A British family in Andalucia handed over a car for what they thought was a straightforward ITV check-up job. Almost two and a half years later they still have no car, no refund and a paper trail that now only points towards an inevitable future court date.

Bernie and Earl say they trusted a British mechanic in Benamaurel, Granada Province, in April 2024 to get their Mercedes ready for Spain’s compulsory ITV roadworthiness test. What followed, they say, was a transfer to an officially recognised Mercedes workshop in Guadix, thousands of euros of work they never authorised, an insurance claim opened with Earl’s personal details without permission, and months of each party pointing at the other. Earl, a construction worker, now has no choice but to do the family Lidl run on an electric scooter. That shop feeds two adults, two teenagers, four rescue dogs and three rescue cats.

How an ITV job turned into 29 months without a car

April 2024 was meant to be a routine hand-over. The Brit mechanic took the car “in good faith for ITV-related work,” the family say. By June they were told it had to be taken to a main dealership. They later concluded that step was not necessary. Transfer went through an insurance process using Earl’s personal details, which he at no point signed over, and which he says he was misled into agreeing.

October 2024, according to the family, the mechanic took €1,000 under false pretences. That money went onto a workshop account without Earl’s authority and has never come back. Late 2024 into early 2025, they say, roughly €4,000 of work was billed in Earl’s name without his knowledge. The dodgy mechanic acted as go-between while the owners were shut out of decisions about their own vehicle.

Bernie puts the clock plainly: “the car arrived at a Mercedes workshop Guadix 26 months ago, after almost three months with the first mechanic. We have therefore been without the car for approximately 29 months altogether.”

Spanish workshop and Brit mechanic still point at each other

The paperwork, the family insist, is awkward for everyone involved. Earl had been put on the register as the owner in the dealership’s internal system, and as the official client since December 2023, although he signed nothing. Decisions, authorisations and costly work still went through a third party and without his knowledge or permission.

April 2025 brought a written line from the Mercedes workshop in Guadix, via Mercedes-Benz Spain, that they had been misled by the mysterious British mechanic and that he bore responsibility. After that letter, the family say, the dealership still refused key documents on “data protection” grounds, kept the disputed €1,000, and left the car on its property. Mercedes-Benz Spain and Mercedes-Benz Germany have since said responsibility sits solely with the workshop and is nothing to do with them. Neither the British workshop owner, nor the Guardix taller have been contactable by telephone for comment in recent months.

The Brit mechanic, they add, has “effectively gone to ground.” In February 2025 he opened an insurance claim through the insurance company using Earl’s details without any consent. Findings from that claim were later used, the family say, to try to wash his hands of the matter in OMIC proceedings.

A complaint was then made against the family. They had to attend a police station and rely on their 12-year-old daughter to translate. They believe parts of that complaint were falsified.

Trusting a local professional because he speaks English

Professional expats on the coast are many, and the majority are pros, providing exceptional service, and are easy to communicate the nuances of what the customer needs and wants. But, inevitably, amongst the flock there’s always a black sheep giving everyone a bad name. One that promises the earth and delivers nothing. Cowboy traders whom we are left wondering if they really wanted to move to Spain, or they just weren’t wanted back home anymore.

Some, because of the language difficulties, know there is a captive market in Spain of expats who are not 100 per cent with the lingo, and can easily fall into the trap of trusting a slippery character who claims that not only does he know the language, culture and laws perfectly, but that he will help bridge the gap for you. Among the gems, there’s always a rotten egg who ruins it for everyone – and keeps the cash, of course.

Earl’s employment has taken a hit without having a proper vehicle. Official routes have already been used: OMIC, the Junta de Andalucia and the data protection agency. Advice now is that judicial proceedings may be the only route left.

What Spanish garage law actually requires

Spain is not a free-for-all if you know the rules. Workshops must give a written estimate, a deposit slip when they take the keys, and an itemised invoice. Authorised work is supposed to come from the owner, not from whoever happens to be chatting in English in the waiting area.

Consumer offices exist for a reason. Andalucia’s official path starts with a hoja de reclamaciones, then OMIC (OMIC is the local town-hall consumer office, or Oficina Municipal de Información al Consumidor) or Ministerio de Consumo if the workshop dodges a proper answer. Junta guidance is here: Reclamaciones – Junta de Andalucia and Como presentar una reclamacion.

