PRO FOOTBALL / DAILY REPORT : RAIDERS : Shell Playing It as a Working Vacation

It’s tough for the Raiders to look at the blue waters of the Mediterranean outside the windows of their Barcelona hotel, watch sailboats lazily cruising through the calm waters, see the vacationers stretched out on the long beaches and remember that they are supposed to be in training camp.

But once he has them out there, Coach Art Shell has been working his players hard in their one daily practice session. They went nearly three hours Friday, an hour longer than a normal session in Oxnard.

“We want to let them enjoy it over here,” Shell said. “This is a place they may never get to again.

“But I also hammer into their minds that they are still in training camp and they have got a game to play.”

It also helps that Sunday’s game against the Denver Broncos is the Raiders’ first of the exhibition season.

What if it was the last?

“I wouldn’t do it,” Shell said. “We wouldn’t be here.”

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Shell plans to give starting quarterback Jeff Hostetler at least one quarter of work Sunday. But probably not much more. Shell wants to shield Hostetler, who took a beating last season, as much as possible until the regular season. . . . Wide receiver Alexander Wright, suffering from a pulled calf muscle, has started jogging but won’t play Sunday.