Tourist guides hold back coach for an hour in demo

A group of about 20 tourist guides staged a demo outside a leather shop in Inca, and retained a coach carrying tourists for about an hour. They were protesting against the organisation of excursions without official guides. The official guides asked the person in charge of the coach tour for her credentials, at which she called the Local Police, who arrived with the Guardia Civil. Loli Garcia, vice president of the tourist guide association, said that they knew that the company in question, Mallorca Tours, makes weekly excursions without an official guide. She added that it was not their intention to annoy the tourists who had paid for the excursion, and they told the company owner, who went to the scene, that the coach could leave provided an official guide travelled with it. Garcia said he refused on the grounds of cost, and the coach was held up in Inca until noon. The official guides say that there are three or four agencies which organise excursions without official guides and they have complained on various occasions to the ministry of labour, to no avail.