During the year so far, Local Police in Málaga have issued 255 denuncias against the ladies caught offering flowers or lavender cuttings in a persistent and often intimidating manner to tourists in the street.
Most have been charged under the municipal ordinance relating to the Guarantee of Coexistence and the Protection of Urban Space for which the fine is €167.
Persistent offenders can find themselves prosecuted under Article 634 of the Penal Code for ‘disobedience’.
Police have identified around 50 flower ladies, many of whom have long criminal records for theft and robbery. One women had a record of 15 arrests, 13 of them for theft.
A total of ten women have so far been charged with robbing tourists while offering them carnations. It is notoriously difficult to either catch the flower ladies in the act of theft or to prove theft at a later stage, hence so few are ever arrested for theft.
MA says:
I was in Nerja in June and unfortunately, met with one of these “flower sellers” who “asked” for a donation and tried to take money from my purse in a very intimidating manner. Nerja is a lovely place and I have been there on holidays on at least 5 occasions but was very upset and angry by this and I hope anything like this does not occur again.
Barry says:
If the unfortunate lady hopes that this does not occur again, and the respondant agrees completely, what do either of these upset people intend to do in order that some action may be instigated ?
Barry says:
What happened to the respondents text that was submitted following MA’s blog ? this appears to have been withdrawn…are NerjaNews blogs now being edited ?
The Captain says:
It is very rare indeed that any comments are edited apart from those containing obvious spam or deemed to be from a suspicious address.