Staff and customers in a cafe in the southern Spanish city of Seville faced a harrowing ordeal earlier this week after a man set fire to the premises. According to ABC de Sevilla, a man set fire to the bar after the waiters told him they did not have any mayonnaise or ketchup for the sandwich he had ordered.
In response to the staff’s reply, the man left the premises – Las Postas Cafe-Bar, in Los Palacios y Villafranca – and entered a petrol station just 160 feet away. Shortly afterwards, he reappeared at the café with a 1.5-litre bottle filled with petrol and asked the waiters at the bar again if they had any sauce. After receiving the same answer, the man doused the bar with the fuel and set it on fire, according to footage released by the cafe owners. A ball of flames erupted just moments after.
The panicked customers – including several young children and elderly people – ran out of the packed establishment while one of the waiters grabbed a fire extinguisher to try to put out the flames. Thanks to the employee’s quick work and the fire brigade, thankfully, only material damage was reported.
Minutes later, the man – who has a criminal record – was arrested by Guardia Civil officers in a nearby square and has been brought before the courts. Before this could happen, he required treatment at a nearby health centre due to burns on his left arm, caused by the explosion he had caused. The footage shows the suspect rushing out the door with his left hand alight.
The man has reportedly caused £6,000 to £7,000-worth of damage.
Jose Antonio Caballero, owner of Las Postas Cafe-Bar where the incident occurred, described it as “surreal”. He told Spanish press: “The bar didn’t have a kitchen and the sandwiches came ready-prepared and we didn’t have sauces.
“At that moment he walked to the garage opposite, returned to the bar with a bottle in his hand which we discovered afterwards had petrol inside, and asked the first waiter: ‘Are you sure there’s no mayonnaise?’ without giving him time to reply.
“There’s no explanation for what happened. It was awful.”
The man has only been identified as a 50-year-old from the neighbouring province of Cordoba, but has not been named.
This incident on Wednesday comes after a 59-year-old British woman was arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting an Italian girl in the Spanish holiday hotspot of Malaga. The Brit allegedly sat next to the female child, who is under the age of 14, on Boulevard de La Cala in Mijas, a whitewashed village in Andalusia, on August 10.
She then proceeded to strike up a conversation with the victim in English to gain her trust. According to witnesses, the British woman then began touching the child, including intimate areas of her body, reports SUR.