More Judicial Surprises
A father, who had been previously acquitted of the charge of repeatedly sexually abusing his 8-year-old daughter, was retried, by order of the Supreme Court, but before a different judge to the first. He was subsequently found guilty, sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment and ordered to pay 30,000 euros in compensation.

The mother, who faced the same possible sentence, was acquitted because the tribunal did not consider that it could be proved to a sufficient degree that she was aware of what had been happening to her little daughter.

How many of you have asked yourself, as I have, how a mother could possibly not know that something was up? Surely there must have been a radical change in the child’s behaviour?

Policeman Fined
It makes a pleasant change to hear that a policeman has been fined for not wearing a seatbelt, doesn’t it? Well, that’s the case of a policeman from the Policía Nacional, who apart from receiving a 150-euro fine, also lost three points from his driving licence *sigh!*

So, who would have the testicular fortitude to pull over a Policía Nacional patrol car and fine the policeman at the wheel? The Guardia Civil, of course. It was not good that the Brown Meanie pointed out to the Green Meanie that they were in hot pursuit of a delinquent – after all, the Guardia Civil have heard it all before…

The judge refused to accept the reasoning offered by the defendant’s lawyer that the policeman hadn’t been wearing his belt because it restricted his ability to draw his gun.

Talking of Drivers…
A resident of the northern Granada-province town of Iznalloz was arrested by the Guardia Civil for driving without a valid licence – which was not the first time that he had been charged for this offence. Mind you, it cost the G.C. a bit of a run around; because the driver abandoned the car, containing his wife and daughter, in order to later pretend that he had not been driving it. As neither the wife or young child possessed a driving licence themselves, it was just a tad suspicious that they would be sitting in the car, in the middle of nowhere, with no one to drive it…

So, there was the said family, with the driver, unblemished by the presence of a valid licence, driving along a country back road when they saw a Guardia Civil checkpoint up ahead.

Upon seeing the police, he pulled off the road and did a passable interpretation of ‘The Road Runner,’ running off across the fields in the grips of optimistic desperation, before finding a hiding place amongst the bushes.

The Guardia Civil, intrigued by his actions, sauntered over and spied the embarrassed looking wife and flummoxed child, next to a driving seat, pining for its hitherto occupant. They checked their onboard computer and up came the name of the owner and his penchant for using it without a licence.

Finally, the police, the wife and the daughter became bored with waiting for him to emerge from behind the bushes, so they dismantled the road check and went around to his house and waited for him to show up, which he modestly refused to do during that whole night. The police decided to have a break and come back at lunchtime, when they found him…probably toying, longingly, with his car keys.

Wrong Decision
A man, who handed over the keys to his luxury flat to an acquaintance, so that he could show prospective house buyers around, regretted the decision, as the said man ran up a telephone bill of 5,000 euros during the owner’s absence.

Blas M.G. – from here on known as ‘Blas the Blah Blah,’ was duly sentenced to a 1-year prison sentence after the judge considered it proved beyond reasonable doubt the he had usurped the identity of the flat owner with the telephone company to remove the restrictions on ‘erotic calls;’ i.e., expensive panting charged by the minute. Consequently, between the 15th of May 2006 and the 16th of July that same year he ran up 5,239 euros in long-distance orgasms.

Wonky Justice
The father of the young girl that was murdered in Rute (Córdoba) in 2006, Javier Romero, is not too chuffed with the Spanish judiciary system… and understandably so. Then again, neither is the ex-boyfriend of the girl and allegedly the murderer.

You see, the murder suspect, Manuel García, has been sitting in jail, awaiting trial for four years. As this is the maximum that you can languish in jail, waiting for the judge to get his finger out, the prison authorities released him at the beginning of October, pending trial.
While he is reasonably euphoric to be back into the land of sunshine, he’s not happy that he’s already done four years for a crime that he has not been found guilty of.

Meanwhile, the girl’s father, Javier Romero, while he was also reasonable euphoric to see the person that he feels in his bones did away with his cherished daughter behind bars, his rating on the happiness scale fell off the bottom end – how can this man be free to wander the streets… gloatingly, he considers? In fact, in his own words, “The judicial system is laughing in my face!”

