(This article was originally published in December 2009 and is visible now so that readers can look at what was happening on the Costa Tropical back then.)
Industrious Wife?
The wife of an ex-Policía-Nacional officer has been accused of stealing confiscated drugs from the national police headquarters in Sevilla. Four people have been arrested to date in connection with the disappearance of 100k of heroin and cocaine from the police security storeroom.
The ex-police officer, Lars S.M., had already been ‘interviewed’ by the Internal Affairs Department of the Policía Nacional after the drugs were found to be missing back in June 2008. The theft was discovered after an inventory check brought to light that 100k of drugs had gone missing since the last check in June 2005.
The I.A. Department had decided to centre their investigation on Lars S.M. because of the access that he enjoyed to the storage facility as a member of the UDYCO (Drugs and Organised Crime Unit) and the fact that he had left the service to start his own business in the purchase and sale of motorbikes and marine pleasure craft in Sevilla.
The wife, on the other hand, despite having no visible source of income, had obtained a summer residence worth 240,000 euros, strangely enough.
Police Thug
Police officer O. is still suffering from the psychological after effects of being beaten up by two men in Zaidín on his way home. But besides being a bit jittery, the member of the Policía Nacional is also pretty damned outraged to discover that one of his assailants was an off-duty policeman belonging to the city’s Policía Local.
He had been walking home out of uniform after a long nightshift, when a car started to trail him with two men inside. The window was wound down and one of the occupants started mocking him, asking if he wanted oral sex. He told them to leave him alone.
Yet, allegedly, instead of desisting they got out of the car, the local policeman reported, carrying an iron bar and said, “If we beat the crap out of you now, nothing is going to happen to us – you don’t know who you are dealing with.”
Well, at that moment, the two men in plain clothes didn’t know who they were dealing with either, so the national policeman told them to take it easy as he was a policeman, showing them his pistol holster.
And this is where the story differs. The two men claim that they had only been fooling around and had decided to wind up (annoy) a by-passer. Their victim, they claimed, had become aggressive. They also claim that they had no idea that he was a policeman. When they saw the pistol, they pounced on him to disarm him.
According to the national policeman, the second man – a civilian – grabbed his arms whilst the local policeman beat the crap out of him with this iron bar, leaving him there on the street bleeding before driving off. Thanks to the victim’s police training, he managed to remember the number plate of the car before losing consciousness.
The weapon used has since disappeared but the question remains what was the municipal policeman for Zubia doing with it in his car?
Anyway, all the police unions (even the Policía Local union) are demanding that the culprits receive the full force of the law against them. However, the Police Chief of the Zubia Policía Local defended his subordinate and announced that he will not be suspended until/if he is found guilty.
Regardless of whether the alleged assailants are telling the truth, what was a local policeman doing annoying a citizen as he walked home and what was he doing carrying such a weapon in his car, as the one used to attack the man?
To Cheer You Up!
The economy of Granada is on the verge of collapse, says the Cámara de Comercio, and could fall in upon itself within months – last year 2,200 companies in the province went down the pan (disappeared).
The Cámara de Comercio, by the way, is that strange official organisation that besets self-employed workers with periodical bills for services that nobody has ever quite worked out what the hell they are. The translation is Chamber of Commerce, just in case you are wondering.
Anyway, the provincial office of this administrative body, headed by Chairman, Javier Jiménez, was gloomier than Ghandi’s loin cloth about how the small businesses in the province are doing: unemployment is up 14% in just two years, putting it at 26%; 2,253 businesses have closed. We’re 200,000 visitors down and 400,000 overnight stays fewer than the previous year.
If something is not done soon, then another wave of closures is on the way. In fact, he basically said that politicians and governmental institutions have failed wickedly and have been as much use as a refrigerator at the North Pole.
He also pointed out that the funds released from the Central Government for small businesses are being used instead by financial entities to balance their books. He also asked people to go out and spend, to help consumer levels, where they could. Brilliant. I’m working out how I’m going to pay my quarterly taxes and these bloody silly Cámara de Comercio bills, and I’m being asked to go out and spend. I’ve got a better idea: give me back the money I’ve paid to the C.de.C over all these years and I’ll go out and spend it! How about that?
Prices Time Warp
How would you like to go back to the prices of 50 years ago? How would you like to pay just 28 pesetas (15 euro cents) for a full menu of the day; i.e., a stew as your first dish, fish or meat as your second, rounded off with dessert and coffee? What about a caña at one peseta ten céntimos, (just over 0.6 euro cents)? Well you could, in last month!
No, the Ed hasn’t flipped his lid – this is what one very well known bar was offering on a non-specified day in November, to mark its 50th anniversary.
Bar León, in Granada’s city centre, did the same a quarter of a century ago to mark its 25th anniversary, but of course, the price difference was not so exaggerated. The brothers who run the bar, Joaquín and Antonio León Guerra, have decided to make it an anniversary to remember with these incredible risible prices by today’s standard.
For obvious reasons, they didn’t let on which day it would be, but anybody that walked in on that day, filled his boots for less than a euro with the bar’s widely recognised cuisine… It’s a hard act to follow, that’s for sure.
The brothers remember the beginnings of the bar, when their father moved to the capital from Andújar and began work as a waiter in a nearby bar, before setting up his own with the Bar Aguilera in La Placeta de la Sillería in November 1959. In 1964, he changed the name to Bar León, although moving it to Calle Pan, Nº3. Then in 1984, he moved it from this upstairs restaurant across the street to its present location.
