Arcos' Darwin Awards

To catch the bus to Sevilla on Valentine's Day, I woke up at 6 am and traveled downhill through my quiet, darkened town. Though I've been up that early before to catch other buses and have never felt anything but safe, I felt uneasy this time. To add to my unease, or perhaps justifying it, I passed a glasses shop and saw broken glass on the sidewalk. Then, a large rock. And a hole in the window just in front of a display case, the Prada glasses missing. I felt unnerved enough (the crime had obviously happened in the past few hours) to quicken my pace, start to look over my shoulder and make my way to the lighted part of the street.

A week later, the criminals were apprehended. They were attempting to break into the OTHER glasses shop in Arcos, just across the street from the first, on a Friday at the same time as the first burglary. I can only imagine they did it with the same rock.

I sat down with a friend earlier today who said this wasn't the first time a burglar showed a lack of savviness in Arcos. Last summer an Arcense robbed a bank, made off with several thousand Euros, and then...hung around in Arcos. Now, Arcos is a small town. It wasn't hard to figure out who'd committed the theft. But he wasn't eager to skip town. In fact, his first crime had gone so well he decided to try it again. He held up a restaurant in the old town, using only white face paint as a disguise. He was caught soon afterward.

The friend who was telling me this story said his own house had been broken into at one point. He got off lucky, he said. Ignoring a plasma-screen TV, several pieces of very expensive furniture (this friend is in the business of remodeling homes, included interior decorations), and other items with acknowledgable value, the thieves took:
1) 2 plastic deck chairs
2) a large skillet
3) a bread-maker

You can tell these thieves weren't in it for black market resell value...they were just in the mood for a back-porch bread-filled barbecue.