If you want to know the time..

You see a lot of police officers in Spain. Google says there are 238,000 of them. By comparison there are around 136,000 police officers in the UK. 

The structure and organisation of the Fuerzas y Cuerpos de Seguridad (Security Forces and Corps) is complex, so take this as a rough and ready guide rather than the definitive truth. I've omitted the blood soaked past and avoided any sort of critique so I apologise now if the post is a bit dry and dusty.

Nationally there are two police forces. The Guardia Civil and the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía (CNP). In very broad stroke the CNP operate in urban areas and the Guardia Civil operate in rural areas. The Guardia Civil use a green and white colour scheme while the CNP uses blue and white. Both add the Spanish flag into their livery. Both these national police forces are controlled by the Interior Ministry but the Guardia is a military unit with responsibilities to the Ministry of Defence. 

In any town with more that 5,000 inhabitants there has to be a police force employed by the local Town Hall, these are Local Police or Policia Local. In Madrid they are called Policía Municipal and, in Barcelona, Guardia Urbana. 

All the police forces do those things that you expect from European police - protecting people, goods and property, maintaining order, preventing crime, investigating offences and collecting intelligence about potential crime. The two national forces have different, but sometimes, overlapping responsibilities.

The CNP (68,000 officers) works in the provincial capitals and in specified urban centres; as a rule of thumb those with more than 30,000 inhabitants.The CNP issues identity documents and passports and has responsibility for combating drug crime, organised crime, cyber crime, gambling and forgery. They also do border control, immigration and human trafficking. They are responsible for coordination with international police forces and they control private security firms. Among the specialist functions the CNP has a bomb squad, a "SWAT" team, the GEOs, and more.  

The Guardia Civil (78,000 officers) deals with traffic on the main roads, looks after the security of things like ports and airports, looks out for environmental crimes, moves prisoners around and issues all the gun and explosives licences. They have specialist units for anti smuggling, for tax related and economic crimes. The Guardia do mountain rescue and they patrol the southernmost frontiers of Europe in Ceuta and Melilla.

The Local Police (66,000 officers) look after the protection of local councillors and council property, deal with urban traffic, are responsible for crowd control at public events (along with Civil Protection), mediate in conflicts between neighbours and cooperate with the other police forces.

Now the exceptions. Because of Spain's almost federal structure there are a regional forces in Catalonia (Mossos d'Esquadra), the Basque Country (Ertzaintza), Navarre (Foruzaingoa) and the Canary Islands (Guanchancha). About 28,000 officers in all. The Basque and Catalan police forces do most of the jobs which are usually associated with the Guardia Civil and CNP within their regions. In Navarre and the Canary Islands the regional police forces are less "powerful" but they still have a very visible presence for day to day policing including serious crimes like murder. In Andalucía, Aragón, Asturias, Galicia and Comunidad Valenciana there are regional police forces that are part of the CNP but have a certain independence. If you live in Alicante you may have noticed the light blue and white police cars of the Valencian Police from time to time.

The title?, it was a song, If you want to know the time ask a policeman.

And may God have mercy upon your soul

The last time I was in France I was holidaying in Cataluña. It was the sign that said 20 kilometres to France or something that drew us there. Ah, the gay abandon of it all, the sweet adventure of crossing an international frontier just because we could. Free spirits and all that.

So last Friday I got a speeding ticket from France written in Spanish. Some French traffic camera seems to think I was there on Christmas Eve 2016. Actually I was in Villena and so was the Mini. I bought a bottle of Laphroaig for me and a bottle of wine for Maggie as a Christmas treat. I paid with a credit card. The credit card bill is now one of my few bits of evidence that I was in Spain.

At first I thought the ticket was a scam but a bit of asking around and a bit of checking some websites and it seemed real enough. A 68€ fine or 45€ with a discount for quick payment. I have 45 days from the issue of the ticket to appeal.

The paperwork was pretty good; details of what and how and why, methods to get a copy of the photo and various "modes" of appeal. The website was in several languages and both the paperwork and the website suggested that nearly everything could be done online. Paying the fine went from cash and credit cards to paying via a mobile phone app and a Google Pay account.

