Antonio Guzmán is a lucky man, although if you took a look at his battered face as he lies in his hospital bed, you wouldn’t think so. This 59-year-old man does the late shift at Hotel-Restaurante El Ancla in Calahonda and it was 03.30h that his life changed radically.

He spotted a completely naked man lurking near the hotel terrace, so he phoned the police – he had seen the man before – but clothed – a couple of days previously, when he had approached the hotel and asked for a telephone number for a taxi. Antonio then sat down at the reception desk to attend to the normal night-shift duties in a small hotel. He then heard a noise in the hallway  and went to investigate.

Suddenly he felt a blow to his back. As his head cleared he realised that the nude had hit him with a bar stool. From there on in he just tried to defend himself from the attack as best he could. His assailant stood before him, and armed with a knife off the bar top, he stabbed Antonio several times in the head.

The attacker was in a frenzy and even bit half his victim’s ear off. He then launched several plates, hitting Antonio square in the eye, splitting his eyelid. Yet, with blood streaming down his face, he somehow managed to shove the attacker out of the bar and thus end the assault.

As for the aggressor, he was hospitalized as well, but in the prison sick ward. It goes without saying that his mental faculties are not up to scratch. Several locals in Calahonda had reported seeing the man, stomping, completely nude, through the streets on the day of the attack. Two days previously passers-by had to drag him from the surf onto the beach because he was in danger of drowning.

Antonio, who started his working life, working at the now disappeared discotheque, El Cadi, which was on the ground floor of the equally absent Hotel Luz. He began his night-shift career there in 1969, and has been working nights since then.

(News: Calahonda, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)