93 extra national police on patrol this summer

This summer a total of 1.400 new National Policemen and women have been recruited to boost policing in Spain's top tourist resorts by a third and the Balearics, especially Palma, now have an extra 93 officers on the beat. While the main aim has been to increase the level of safety for tourists, in the case of Palma, the extra National Police have also formed part of the special royal protection operation which swung into action this week ahead of the gradual arrivals of the Spanish royal family and guests, which will include members of other European royal families. National Police chief, Juan Cotina, said yesterday that Operation Summer this year is costing an extra 500 million pesetas. One of the new additions to Operation Summer this year is a multilingual emergency telephone number (902 102 112). Since June 21, when the new service was introduced, multilingual police telephonists have dealt with 639 calls, 78 from Germans and 54 from Britons.