It was a normal monday spent walking in the streets looking for something to do with my good friend, Casey. We were on the way back to our Hostel after trying to go to an Egyptian temple museum that ended up being closed in the middle of the day. As we were walking, we were approached by 4 young girls with a petition to sign to help the blind & deaf or something like that. Little did we know that this is a common scam in Madrid.
I gladly signed it “Greg Hanson” since that was the first fake name that popped into my head and it seemed the fastest way to get these 4 rather persistent young ladies to leave me alone.
I filled out a couple other fields and then left when they asked to see some form of ID to verify my signature. This is where I just told them that I had to go and that I didn’t have any ID on me.
They did all that they could to slow me down and stop me from leaving. The kept asking me “please verify your signature. It’s for a good cause.”. I just kept on walking and I made sure that none of them touched me (I’ve got a slight history with Iberian pickpockets). I looked back when I was about 8 feet away to make sure that my friend was close behind.
When we were about 50-60 ft away we heard a strong male voice shouting in our direction. We didn’t turn around thinking it was another solicitation for a cause or to ask for money or some other such nonsense. The voice got closer, louder and a bit more authoritative so we turned around to see a rather robust police officer running towards us.
At this point I’m thinking “Oh crap, what did we do? Did we just violate some local law or disrespect some holy place or something?”
I didn’t understand all of what the officer said as his jog ended just an arms length from us. As always, we responded as best we could and as respectfully as possible given the language barrier and the fact that he had a gun along with legal means to ruin our lives.
We could decipher that he was asking if we gave them any money and if we had our ID’s
This is when I started to get a little concerned.
At this point, the only things going through my mind were… “Did we just sign a petition to support a gang or terror group or to create problems with the government or something?”
We fought through a few sentences with our broken Spanish along with the police officer’s patience.
It turns out that these 4 chicas were scamming people to get donations, pick some pockets and even snatch ‘n’ grab IDs and wallets when people verified their signatures.
The officer was just making sure that we didn’t get played. I was confused by this cause I think it’s the first time in my life that a Police officer might have actually been helping me instead of trying to extort money or harass me.
Luckily, I’ve traveled enough to know that if a random girl starts talking to me in the street, it’s because she wants something. (I’m talking everything from beggars to pushy vendors all the way to prostitutes)
Sorry chicas, I was born at night but it wasn’t last night and the streets of Spain have taught me a thing or two about trust. My friend, myself, my passport and all of my money made it safely out of the streets of Madrid, Spain.
Adios!
Also, +1 respect points for Mr. Policia Municipal de Madrid. Carry on, señor.
