diezma stretch for eleven months, but that is nothing compared with what we are facing now.

Abusing Trust I
Here are three instances where a person, who is in a position of responsibility – somebody who should be trusted, has abused that position. The first concerns a policeman who decided to use extortion against the woman he was supposed to be protecting.
The Supreme Court has confirmed a court sentence against a police inspector who blackmailed a woman by saying that he would testify against her in her divorce case if she did not give him the money that he wanted. The policeman was sentenced to nine months imprisonment.
The inspector, you see, worked in the Unidad de Prevención, Asistencia y Protección a Víctimas de Violencia de Género; in other words, a special unit to help women who are victims of domestic violence. In 2004 the woman had reported her husband for beating her up and the said inspector was assigned to her case.
At first the relationship between the two was professional but the inspector managed to steer the relation onto a friendship basis. Before long he was asking her to lend him money, which she did willingly until he asked for 18,000 euros (3-million pesetas, *sigh!*).
She refused but he repeated the request on numerous occasions, always receiving a negative. This was when he said that if she did not ‘lend’ him the money, he would testify against her in her coming divorce case. He also warned her that this would mean that she would lose her children because their custody settlement would very much take into account his report.
The most amazing thing about this is that this ‘gentleman’ only got nine months, especially when you consider that being less that two years is automatically commuted to a suspended sentence.

Abusing Trust II
The next case deals with a teacher that allegedly stole laptop computers from the centre where he worked. He had been hired at a Centro Guadalinfo in Armilla to give classes on Fridays. He evidently wasn’t satisfied with the agreed salary because he decided to augment his income by relieving the centre of its valuable equipment, reportedly.
At first, nobody realised that the computer stock of the centre was mysteriously being deplete, (one a week – and on Fridays). The head of the IT centre reported the loss of five computers to the Guardia Civil, pointing out that the classroom showed no signs of being broken into. The police investigation quickly eliminated the other teachers and the pupils and all eyes swivelled to our hero. The lad was nabbed as he was heading towards his car with another pert laptop snuggling in his rucksack.

Abusing Trust III
This time it wasn’t a teacher, but a school janitor – he was arrested for allegedly peddling drugs on the school premises. This occurred in the province of Jaén in a town called Martos.
The Guardia Civil received a tip off that something along these lines was going on so they decided to keep an eye on the school. It was soon established that their suspicions were justified and 32-year-old M.G.R. was arrested in the Janitor’s Office, together with a ‘customer’ that was present. A quick search of the premises turned up 38 grams of marihuana, and a high-precision set of weighing scales. Within a short time they tracked down the janitor’s supplier, 24-year-old M.M.P., who was also arrested.

WTF?
A 68-year-old man, who had already served time for killing his first wife, was arrested for breaking a court order not to approach his common-law wife. L.M.M. had also been boasting amongst his neighbours that he would have to murder her too.
No sooner was released from prison, he began a second relationship and immediately began mistreating her physically and threatened to kill her on several occasions. He was jailed for this and then released with the court order not to approach her – he immediately broke it.
He is back in prison because he broke the court order but how long before he is set free again?

Killed by a Vase
A 26-year-old domestic maid allegedly brained her 64-year-old female employer with vase after arguing with her over a supposed debt. At around four in the afternoon, neighbours in the same block of flats in Granada, who had been alarmed by all the shouting, phoned the Policía Nacional. When they arrived it was to find the house in silence and the womans’ body on the floor. A quick search of the house uncovered the maid hiding in a wardrobe.
The problem seems to have been that the elderly lady, a retired language teacher, owed the home-help lass money from previous hours worked and was apparently reluctant to hand over the money. The exchange became heated and climaxed in the maid picking up a bloody-great vase – the kind that stands on the floor because it is so large – and put an impressive dent in the other women’s cranium, resulting in a distinct lack of cardio-respiratory interest on the victim’s part.
It is worth pointing out that the aggressor had been arrested earlier on in the month, accused of stealing in another dwelling where she worked.

