When Pam and I were down in Torrevieja on Thursday, we saw loads of salesmen trying to flog their “hooky” DVDs, CDs, bags and even fake Calvin Klein pants. I said to Pam, “if the police spot them, they’ll confiscate the lot”.
The war between the local police and the salesmen has heated up recently. The salesmen are determined to carry on their trade and the police are equally determined to stop them. On Thursday this apparently led to another confrontation where two of the vendors got injured along with one of the police officers.
The story goes that, late in the day, two foot patrol officers came across between five and ten of the Africans who promptly fled only to be found moments later further down the street.
At first the confrontation was just a tirade of insults followed by a retreat on the part of the sellers. Then suddenly the men stopped, a group of them surrounded one of the police officers and started pushing and hitting him. The police officers retaliated resulting in two of the Africans receiving cuts on their heads and the policeman a cut on the arm.
When the police tried to detain the assailants, the gang of black people tried to stop them which forced the police to send for members of the Guardia Civil to act as reinforcements.
The Africans will be claiming that the police used unnecessary force to detain them. Fighting back and getting into confrontation is presumably a new ploy that they hope will intimidate the police into leaving them alone. I doubt that it will work. Now if people stopped buying these fake goods – that would work. Without a market – the Africans would be forced to give up their illegal trade. In my book, people who buy fake goods are just as guilty as those that sell them.
2 comments:
I quite agree - also people who buy goods that have " fallen of a lorry " are as bad as the housebreakers.
The sale of these fake CD's only helps to fuel other illegal activities.
Anyway CD's are a bit old fashioned and will go the way of the 78's. Most people download music to their iPod now.
There have been times when it was impossible to walk along the front at Guardamar without being continually harrassed by these guys. However, during a recent three week visit to the town we were able to walk along the prom unmolested. The reason? The local police are conducting regular patrols along the beach on quadbikes! It seems to be working as well. On one occasion we witnessed a dozen looky-looky blokes hurriedly gather their wares and scarper as the police appeared. I would never buy anything off these blokes and welcome the action by the local police.
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