It is hard to learn a foreign language, and hard to understand the culture behind the conversation. The accents, the words spoken in laughter or whispered or referencing some icon not known to a foreigner: all making comprehension difficult.Today, the Guardia Civil gave a talk in the Artisan Centre to the English-speaking residents in Mojácar regarding personal safety and how to avoid robberies and rip-offs. They also told us what to do if anything looked suspicious or if anyone became a victim of an robbery or an assault.
Two young Guardias gave the lecture, apparently on their day off, and did a good job explaining the different chapters in their talk on crime and prevention. I had been asked to translate, but an enthusiastic lady from the Cruz Roja took charge and I sat at the back in a mild sulk.
The presentation was fun, with the two Guardia helping the 'translator' to more or less get the ideas across. They were aided by a power-point presentation which the Cruz Roja lady gamely tried to render into English, with lots of 'how you say in English...?' and other garbled explanations.
Never mind, as the two Guardias pantomimed various scenarios and everyone was amused and, hopefully, informed.
A leaflet in English was handed out to help with the presentation, but it had an important mistake - a wrong phone number for the local police.
Which begs a question - if you call the local police, or the Guardia Civil, will they understand you?
Those numbers:
Any emergency 112
Local Police 091
Guardia Civil 062
I remember driving past an accident, and saw that other people were directing traffic etc. No pocket phones in those days, so I drove to the local Guardia in Calpe. Where was the accident? "Dos km al sur de Benissa" in my broken Spanish. "You can't be right, there aren't doce km between here and Benissa". Even something simple like a guiri trying to say "dos" instead of "doce" causes problems.
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