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By Humphrey Carter

THE so-called second fiesta of Boxing Day is only celebrated in the Balearics and Catalonia while the rest of Spain, and most of the world, returns to work.

With the debate now raging about having more flexible trading hours in the Balearics, will such moves go as far as high streets opening on Boxing Day?
Granted, it is also a Bank Holiday in the UK, but that has not led to a complete shut down of the country.
Who knows, Palma could have been humming with Boxing Day shoppers yesterday and retailers may have welcomed a bit of extra recession-busting cash.
Northern Europeans who have come to Palma for Christmas will have surely been miffed to have found the capital totally closed for the second consecutive day - only a handful of restaurants could be bothered to open.

Palma 365, the council's plan to breath life into the city every day of the year for the benefit of residents and tourists is going to eventually go down in history as a slogan which sounded great like the now infamous, but sadly somewhat hard to believe in Majorca, “a tourist a friend”.

The island's administrations need to look North, study the habits of the millions of Northern Europeans who come to Majorca every year and cater for their demands, adapt to their lifestyles and then, perhaps, Palma 365 might work.