ITV itself is a separate, tightly policed test, not a blank cheque for a mate-of-a-mate to disappear with your keys. Recent EWN reporting on inspection integrity includes Bribes, arrests and unsafe cars: ITV scandal rocks Spain. Damage during an official inspection has its own liability rules, covered in Who takes responsibility for vehicles damaged during an ITV?.

Trust, language and the risk of betrayal

Plenty of British residents in Spain still put their trust in a familiar accent when a car needs work or their house needs repairs. That shortcut can feel safer than a Spanish-only taller where maybe not everything is fully understood. This article is a reminder that a shared passport is not a professional qualification, and that “I’ll handle the dealership for you” can become a wall between owner and workshop.

None of this article finds the British mechanic, Guadix workshop or insurance company guilty in a courtroom. It reports what the family say they can document: unauthorised work, money that did not come home, a car still sitting in Guadix (somewhere), and a family man left doing the big shop on two wheels.

Bernie is not asking for sympathy. She wants the keys to her car, the €1,000 handed over in confidence, and a straight answer about who authorised what after Earl was already placed the books as client without his knowledge. Until a judge or a workshop manager breaks the deadlock, that car and work on it remains a very expensive local story in Granada province.

Red and white took over Casemates Square on Thursday as Gibraltar celebrated National Day without the old barbed-wire Verja in the way. Crowds sang Llevame donde naci’ and God Save the King, paper confetti flew, and a drone show waited for nightfall. It looked like a chapter had closed. Brussels, though, still has a vote sitting in the diary.

This was also Fabian Picardo’s last National Day as Chief Minister after 15 years. Europe’s The Final Countdown kicked off his walk onto the stage. He told the square the countdown for him had started for real, then promised he would keep turning up every 10 September anyway.

Flags, anthems and a farewell on Casemates

Gibraltarians had already filled the Rock in red and white for hours before the speeches. Picardo made a point of naming people who could not be there: residents at Mount Alvernia, patients at St Bernard’s Hospital and Calpe House, students and workers abroad, and those on shift so everyone else could celebrate. “You are not just watching National Day. You are National Day,” he said.

History sat under the party. Sixty years after Franco shut the frontier, and 59 years after the 1967 referendum, Picardo went back to that vote. His parents and grandparents, he said, backed Britain knowing phones could go dead and families could be split by a fence. “They did not vote for an easy life. They voted for the right to decide their own.”

Brexit still hangs over that story. Ninety-six per cent of Gibraltarians voted to stay in the EU in 2016. “It was not our decision to leave. It became our problem.” That problem, he added, ate a decade of government time.

Then came the line he has used for years: “Not a grain of our land. Not a drop of our water. Not a breath of our air.” He said the deal now in force on a temporary basis gives a fluid frontier and legal certainty for business, with “not a single concession” on exclusively British sovereignty. He said it five times. “Not one. Not a small one. Not a technical one. Not a hidden one. Not one.”

UK MPs were in the square this time, not just on a video link. Labour’s Amanda Martin, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Gibraltar, led a cross-party group that also included Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Reform. Picardo thanked them from the stage as the people “who have never let us down”.

King Charles III sent a letter praising Gibraltarians’ “strength and steadfastness” after Brexit and pointing to environmental co-operation under the new arrangement. Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s message from Downing Street included the line that landed best: “Nothing about Gibraltar without Gibraltar.” Picardo grabbed it at once. “Those five words are the whole story of the last 15 years.”

He still has one more official trip as Chief Minister to the UN Fourth Committee in New York next month. Gibraltar remains on the list of non-self-governing territories, and he said that fight is not over.

For more of his wording from this week, see Euro Weekly News’ Chief Minister’s National Day Message 2026. Readers who want the midnight scene when the fence came down in July can go back to the Gibraltar border fence falls as families and neighbours cross together.

Open frontier, unfinished paperwork

Daily life has already changed. Routine checks at the land crossing with La Linea disappeared after the UK–EU agreement on Gibraltar went into provisional application on 15 July. Shops on the Rock have since reported a jump in euro takings from Spanish day-trippers, as covered in the Gibraltar shops report, with sales rocketing after the border comes down.

‘Provisional’ is the word that matters. Formal conclusion on the EU side still needs European Parliament consent, then a Council decision. File 2026/0058(NLE) is in its preparatory phase, with an indicative plenary date of 14 December 2026.

