The commander of the Guardia Civil in Ibiza and Formentera, Enrique Gómez Bastida, was very clear and concise when it came to the best advice for tenants and owners of tourist homes: "Use common sense". A message that would sound cliché if it were not for the fact that, as he pointed out, a large number of burglaries are caused by such naive carelessness as "leaving doors and windows open in houses or going to es Vedrà to see the sun gate and leaving the car open". And "with valuables in plain sight".
These situations "would not happen to tourists in their place of origin", but the relaxation of the holidays encourages this laziness. The commander, along with the head of public safety in Santa Eulària, Lieutenant Gabriel de la Coba, and agent Alejandro Fernández, from the telematic crime team (Editeco), were the protagonists of the conference on security in holiday homes held yesterday afternoon at the Centro Cultural de Jesús, organised by the Association of Tourist Homes of the Pimeef (Avat), in collaboration with the Santa Eulària Town Hall, the Consell de Ibiza and the insular directorate of the State Administration.
After the official introduction of the representatives of the respective public administrations, the commander went on to highlight the importance of the involvement of tourist homeowners in improving collective public safety. The first part of the talk focused on the tourist accommodation travellers' log book, which has been compulsory since the latest legislative changes to regulate the sector.
As with hotels, from 1 July, owners of holiday homes that carry out holiday rental activity are obliged to manage the log books and passenger entry reports in accordance with state regulations in order to hand them over to the National Police or the Guardia Civil. The commander recalled that "all of them, not just a few on behalf of the whole group".
This register allows that "if any of the clients has an arrest warrant, the Guardia Civil is notified immediately and can alert the owner". At this point, Gómez Bastida recalled the usefulness of this mechanism in a place like Ibiza, "where there are people who come repeatedly every summer to commit criminal acts".
"If there are robberies in the area," he explained, "you can find out which people with a criminal record are staying on the island. "That's why this logbook is as important to you as it is to us," he said.
Apps for reporting
The commander also explained to owners of tourist accommodation how to advise their clients who have been victims of crime, a situation that already "causes stress, but which can become more traumatic because of the language barrier and because they are on holiday". To reduce these negative consequences, he recalled that, in addition to the fact that the Guardia Civil switchboard can attend to tourists in several languages, new technologies have facilitated applications, such as Alertcops and other similar ones, to contact the security forces immediately and even file a complaint.
"The majority of crimes on the island, between 70 and 80%, can be reported electronically, such as theft and vehicle theft. "The user can choose their own language and even chat with the police, so in less than a minute, they can report an incident even if they don't know the telephone number to call or the language".
Three years
Lieutenant Gabriel de la Coba then explained the technical aspects that owners must complete when filling in the forms for the logbook. He explained that these must be kept for three years from the date of the last of the registration sheets, of which there must be a minimum of 100 and a maximum of 500. He also advised owners to use telematic means to transfer all the contents of the registration sheets, which the regulation will now oblige them to do.
Watch out for websites
For his part, the agent of the telematic crime team, Alejandro Fernández, reviewed the main crimes that take advantage of new technologies, such as bank and credit card scams and obtaining the PIN number of the victims. "They create non-existent houses through social networks to swindle with rentals", in the case of supply, while deception on the part of clients occurs above all "by paying with cheques without funds or making reservations with credit cards that are then cancelled".
For this reason, he warned that "we should always be wary of bank accounts in foreign countries", as well as "periodically check the websites of accommodation to see if there are any hackers who have misappropriated any advertisements". In addition, he insisted that owners should not provide any supposed client with "information about the holiday home that is already explained on the website" by telephone, as well as "keep all the original digital files, because they contain a lot of information".
Uncertainty
During the question and answer session, those present, some 70 people, expressed their fears about the difficulty of complying with the requirements demanded of them for the travellers' register book, especially when it comes to obtaining the documentation and conformity of each and every one of the tenants of the house, except for those under 16 years of age.
In this sense, several of the owners recalled that, given the characteristics of this offer in chalets, they are usually rented to groups of people and "many times a couple arrive on one side, others after a few hours or the next day" or even "some leave the island and then return if they rent the house for several days". I understand it's a tedious job," the commander admitted, "but remember it's for the general good of security".
And the mistress?
During this question and answer session, an Italian assistant provoked widespread laughter by asserting that registering all the tenants of a holiday home could cause a flight of tourists due to jealousy and infidelity. "Fifty per cent of people don't come with their regular partner, they come with their lover and they will stop coming if they have to register it as a hotel, that's why they come to the villas.
"It's more fun to be in a house with a swimming pool and peace and love, otherwise we go to the Vatican," he said. The commander's retort got even more laughter: "You can guarantee your client that the police will not call his spouse.
Zidane
Another attendee expressed his concern to the Guardia Civil about thefts from country houses and asked if the number of staff would be increased. The commander then recalled that Zinedine Zidane "in December they asked him to change the goalkeeper and half the squad and he said he was dead set on that team". "I'm the same, demand effectiveness from me, don't ask me for guards, ask me for service and results," he concluded.
SOURCE: DIARIO DE IBIZA, 8 JUNE 2018
Josep Àngel Costa - Eivissa
