No La Guerra and other Madrid, Spain Warning Or Danger Tips

While in Spain there were two major protest. Thousands and thousands of people protested the potential war in Iraq while on another day thousands more protested because of the devestating oil spill in the Galacia region of Spain!

I am sure somewhere else on VT you will learn about the ETA. I had no bad experiences here. You might also learn about a train bombing that occured in 2004. This one I think can be attributed to the US President George Bush's antics around the world.

Spain is a perfectly safe country in my view. I was very impressive with the millions of people in Spain that protested the war in Iraq.

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Madrid like many large european city does have its share of people just willing to take your money.

I was well warned before going to Madrid but do have a couple of experiences to share.

A colleague of mine was staring eye ball to eye ball with a well dressed man on the subway system. He didn't have a care in the world until he exited the train and realized several hundred dollars of his money was gone with his money clip. In this case he was somewhat at fault to have his money just sitting there unprotected in his pants pocket. This has to be the easiest way to loose your money.

My second experience was at the El Rastro. Nothing happened here however for several blocks I kept noticing the same guy on each corner staring at me and the people I was with. To me it was clearly obvious we were being followed, watched and targets to loose our money. Luckily we were aware enough to spot this, hung on tight and let them know we were aware of what was going on.

These people don't want an incident, that's not how they survive.

You can see from this picture people are glued together in some of these markets and everyone is being bumped making your pockets easy picking!

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When you are in Madrid if you are going to be in a lot of Museum or signifcant buildings like the Royal Palace be warned that camera flashes are not welcome!!

So a camera that takes good pics without a flash is important here.

I was on several tours and one in particular where people where on the last warning to be evicted if they didn't stop using a flash and there is plenty of security in these buildings to enforce the policy.

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