The Pain in Spain: Encountering the Barbarian of Seville

Thugs on a motorcycle seriously changed one Oregon couple's vacation in otherwise sunny Spain.

Train station in Seville, Spain, about three years after Carmela's ordeal. Courtesy: ruimoraisdesousa.blogspot.com

(SALEM, Ore.) - As it happens I was two weeks shy of becoming a US Citizen in November 1986 when Barry Lee and I were starting to tour Spain.

We had just gotten off the train in Seville and it was early evening, so we began looking for a nearby hotel. Evidently we were being watched carefully by a motorcyclist and his friend.

Barry Lee walked a few paces ahead of me when he saw a hotel. I lagged slightly behind with my suitcase. A local guy got off his motorcycle and wrestled me for my handbag, with all my money and passport and ID inside.

I was too scared to scream, but tried to hold on. He was obviously much stronger...and won that fight. In fact, I scraped my elbow when falling, and finally shouted.

Barry Lee turned around and tried to run after the robber/ladron, but he was onto his motorcycle and quickly rode off in the dust. I began crying and my husband embraced me, then ran to the hotel lobby to alert the police.

But it was too late to recover my property. We spoke enough Spanish to tell authorities what happened. The crazy predicament, however, is that I no longer had any proof of whom I was and so was not able to fly home with my husband, who regained his US passport.

In sharp contrast, I had to travel to Madrid and face a very unfriendly staff person at the Filipino consulate there. Spain had been the conquering country of a colonial Philippines many centuries earlier, but that mental attitude remained.

I was treated in a dismissive way as though I was second-class. I later learned that in Spain most of their Filipinos were lower-class domestics. They were totally unaccustomed to having met a college teacher. I clearly felt their prejudices.

It took almost two weeks for the Filipino Consulate in NYC to produce a new passport.

I later learned that they had misfiled my passport application--by mistake--under my maiden name. So for two weeks I was an invisible person, someone who didn't exist, a "hostage" in the twists and turns of international diplomacy.

It was necessary for Barry Lee to fly home to his job at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in DC without me, since his vacation time was limited. Back in '86 nobody had cell phones so we had to call long-distance using local phones.

Fortunately my mother-in-law wired us emergency money so I could stay in a Madrid hotel while this tangle of events was being straightened out!

One further footnote: that little adventure above became the content of a speech for my Toastmasters club. We decided to name it, "Beware the Barbarian of Seville!". Hope you enjoy this episode.