Growing Foreign Population
The foreign population of Granada has grown by eight fold in the last decade. Another interesting point is that 60% of new empadronados in the province’s municipalities come from abroad; the other 40% are obviously Spaniards that have moved to Granada from another province.
In 1999, only 1,181 foreigners officially lived in the province, whereas now there are 61,732. Both figures are inaccurate, obviously, because there are many foreigners living here illegally, or ones (EU) that just can’t be bothered to empandronarse.
In case you are wondering, this percentage is well above the national average – Granada has been definitively ‘discovered.’ In fact, there are only three tiny villages in the whole bloody province where there are no foreigners: Alicún de Ortega, which has a population of 526, Gobernador, with a population of 285 and Ferreira with 342 residents and half a cat.
This invasion came in two waves, one in 2005 when the foreign population jumped from 26,876 to 36,318 and then three years later when 10,000 newcomers turned up, leaving the total in 58,775.
Motril is an interesting case because in 1999 only 250 foreigners lived within the township, but by 2009 there were 6,432. Mind you, Jete is also interesting because there were only five foreigners registered there in 1999 and now there are 207, which when you take into account that the total population is 892, it means that foreigners represent 23% of the total. However, it is Polopos that takes the biscuit where the foreign population makes up 39% of the total.
So, where are we all springing from? Half come from the European Union (31,876), followed by South and Central Americans (15,807), Africa (11.970 and Asia with a modest 2,150.
Amongst the EU crowd the Brits make up the third largest group with 7,241 residents, followed by 2,082 Germans and 1,621 French, but the European country that holds the first place is dear old Romania with 11,512 residents! Finally, the second largest group, but who are non-European, are the Moroccans with 4,142 residents.

Overtime Overkill
Did you know the city of Granada’s Local Police get a higher hourly rate for overtime than a surgeon? No, well the blighters get double the hourly rate, to be exact. Yes, it’s true!
The 2009 municipal budget set aside half a million euros to cover police overtime, yet by December of that year it had swollen 2,050,475 euros. The official reason for this is that overtime is needed to cover fiestas and botellones, because the staff number is insufficient.
The 2010 budget has made a ruthless cut back, earmarking 362,986 euros for police overtime, 137,013 euros for firemen’s over time and just one euro for the rest of the municipal functionaries and councillors.
This is how it works: Local Policemen, 35,54 euros per hour, National Policemen, 60 euros in total for an 8-hour shift, specialist doctor (surgeon) 19 euros per hour, and a fireman, 600 euros for a 24 hour shift (25 euros per hour). A Justice of the Peace gets 255 euros for a 24-hour shift.

Is Enough Being Done?
Juan Cano Bueso is the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Junta de Andalucía, and in a recent interview with the press had harsh words on urban development, corruption and the excessive salaries and legal protection of some top executives in public posts.
Asked whether the Junta is doing, or has done enough against cases of urban development abuse, he commented the following. The problem is not that there are sufficient controls over local administrations, but that it is too easy to bypass them – a corrupt municipal administration need only ‘forget’ to send their paperwork to the controlling bodies in the Junta for some of the worst cases to go unnoticed until is virtually too late; i.e., with the illegal project nearing completion. It is worth remembering that Andalucía has over 800 municipalities and Granada is the province that has the highest number of municipalities.
When the interviewer pointed out that the general public perceive that that is insufficient retribution against corruption he responded that Spain, in general, is too benevolent with those guilty of urban development corruption. He added that political parties are not doing enough to expel or marginalise those found guilty, or even suspected of such crimes. As an aside, in most Western European countries, politicians who are facing investigation voluntarily resign until their innocence is proven or otherwise. Here in Spain, on every political level, from a municipal one to a national one, politicians facing judicial investigation do not resign, presuming innocence until proven guilty. But it is not only political parties that are guilty of permitting this, but also the voters themselves, who elect candidates, regardless of whether they are widely suspected of corrupt dealings.
Asked whether he believes that a lack of municipal financing via the State is guilty, in part, for corruption on this level, he responded that a lack of public funds does not justify, nor even explain corruption. If there are insufficient funds for the efficient running of a municipality, money should be sought via official channels and that a town hall should never become a ‘legitimizer’ of urban development that infringes laws and regulations.
Finally, he was asked about excessive political salaries earned on public posts. He said that he totally agreed with the Junta’s decision that no employee with the administration should earn more than the First Minister of the Junta. He also said that he was very much against top executives having ‘bomb-proof’ contracts.

