Only the Guardian newspaper could come up with such an outrageous pun - do they still have sit-down comedians to write all their headlines? The phrase 'Saga louts' recalls the 80's phenomenon of young gun Brits fuelled on gallons of high-strength lager loutishly wrecking property and people in Britain and abroad - Spain with places like Loret del Mar and Torremolinos were a prime casualities. Latterly young people in the UK seem more likely to wreck themselves at the weekend though they still manage to create no-go areas for the rest of us leaving stations, town centres and carparks awash with vomit. Luckily today's teenagers seem more concerned with how many times they can throw up in a night rather than how many fights they can pick.
But 'saga louts'? OK, saga rhymes with lager but there have to be other similarities? Well it seems there are. An increasing number of Saga members, the over 60's, are taking the law into their own hands. Financial crime, drug and weapon crime and sexual offences (must be all these purple pills available on the Internet) are on the up for pensioners, so much so that elderly prison wings are going to be the thing to go for in penal institutional architecture, fitted out with stairlifts and wheelchair ramps. Plus prison staff will also need to learn how to deal with prisoners who suffer from dementia problems and don't know why they are there or even just Why?. Will that sad infirmitythat become a legitimate and genuine defence in court? "My client doesn't remember a thing about the night of the 11th , mi lud."
The Guardian suggests the reasons for this significant increase in older-person crime could be because pensions aren't enough to live off in today's climate of increased VAT and fuel bills. The Internet makes scams easier to set up and courts are getting tougher on older criminals. It also points out that it's not only Britain where the phenomenon exist : the same has been happening in Holland, Japan, France and Israel. Increased customers on Saga Holidays and Cruises another reason then?
No figures exist as far as I know for penioner pugilists in Barcelona, though I did once see an irate abuela almost club a pink shirtless tourist to death with her brolly as he crossed the Ramblas with his mates. But things are clearly changing. Published crime figures show that a highly respecatable area of Barcelona like Sarria is now statistically regarded as a high crime area even though it's mainly populated by the over 70's. Gym chain, Dir, have classes every morning for the Evergreens in its upper Diagonal area premises. Maybe it should stop training them in Body Balance, Karate and Kick-boxing though. It's obviously putting ideas into their heads and over-toughening their aging bodies.
Soon young people will have to move downtown to safer places like Cuitat Vell and Trinitat where there will be fewer chances of being robbed and violated. Or run down by wild pensioners gunning their Porsches and Ferraris. Soon we'll also have 70 year olds whispering psst! as you walk up Via Augusta while pulling out plastic wrapped comforters from their shopping trolleys. A perfect cover. It's going to play hell with the city's demographics in a year or two. Its clubs and bars will be full of randy old greybeards fuelled on Viagra and Cialis leching after young women and swigging Hot Chocolate cocktails. What? They already are? OK forget that then. Certainly you can expect to see an increase of leather-jacketed Segway riders hanging out in L'Illa, sporting labels on their backs like "Turro Park Grannies" or "Les Corts Angels.
It's not going to be pleasant then for us good law-abiding types working our nuts off - I'd hate to be a Mosso in the next two or three years if Spain follows the current trend. But then maybe there's no need to worry yet as the country is always the last one to follow norms and trends. It will be the last to observe smoking bans in public places so why should it send its glamorous grannies to solicit on las Ramblas?
