It’s a little disconcerting, especially at night.
The digital road signs over the motorway in north-eastern Spain are usually as dull as they are everywhere else in the world. They tend to warn of congestion or an accident up ahead, speed limits or the weather.
Suddenly something unusual flashed up: “Highway Robbery!”, it declared in English (and Catalan, Spanish, and French). Highway robbery?
That phrase, for myself and many English folk on that stretch of road I’m sure, immediately conjured up images of Dick Turpin on his horse. That annoying Adam Ant song from the 1980s also came to mind: “Stand and deliver, your money or your life!”
Another memory flashed into my mind as that sign disappeared into the darkness of the empty road in my rear-view mirror.
When I was about 10, we went on a family road trip from the north-east of England to the south of France. Mam and dad in the front, my two brothers and I squeezed in the back trying hard not to fight for 1,000 miles or so.
I had a window seat and, in the days before smartphones, I was playing the game of making up words from car registration plates; FKN 3L, BLX 1T, etc.
We were in the dark somewhere well south of Paris, just another foreign family on the main road. There was very little other traffic around when a silver car drove up close behind at high speed and started flashing its lights and beeping its horn. My dad thought something mechanical must have been wrong, perhaps the back door was about to spring open and tip all the travel bags into the road?
So, after the driver kept beeping and flashing, dad pulled on to the hard shoulder. I watched from the window as two men got out of their car; one of them had something in his hand.
“Lock the doors!” dad said. So we did.
He opened his window, but only a tiny little bit. “Oui?”
The main guy barked something incomprehensible.
“No parle le French!” my dad replied.
Then – and my memory is in slow motion – the other man pointed what he had in his hand at the window; I saw it was a spray can and I heard the gas escape as he pressed the button.
It was probably mace.
My dad had had the presence of mind to keep the car in gear and his foot half-pressed on the accelerator. He slammed it to the floor, let out the clutch and we screeched away, leaving the two wannabe Dick Turpins on the hard shoulder.
I watched from the back window as they scrambled back in their car. They chased us for a while with their lights flashing, but there was no way we were stopping again. They soon gave up, overtook us and drove off at the next exit with a final angry toot.
Highway robbery is common on the main AP-7 artery that links Catalonia to France. That’s why the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police force, had lit up that highway robbery notice on the digital board.
The latest ruse involves the robbers alerting a motorist of a “puncture”. One thief will play the Good Samaritan and help to “repair” the tyre while an accomplice robs the car.
Targets – typically the elderly, lone travellers and tourists – will have been selected by another gang member, usually at a service station, who sends the licence plate to the highway robbers out on the road.
Police recorded 333 highway robberies on the AP-7 between April and July 2024 (there were 398 for the same period in 2023). They made 108 arrests. Many were repeat offenders who originate from the Balkans but who live in Barcelona.
It’s worth physically checking that your doors are actually locked at a stop on a service station, too, the police add, as a new trick involves jamming the signal from the remote so the doors stay open. The highway robbers can then rob your car at will.
“Never stop if someone tries to pull you over on the highway other than the police, for whatever reason,” a police spokesman told me. “Our advice is to dial the emergency 112 number. It’s a scam.”
Adrian Addison is a journalist living in Barcelona