Train Connection
The motorway, or autovía, if you prefer, is still not complete and already our illustrious politicians are bickering over a long-promised train link between the provincial capital and Motril Port.
Mass transport, many would argue, is the solution to our mobility, contamination and transport-congestion problems, so such a train link, together with a coastal rail corridor, connecting with Málaga and Almería is quite a mouth-watering concept. Yet, it is not just an attractive alternative to reaching the coast from the hinterland; it is also a crucial necessity for our province’s poor-sister port.
Both Málaga and Almería ports, which enjoy motorway and rail communication must shudder at the though of Motril Port coming of ‘communications’ age. Both our neighbouring provinces lack the tremendous heritage pull of the Alhambra and the tourist pull of the Sierra Nevada and God forbid, they no doubt think, Granada ever getting equal terrestrial communications infrastructure!
At the beginning of last month, a political figure from the regional ruling party let slip that there would be no rail link for Motril Port, despite reiterated promises around elections time. The opposition parties and the business sector did some serious ‘simian defecation,’ and all hell broke loose.
The PSOE burnt political calories doing extraneous back peddling, claiming that the Secretary of State for Infrastructure for the Central Government, Victor Morlán’s comment (a freight-train link to the coast would be impossible and don’t even think about a passenger service) was not indicative of the Junta’s determination to bring such a link into being. The Councillor for Public Works for the Junta, Rosa Águilar, responded to questioning on the thorny subject during a parliamentary session that alternative routes were being studied but would not specify which. You see, Sr. Morlán said that the gradient would be just too steep and a lot of height had to be lost in to short a distance (700 metres in 50 km). The opposition pointed out that if you get a train up to Tibet, you sure as hell could get one down to the Costa Tropical.

Has It Rained?
Telling our readers that it has been raining continuously would be superfluous news, but what you ‘wetties’ might not know is how much in statistic values.
Take the case of Trevélez where 1,120 litres per square metre have fallen between the 18th of December (when the rains began) and the 18th of February, which is 50% higher than the rainfall collected during the whole of the previous year! Yes that’s right: 750 l/sq-m during 365 days, compared with 1,120 l/sq-m during just 60 days. A pluviometric year is measured from September to September, by the way.
For the rest of the province, the average has been a modest 468.8 l/sq-m, but which, in itself, is the most in over 30 years. Speaking with some locals, they put it at around 40, but let’s keep to the official reckoning. But talking of the locals, the elder generation have a saying that until the rocks weep, the ground hasn’t stopped drinking, which is the case now. All you have to do is look at any cutting, whether recently done or one having stood for decades and the layered rock facing is leaking water, copiously. In other words, the ground has reached and surpassed its maximum absorption capacity.
You want to know another interesting point? The water that is being shed from the province’s reservoirs, because they are reaching dangerous levels, is enough to supply the city of Granada for seven years!
Needless to say, the damage caused by flooding and earth movement has been considerable. Down Cádiz way, the motorway has disappeared under the water, thanks to the rivers breaking their banks, and only rooftops are visible. The rain in Spain falls mainly… So what is the Junta doing about it – issuing umbrellas & blotting paper? Nope, what they are doing is allotting 127 million euros to help repair the damage caused between the 21st of December and the 11th of January. Damage caused after that date will obviously have to await a later ‘aid package.’
Of the before-mentioned sum, 33 million is for agricultural damage. Around 2,274 kilometres of rural dirt tracks have been affected (that’s equivalent to driving from to Santander and back.) That sounds like as if every track has been taken out by the rain, but Andalucía has 50,215 kilometres of rural lanes, so the damaged section represent 5.4% of the total.

Bullfighters and Prostitutes
The fruit of a police operation in Cádiz and Málaga was the arrest of a bullfighter and members of his family for running a prostitution ring, Juan Pedro Galán, his sister and parents, were rumbled when the Guardia Civil followed up a tip off involving around 100 women that were being exploited in nightclubs all over the two provinces.
Operación Toscana is still ongoing, following the arrest of these 15 people and the discovery of half a million euros, hidden behind the wall of a jacuzzi in the home of the bullfighter’s parents, who ran the whole prostitution ring, together with their 39-year-old bullfighter son, Pedro, and 35-year-old daughter, Rocío.
The family, who ran the whole circus under the name of Galantería Hoteles, abused the prostitutes by making them work long hours and depriving them of over half their takings. They also fined the girls if they did not dress in a particular manner or were absent from work through sickness.

Teacher Attacked
A teacher, who was on corridor duty; i.e., one of the duties that teachers have to carry out during school hours when they are not actually teaching, spotted a lad climbing over the school fence, attempting to sneak in. The lad had been expelled from his own school and had decided to pay a visit to this neighbouring secondary school.
The teacher proceeded to tell the lad off, telling him to leave the area, but instead of climbing sheepishly back out, he beat the crap out of the teacher…
Not unsurprisingly, the teacher from IES Luis Bueno Crespo in Armilla (near Granada) reported the attack to the Guardia Civil and the school-teachers’ union expressed their total rejection of such behaviour and complete support for the victim. The union is also demanding that teachers be considered ‘public authority’ whilst carrying out their school duty, meaning that aggressors should meet the same severity of punishment as they would if they attacked a policeman.
No further information was cited in the original article concerning the attacker, probably because as a minor such information is restricted. He is probably receiving psychiatric counselling for the traumatic experience of getting blood on his fists, the poor little mite.

