Jon Clarke is a Londoner who worked at the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday as an investigative journalist before moving to Spain in 2003 where he helped set up the Olive Press.
After studying Geography at Manchester University he fell in love with Spain during a two-year stint teaching English in Madrid.
On returning to London, he studied journalism and landed his first job at the weekly Informer newspaper in Teddington, covering hundreds of stories in areas including Hounslow, Richmond and Harrow.
This led on to work at the Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Mirror, Standard and even the Sun, before he landed his first full time job at the Daily Mail.
After a year on the Newsdesk he worked as a Showbiz correspondent covering mostly music, including the rise of the Spice Girls, the rivalry between Oasis and Blur and interviewed many famous musicians such as Joe Strummer and Ray Manzarak, as well as Peter Gabriel and Bjorn from Abba on his own private island.
After a year as the News Editor at the UK’s largest-selling magazine Now, he returned to work as an investigative journalist in Features at the Mail on Sunday.
As well as tracking down Jimi Hendrix’ sole living heir in Sweden, while there he also helped lead the initial investigation into Prince Andrew’s seedy links to Jeffrey Epstein during three trips to America.
He had dozens of exclusive stories, while his travel writing took him to Jamaica, Brazil and Belarus.
He is the author of three books; Costa Killer, Dining Secrets of Andalucia and My Search for Madeleine.
Contact jon@theolivepress.es
Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)
Every time the number of policemen increases criminality increases too. The simple reason is that more police register more crime. I think that the trouble with Spain is the amount of “unseen” crime.
Sweden is a very organized society where every mishap gets noted. It is also a very safe country with very little crime experienced by its population.
Southern Europe isn’t well-known for its low levels of criminality in spite of these official statistics. People do not trust their police enough to report all crime or to be witness in cases against organized crime. Hence no crime reported and nice statistics.
You know what they: You have lies, big lies and statistics.
What Ernesto is saying is absolutely correct. My wife and I fled GREECE because of unbearably HIGH crime rates. We had 5 times of theft (car, home, my wife’s car, my mother in law, my sister). Did I report it to police? Yes. Did police do something about it? NO!!
The day my wife and I decided to move was when two children were kidnapped from our neighborhood in Athens for ransom. This case was not even reported as police after the kidnapping of a shipowner whose wife paid the exorbitant amount of 30 million Euro (!!!!) put a lid on releasing information about them in the fear of bad press about Greece… (you see freedom of speech does not work in Greece)… Luckily the kids were returned home against an amount of 150,000 Euro for which the entire neighborhood had to pitch in….By the way, in Greece only shipowners get the assistance of police. This case was reported but no assistance was given….
So Good Bye Greece. Good luck with your lawlesness…. and your statistics!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ernesto is correct, too few good police and an overwhelmed court system means few convictions. Perhaps you could report on that or is the Olive Press going a bit SurinEnglish?
These figures do not represent the true picture. Most crime in Spain is not reported and denuncias are not made. Spain has the highest number of domestic violence against women in Europe and even when these poor women do what the government advise (use the special phone number to report it) nothing gets done so they get murdered. This aspect of crime in Spain is a national disgrace.
Don’t kid yourselves, even in the “crime-free” rural villages in Andalucia there is plenty of crime. Drugs are rampant and so is the crime that goes with this blight on society.