Misplaced Trust
If you go away on holiday, handing over your keys to a trusted neighbour to water the plants and keep a general eye on the property, you should be able to wave goodbye in an easy state of mind, but one house owner didn’t have such luck; his trusted neighbour used the spare set of keys that he had been entrusted with to ‘burgle’ the flat.
To cover his tracks, the 57-year-old ‘friend,’ made a report to the Guardia Civil saying that both his neighbour’s house and his own had received ‘light-fingered visits.’ Whereas in the trusting neighbour’s house jewellery of great sentimental value and cash savings, valued at around 4,500 euros in total, had been removed, the so-called friend reported that he, in turn, had been relieved of 500 euros.
The Guardia Civil, however, upon inspecting both houses noted that there were no signs, whatsoever, of a forced entry in the claimants’ house.

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.