Bogus Student
A girl faked being the victim of extortion to cover up the fact that for the last eight years she had not been studying at university, as her parents supposed. Yep, for eight long years, Mum and Dad had been coughing up each month for her to attend university, paying for her accommodation etc, when in reality, she had never even begun her studies, bless her.
This 26-year-old lass had finished high school in Málaga and had announced that she was going to study pharmacy in Granada – the parents’ dutifully opened their wallet and purses. They continued to maintain her after she supposedly completed her university studies and knuckled down to study for the entrance exam into a public work post.
The parents’ peace of mind was shattered when she announced that her boyfriend was blackmailing her, threatening to post certain intimate photos of her on the Internet, if she did not give him money, or more accurately, if the parents’ didn’t provide the money.
The girl must have kicked herself when they insisted on marching her down to the local police station and denouncing the situation. Within no time, the police investigation blew the bottom out of her 8-year series of lies.
No only did she have to face her parents’ wrath, but she will also be appearing before a magistrate for filing a false statement before the police. The police discovered that not only was there no extortion; but that there wasn’t even a boyfriend!
The case is that the girl did begin university but soon dropped out, not letting on, preferring to live a subsidised life in Granada, far from her parents. Of course, when the university course concluded, she had a problem because upon lying to her parents that she had passed her studies and obtained her degree, the parents offered to set her up in her own chemist, which is why she invented the bit about studying for a public entrance exam and a cushy job as a state employee.
There was a limit to how long she could swing that one and after two years the parents were getting impatient, so she announced that she had passed the exam… whoopee! The parents were over the moon and accordingly turned off the money tap, however, she continued to withdraw cash using the credit card provided by her father during her studies.
When the parents asked her why she was still using the card, she invented the nasty boyfriend.

Mutual Stabbing
A young couple, both 19, decided that the best way to end their brief romance was to attack each other with sharp implements: he used a knife and she used some pretty impressive scissors.
According to the doctor’s report the lad had suffered a small wound to his side, where her scissors had ‘penetrated timidly.’ The lass had a 1-cm wound in her hand, scratches and a bruise. So it wasn’t exactly the Battle of Agincourt, was it?
Apparently he had turned up at her house in search of a present that had been left behind. One thing led to another and out came the knife and scissors. When the police arrived, alerted by a neighbour, they only found the girl and her hand wound. She said that she had stabbed her ex in the chest and he had been taken to hospital by his friends. Can’t help thinking that it would have been safer with a condom…

Autovía Work Stops
The Gorgoracha-Puntalón work ground to a stop when workers ran into unexpected, loose shale-type rock, which would double the cost and time needed to complete this controversial stretch, it was announced. Consequently, the Central Government decided that the only thing that they could do was pay off the construction company that was dealing with it and put the contract up for tender again.
The opposition party, the PP, consider that a lack of funds is the real reason behind it and that the ‘unexpected’ shale is just a convenient excuse to delay things until more lucrative times.

The Registrar’s Residents
The Land Registrar is the ultimate authority, perhaps, as to the ownership of dwellings and real-estate property in general, but even this majestic position can be blown out of the water when a group of youngsters, with a generous interpretation of ‘possession’ decides to squat, and that is what happened in Pedregalejo (Málaga).
It was during the Christmas holidays that the young couple decided to take up residence, so that when the all-powerful Land Registrar and his family returned from family stay-overs, they found that the family had depressingly grown.
The squatters; a 20-year-old Argentinean man and his female partner, of around the same age and of the same nationality, had moved in, changing the front and back-door locks, and fully occupied with enjoying their new acquisition, together with their pet Alsatian dog.
The Registrar immediately opened ‘dialogue’ with one of the squatters, through the firmly closed front door, and during the said conversation expressed his wish for them to bugger off, sharpish, like. Far from agreeing with the Registrar’s urgent proposal, the squatter informed him that if he didn’t bugger off and leave them alone, he just might happen to mention that he had a bit of spare room to a few dozen mates and their girlfriends.
Undeterred, the Registrar whistled up a couple of beefy policemen with a hankering for maiming the Great Unwashed, and before you knew it, the couple were out and having their fingerprints taken as suspects to the offence of breaking and entry.

