Nora Johnson: News flash! New foreign species spotted in Spain!

“It’s that time of year,” Sir David Attenborough will breathily tell you, “when you first really start to see them.” Tourists, that is. After all, they’re the easiest to recognise as a species. They’re the pasty-looking white blobs on the beach – unless it’s been unusually hot and they’re red as lobsters and being given the kiss of life by paramedics.

They’re the ones who hold you up. On the roads because they don’t know where they’re going. In supermarkets because they’re counting out their change. In restaurants because they’re confused about the difference between salmón and salmonete but, in any case, would prefer burger and chips.

If the weather suddenly turns bitterly cold and showery, they’re still dressed for summer. In summer, they’re the ones wandering around shops, streets and restaurants with hardly a stitch on.

Tourists could never be mistaken for two other species you encounter in Spain. The newly arrived ex-pats and the long-term ex-pats. The former you’ll see enthusiastically attending every Spanish class, Flamenco, bullfight and obscure feria and club imaginable.

Whereas long-term ex-pats are the complete opposite and the hardest to spot. They dress like the Spanish, wear summer clothes only in summer and dress more formally in town. Like the Spanish too, they’ve learned to accept the way of life. Mañana really does mean, err, mañana.

Recent research showing that Neanderthals came to spend the summer on the south coast of the Iberian peninsula also puts a new gloss on package holidays in the sun. Thirty thousand years ago, when Europe was going through an icy period and snow covered practically everything north of the River Ebro, hominoids searched for somewhere warmer to give them a greater chance of survival.

We now know that Neanderthals “holidayed” in what is today the south of Portugal and Spain after their most recent footprints were found in a quarry in Gibraltar.

So, first Neanderthals, then the Romans. And with all the Roman ruins – villas, roads, marketplaces – being unearthed here, it struck me that the Romans were among the earliest ‘long-term’ tourist species. You can just imagine them, can’t you? Hurtling along the carreteras to the nearest encampment in their horse-drawn chariots. Holding up traffic at the roundabouts. Counting out their silver denarii coins in the markets. Overseeing another luxury villa reforma.

Before advancing over the Alps into Italy, Hannibal first got the show on the road in Spain when he breezed in from Carthage with his, err, caravan of nose-to-tail elephants. So is all the TAIL-gating you occasionally observe among local drivers yet one more vestige of those ancient times?

Give a final thought to Strabo, an unlucky general who not only took a pasting from the locals but died of the plague during one catastrophic campaign. Just as he was about to expire, lightning struck his tent and reduced it to ashes. So, not a happy camper either…

Not to be outdone, though, the worst UK campaign was in 1216 when King John, marching about dealing with a rebellion and a couple of invasions, caught dysentery in Norfolk, lost the Crown Jewels in the Wash, and died in Nottinghamshire. Nuff said.

Nora Johnson’s 12 critically acclaimed psychological suspense crime thrillers (www.nora-johnson.net) all available online including eBooks (€0.99;£0.99), Apple Books, audiobooks, paperbacks at  Amazon etc. Profits to Cudeca cancer charity.