I'm afraid that of all the foreign travel we do from our office, the only problem in recent years was in Madrid - one of our staff violently attacked and robbed in a "tourist area" bar, seriously injured and ended up in a grim hospital. Fortunately in a few hours the client's local directors became involved and he was moved on to a decent private clinic.

As ever locals blame the problem on incomers and we were told the problem was with those who came over to Madrid from North Africa. But for some reason in the major Spanish cities (not so much the resort towns) this seems to be a problem the authorities have not got to grips with. Certainly here in London Americans are very free to "act as Americans" without a problem, none of this having to pretend to blend in stuff.