There´s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.

By Christine Johansson

This week I had a letter from a company offering me a gold plated cross from Caravaca and a Nordic duvet. I would get these stupendous gifts simply by attending a talk at a local hotel on a subject of great interest about health. I thought an extra duvet could be quite useful but to get it I had to be accompanied by my other half. So he was duly roped in.

We set off at 9.45  one Saturday morning and arrived to find a throng of other pensioners, perhaps 80 all-told, the majority Spanish, waiting in the lobby. A rep from the company took us up to the fifth floor and presented the speaker, a smart woman who I estimated to be in her mid 40s. She wore a white lab coat and seemed very professional.

The talk introduced a product based on using magnetic fields to get rid of the body’s accumulation of oxidisation and allowing it to regenerate new cells. Several people in the audience testified to the efficacy of the product, having bought at earlier meetings, and she herself revealed that she was in her early 50s, claiming to looking much fresher and feeling much healthier since she started using the machine in question.

Now, I don’t know one way or the other whether the product really does what was claimed (though Rafa Nadal had testified in a sports paper she showed to us that the magnetic treatment had cured a shoulder problem). But when it came to the nitty gritty, I just don’t have 1500 spare euros to risk on trying it out to see. Neither did most of the people there. We’d come for the duvets.

The lady talked non-stop, sketched on a whiteboard and fielded questions from 10.30 until 12.50! By 12.00, people were fidgeting, getting up, and going to the loo; yawning and one or two seemed to be nodding off. She kept on relentlessly, underlining repeatedly the wonders wrought by the magnificent machine until, at last, she said she would now be prepared to answer individual queries and take orders. I didn’t see anyone crushed in the rush to the order forms.

We had to hang on for another 25 minutes before we were let out and handed our “free” gifts, which we felt we really deserved after going through what amounted to severe brainwashing. The talk was, of course, in Spanish so I suppose it was good practice but more than 2 hours rapid-fire hard sell in a foreign language is a touch wearing, to say the least. I can now see why people buy time-shares, just to be able to leave!

Armed with our Caravaca Cross and Nordic Duvet, we legged it to the nearest bar for wine and tapas (coffee by that time just wouldn’t have done it!)  Husband declares he will never set foot in another demo talk. I hope the duvet is OK!

Guest Blogger:

Christine Johansson is a British Expat now living in Spain after spending 30 years in Sweden where she met her Swedish husband.