Six Spanish MEPs, Francisco Jose Millan Mon, Antonio Lopez-Isturiz White, Gabriel Mato, Nicolas Pascual de la Parte, Juan Ignacio Zoido Alvarez and Borja Gimenez Larraz, have tabled an amendment so Parliament would refuse that consent rather than grant it. Their text does not kill the treaty on its own. It does put a political tripwire on the floor of the hemicycle.

If that amendment ever won, the Council could not conclude the agreement as planned. Past EU practice after a late “no”, SWIFT and a Morocco fisheries protocol, among them, has been to wind down provisional application once the other party is notified. That would put the open land border back under legal strain, just as the Entry/Exit System is already part of Europe’s frontier kit.

UK scrutiny is still running too. The treaty was laid at Westminster under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act; the first 21-sitting-day objection window runs to 22 October. A useful official explainer sits in the House of Commons Library briefing, and the published text is on GOV.UK. Euro Weekly News walked through the first working day of the new rules in Gibraltar. Border changes begin today, and the airport and police chase detail in Gibraltar travellers face airport checks.

Picardo’s line to the people was that the treaty is about how Gibraltar lives next to its neighbours, not about who those neighbours are. “We are still 100 per cent British. British. British. British.” He thanked Joseph Garcia, Michael Llamas, the negotiating team and Sir Joe Bossano, who he said taught him what self-determination actually costs.

Barbed wire is gone for now. A December vote in Strasbourg will show whether that is the new normal or only a summer and autumn without the fence.

Imagine being the person who discovers something unique, something that has never been seen by humans before. One moment you are out fishing; the next, you are looking at an animal that could change the scientific record.  That is exactly what happened off Costa Rica, where a sport fisherman encountered a bright tangerine-coloured nurse shark with startlingly pale eyes.

Instead of discovering a new shark species, however, researchers found something arguably more intriguing: an extremely unusual combination of pigmentation conditions that has never previously been documented in a nurse shark, and no, before you say it, its not AI, the shark is very much the real deal.

A shark unlike any other

The extraordinary encounter happened during a fishing trip near Tortuguero National Park on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. The shark was caught at around 37 metres below the surface and measured roughly two metres long.

Rather than keeping the unusual animal, the fishermen photographed it and released it back into the sea. Those photographs later gave scientists the chance to examine an animal that would otherwise have been almost impossible to study.  The shark was identified as a nurse shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum), a species normally found with grey-brown or yellow-brown colouring.

This one was dramatically different.

Its body was an intense yellow-orange, while its eyes appeared almost completely white. Scientists believe the unusual appearance is linked to xanthism, a rare pigmentation condition associated with an excess of yellow colouring, combined with signs of albinism, which affects the production of darker pigment. The combination is what makes this particular shark so remarkable. 

How did it become orange?

Colour is not simply decoration in the animal world, for many species, it can mean the difference between eating and being eaten. Nurse sharks spend much of their time close to the seabed, where their normal colouring can help them blend into their surroundings. They are generally slow-moving and feed on animals including fish and invertebrates.

So an adult shark carrying such a bright striking colour raises an obvious question: how did it survive long enough to reach adulthood? The Costa Rican shark was around 6.5 feet long when photographed, suggesting that its unusual colouring had not prevented it from successfully navigating life in the Caribbean. 

Scientists still do not know exactly what caused the unusual pigmentation. The conditions are generally associated with genetic factors, although researchers have noted that other influences may also deserve investigation. There was no genetic testing of the shark itself, so the precise mechanism behind its appearance remains unknown. 

A first for nurse sharks

The discovery is significant because the scientific report, published in Marine Biodiversity in 2025, describes it as the first documented case of xanthism in a nurse shark. It is also the first reported case of xanthism in a cartilaginous fish in the Caribbean, a group that includes sharks, rays and skates. That does not necessarily mean an orange shark has never existed before,  but this is the first documented case of one, it means scientists now have a evidence that they can use, examine and compare with future discoveries.

And that may be one of the most fascinating things about the encounter, the ocean is full of animals whose biology remains poorly understood, particularly when unusual individuals are rarely seen. One brightly coloured shark, photographed for a few moments before being returned to the water, has given researchers another small glimpse into just how much variation can exist within a familiar species. For now, the orange nurse shark is back somewhere beneath the Caribbean waves, and nobody knows whether another one just like it is quietly swimming nearby.