900 Hams
Question: how much do 900 jamón Serrano hams cost? Answer: two years in prison… if you had stolen them, which is the alleged case of a 59-year old gentleman from Granada. If you are wondering what the euro cost of 900 hams is, then we can tell you that it is the not inconsiderable sum of 25,000 euros!
The theft took place in 2004 when the accused began work at Sociedad Lodesgran as a self-employed worker. The company had sold 900 hams to a business in Lanjarón, handing over the merchandise in exchange for iou’s (post-dated cheques). However, the purchaser explained that he could not meet his financial obligation and both parties agreed that the hams would be returned, which is where the accused steps in, because he was tasked with collecting them.
Instead of taking them to the company stores, he reportedly took them to Granada and deposited them in a different drying store, only to collect them yet again 20 days later, but signed over as belonging to him.
If found guilty, not only will he face a possible 2-year sentence, but will also have to pay compensation to the bona-fide ham owners, equivalent to their worth; i.e., 24,920.45 euros.

Acquitted
A businessman has been acquitted in a trial in which a utilities company (Endesa) accused him of not paying his bills. The Judge considered that there existed no fraud because the electricity company chose to maintain the power supply, despite the row of bounced cheques for the total value of 261,735 euros. Basically, the company accused the consumer of swindling them out of 261,735 euros but…according to the Judge it cannot be classified as swindle as the company knowingly continued to allow the man to knock up further indebtedness with them.
S.G.M., who runs a factory that produces plastic in Sevilla, faced a recommendation of 2-years imprisonment by the Public Prosecutor and a private case placed by the electricity company, whose lawyer called for a 3-year prison sentence.
Although the outstanding sum dates back to October 2003, the plastic factory was in such a bad state by 2004 that S.G.M. transferred all the factory machinery into the name of the work staff, which had formed a collective entity.

Demolition or Jail
Builder-cum-developer, Joaquín H.M., has just entered prison to serve a sentence for having built a house illegally in El Chorillo (Albolote)… so it’s not just foreigners that are receiving demolition orders. This 25-year-old man won’t be alone there, because his 47-year-old brother-in-law, Pedro M.B. was sent to prison a month before. Pedro, apart from being a relative of Joaqúin, is the owner of the land and illegal cortijo.
Joaquín is hoping that the Judge will agree to his request for the house not to be demolished (and his being sent the bill for it) whilst he is in prison, but to allow him to pay for it to be done, little by little, because he doesn’t have the money to pay for it all in one go. You see, before becoming a prison inmate, Joaquín was on the dole and to top it all off, still has to pay his mortgage repayments on the 180,000 euros that he borrowed to build his illegal house.
The fact is that neither Pedro nor Joaquín should be in jail, because under Spanish law, if the sentence is less that two years (both of them got six months) it should automatically be a suspended sentence, providing that they do not have a criminal record – which they haven’t.
On March the 26th the said Judge found them both guilty of having committed ‘un delito contra la Ordenación de Territorio,’ for which they were ordered to pay a fine of 1,400 euros each (which they did) and demolish the house within three months, (which they haven’t because there is an appeal in progress.)
The two brother-in-laws applied for building permission for a 20 sq/m ‘apero’ (tool-shed/agricultural storeroom) before the Town Hall of Albolote, which was refused. So, looking around and seeing that the land was surrounded by illegal constructions, they though, “bugger it,” and slapped the cement mixer into overdrive. Wrong!
The local police came along, denounced the building job, and taped the place up. The two brother-in-laws thought, “bugger it,” took the tape down and fired up the mixer again… Wrong!
The affair went before a judge, who told them ‘pull it down and pay a fine’. The lads though, “bugger it,” and ignored the Judge… Wrong! Next thing they knew they were knocking on the provincial prison gates, waiting for somebody to open up and let them in.

Knock, Knock, Woof!
When somebody owes you money, and they don’t want to pay, what do you take along with you on your next visit? A bloody great pit bull… at least, that is what one teenager did. Mind you, under Spanish law, you cannot owe one of these growling machines until you come of age; i.e., 18, which wasn’t this person’s case.
The first time the lad went round to his neighbour, who owed him 60 euros, he went without the Canine Convincer, but did not manage to obtain one cent of the outstanding sum. So the next time, he took along Fido the Fillet Maker and a large stick, although it is not certain whether the stick was an additional debt-cashing element, or a means of maintaining his ‘employee’ from chomping in the wrong direction…
So there they were at the doorstep, the dog owner encouraging the dog to ‘help himself to a snack,’ the dog, drowning in saliva and growling in a non-politically-correct manner and the debtor screaming in fear whilst considerably increasing methane pollution and balancing precariously on the roof of a parked car.
Finally, the lad’s stick broke, thanks to his bashing it against a wall repeatedly, and the dog got bored with the whole thing because his dinner wouldn’t come down from the car roof… He never got his money, by the way, and what’s more, will probably have to pay a fine, thanks to being denounced by the victim and brought before a magistrate.

