Demon Tricycle
Guardia Civil policemen from San Juan de Aznalfarache (Sevilla)
had cause to arrest a man for dangerous driving after discovering him on a child’s toy tricycle, hammering along a downhill stretch of SE-8082, where it passes next to several large department stores.
The ambitious riders reckless driving was further heightened by the fact that it was during the early hours of the morning and his ‘vehicle’ had no lights.

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.