Robin Hood in Alfaguara
The 7th Edition of the International Archery Meet took place last month Granada’s Alfaguara.
In contrast with the monotony of official competitions, there are more and more popular ‘social’ competitions, in which competition is as important as sharing experiences with other sportsmen and women.
Besides offering a wide range of social activities, this Archers’ Gathering is based, once more, on the use of silhouette targets, which guarantee the originality of the different shooting competitions. This year the organisers tried to consolidate the international character of the Gathering, welcoming archers from all over the world.
Categories included: straight bow, recurve bow, classic bow, crossbow and free bow, i.e., and of the aforementioned bows both for Men and Women.
If you are interested in archery then there is a club in Granada at the Club de Tiro con Arco, Alfacar, C/ Neptuno 4, 5ºG. You can email them either via enriquemedina@telefonica.net or javcalpi@hotmail.com
Sweets and Drugs
You can buy quite a few things at a sweetshop besides sweets: cheap toys, stickers, badges … and even drugs – at least that was the case in one such establishment in Cúllar, Granada.
The Guardia Civil arrested the female owner after they discovered 260 marijuana balls for the kids in the area. She had a notice on the door saying, “We also sell bread” – she might have added, “and a few other things.”
The shop, which is situated right next to a school, is in the Plaza de Profesor Felipe Moreno. The police had become suspicious and decided to keep the chucheria (sweet shop) under surveillance. On the day of the raid, three police cars blocked off the exits from the square and moved in on the sweet shop.
The reason that the police had become suspicious was that there was quite a lot of young kids with drugs in the area and all roads led to Rome… They asked the women to open a machine for dispensing telephone recharge cards, but she refused, so they broke it open. Inside they found three balls of marijuana, almost identical to the ones that they had confiscated off adolescents and teenagers.
With this discovery, they obtained a search warrant for her house, which is where they found the main ‘stock.’
Foreign Sales Down
The sale of real estate to foreigners has dropped 36% within the province. The figure for the whole of Andalucía stood at 50.3% during the first half of the year, dropping from 4,429 transactions in 2008 to 2,200 this year.
No surprises to learn that most purchases were made in Málaga (1,417) although the drop was 45% compared to last year. Almería showed a sale of 260 dwellings, which was 56.5% down. Granada registered 197 sales but was only 36.2% down, giving the smallest drop in the region.
Cádiz had 172 sales, giving a 44.3% drop. Sevilla had the lower sales; just 58, which worked out at a 78.7% drop and Huelva cruised in with 49 dwellings bought, representing a 73.6% drop. Córdoba saw 26 sales, dropping by 60%. However, the place that attracted fewest foreigners was Jaén, where 21 purchases were made, which was 78.5% less than 2008.
Taking all things into account, Granada appears to be doing the best at holding its ground.
Teacher Attacked
A minor has gone before the magistrate for insulting a teacher throughout the whole school year and then kicking him in the back when they crossed in the street, which is when the teacher decided that enough was enough and reported the boy to the Guardia Civil. There were two boys, in fact, but the other was merely a sidekick (so to speak) to the aggressor.
The teacher had put up with the verbal attacks, both at school and outside, because he thought that “it was a joke in bad taste and they would tire of it.” However, when he came across the two boys in the street and confronted the older one, he received a kick in the back when he walked away.
It should also be pointed out that an ex-pupil witnessed what had happened and had confronted the boys, asking them what they hell they though they had been doing.
Town Hall Inspectors Charged
The Public Prosecutor has imputed six inspectors from the City Hall of Granada for irregularities in their task of controlling excessive noise in bars. For the last ten years they have been ignoring a very frustrated house owner that has had to put up with the unbearable noise from a bar immediately beneath them.
The residents made their first official complaint in 1997 and have lodged a further 59 since them – all to no avail. Confronted by the complete lack of adequate response – any response, in some cases – they decided to approach the Department of the Environment of the Junta de Andalucía, who did react. They took noise-level readings and confirmed both noise actually in the bar, as well as the noise reaching the said dwelling, were above those limits established in the municipal by-laws.
It appears that the only action that the City Hall took during those ten years was to fine the offender although the punitive sums were never paid – we’re talking about a total of 24,000 euros according to the plaintiff. And through all this, the bar continued to operate with apparent impunity, instead of being closed down.
The Public Prosecutor has brought three charges against the inspectors: a crime against the environment, falsification of official documents and damaged caused to these neighbours. The City Hall is also facing criticism for allowing this bar to function for the first four years without a licence.
In one of the reports, submitted by the municipal inspectors in 2006, no mention of the excessive noise was made because the noise limiter hadn’t been legalised…
Councillor not Omnipotent
PSOE Councillor for Otura, Nazario Montes, has been fined 150 euros for disobeying a municipal policeman over where he could park. His truculence also lost him four points from his driving licence.
The incident occurred during the summer when Sr. Montes decided to park his bat-mobile right next to the municipal sports centre. When a municipal policeman informed him that he could not park there, he responded that he could, as he was a political representative; i.e., mega-special. Well, he wasn’t special enough because a police complaint winged its way over to the Town Hall and the opposition parties got their hands on it.
(News: Andalucia)