Bad Sales Pitch
Another teenager made the terrible mistake of trying to sell hashish to two plainclothes policemen – not recommended. The two parties were destined to meet, as the adolescent was bent upon making some nifty cash selling hashish, and the two National Policemen had been tasked with tracking down small-time drug pushers in the centre of Granada.
Fortunately for the minor, when he was rumbled he had very little merchandise on him; in fact, the street value of his wares was only 15 euros – hardly the capital to set up a narco-ranch in Colombia, right?
The tragedy behind this is that the lad is now over eighteen (slow wheels of justice, as always) and is living rough, sleeping on the streets. He had been living at a refugee for immigrant minors who arrive in boats from North Africa, but upon reaching 18, he had to leave the refuge. So, the light sentence handed down (18 months’ parole) is hardly going to make a difference to his immediate prospects.

Wet Winter
You hardly need reminding, but just in case you didn’t notice, December 2009 was the wettest December in 60 years. In just twelve days there was 238 litres per sq/m on average. As you also know, January started off just as wet and only decided that enough was enough around mid month.
But despite land slips and flooding in places, it’s been a good 15 days of soak-in rain. The 2007 autumn flooding, however, was caused by the brief but violent rainfall, which just bounced off the ground rather than soaking into it, before sweeping through Almuñécar.

Hooray!
A Judge has withdrawn the custody of a dog from its owner for cruelty! My God, it wasn’t that long ago that they were throwing live goats from bell towers as the high point in village fiestas!
Two years ago a resident from the northern district of Granada was the first dog owner to get fined for cruelty, after kicking it systematically. This was a tremendous breakthrough, especially when the law concerning the treatment of domestic animals is not that clear at the best of times. However, a Judge with a heart and a mission decided to interpret the law in such a way that the nasty bastard in question got a 720-euro fine.
Two years later, the same dog owner unwittingly reached another milestone in Spanish legal history when a magistrate confiscated the dog; i.e. withdrew the man’s legal custody of the animal. The more cynical amongst us (Me! Me!) would make the comment, “Yeah great, so the animal was taken away and put down,” but that is not the case, because the magistrate awarded custody of the animal to an animal protection group in Granada.
The animal protection group had reported P.A.G. for the second time on the 8th of November last year; a member of the public had witness a brutal kicking by the said dog owner. This person had approached the aggressor, reproaching him, and telling him to desist, which was ignored. This was when the woman, decided to phone the police.
When the police turned up the owner explained that he was kicking the shit out of the small dog because it would not do as it was told, and by kicking it, it made him feel better.
As luck would have it, Mr. P.A.G. went before the same magistrate as before, who was positively gleeful to be reunited with the dog owner. The accused showed no repentance for his behaviour, so he was fined 720 euros again and had the dog taken off him.
I would like to report that the magistrate, court clerk and cleaning lady took the man into the judges’ office and kicked the hell out of him too, because it made them feel better, but that was not the case… unfortunately.

Economy and Noise
One of the less predictable outcomes of money being tight is a rise in complaints about noisy neighbours… people stay at home and have a party with friends, because they can’t afford to go out and buy across the bar. So acute has this become that more neighbours are being denounced for making more noise than bars!
During 2009, the authorities in the city of Granada received 254 complaints about noisy bars, whilst in the same time period they received 278 complaints about noisy neighbours.
There have been complaints about the noise caused by dentists’ compressors for their drills, about rattling air-conditioning units, restaurant smoke extractors and insomniacs who rearrange their furniture at four in the morning. But it’s not always the noise that neighbours make that annoys those next door, because smelly barbeques are often cited.

