2020 - Narcotrafico in Alicante?
Narcotrafico? (drug dealing?)
My oh my, what can happen to you! My website here is in English, edited by our distributor / agent, Bernard Ayling, who sold a lot of Tru-Tune tremolos for us in the early 80s in the USA. Still a good friend who grew up practically near Frankfurt, Germany, because his father worked there in the US military. Speaking perfect German, the man is very intelligent and has a good sense of humor. But I wanted to have the whole thing in Spanish and I remembered my old friend Ana (also mentioned before), who grew up in Switzerland and also speaks perfect German. At that time she worked for a distributor of guitars and guitar parts in Alicante, who often ordered things from us. More than twenty years ago she translated all our catalog texts into Spanish. Super lovely woman, educated and with a lot of detailed knowledge of our business. We hadn't seen each other for fifteen years, but I still had her phone number: "Hello Ana, Dieter here, what a surprise! "Dieter, how nice that you remember me!" "Of course I remember you. What are you doing anyway?" "Still in Alicante and working for an export company for fruits and fruits that we mainly export to Germany and Switzerland. Besides, I have been married for a long time and have two children" "Your German is still great! "Not as good as it used to be, especially since our export customers are practically all South Americans".
Then I told her of my wish for translation of the texts. Her answer: "I don't have much time, but I think I can do it for you." I e-mailed her the first texts from 1964 to 1978, then I called her again and asked if this was really possible for her. "Yes, yes, yes, I'll have a look at it in when I have some peace and quiet."
After two weeks without further contact I called again, but at the other end was an older, apparently slightly confused woman who asked me if I was calling from the land registry office about a property, and other babble that was incomprehensible to me. Another attempt. Ana answered the phone, but this older person could not explain herself - strange, because I could not have dialed the wrong number, the number was stored in my cell phone. Then I couldn't reach her for the next few weeks, always only an answering machine. I was worried. Ana had a page on Facebook that I had looked at: husband, two children, lots of photos. Called again several times, but always only the answering machine! I thought I'd take a look at her Facebook page to see if there was anything I could verify. But suddenly the page no longer existed!
In the evening I told Paloma this, who immediately expressed a strong suspicion: She knew that about two weeks before, there was a European-wide drug investigation, in which among other things narcotics dealers in Alicante had been arrested. It’s easy to see that by exporting fruit and vegetables you can of course also pack several kilos of cocaine or hashish into a few crates of tomatoes or bananas etc. Ana's customers in Germany and Switzerland were also all South Americans! Of course, none of this is verified, but I am guessing that this lady was either arrested or possibly escaped to Morocco with her husband and children.
Well, shortly after that I found another translator, a guitarist in Madrid who works as a night porter in a hotel and has plenty of time for this job. I e-mailed him all the existing texts and pre-translated them with a program called "DEEPL" (which is much better than Google). Let's see, what will become of it ...