Holiday... continued.

... continued from here:

Rachael's eyes get bigger and bigger as she's on the phone. I'm jumping up and down, going
'What? What? What?! Is it her?' But it's okay, I can hear her voice on the phone. She's alive and okay, that's all that matters.

She's been in a prison cell since 5.00 pm the day before, then taken to court, then only just been released.

She had gone to buy a raincoat in a shopping centre. It was an open plan place with different boutiques surrounding a coffee shop in the middle. She had put the coat over her arm while she went to get a coffee, before she took it to the counter to pay for it. But she's immediately surrounded by a million Spanish women, including the sales assistant, who are all accusing her of shop-lifting. (How this can be when she hasn't left the shop is still not clear.) She doesn't speak a word of Spanish (and before you judge, she speaks German English and French, so not doing too badly.) And they don't speak any English, or pretend not to. She doesn't know what's going on. It appears at first that she can just pay for the coat and go, but the sales assistant says it's too late, she's already called the police.

The police take her to the station. She is strip searched. They take away her bag, and though it's pretty cold, her scarf (in case she should hang herself with it in the cell.) They won't let her make a phone call. They give her a document with her rights in English, but then make her sign a document in Spanish. They put her in a concrete windowless cell with strip lighting and a mat on the floor in the basement of the station. She can't hear any noise from the street and can't tell what time it is or how long she's been in there. She has to be in court for the case and apparently they won't let her go in case she tries to skip the country. They tell her the case might come up in 3 days' time. She can hear her phone ringing in her bag outside the cell (me & Rachael, increasingly frantic) but they won't let her answer it, or answer it themselves.

She's moved to another jail in the morning, which is very busy, but she's the last person to be taken out of the cell to court. They take her to court in handcuffs. There's an interpreter there, but they won't let Barbara ask the interpreter any questions except to translate what is being said by the sales assistant. If she will pay a fine of 300 euros she can go. She agrees to pay the fine.

When we tell the consulate all this later, they say the police have been in breach of her human rights in not allowing her a phone call, and say they will take it up with the police.

It makes you wonder what they would do with actual terrorists. ("This would never happen in England" said Barbara. "No, in England they just shoot you in the back" said Rachael.)

Spanish police (with the honourable exception of Marian, of the local Basque force) are cunts. That is all.