Three men were arrested for stealing 26 olive-branch shakers (vareadores) from the Duke of Wellington’s Estate in Illora, Granada. Yes, an ‘olive-branch shaker’ sounds like a quaker peace mission, but it is in fact a hand-held device for shaking olives from a branch.

The three men, aged between 22 and 36, are all from Pinos Puentes, which is a satellite town of the city of Granada.

The estate, which was granted by a grateful Spanish government in the early 19th century to the Iron Duke for his service of kicking out Napoleon’s armies in the Peninsular War of 1808-1814. Nowadays, it is the Prince of Wales and family who occasionally enjoy this rather large rural estate.

Two of the alleged culprits were apprehended on the 15th of January in the Las Cuevas area of Pinos Puentes with two of the stolen machines in their possession. The third man eluded capture until the 6th of February.

One of the arrested men was a farmer from Jaén who had travelled down to buy some of the machines, which had been stolen from the Duke’s estate the day before – is nothing sacred?

Just as the buyer was loading two of the machines into his van the Guardia Civil pounced, but not before one of the young men, a Rumanian, fled.

Had the Duke been alive, he would have had the provosts string the blighters up, after a damned good flogging, by Jove! The Duke can be seen in this last photograph, operating an olive-branch shaker…

(News: Illora, Poniente de Granada, Granada, Andalucia)