Pros And Cons: Whoring in Magalluf

Pros and cons. Not many for, plenty against. Pros and cons. Prostitutes and to-be or ex-convicts, about to be again. Magalluf is suffering an invasion of bodysnatchers and snatches; the snatch snatches the body of a pink pot-bellied pig of a tourist, lagered and vodka-ed up, egged on by a whip-round of scrunched-up notes from his braying companions. The con pockets the cash; the wretched whore, dragged out of a slum in Senegal, has to mop up more than just the vomit. There's a further snatch, too - the wallet.

Magalluf. Shagalluf. It's always been a place for tarting. Paid or unpaid. The streetwalking of the resort has, though, become street running and hassling. The tarts are terrorising tourists, so it is said. Residents have had enough. They've begun attacking cars "associated" with the prostitutes.

The mayor of Calvia (Magalluf is a part of Calvia, in case you didn't know) is being criticised for being on holiday at this time of moral crisis. What's he going to do? Open a mission for fallen women? The police have been doing their best, but there's only so much they can do. Like the lookies, detain a prostitute and try and fine her, and see where that gets you. She won't be able to pay and there'll always be another one to offer business.

The prostitution problem is, apparently, causing tourists to "boycott" Magalluf. Are they really? According to "The Bulletin", they are. "British families are staying clear." It may not have meant to have done so, but in reporting that this so-called boycott is "fuelling a rise in demand for package holidays in the north east of the island", there was a sense of its being pissed off that elsewhere on the island might derive some benefit from the presence of slappers on the Maga strip. The north east, let's call it Alcúdia shall we, gains, while the paper's southern heartland of interest suffers. The paper's lamentable insouciance where matters others than the incestuousness of what we should really call its home market is exposed yet again. Would there be the same level of reporting or indeed concern, were the reverse to be the case?

If demand for holidays in the north has indeed increased because of Maga's whoring, then it should be encouraged. But let's not indulge in this schadenfreude for too long. Magalluf was successful in getting rid of the timeshare scratch-cardists, and they shifted their attentions to the north, resorting - at times - to an aggressive form of hassling employed by the prostitutes. There is little to choose between them. The scratch-cardists may ultimately mug you of thousands if you happen to get sucked in, but that's your decision; you're a willing if unwitting victim of pickpocketing. It's not quite the same with the prostitutes: they aren't all on the game, they're just gangs of muggers. It doesn't matter if you have your trousers down; they'll lift regardless. "The Bulletin" wants plod to run the whores out of town. Good for it, but rid the Magalluf streets of prostitutes, and they'll find somewhere else to go.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.