deja-vu / nostalgia

I was pleasantly surprised to see this picture on Henri Berguis' blog just now:

I'm pretty sure that this is within a couple of hundred yards of the apartment block that I lived in about 18 years ago in La-Linea, Spain.

Back then, those seats on the waterfront were poorly maintained white-washed concrete blocks, some of which had fallen down towards the coast. The other side of those blocks used to be a rocky slope leading down to the water.

If you followed the road closer to the Gibraltar border, you could park your car on the road side and a group of gypsies would "look after" your car in exchange for a small fee (typically pocket change, if I remember correctly). If you felt that their protection wasn't worth much, you'd return to find that someone had indeed broken into your car and removed any valuables. I wonder if they're still protecting cars to this day?