Do They Take Us For Fools?

The word had been that it was going to be more insane than ever. The word may well have been right. How many do you, do we, do they want dead? It's only just begun and yet the emergency services are equating it to high summer. Two dead in Magalluf. One in Santa Ponsa. Another badly injured in Palmanova. Half a dozen have fallen from balconies, two of them put into a body bag. The British media have a video of a dwarf whipping a groom-to-be during some warped S&M session in a bar. The local media have been highlighting gangs of chanting, drunken Germans blocking the main road in Arenal. They are following events in the notorious resorts like never before. It was going to be more insane than ever. Wasn't it?

Civic ordinance in Palma, civic ordinance to be introduced in Calvia. More resources. More powers for the authorities. Greater co-operation between businesses. Greater willingness of businesses to assist in a clean-up. Promises of this. Promises of that. It is more insane than ever. The so-called prostitutes more aggressive than ever. More driven by their criminal gang organisers than ever. The National Police taking measures to identify sources of criminal supply to the lookies who wander the streets of Palma with groundsheets and who lay them down on steps, on squares: Saharan bazaars in the centre of the Balearic capital. Pickpockets, daylight robbers, drug sellers. More of these, or at least they are the more that social media, with its wildfire spread of news, suggest. Who is to say there isn't more? 

Reports of a trial into corruption among police, officials from the local authority and businesspeople. Reports replete with orgies and Russian prostitutes, the latter being afforded protection in order to give witness statements. Reports which follow last year - Magalluf and police arrests - and the year before, when Playa de Palma's police first came under investigation.

Write all the above, and there are those who hammer you for negativity, for exaggeration, for choosing only the blackspots. Avoid saying the above, and others lay into you for turning a blind eye and for complicity. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. But avoidance has been part of the problem, as - for so many years - was a form of self-censorship or persuasion to play things down. You can't or shouldn't say that; it would be bad for tourism.

One person's bad is another person's good for tourism. If nothing else, Magalluf has taught us this. But this one-time reticence is no longer possible, not when there are videos of sex acts all over the internet, not when there is sensationalism on the pages of the British and German press, willing accomplices in generating ever more insanity. Too much past reticence and too many apologists, of whom there are still many. Maga, Arenal (and you can add one or two other places): they are what they are, tourists are coming for fun, to party. They are what they are, what they have been and what they will be.

To party, to have fun. Absolutely. Essences of holiday. For thousands upon thousands. For families, for older people, for younger people, none of whom can be blamed, and none of whom wish to be implicated in all the above or have any reason to be. Responsible tourism, a convenience of marketing with its environmental eco-righteousness that cannot disguise the business ambitions of hoteliers, of tour operators, of bar owners. Volume, they need volume, as do the planes. Responsible tourism is a two-way street and not only that of Punta Ballena. Whoever decreed that it was acceptable for foreigners (and Spaniards) to treat parts of Mallorca with such irresponsibility? Who the hell do they think they are?

But the blame game will say it's the fault of others. It is. But the fault stems from that old reticence, that old "persuasion". Bad for tourism. The heads were in the sand for years and years before some tourists - so hacked off with the persistent pestering - started to stick flags in the same sand bearing the legends: "no sunglasses, no massage". Complacency and a complicity of a different type. We all know who to blame.

It will be better, though, not more insane. Just wait for the ordinances to really kick in. For the end to drinking in the street. For the end to balconing because of the fines. Do they take us for fools? Hopefully, they will be right. Hopefully, it will improve. But who's doing the caring? Onieva? Isern? Martínez? All gone at the election. Maybe their replacements will, however, discover the legal wherewithal to deal with the greatest of the insanities - the mugging prostitutes of the streets - and not instead introduce fines for supposed clients. That beggars belief. The equivocation of victimary. Taken for fools.