There’s one particularly narrow street in the Albaicin of Granada that has snared unwary tourist cars, relying too much on GPS navigators.

The street corner where Calle Oidores meets San José Alto, has seen at least 15 cars jammed between two houses so far this year, because the gap measures only 1.5 metres.

María Morales, who is the owner of the car-devouring house, explained that since she moved there in 2014 such incidents happen daily, although in most cases the cars ‘get away’ with only scratched sides.

On one occasioned she said, a German couple go so jammed that they could neither advance further nor reverse out of the predicament. They couldn’t even open the doors, so they were trapped inside until the woman passenger managed to escape through the boot. The male driver, however, stoically remained inside listening to music with the aircon on, refusing to abandon ship.

Eventually, after two hours, a breakdown truck managed to winch him out, minus a lot of paintwork.

But the houses suffer two, because some tourists unwittingly take away souveneirs such as cables and metal pipes that protude from the walls.

Hardly surprisingly, they have been bombarding the City Hall for a solution which wouldn’t involve their houses being demolished. However, until now, the only thing that the authorities have done is put up a round road sign warning of a very narrow street and that vehicles wider that 1.5 metres are forbidden to continue. Nevertheless, overly optimistic tourists advance intrepidly but forlornly.

(News: Albaicin, Granada, Andalucia)