Your weekly news catch up in Mallorca

Ah, the summer fiestas, joyous occasions replete with al fresco street dinners of neighbourhood conviviality, ball de bot folk dancers reminding us all of a cultural heritage, demons being dastardly but only pretending. Times for whole families, with the general exception of the “nit jove”, the youth night with local pop and rock groups and DJs blaring out until the wee small hours and the local youth misbehaving.

It used to be that there were certain fiesta events more than others which were flashpoints. For some unknown reason, tiny Biniali once found that it was a magnet for youthful troublemakers in early July. Given incidents over the past days, it would seem that anywhere is now likely to host a fiesta-time scrap. First we had Esporles, where local youths clashed with ones from out of town. There hadn’t in fact been a nit jove, a suggestion as to the cause of the fight in the centre of the village around 6am being that it was drugs-related. When there subsequently was a nit jove, police reinforcements were brought in.

In Puerto Soller, meanwhile, three youths, not residents of Soller, were set upon by a group who were residents that increased to a total of thirty. This was on the beach. They managed to get away, only to be confronted by ten of this mob when they were attempting leave Soller. A bottle was used in the fight, and one of the three was admitted to Son Espases Hospital given the nature of his injuries.
In Palma, the district of S’Aranjassa specifically, the fiestas were marred by a mass brawl that involved some one hundred youths. What seemed to start out as a ruck between rival groups from Arenal and Es Pil-lari developed into something altogether more serious around 3am last Saturday. It was said that youths from other parts of Palma had arrived for a fight.

Drunken tourists

If nothing else, these fiesta set-tos were a reminder that it isn’t only drunken Brits and Germans on holiday in Magalluf and Arenal who can create disorder. And nor could we conclude for certain that it was Brits and Germans overwhelming hospital emergencies because of alcohol poisoning, fights and overdoses. The doctors union only referred to “foreign tourists”.

The overload in public health hospital emergencies isn’t because there are more cases. It has to do with the fact that an arrangement for admitting foreign tourists to emergencies at private clinics has come to an end. The Balearic health ministry had introduced this arrangement during the pandemic. The doctors union is arguing that it should have been kept in place. It was a measure “that was working”.

The security forces have otherwise been kept busy by incidents such as one in a hotel in Manacor. The hotel wasn’t named and nor was the resort, this having been the case of the 45-year-old Irish woman who was arrested by the National Police for child neglect. The woman was said to have been drunk from morning to night and to have gone out and left her five-year-old daughter in the hotel. A couple with a child of similar age took it upon themselves to look after the girl. When the police were finally called in, the woman was so drunk she could barely stand up. The father arrived from Ireland the following day, the child having been taken in for a time by social services.

All Covid measures finally end

Other arrangements during the pandemic have also come to an end. The last remaining Covid measures were lifted by the Spanish government at a Tuesday cabinet meeting.

One of these concerned the wearing of face masks. While people could understand these continuing to be obligatory in health centres and hospitals, there was far less understanding when it came to pharmacies. Many people had been ignoring the requirement anyway, visitors were unaware that there was one, and pharmacies had given up trying to enforce it. Anyway, masks are no longer required in pharmacies, health centres and hospitals, this having been a nationwide rule, unlike smoking on bar and restaurant terraces. The ban on smoking did originally apply to the whole country, but regions were subsequently given the option to scrap it or maintain it. Only two regions kept the ban in place - Valencia and the Balearics. The Spanish government has now ended the possibility of a ban, so smoking is once more permitted on terraces in Mallorca.

There are bars which are trying out smoke-free policies. These have to rely on smokers’ goodwill, as they can’t be enforced, as is the case with smoke-free beaches, where the environmental damage from cigarette ends is every bit an issue as public health. Still, beaches in the Balearics continue to pop up high among the rankings when best-of lists are produced, the latest one from Lonely Planet having placed Es Trenc in Campos at number four in Spain.

We’ll see if Es Trenc continues to command a high place if a provision of the plan for the Es Trenc Nature Park is enforced - not removing posidonia sea grass remains even in summer.

New administrations taking over

Various projects and policies could of course now change because of new administrations. In Palma, the Partido Popular-led town hall wants some modification to the Paseo Marítimo works - the building of three underground car parks in particular. The PP reckon that the project lacked ambition but they don’t wish it to be paralysed, saying that this would be “a worse remedy than the disease”. The project comes under the auspices of the Balearic Ports Authority rather than the town hall. A meeting is to be held to discuss possible modifications.

Palma’s boutique hotels are nestled away in the old centre rather than on the Paseo Marítimo. A comparative study suggests that Palma has the most expensive boutique hotels in the Med - more expensive than the likes of Cannes and Mykonos at any rate. The highest price per night in early July is 640 euros for the Can Bordoy Grand House and Garden. The new government is committed to the mantra of quality tourism, but it remains to be seen how much tourism there will be. Another mantra is one that rejects talk of de-growth, and plans are being worked on for boosting tourism marketing by both the Council of Mallorca and the Palma 365 Foundation.

There isn’t anything specific as yet, as new officials need to get their feet under the table. There is no change at Palma 365, though. Pedro Homar, who was first appointed when the PP ran the town hall from 2011 to 2015 and continued as head of Palma 365 after the left-wing coalition took over, will be staying put.

The dependence on the summer

What will the new administrations do about that old chestnut of tourism seasonality? Despite the efforts of Palma 365 and the now ex-government’s talk of redistributing tourists away from the main summer months, a study by Spain’s General Council of Economists looked at the percentage of annual tourists over the months of July to September in the main tourist regions. Conducted for the period 1997 to 2019, this concluded that whereas the percentage fell in other regions, it increased in the Balearics.

Things could have changed since 2019, but further data show, for instance, that there were fewer foreign tourists from January to March this year (671,000) than there had been for the first quarter of 2002 (767,000). Regardless of this, the anticipation continues to be that 2023 will be a record tourism year, meaning more dependence rather than less on the summer months.

Airport “fury”

But as ever, there are issues which affect travellers and create publicity but never really seem to affect traveller numbers. An IT outage at the three Balearic airports last Friday was, let’s face it, not in the same league as the system failure recently experienced at UK airports.

So this was an inconvenience, no more, whereas we had the double whammy on Monday of Britons heading for Mallorca being warned of summer flight disruption (because of French air-traffic controllers) and British travellers being “furious” at queues at Palma Airport.

Same old stories, accompanied by same old comments along the lines of, for instance (and apropos the queues in Palma), this all somehow being a way of getting back at the British because of Brexit. Dear, oh dear.

Crazy Americans

Americans, who are just as likely to be affected by airport queues as the British, are going crazy for Mallorca, we were told. This was according to a travel booking platform which actually reported that Portugal is topping the American chart.

But there’s still plenty for the Americans to go crazy for, such as apparently spending up to 200,000 euros for luxury events (e.g. weddings) on the island or hoovering up old manor houses in the Soller Valley that are coming onto the market because Mallorcan families can no longer afford to maintain them.One of these houses, Cas Don in Biniaraix, is priced at 5.5 million euros. It’s reckoned that it will cost a similar amount to restore it.