I have lived here for over 5 yrs now and never once felt unsafe, nor in the UK either - and I used to walk into town on a weekend.
I hope telling my tale will prevent it happening to anyone else who uses cash point machines…..
My bank is the type which has an indoor cash point, where usually one person is using the machine and others wait outside. I went in at about 10pm last friday night, and was taking money out the machine when a man walked in behind me. I had just put my card back in as I forgot to get a receipt, when he came up really close behind me. He had on a full faced motorbike helmet.
I told him where to go (in no uncertain terms….) and he asked me in accented english for ‘money please’...... I told him I didn’t have any, and somehow managed to cancel the transaction and remove my cashpoint card and get it into my pocket - all the time looking at him to keep him from noticing.
He kept repeating the words, and then slapped me around the face and pushed me roughly so I fell against the window display.
I’m not quite sure how but I managed to get past him and thru the door…... and ran to get help from a nearby bar where the policia and guardia civil came.
The moral of this story which I only found out afterwards is that inside the door there is a lock. If you go into the cashpoint room.. LOCK IT! This will prevent anyone from coming in behind you. I was VERY lucky and lost nothing, not even my bag with almost 700 euros in it, nor jewellery…...but he could have locked it behind him and made me clear my accounts and robbed me of everything, I don’t even want to think about what might have happend if he had been armed.
Don’t become a statistic like I did…..
