Everywhere a scam

The Spanish Pavilion, Seville, Saturday

On the stairs of the beautifully tiled bridge a gypsy woman approaches a young Mediterranean woman and with a big smile places a sprig of Rosemary in her hand. She holds the girls hand and we watch as she reads her palm, first one hand then the other. She is finished in less than five minutes and the girl is now also all smiles, clearly her future is bright. We keep watching from a distance because we know what is about to happen. The Gypsy woman then tells the girl how much she must pay for the palm reading. We have been warned about this, it will be some exorbitant price like E20. The girl reaches into her wallet and unhappily digs around for some money; she hands over a couple of notes. The gypsy woman gets very aggressive and the girl goes into another bag and comes out with more money, who knows how much but she will have handed over a significant amount of cash. She is now visibly distressed. The gypsy woman stashes the cash and moves on to a new spot. There is little we can do although we do consider a range of options. It reminded me of a different kind of scam, definitely a fleecing, then by a gang of women on a beach in Bali. I still have the $100 coconut wood spoon it cost me.

Anyone around with an open wallet in public is exposed, I am learning how not to do this as casually as I would at home. Other current scams that we are warned of this week include scammers dressed as police (with ID) asking to see E50 notes because there is a counterfeiting ring actively working the area, they then clear you out of cash and people being approached on trains fined for non ticket validation (like I was in Italy where it is necessary) in countries where there isn’t any validation requirement - they are reaping in E70 a conversation from innocent travellers.