A twenty-year partnership with the police

Twenty-two years have passed since Mercedes El Ibiari was approached by an employee at Torremolinos town hall, a foreign resident like herself, with an unexpected proposition. She told her that they were trying to set up a team of volunteers to help people in need of help at the National Police station in the town who could not understand or speak Spanish.

At first she thought it was an odd idea. "I had never worked with the police in my life," she said.

However, circumstances meant that she was already a pensioner "with a lot of energy" and had no intention of spending the rest of her life "sitting in a café, watching television or going on trips. So, she joined the project.

"I wanted to become integrated in society, to find out more about the place where I lived, which in a way was the homeland I had chosen," continued El Ibari.

With those intentions she went along to the Torremolinos-Benalmádena police station, where more than two decades later she is still offering her services, as always, asking for nothing in return.

"We didn't go on a course; we just started working with the police and with time we learned everything. But [the officers] also had to learn to trust us, to realise that we were reliable and always available from Monday to Friday and at weekends too, in the case of an emergency," she explained.

The partnership of police and interpreters has worked well over the years and received recognition on Tuesday this week at the celebrations to mark the day of the patron saints of the police, the Holy Guardian Angels, organised by the Torremolinos-Benalmádena police force.

There, Mercedes, along with four fellow volunteer interpreters - Anne Marie Fraser, Herminia Martín Molina, Judith Knowles and Susan Elisabeth Zorrilla - were presented with a badge of honour by commissioner, Antonio de Haro, for their "altruistic and selfless" work.

"We just want to help people," said Anne Marie Fraser. And that means helping both victims and arrested suspects.

Among them, the team of interpreters can help with translation in English, French, German and also Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. "We can cope well with most Europeans," they said.

The interpreters said that their work often brings them great satisfaction, but sometimes it is tough, for example when they have to intervene in cases of domestic violence. But they focus on the positive: "knowing that you have been able to help someone at a difficult time in their life".