Down the Drain…
…Or better said, down the river. Rules dam has been discarding millions of litres of water during the rains. We took a drive up there to get some nifty photographs, one of which was a nozzle that was ejecting an incredible 14,853 cubic metres of water… every second! That’s a mind blowing amount. To give you an idea, we have a modest water tank next to our cortijo that holds 50 cubic metres. It costs 100 euros for a water-bowser to bring up 10 cubic metres, thus to fill the tank it needs five loads, costing 500 euros – it also takes most of the day, with the lorry having to make its way down to the coast and back. Now, getting back to the waterspout at the dam, it would take approximately a 300th part of just one second to fill my tank!
Anyway, why are they letting so much water go down river? For two reasons, one of which is that there is no pipe network to take the accumulated water anywhere – which is as good a reason as any, the other reason is that to fill a dam for the first time, it has to be filled up in stages and at each stage that level of water is held for a given time – weeks, to check for signs of weakness, before proceeding to the next mark.
On the 15th of January, the dam was holding back 88.72 hectometres of water, which means that the reservoir was virtually full, as the maximum water that can be safely stored is 110.59 hectometres. In other words, it was 80.5% full. The water has reached the 233 mark, which is the penultimate test, before the water reaches it maximum height of 243. This means that there are only another 10 metres to go and the next stop will be five metres from the top.

A Whiskey and Coke
If you’ve ever been out on the town in Granada, the chances are that you have done the Pedro Antonio de Alarcón circuit. It is a parallel street to El Camino de Ronda and is stuffed with student bars… OK, I’ll admit it; it’s been a while since I was young enough to be inconspicuous in a student bar, but that’s another story… and talking of stories, this one is about one of those bars down Pedro’s way.
One of the freebies on the bar, where you would normally find the peanuts, was a small dish of cocaine – very originally and decidedly generous. I mean, coke doesn’t cost exactly peanuts, does it!
The owner of the pub, 26-year-old M.S.R.H., from Morocco, was just about to open the bar, when in barged the drugs squad. Unfortunately for M.S.R.H (a.k.a. My Sh** Rates Highly) the sample plates were allegedly ready and waiting on the bar top. Further inspection found 200 grams of coke as top ups, six balls of hashish and 4,635 euros in cash that – at a wild guess – the Hacienda had no knowledge of.

Mysterious Virus
Hands up who had a mysterious attack of the dreaded squirts around the beginning of last month? You did, and it only lasted 24 hours? Well, you’re not alone because 25% of the cases of people in the province reporting to their doctors during two weeks were the result of this virus.
For a few people, it lasted 48 hours and also involved vomiting, but the majority just had a breach at one end of the body and woke up the next day with normal bodily functions.

Noise II
The next noise-related story is about a student fight in Granada, where a confrontation between the Local Police and the inhabitants of the flat resulted in several police officers being injured. The students described the scene as ‘surreal.’
It all started when the neighbours – also university students – phoned the Local Police at seven in the morning to complain that their studious neighbours had their music loudspeakers hammering out. One of them, whose bedroom was just on the other side of a thin partition wall – had begun hammering on the noisy-neighbours front door and within moments a heated argument had broken out and all the students from both flats were standing in the corridor, arguing, for three quarters of an hour.
Yet for all the calls to reason that were offered, the noisy neighbours insisted in carrying on with their party, and so the Local Police were called.
When the police arrived at the flat of the callers, one policeman said that you could actually see the walls vibrate, so they hammered on the offending front door. The callers went back to bed without seeing what later occurred.
Now, according to the party-going neighbours, they insisted to the eight policemen who had turned up that there was no party and that they had just returned from a night out on the town and wanted to listen to a spot of music.
“They broke our front-door lock and wanted to drag us outside – it just wasn’t normal,” one of them complained. What is more, another student complained that one of the policemen was ‘really pushing his weight around,’ and had turned up with his gloves on, brandishing his truncheon. The students claimed that the policeman’s colleagues had to quieten him down as he had become very agitated. Anyway, a struggle ensued and one policeman had his glasses broken in the tussle.
The police ended up not arresting anybody and the students claimed that the police made more of a scandal than anybody, and that four patrol cars had turned up with the intention ‘looking for a fight.’
Well, it’s a tough life being a student and thanks to this fascist attack against their liberty, it’s a wonder that they manage to get any studying done… bless them.

