king-ghidorah, that colchester-thingy listing of European laws has circulated on the net for many years now. I am of the opinion that whomever assembed that list, years ago, must've simply sent out a letter to consolates or a govt. official or whatever, in each country, asking "what are the laws about metal detecting in your country?". And if you scroll through that list, you can see that there are dire sound consequences, limitations, if not downright "no's" from nearly all of them. All except perhaps England anyhow.
True story: Several years back, I had a used metal detector listed on a web-classified listing. An interested person in Spain responded. He explained that the particular out-of-production model I was selling, was still a popular one in his hunting circles, so they had to buy USA, as there were no dealers of this brand in his area. As this fellow and I exchanged emails to prepare to sell and ship, my curiousity go the better of me. I too, like you, pulled up that Colchester list of European laws, and saw that in Spain, it seemed that it was all but illegal. So, as a side-note, just out of curiousity, I asked this buyer "I thought metal detecting was illegal in Spain?" and I linked him to that site. He replied back that those laws only apply to public lands. They would not apply to private land (like farmer's fields, etc...) with permission. And he also frankly told me that they detect "way back in the forests", where there is just no one to care, to begin with. He said that as long as you aren't snooping around obvious historical sites, getting into archaeological pits, or being some other kind of nuisance, that those laws really only applied to exporting national treasures type stuff. He said that there were clubs, dealers there, etc... So no, he said it is not illegal to detect in Spain.
Another example: Back in the very early 1980s, Fisher Co. used to have a monthly or quarterly periodical. One of the pages in each edition was a Q&A column. In one edition, someone had written in a queery, saying they were getting ready to vacation to Mexico, and wanted to know if detecting was legal there on the beaches. The editor's answer was in a few paragraphs entitled something like: "When travelling to Mexico, leave the detectors at home". The editor then went on to detail how detecting was NOT legal in Mexico, blah blah blah. Here's where it got strange though: In the FOLLOWING edition, several others had written in to this Q&A column asking things like "Since WHEN?" and "Where did you get your information?" "Who told you this? We detect there all the time and never have a problem" etc..... The column editor, in response to the persons who took exception to their earlier answer, gave this response: When they had fielded the earlier inquiry, they merely went to some Mexican consolate or govt. official type over there ....... AND ASKED! Doh! (I mean, who better to ask, than Mexico themselves, right? haha) Fisher was merely passing on the answer they received. But the letter writers insisted that metal detectors are a common site on tourist beaches there, and they had never had any problems. Also all the major manufacturers have dealers in Mexico, INCLUDING FISHER! Doh! All I can figure, is that whomever answered Fisher's earlier inquiry, must've had things like antiquities laws (that would be a far stretch to apply to modern beach-goer-fumble fingers losses), pyramaids, shipwrck salvor stuff, etc... in mind.
