Burglary in Spain

BURGLARY in SPAIN

“I have robbed”, I confessed to the bemused young Guardia Civil officer after I had found my way inside the rather imposing Guardia Civil barracks in Nerja (there is internet speculation that certain chips in the stonework date from the times of Civil War firing squads). My phrase book had correctly prompted me to say “me han robado”  (“they have [someone has] robbed me”), but in my somewhat panicky state it came out as “he robado”.

No matter; I was not banged up or otherwise subjected to Franco-era indignities. The young man (police everywhere are getting younger) was very polite. Between his broken English and my more broken Spanish we established that, first, a police report must be made in Spanish and, second, getting an official translator was something of a procedure and, therefore, it would be better for me to return with un amigo o una amiga who could translate for me.

Rebuffed, I retreated to await the arrival of such a skilled person the next day. On our return, a different officer who spoke good English and did not really need the services of my translator interviewed us. The interview started in Spanish – “We have come to report a robbery”, to which the officer replied, deadpan, “estupendo” – “marvellous”.

In spite of the language barrier falling open, I do not advise that, on initial contact with the Guardia Civil, one deploys the traditional boorish tactic of speaking English with increasing volume until they produce one of their English-speaking officers.

The morning had begun very strangely and had swiftly developed into an emergency. I was alone in the house, awaiting the arrival of friends over the next few days. I got up. I couldn’t find my shirt and trousers. I had that feeling of “Am I going mad”, as I puzzled between my bedroom and the one next door where I had temporarily parked some possessions. Finally – could I have got undressed downstairs? (Why?) So I stumbled down and registered , in order, shirt and trousers on the sofa, the supposedly locked terrace sliding door standing open …there was a draft. I turned and saw the front door, giving onto the street, also standing wide open. Burglars! But there was my laptop, lying on the desk in plain sight. If there are burglars, don’t things get burgled? Was it me after all, going mad or sleep walking? Upstairs again – and no mobile phone, which I had left charging on a table in my bedroom (but a envelope containing 300 Euros was still there). Next door a shoulder bag had been rifled of other Euros and some sterling, but not my passport.

That seemed to be it. Although the thief had entered the room where I was sleeping (which he could do noiselessly because I had left the door open), he had obviously done so at speed, to grab my phone and take my clothes (to make hot pursuit more difficult?). He had missed cash, bank cards and Ipad, as well as ignoring the laptop. The inference is that the thief conducted a hasty search for small items that he could easily conceal in his pockets.

How did he get in? One part of the answer soon became clear. The sliding doors had long had a worn catch, which needed carful closing from the inside. From the inside, the catch appeared to hold, eventually. From the outside, however (as later investigation revealed), a firm push was enough to open the door. But how did the thief know about this weakness, and how did he get to the back of the house, which is considered pretty inaccessible? One can only speculate, but there have been many workmen carrying out a major refurbishment next door, including at times when the house has been unoccupied.

This was the second burglary I’ve suffered in 14 months, the first at home in London, when I was away. Both involved entry through sliding doors (in London the door was forced). In both cases various groups of workmen had been spending large amounts of time either in (replacing the London kitchen) or nearby the properties. Both properties are difficult to access from the back.

My mordant thought was that the London Sliding Door Burglar also liked to holiday in Spain.

In the case of both burglaries, my initial reaction on first discovering something out of the ordinary was bewilderment and a furious inability to process the strangeness of what I was experiencing.

In Spain, it was the missing shirt and trousers. In London, it was finding a kitchen chair behind my front door (which was mysteriously un-double-locked). Why had someone (cleaner, child with key) come into the maisonette and moved a chair from the kitchen down the stairs to the front door? It didn’t make sense – until I looked up and glimpsed the open sliding door and its mangled wall fitting. The chair had been used to jam the front door in case anyone legitimate tried to enter.

The other odd thing about burglaries is how haphazard is one’s ability to notice what has been stolen. Everyone will check at once for computers and other expensive electronics. But in London it took me about 24 hours before I realised that the most expensive item stolen had gone – a road bike, which had been standing just inside the front door. The bike-shaped empty space had not leaped to my attention perhaps, because, deep down I thought that bikes only got stolen out of doors; perhaps because a second, unstolen bike stood in the same position and somehow masked the absence of the other.

The starting psychology of a burglary victim (where one is asleep or absent whist the crime is occurring) is a deep reluctance to accept that anything so nasty has happened. For seconds, even minutes, the mind seeks for some harmless explanation. After, come the shock (including the thought that the thief had been in your bedroom with you), the anger and resignation, and the vital phone calls and panicky misuse of a phrase book.

PS Both sets of doors have now been proofed against similar incursions.

January 2016