When I got into the detail of the paperwork the website and documentation began to look less good. Basically unless I had certain pieces of paper I would have to make a deposit of 68€ to contest the ticket. I rang the service centre in France and spoke to someone in English. She said it was easy. Go to the police, report that my number plates had been usurped (A bit like Richard III and Henry VII) and then send them the scanned report via the website and Robert est ton oncle. I went to the Guardia Civil. "We can't give you any paperwork because how do we know the plates have been usurped?" "You need to get a copy of the photo - it'll either be a mistake or if it is real then we can give you paperwork". "Anyway, it's easy without us," said the Guardia officer, "just fill in the form bim, bam, tell them you weren't there and Robert será tu tio". I rang the French service centre again. "If I just pay the fine do I get points on my licence?" The man, it was a man this time, said he would advise against paying up because if someone had copied my plates I could expect fine after fine after fine. I see the logic but I don't know how that will work practically - how will paying stop the speed cameras generating tickets? He did tell me though that my defence was Mode 1 on the form. He said I didn't need to send money to make the appeal. He was wrong. For a Mode 1 appeal I needed the paperwork from the Guardia. Without paperwork it's a Mode 3 appeal. Actually it didn't matter anyway. After hours of preparing documents, scanning other documents and reducing them in size so they would fit onto the French website I finally pressed the send button. "Erreur" said the site. It was one of those websites where after each failed attempt you need to go back to the very first step. I tried with different browsers, different document sizes, different labels on the documents. I gave up.

I asked my insurance company - insurance companies in Spain often "deal with" speeding tickets - if they could help and I sent them all the scanned paperwork. They, rang me back. They only deal with stuff in Spain so they couldn't help but the legal department pointed out that my paperwork probably proved that I was in Spain but it didn't prove the car was. They thought the chances were that the speeding ticket would hold up in court and I would be found guilty.

I turned my attention to getting a copy of the photo. If it wasn't my registration number, if it wasn't the car or it wasn't me I might not have to prove the nearly impossible that neither the car nor I were in France. That had to be done by ordinary post. It needed lots of copied documentation of course. I went to the post office to post it before work but, after waiting in the queue for thirty minutes, I gave up, stuck all the stamps I had on the envelope and hurled it into the post box. 

I've spent this weekend occasionally trying to get the documentation to load to the website but, eventually, I gave up and collected it all together in an envelope. I paid the 68€ to lodge an appeal online. I notice that there are three possible decisions on appeal: I may end up paying the original fine because I didn't prove my case, I may end up with the fine increased by 10% for wasting the court's time or they may exonerate me. In the last case I have to write to ask for my deposit to be refunded - the refund is not automatic. And the cost of posting the bundle of documents by registered post was another 13.25€.

My guess? They decide I was in France and it costs me 68€.

The photo by the way is of the last time I was in France.

Good morning sir. May I see your documentation please?

I get pulled over fairly frequently by the police, usuallly the Guardia Civil. Normally it takes seconds - they see I'm wearing my seat belt, see that the car has been checked for roadworthiness or whatever and I'm soon on my way. Not always, they sometimes have big guns and give clear instructions about leaving the car s-l-o-w-l-y. I've been breathalysed either three or four times as well. Always 100% clear.

On the way to stay in a hotel in Cartagena last week I was being followed by a police car with speed cameras mounted on the roof. I signalled left and pulled into a parking bay. The policeman started gesticulating and shouting. Once out of the car in that flurry of tripping over things fluster he told me off for crossing an unbroken white liine in the centre of the road. I shouldn't have turned left.

Today we went to visit a bodega though here in Portugal they seem to be called quintas. When it got to the wine tasting I only took about half a mouthful of wine. I've got to drive I said.

Five minutes down the road and we were pulled over by police officers on a country lane - their uniforms had the letters GNR on them. "Documentation please," they said in Portuguese. I tried answering in English, no good, I tried Spanish - that worked. It turned out the poliiceman had been a lorry driver and knew our bit of Spain as well as Spanish. There were no problems with the paperwork. "You haven't been drinking have you?" he asked, almost as a throwaway line. I told the truth. I was lectured on the strength of Portuguese wine and sent on my way. Two police incidents in five days is a bit on the top side thouugh.

Interesting about the language too. I complain a lot about not being able to speak Spanish very well. Being here in Portugal where I have difficulty pronouncing the name of the town that I'm staying in has brought home to me how communicative I actually am in Spanish. It is horrible being so lost and having to be so British about speaking to foreigners - well modulated sounds, a slow delivery and simple words. Of course, just as everywhere else the foreigners put us to shame and usually manage English remarkably well.