David Landau

In the middle of October 2015, while passing through an alley adjacent to the cathedral in Granada (see map), we noticed on the pavement a yellow, of what we thought was, a mailbox. Having several stamped postcards to send, we asked a merchant there whether we can put them in this box and she nodded yes. So we inserted them through the slot.

While other cards we left at the hotel desk a day earlier reached their destinations long time ago, those cards we ‘posted’ in Granada have never arrived. They are gone.

The only theoretical explanation I have come up with is that one of the merchants around put the look-alike mail box there in order to collect stamped postcards from unsuspecting tourists. In the evening he or she opens the box, remove the stamps from the cards, and throw the cards away. The stamps he sells.

If my theory is correct, then this is a perfect scam; after all, who will come back to look for the missing cards? There is no point to complain to the local tourist office; what can they do? After all, they will not embark on an expensive sting operation.

So my advice is not the insert stamped postcards into the slot of a yellow box that looks like a mailbox standing on the pavement in an alley adjacent to the Cathedral of Granada; they will probably never leave Granada.

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