UPDATE Vandal Attacks Foreign Cars In Marbella

Thursday September 28

It didn’t take long for the National Police to arrest the person who has been vandalising cars with British number plates around Marbella over the last week or so.

He got around the municipality on a bicycle which meant that he was difficult to track down but he was actually caught in the process of spraying another car in the area of Puerto Romano on Thursday September 28.

According to an eye witness statement on the Marbella Se Queja Instagram site, he reportedly said that the reason for his actions was “I have lived in England and they have treated me terribly.”

There seems to be a vandal with a grudge against foreign visitors in the San Pedro Alcantara/Marbella area.

For the past week or more, visitors driving cars with mainly UK number plates have returned to their parking spaces on a number of different roads to discover that they have been sprayed along each side with bright pink paint.

Pointless vandalism

This sort of pointless vandalism does nothing to endear the area to foreign visitors, especially at a time when tourism is such an important mainstay of the Costa del Sol economy.

In many ways this is an extension of the unsightly tagging whereby those with no artistic talent and nothing better to do with their lives simply spray often unintelligible letters on buildings and structures, marking them as their own, just like a cat or dog marks its territory with urine.

Urban art

There is no question that urban artists such as Banksy in the UK and San Pedro’s own Jose Enrique Ragel can not only brighten up drab or dreary buildings but when curated properly, as in Estepona, create an urban art gallery for all to enjoy.

This simple attack on visitors cars achieves nothing positive as the person responsible appears not to have the courage of their own convictions by explaining the reason for targeting foreign cars.

Tourism suffers

Comments on local Social Media are united in criticising the brainless vandalising of these cars with comments being seen such as “Marbella and tourism are being destroyed, in a short time people will stop coming. The other day I met a man in Benalmadena who told me that he was not going to Marbella because there were many robberies. Either the city council puts a strong hand and more security or Marbella is over.”

Another, repeated observation being that there could be violence if the car owners catch the person responsible for the spraying of their cars whilst another person said “It’s sad that some vandals targeting vehicles from certain countries as more than 75 per cent of tourists visiting Marbella are international.”

Police aware

Police are aware of the problem but in fairness, the area is large and finding a single vandal with a spray can is a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack.