An Innocent Abroad

 

During the mid to late eighties I competed in the Benidorm Marathon on an annual basis. It was a good event for me as it was fairly flat, late in the year and warm but not too hot and had an almost had an end of season party atmosphere about it.

I liked it and usually did quite well there. I always went with my local harriers and although they weren’t my 1st choice running club I had a lot of friends who did compete for them and I usually wore their colours in Benidorm. 

 

Our self appointed captain was ‘Stoddard,’ who arranged everything, from coaches and flights in the UK, coaches to and from Alicante to Benidorm, hotels, rooms, water stations. Nothing was left to chance, and all we had to do was turn up and run.

We always took 50 or 60 club athletes, and our party had a good mix of varying ages and abilities. Some people brought wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends and children and treated it as  part of a mini holiday break. It was marathon runner’s heaven and 90% of all entries were British club runners. Almost every running club in the UK was represented but we were always the biggest and we stood out from the rest with our reversible red and blue running kit. It was a nice social event, with a bit of running tagged on.

They still put on the Benidorm marathon now  but despite winning a trophy in 1987 I have never been back there since, and only recently visited the Spanish mainland for the 1st time in almost 30 years.

 

After completing the 1987 marathon the harriers made our way collectively back to our hotel and rested for the rest of the day. After our evening meal Stoddard had arranged for all of us to visit the local 10 pin bowling alley. We really knew how to live it up! There had been many reports in the UK media that year of English football hooligans and lager louts causing mayhem in Spanish holiday resorts and this was the time of rave culture, but we were about as far away from any of those people as it was possible to get.

 

We bowled for a couple of hours, had a couple of non-alcoholic drinks and left about 10pm. Whilst we were there we’d been talking to a group of girls from Sweden, who were the winning contestants on the Swedish version of Blind Date. They had film cameramen and TV type people following them around all night, and we’d been showing them our marathon medals. One of the girls had pinned a badge on my marathon finishers shirt that said ‘English lager louts on tour, Spain ’87.’ We thought it was ironic and funny at the time. 

Most of our party had been gradually drifting back to the hotel  throughout the evening and eventually 8 of us remained. The Swedish Blind Date girls and camera crew were trying to get us to go to one of the night clubs with them, but I was too tired and wanted to go back to the hotel. I should have left with Stoddard, but I’d hung on, because the Swedish girls were really attractive, and they were fun too. Eventually they talked us into going along with them.  

 

As we walked towards the main entertainment area I felt so tired and could barely stand up. It’s worth mentioning that at this point we hadn’t had any alcohol since arriving in Benidorm, and my tiredness was simply down to the exertion of running the marathon a few hours earlier.

My friends were more interested in the girls than the beer but decided to go along with them anyway and we parted company about 400 meters from our hotel. It should have taken me 10 minutes to walk back. 

By now it was dark, and I was a few hundred yards away from the hotel when I became aware of a violent disturbance going on outside a British bar just yards in front of me. Bloody lager louts, I thought to myself!  

There were people rolling around on the floor fighting, bottles and glasses being smashed, tables being thrown into the middle of the road  and lots of shouting and screaming. It was very vicious and scary with people covered in blood. I did what I thought was the sensible thing to do and crossed the road in order to avoid it.

 

 I could hear sirens approaching from the distance and as I’d now passed the immediate scene of the trouble I momentarily paused by the kerbside to let the police cars go past before intending  to cross back over the road, and to the safety of my hotel. What happened next was surreal and like watching a film scene in slow motion.  Two police cars sped past me but the third one  bumped up on the kerb immediately in front of me, nearly knocking me over in the process. ‘Bloody idiots’, I cursed under my breath.

Before I had finished my curses two policemen jumped out, threw me across the bonnet of their car, handcuffed my hands behind my back and pushed me into the backseat of the car. They both got in either side of me and the younger one gave me a punch to the side of my head which bloodied my nose. I was driven at speed with the sirens blaring to the local police station.

 

My details were taken, someone was sent to the hotel for my passport and I was transferred to the national police station, near Alicante. When I arrived there were 20 or more blood splattered drunken Brummies still trying to fight it out with each other, and by now the front of my own t shirt was also covered in blood where I’d been hit.

I was fingerprinted, mugshot photographs were taken, jewellery removed and signed for I still had my marathon medal in my pocket which was also confiscated. One of the Spanish police officers noticed the English lager louts badge on my shirt and pulled it off and gave me another dig in the ribs, bizarrely making a comment about Boy George. I went right off Culture Club after that. I was given a dirty blanket that smelt strongly of urine, thrown into an underground cell, and the lights were turned off. I was in total darkness in more ways than one.

 

The next morning official statements were taken, the British consulate staff had apparently refused to see any of the English lager louts, and I was put in a line up in my blood stained t shirt. Unbelievably I picked out. WTF? I was charged with ‘Escandelo Publico’, and asked if I wanted a public defender? 

Of course I wanted a public defender, I hadn’t done anything, I was INNOCENT.

I was locked up again for what seemed like hours and at sometime in the afternoon the people in the cells were put into police vans and driven to court. These stupid idiots were still shouting and fighting on the way to court.

When we arrived at the courthouse I had a meeting with my legal defender.  My marathon finisher’s t shirt was covered in my blood, and I smelt of stale urine, because it had been cold in the underground cell and I had eventually wrapped myself in it  to keep warm.

Even though I was terrified at the time and in obvious dire circumstances, I remember very clearly thinking that my female defender was extremely attractive. Maybe in her early 30’s, so slightly older than me, she was wearing leather trousers, high heel shoes  and a tight  low cut  white blouse, and smoking a cigarello. She looked like she was going out for the night with Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix.. Her appearance and looks really did lift my spirits. 

 

I was brought back down to earth very quickly though as word was coming back that the first few defendants in the dock had been sentenced to 6 weeks in jail. Apart from the punishment of being locked up I would have lost my job and  my cat was expecting me to pick him up in 5 days time.

 

Eventually I was taken up to the dock and an eye witness was brought into court. It was the English barmaid  from the pub where the trouble had occurred. She said that I wasn’t one of the people involved and that she hadn’t seen me in the pub at all. For the next few minutes there was an exchange in Spanish between Jim Morrison’s girlfriend and a court official, they asked me where I was born and where I current lived ( Channel Islands and Cheshire) , they checked my passport and then the case was dismissed.

I was given my passport, my jewellery and my marathon medal back and I was told that I could go. Just like that, with no mention about how the front of my shirt had become covered in my own blood. I was shown out of the court via a side door and noticed there was an English pub just across the road. I went and had a beer, the first one I’d had since arriving 3 days earlier. I sat on my own at the bar and shed a tear or two. It was out of joy and relief, of course?

 

I had been hoping that I might have seen my legal defendant coming out of court but we never saw each other again, and she probably took off on the Harley Davidson that was parked in front of the courthouse. She must be in her 60’s now.

 

When I got back to my hotel at I found the harriers sitting around the pool. They hadn’t missed me at all, and thought I’d got lucky with one of the Swedish Blind Date girls.  One of them shouted over, “What was she like, you dirty old dog”?  I almost laughed and was tempted to say she had  leather trousers and smoked a cigarello,  but instead I told them the truth. They didn’t believe me until I showed them the charge sheet. 

 

Later that evening I had to attend the marathon presentation awards, and even though I’d put on a smile I knew I would never go back to Benidorm.

After I’d received my and photographs had been taken  Stoddard  told me off for not wearing my  marathon finishers t shirt.