(Santa Fe/Granada) Little did Manuela Cordoba suspect, when she left her home in the morning, that by midday she would be mistaken for a bank robber and her son’s toy pistol confiscated…
She was fined 100 euros and had her driving licence confiscated… but we’re getting ahead of ourselves, so let’s start at the beginning.
Manuela’s big mistake was parking her car in front of Hotel Casa del Trigo in Santa Fe. She hadn’t parked it and walked off to do some shopping, but had merely pulled up, jumped out and popped in to leave a message for some relations that were stopping there. She even left the back door open so that her mutt could get some fresh air.
However, in the meantime, a passer-by had glimpsed a nasty gun in the back of the car and had alerted the police.
Actually, it was a combination of three things that moved the passer-by to report the car to the police; the others were that the number plate corresponded to Bilbao… terrorist turf! On top of that, on the other side of the street was a bank: gun, Basque number plate, outside bank…
Now, perhaps, if the ‘concerned citizen’ had phoned the Guardia Civil or the Policia Nacional, then things might not have got out of hand, but she phoned the Policia Local, completing the fateful combination circumstances.
The driver came out of the hotel to find the eager blue heroes scowling at the car – her young son had gone into the hotel to tell her that the police were looking at the car, you see. The policemen were literally fingering the pistols in their holsters when she appeared.
They kept up a barrage of questions about the firearm and she repeatedly explained that it was just a bloody toy, but when visions of glory are pulsing through a Policia Local’s blood stream, reasonable explanations are pushed aside.
Just to get the ball running, they demanded her personal identity papers and car docs, gave her a parking fine and confiscated the ‘weapon of mass destruction.’
The toy pistol, by the way, is of the sort that fires yellow or green, plastic balls – you can buy them anywhere and certainly in Santa Fe. Oh, and by the way, they still haven’t given her son his pistol back – it’s probably the proud possession of one of their own children, perhaps.
But things got worse, because when she handed over her driving licence, she noticed that it had expired just two days before without her realising it – they confiscated it.
No matter that Manuela can’t renew her driving licence in Granada, because she lives in Bilbao, therefore she needed the driving licence to get back, or at the very least, a document from the local police to say that they had it in their possession.
Since then she’s tried to clear up the misunderstanding concerning the pistol, etc, but when she turned up at the police station a couple of day s later, they subtly asked her to leave the premises.
Her best bet, probably, would be to get the Guardia Civil to go round there and talk some sense into the buggers.
(News: Santa Fe, Granada, Andalucia)