A friend with more political savvy than I (she has lived here all her life, and always applies the principle of Occam's Razor to any village goss) says it is obvious. Spanish fisherman have infiltrated themselves into the crew of every boat that leaves Fleetwood, she says, and they are spiriting great crans of the silvery stuff back home at the dead of night. But, homesick in the long months away from la casita, and anxious for news of the señoras and señoritas they have left behind in that land where hidalgos eat a lot of big fat sausagey things and slurp wholesome red wine at two pesetas (€0.000000001) a litre and then start getting naughty ideas, they thought they could slink over the river to buy their foreign newspapers and keep tabs on things without anybody noticing.
Ha!
If we act together as a community we can flush them out. I suggest that a deputation of tough-looking gentlemen from the village assemble at the head of the jetty at 16:55 one evening when the wind in the north, and saunter down to the river saying in very loud voices "Gosh, Jeremy! It must be nearly five in the afternoon." (It sounds much better in Spanish, if everyone can manage it.)
If that doesn't work, we could next improvise provocative limericks about, for example, Lope de Vega or Federico García Lorca, and, in the last resort, make pointed observations about the probable sexual proclivities of professional football-punters from popular Spanish clubs ("Sociedades Españolas de Futbol y Otras Actividades Interesantes, Nudgio-Nudgio"), not to mention those of bullfighters (I mean, have you seen the way they stick their bottoms out? Oo, ducky!)
Hordes of fishermen will eventually emerge on the opposite bank to find out what all the noise is about. Ignore the ones in dirty blue T-shirts with half an inch of roll-up in their mouths and speaking a funny language. They are from Fleetwood. Look for the bods from the bodegas - huge waxed moustaches, voluminous pleated cravats, thigh-boots with floppy overhangs at the top, and funny looking hats. If they are not from Pilling, despite all this circumstantial evidence, then they are definitely Spanish.
One just hopes the Co-op manages to flog them those three copies of El País before we send them packing. One is, after all, a card-carrying member of this worthy Society, and one must at all times keep a watchful eye on the divi.
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