Guarda Civil
Years ago, I found myself on the NW part of Iberia. Walking down the street, I briefly stopped to look inside the glass storefront of a local shop when I was immediately detained by a plain clothes armed man identifying himself as Gardua Civil who accused me of being a Basque terrorist. I was in schock, all I did was to look inside the glass pane into the store. I was with a relative when he stopped me. Now, I am a white guy, blonde hair and my relative is a mountain of a man, red hair, measuring almost 7 feet tall and spoke excellent Spanish -we look nothing like the Basques. In a couple of minutes he figured out we were harmless. He started to laugh, shook our hands and invited us to the "Cafe" which was actually a very fancy Sports Bar. He ordered for us food and drinks non-stop and totally refused that we pay for anything. We were there for a couple hours. (I talked nothing about JW.) The Spaniard police officer turned around what would be remembered as a bad experience into a very fond memory. Where in Europe or where in the world would an encounter with law enforcement turn out so pleasant? --Only in Spain.
I noticed that the people of Spain look like the French, mostly European looking except in the NW; Here people look more like the Scandanavian and German. Some of the men had facial features of someone that just got off an old Viking ship. But I've been told that anyone that can prove ancestry from Spain can enjoy citizenship and its benefits, thus the demographics of Spain is changing with a lot of immigration from South America. The country is very nice and the people are very sincere.
