Knife crime
I don't think of myself as having criminal tendencies. I might admit to the odd traffic infringement now and again and I probably pinched a few envelopes when I was working but I'm no Samuel Little. The other day though I found myself in a situation that hardly registered at the time but might actually have gone remarkably pear shaped.
I went, with a pal, to the Foreigners Office in Alicante to help him with the renewal of his identity card. Before going through the security scanner to get into the building I emptied my pockets into the tray. The policeman on duty there pulled me to one side and asked if a penknife in the tray was mine. Apparently I was committing an offence. The policeman confiscated my knife. I thought it was vaguely amusing that he used the Spanish equivalent of confiscate - it reminded me of how the prefects at my secondary school used to "confiscate" my sweets from time to time. In fact I thought the whole affair seemed a bit silly.
For the last couple of days all that has happened when I have tried to speak Spanish is that I have spluttered incoherently. Knowing that I would end up mumbling nonsense, I kept quiet as the policeman told me off. The fact that he was a big bloke, with a stick and a gun, had nothing to do with it. I was pretty sure though that he was being a jumped up prat because I remembered checking about carrying knives and I was confident that the small pocket knife I was carrying was no sort of offence. It was only when I was thinking about buying a replacement and I got around to checking the regulations that I was glad I didn't make a fuss because I was dead wrong.
I've carried a penknife for years. I took to chaining my keys to the belt loops of my trousers in 1997 to stop myself continually locking myself out of an office which had one of those pull to, Yale locks. I used to clip the knife to the same chain. So it was not a big knife. The last three or four times I've bought knives I've bought Spanish ones from Albacete. They often don't have hooks or holes to fasten them to the chain so, recently, the knife has jostled with the coins, loose in my pocket.
Years ago a Spanish friend expressed surprise when, shazam, I produced my knife to puncture the vacuum seal on a jar - that's the sort of stuff it got used for. I'm often surprised how often the knife comes in useful - that's why I carried one. Because of my friend's surprise, and his suggestion that it wasn't legal, I'd looked up the legislation. When I checked it seemed perfectly clear that, in Spain. it was legal to carry folding pocket knives with a blade no longer than 11 cm. Things like automatic/switchblades, gravity knives, disguised knives, double-edged blades and the like were prohibited but the sort of penknife I had, with a short 5 centimetre blade, seemed to be well in the clear. That made sense too.
When I asked Perplexity yesterday if the law had changed about carrying knives in Spain it said yes and no. Apparently although the core legislation, from 1993, hasn't changed there have been "administrative clarifications" and a "renewed enforcement focus" since about 2023.
Carrying a folding pocket knife with a blade up to 11 cm is legal only if you have a justified reason. Justified reasons are obvious enough and include things like working in farming, fishing and carpentry or when someone goes hunting. Justified reasons for carrying a knife do not include opening vacuum sealed jars or defeating the Amazon packaging. So, carrying a knife, however short the blade, without justification is prohibited.
To add to the general prohibition some places get a special mention as being places where it is explicitly forbidden to carry knives. These include places like government buildings, recreational facilities, schools and public transport. I suppose that's to make sure that farmers or carpenters don't take their knives with them when they go to the parent's evening at the local school. Police can confiscate knives or impose fines which start at €300 and work up to €30,000. As Perplexity pointed out the officer’s judgment on context, attitude, and justification plays a key role in whether carrying a legal-length knife is permitted in a particular situation. It's the individual officers who balance up the risks and threats. That's presumably why a guardia civil officer in the law courts wouldn't let me past the security check with my penknife but gave it back as I left whereas this second police officer, in the foreigners office, was only a step away from clapping me in irons.
There are lots of other rules related to knives, swords, machetes and the like. The rules for people to collect them and even use them are generally pretty obvious and allow for their use in appropriate settings. Otherwise the battle re-enactment scenes might lose something if those double sided broadswords were totally outlawed. But I suppose no-one is likely to be unaware of the potential danger of a katana whereas they might not realise that popping a Swiss Army Knife into their pocket might land them in trouble.
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