When I think of the European Union summit in Alcudia 25 years ago this week it reminds me how close I and my colleague Humphrey Carter came to being arrested. All the European Union leaders were attended the event in Alcudia from former British Prime Minister John Major to French leader Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
Security was tight to say the least especially as France was conducting nuclear trials in the Pacific and Chirac was greeted in Alcudia by an army of Greenpeace supporters. Now, returning to our near arrest, we headed to the summit media department to collect our press acrediations. I don’t think the press officer liked us too much because he asked us to return later with a whole series of documents which we did. I then asked him if our press passes would be ready soon, he replied “if you are not in hand cuffs, you will get your press cards.”
Rather worried we went away only to get a call from our offices telling us than a plain clothes policeman had being around asking if we really worked for the Majorca Daily Bulletin! We didn’t get much sleep that night because after all we did appear to be facing arrest! But thankfully the next day we did get our press passes from a rather apologetic press officer. And finally...on the final day there was a mass protest by Greenpeace and I couldn’t understand why many of the protesters were booeing me...then I discovered that my blazer jacket and grey trousers was rather similar to the outfits worn by a special undercover Spanish police squad!