Alain Carbonell is the vice president of the Arenal residents association (Llucmajor). In a resort covered by the tourism of excesses law, he says that young German (and Dutch) tourists are taking advantage of low-cost flights in order to take breaks of 24 hours, 48 hours or 72 hours and which are dedicated solely to getting drunk and taking drugs.
Carbonell maintains that some of these tourists no longer even bother with hotel accommodation. They just sleep on the beach. Where they do book a hotel, they are more often than not thrown out for drunkenness and bad behaviour. "They are all young, 18 to 20 years old, and they come just to get drunk." They go en masse to supermarkets or mini markets in order to stock up on alcohol and food but otherwise don't spend anything. Restaurants "don't see a single euro of all this tourism".
"It's unsustainable. As this is considered to be an area of excess, there is some vigilance, so the problem is moving to Cala Ratjada. They have set up an Arenal there."
Meanwhile, the residents await with trepidation the imminent arrival of Spanish students on their end-of-course trips.