But this is much more complicated than it might appear at first glance. You see, the then 16-year-old girl had been taken into care by the Junta de Andalucía and it was during their custody of the girl that she was allegedly attacked by the jilted boyfriend, then 19, with a shotgun, outside the care centre. The two shots effectively put her in a wheelchair for three years before finally succumbing to her injuries.

So, the original charge changed from ‘attempted murder’ to ‘murder’ in 2009, but to make judicial proceedings even more complicated, the private accusation lawyer decided to sue the Junta for neglect in their custodial duties.

Well, this bitter moment for the father will be over on the 2nd of this month. As for the alleged murderer, considering that he turned himself in on the night of the attack, confessing that he had shot her, his post-trial outlook is not that optimistic.

Yet Again!
Last month we reported an incident where a hapless alleged thief got himself into deeper problems with the Guardia Civil, after he invited them into his house. He did this to prove that he lived there to support his alibi. Trouble is, the police found hashish plants growing on his terrace.

Well, here we are one month later and we have yet another incident involving the Green Meanies and a cultivator of illegal plants.

The said police force had discovered a greenhouse in the Cuestra de Adra area of Lújar, where 30 good-size plants were growing and which had already reached a respectable height of two metres. The owner of the ‘jolly jungle’ saw the two patrol cars pull up and decided that if he wasn’t to have them, nobody was.

His first measure was to shout out, “No bugger comes in here! You’ve come for the marihuana! Well, you’re not getting it!” which rather than leading the G.C. to reconsider their objective, merely produced anticipative grins and gleeful expectation. In fact, you can classify his three utterances in their order of sequence as: sexually discriminating, clearly telepathic, and finally, unforgivably optimistic.

True to his word, he set about the flower-power Triffids with an axe. Such was his eagerness, however, that he missed his target and slammed the axe into his shin… Not surprisingly, this calmed him down a tad and he offered no further resistance to being deprived of his ‘grin weed.’ Furthermore, the 44-year-old gent with 14 previous arrests offered no resistance, either, to being taken down to the Guardia Civil post for charging.

It’s remarkable how an axe in the shin can produce comprehension and co-operation – especially when you put it there yourself… at least, that is what the Guardia Civil claim, of course

He’s At It Again
When I explain that I am referring to a Catholic archbishop, you can be forgiven for thinking that this has something to do with choirboys, but it has not. No, this has to do with parishioners revolting against the decision of the controversial Archbishop of Granada to deprive them of their popular parish priest.

Father Enrique Martín, born in Dúrcal 47 years ago, has been in charge of the parishes of Pinos del Valle, Béznar and Restábal for seven years, as well as Talará, Chite and Mondújar these last twelve months. In this time he has earned the respect of his parishioners. Then came the command from Granada for him to pack up and transfer to Alhama de Granada.
Whilst the priest has accepted the order – he has no real alternative – the churchgoers are incensed and have been collecting signatures for a petition. Several people have personally spoken with the Archbishop, but to no avail.

Now, just to add a little spice to the plot, several ladies from the area claim that behind this ‘sudden transfer’ are a group of very conservative nuns who are certainly out of step with these times in which we live.

So, add ‘Taliban-type nuns’ to ‘controversial archbishop,’ stir gently and leave to brew and hey presto, you get ‘Disenchanted Villagers Mark II in Technicolor and 3D discontent.’
But perhaps you don’t remember what the Archbishop has done to earn the epithet, ‘controversial?’ Let me refresh your brain pan… During a Mass sermon he considered that any women that underwent an abortion literally gave any man the ‘absolute right ‘to do what he liked with her body, bless him. He later claimed that he had been misinterpreted… He also claimed in the same sermon that the new law on abortion put hospital staff on a similar footing as Nazi concentration-camp guards.

What else – if that were not enough? He claimed at the already controversial ‘Taking of Granada’ ceremony, held yearly on the 5th of January, that the conquest of Granada put an end to eight centuries of devastation. The following centuries of religious persecution again Jews and Muslims at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition must have slipped his mind, as did the peace and prosperity under the Caliphate of Córdoba.

Well, won’t be long before he orders us all to grow beards whilst our wives make suicide-bomb vests on their Singer sewing machines, perhaps, whilst the before-mentioned nuns raid ploughed fields for suitably sharp stones…