Noise III
The last article is perhaps the most bizarre because it ended up with a neighbour attacking three men with his teeth because they were making a noise in front of his house. One of the ‘bitten’ is in hospital, awaiting a skin graft for his ear and the other two, who were changing a flat tyre when they were ‘visited’ by Mr. Jaws, are recuperating from their wounds at home.
Some people, when they go off the deep end, shout, flail about with their fists, pull out a knife or gun… or simply turn themselves into a devouring missile of malicious dental intent!. This was the case of the remarkable 29-year-old teeth terrorist – inhabitant of a block of flats in La Zubia, which is an outlying part of the city of Granada.
It was 23.30h on a Friday night when a driver had the misfortune of suffering a flat tyre… right in front of Mr. Gnashville himself. The driver had pulled over in front of a garage – the only available space nearby – and tried to change the wheel by himself, but was unable to, so he phoned his family for them to come and help him out.
The owner of the garage had seen the man below and had asked whether he needed help and received an affirmative reply, so he went down to help out the luckless driver. Soon they were both grunting in their efforts to get the wheel off.
Before long, between the driver, the helpful garage owner and family members, there were eight people engaged in changing the wheel… well, being Spain, there was probably only one and seven offering conflicting advice, but that is beside the point.
Then the Toothy One appeared fifty metres down the street, on the opposite side and began to berate them for the noise. Their chatter continued and they even pointed out that it was nothing to get irate about. Unfortunately, he didn’t agree.
He approached and allegedly launched himself against one of their number, biting his hand, leaving such a wound as to need five stitches – so it was hardly ‘a nibble on a lettuce leaf’ assault.
Before you could say, “I say, steady on, Old Chap,” he launched himself in a blizzard of teeth against another man, savaging his shoulder and drawing blood. By now, most people involved were visibly impressed as well as reasonably concerned about his next action, which didn’t take long to materialise, having by then extracted his cheerful choppers from his second victim. His third victim was attacked with conventional weapons; i.e. his hands and feet, to the relief of all but the object of his attack.
Attracted by the noise – particularly the gnashing sound, no doubt – another neighbour turned up and decided to ‘phone the Guardia Civil, although he might have hesitated and considered phoning the municipal dog pound first…
It was not a wise move, because he was next, and was mildly surprised to find some of his ear missing and teeth marks all over his mobile phone.
Luckily for everybody concerned, the assailant was dentally spent by then and chose to sit on the curb and cry his teeth out… sorry; his eyes out, which is when the Guardia Civil turned up, who gingerly arrested him, keeping extremities well away from the arrested man’s motivated mouth.

Coastal Building Moratorium?
The Regional Ombudsman, José Chamizo, is considering calling for a building freeze along the whole of the coast of Andalucía. He is also calling for a Penal Code reform that would bring tougher judicial retribution of those guilty of urban development offences.
He warned that the ‘exceptional value’ of the coast and its ‘extraordinary fragility’ had been damaged by the ‘massive occupation’ land adjacent to the Zona de Dominio Público Maritima-Terrestre (protected area extending several hundred metres above and below the high-water line). For this reason he considers it necessary to impose a building moratorium along the coast, which would permit the only exception, which would be buildings of public use. The affected areas would be the first 500 metres above the shoreline.
He hoped that such a freeze would give public bodies and the private sector time to decide what kind of urban-development model they want to apply to the future. He also pointed out that despite the slowing of urban expansion due to the economical downturn, parts of the coast have already become unrecognisable. Fortunately, he pointed out, there are still parts of the coast within the province of Cádiz that have escaped the worst ravages of uncontrolled building speculation. His main concern, however, is that the sort of speculation that has taken place along the coast will now be turned against the hinterland.
He complained that despite the Ley de Costas having seen its 20th birthday, around 20% of the coast of Andalucía has still had an official delimitation applied and he thus urges the relevant administration to get its bloody finger out, so to speak.

Granny’s Bank Cards
Six young girls were arrested for using one of their grandmother’s credit cards and ID card to buy goods in shops without the card owner’s consent. The girls, from Granada and Peligros, are all aged between 17 and 21.
Although the girls stole the cards in October, the victim didn’t realise that they were missing until the 22nd of last month. The grandmother made the discovery when she saw on her bankbook that she had been charged 320 euros for a purchase that she had never made.
The Guardia Civil were able to track down the purchases to two gasoline stations and two shops in the centre of Granada, and thanks to the CCTV’s in these premises, they soon nabbed the girls between the 7th and the 11th of November. The camera at the gasoline station recorded the number plate of the car, whose driver had used the missing card to fill the tank. With the number plate, it was a matter of minutes before the police had the name of the first girl arrested.
The granddaughter of the woman had allegedly changed the photo on the ID card to that of her own, as the name almost coincided.
Guess whose name won’t be on Granny’s will as a beneficiary?

Two Young Boys Arrested
The two boys had allegedly destroyed one of the few remaining public phones in the city of Granada, causing damages of around 363 euros, to gain a haul of 1.20 euros – yep, that’s right, one euro, 20 cents. The Public Prosecutor for Minors is recommending a 2-year probation period.
The surge of mobile phone ownership has virtually done away with public pay phones and the ones that do still exist get little use; hence the pittance that was in the cashbox of the telephone cabin.
Finally, if the two youngsters are found guilty, their parents will have to reimburse Telefónica the 363 euros needed to repair the phone.