Spanish policing methods.

Doing some instructing and interpreting for the police in Majorca. The difference between British and Spanish policing styles is incredible and I can tell you it comes as one hell of a shock to a lot of drunken British tourists. The Spanish police demand and expect respect and if they don’t get it they think nothing of smacking someone around the head with a baton, punching someone in the face or covering someone in pepper spray. Saying it like that makes them sound like violent thugs, which they’re not. They just don’t any crap and a lot of tourists think they can treat them like British police and ignore them, flout the laws or be verbally and physically abusive. I’ve always considered myself a lily livered, limp wristed, pacifist, libertarian so I’m quite surprised how good it feels to be standing with a police officer and trying to calm down a spitting, abusive drunk who is slapped across the face, by the police officer, and told to be polite or else he will be smacked around and taken to jail. And to know it’s not an idol boast. Of course I wouldn’t like to be on the end of treatment like that from the police but I would never speak to a police officer like that in order to provoke it. Of course it’s too Life on Mars for the UK but still, it would be nice.