These policemen are well-intentioned, but on the whole ineffective, not from any fault of their own so much as from the conditions of their appointment and tenure of place. In Spain anything can be done by influence, and it is practically impossible to enforce the by-laws against a person in high place who chooses to break them. Not long ago I was at an exhibition, which a very great number of people had gone to see on that particular day. The municipal police were doing their best to make the crowd “pass along,” but at one point there was a block, caused by one or two well-dressed men who refused to move. I asked the policeman why he did not make them, and he replied that one of them was So-and-so (a person of local importance) and that if he said anything to him he would find himself dismissed the next day![20] In a certain town not long ago a body of police inspectors was established, whose duty it was to supervise the municipal police and report derelictions of duty, and as far as I could learn they were doing useful work. After about three months they all disappeared. On inquiry I was told that the reason of their suppression was that one of them had reported the carriage of some duke or marquis for obstructing the traffic, and that the indignant nobleman had insisted on and obtained the abolition of the force. The municipal police go off duty about 8 p.m., and are replaced by the _serenos_ or night-watchmen, who patrol the streets all night carrying a pike and a lantern, and in some towns still cry the hours. Hence their name, from their not unmusical cry, “_Las doce han dado y sereno_” (“twelve o’clock”--or whatever the hour is--“and a fine night.”) Alongside of the municipal police is what is known as the _Vigilancia_. It is they who have to deal with criminals of all sorts within their own districts, arrest pickpockets and other offenders, investigate thefts, murders, &c., and catch the guilty. To them the hotels report the arrival and departure of guests, and it is their business to find any persons who are wanted on extradition warrants. In short, they perform most of the ordinary police duties except those assigned to the municipal police. There is also a body of rural police, whose duty it is to patrol the country districts; they are few in number and not particularly effective. It is not often that one runs across any of them, even in their own districts.