Letter from Trafalgar Conor PopeTrafalgar is quiet this week. No tall ships have gathered off the rocky headland nearly 40km along the coast from the Spanish port of Cadiz to engage in mock battles commemorating the British victory over Napoleon's Mediterranean fleet 200 years ago in October.
There have been no stirring speeches and no rallies. In fact, the small headland, littered as it is with liquor bottles and cigarette packets, could scarcely look any less like the site which gave its name to one of the most pivotal battles in European history.
The sails billowing in the warm Mediterranean breezes today belong not to cannon-laden frigates engaged in a battle for naval dominance, the outcome of which would ultimately save England from Napoleon's invading fleet and resonate for more than 100 years. Now the sails belong to the flotillas of kite surfers who gather at Trafalgar to surf the waves, drink cheap rum and smoke cheaper marijuana smuggled across the Bay of Cadiz from nearby Tangiers.
They have migrated here from the more popular surfer town of Tarifa, pushed out by higher accommodation costs and larger crowds competing for the same stretches of surf. With just a lighthouse and a couple of hostels and bars here, there's precious little to distract the kite surfers from the tasks at hand - smoking and flying.
The sea is still wild and the winds that blow inland from the east, known locally as El Levante, make the waves exhilarating, at least for the surfers. For the thousands of North Africans who attempt each year to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, locally called the Strait of Death, and enter Spain without papers, the waves must be terrifying.
That terror is justified. Since 1989, when the first 18 bodies were found on an Andalusian beach near Tarifa, more than 2,000 bodies, mostly North Africans, have washed up on the Spanish coast stretching from Gibraltar, down to Tarifa, past Trafalgar and along the coast to the popular tourist resort of Conil de la Frontera. Similar numbers have been found dead along the Moroccan coast, and it is impossible to ascertain how many people have been claimed by neither coast but swept out on strong Atlantic currents.
For tourists on day trips from Spain to Morocco, the price of a ferry ticket costs just €20 and the 14km sea crossing lasts no more than 20 minutes. For los ilegales, the price is much higher. Many of those attempting to make the crossing illegally have paid relatively vast sums - of between €1,000 and €1,500 - to organised criminal gangs to secure passage.
The traffickers have no regard for human safety and routinely pile upwards of 30 people into small wooden fishing boats, better equipped to carry six. They are then set loose to traverse the Strait, made treacherous by the confluence of Mediterranean and Atlantic currents.
The 40 horsepower boats are rarely a match for the sophisticated military technology at the disposal of the Spanish authorities and thousands have already been stopped, detained and deported this year.
Border patrols employ increasingly sensitive satellite technologies, military aircraft and high-speed boats to track the progress of the illegal immigrants and hold them in compounds pending repatriation once they land. Assuming they are lucky enough to land. Frequently, however, the boats break up far offshore and all that washes up are shoes, clothes, and pieces of flimsy, broken wood.
The tourists in nearby Conil rarely notice this flotsam and jetsam of broken lives. Nor are they overly concerned by the historical shadows cast by Trafalgar, 12km to the east. The past and the murky present have little appeal to people who have discovered the town, surely one of Spain's best kept secrets.
Much of it is fairly modern but it still looks like an ancient Andalusian white town. It boasts huge stretches of sandy beaches and eco-friendly tourist resorts and remains largely unvisited by the swarming armies of English, German, Dutch and Irish tourists. There are no all-day fry-ups, bratwurst or Irish bars in sight. And no signposts pointing towards Trafalgar.
Of course the 200th anniversary hasn't gone entirely unnoticed here. This week Spain sent an aircraft carrier and a frigate to take part in the staged battles off Portsmouth despite the fact that historians and some contemporary social commentators regard the loss at Trafalgar as a enormous disaster, the consequences of which are still being felt today.
While the faintly comical and ridiculously PC war games between the red and blue armies - colour coded lest anyone be offended - have largely been ignored this week in Andulusia in general and Trafalgar in particular, they have generated much patriotic interest and flag waving in Britain, an indication, perhaps, that England, as ever, expects.