As it turned out, the primary contact form was delivering plenty of SPAM. I never figured out WHY it began as soon as I implemented the new template. Does anyone know if there is a software or web platform available to test form against spambots? I couldn't find one.
Al any rate, ended up adding a simple SPAM trap with an html/text driven captcha which seems to be doing the trick and is not as user-unfriendly as reCaptcha. I posted a tutorial
here. Feedback welcome and hope it helps. It's implemented
here.