What are we going to do about Magalluf? The violence, vandalism and crimes that are being committed in the area just seem to be getting worse and worse. I think I am right to be truly distressed by the events over the past week: another two deaths from balconing and an appalling hit and run incident. On Sunday evening there were apparently about 1000 young people walking on ‘The Strip’ (Punta Ballena, the main road where most of the bars are). A man was trying to drive his Range Rover car through this huge crowd of people and as you can expect wasn’t getting anywhere fast. The crowd apparently started banging on the windows of the car which spooked the driver who then put his foot on the accelerator and knocked down and ran over five young people. The driver didn’t then stop, no, he drove away, and was subsequently arrested two days later. Yes, he may have been provoked, it must have been frightening to be in a car with drunken youths banging on the windows, but two wrongs don’t make a right and some of these young people were seriously hurt.
The road shouldn’t have been open to traffic in my opinion, it used to be closed to general traffic and was controlled by the police: you needed to have a residents’ permit to get access to the road after dark. Surely they should return to that practice? According to Calvia Council the ‘cleaning up’ of Magaluf has already started with the arrest of the unlicensed masseuses on the beach, the ‘looky looky’ men and the prostitutes. Well, I was in Magaluf on Tuesday evening for the Mallorca Rocks gig, and I can tell you there were definitely plenty of prostitutes and ‘looky looky’ men still in action. The planned gentrification of the area has begun with the high profile and ostentatious opening of new businesses recently, but unless you’re in a bubble and transferred to the door of said high class establishments wearing your rose tinted glasses I don’t know how you can fail to notice the fact that next door you can still buy cheap booze in a bucket and drink it with a load of young men all wearing identical mankinis.
The first I knew of the hit and run incident was when a smart phone video of it started to go viral and was doing the rounds on Facebook. Hardly the greatest advert for our island, huh? I’d must rather it was the Estrella Damm ad which had made us all feel so proud that we live here. Funnily enough, that’s an ad for booze too…