I first wrote a Viewpoint about mounting tension and anti-social behaviour in Cala Ratjada a decade ago having been there on holiday and witnessed scenes I would have expected to have seen in Playa de Palma. What was telling was that I was with a group of Spanish friends who had grown up in Mallorca and knew Cala Ratjada as a quaint, somewhat “high class” port with great restaurants and bars.
However, they had never ventured to the new part of what is now a resort which is where all the hotels have sprung up with bars and clubs and supermarkets selling buckets of booze for the controversial beach parties which have required extra policing during the summer at great cost to Capdepera council.
In fact, Cala Ratjada is the only place during my 30 odd years on the island where I have had to order a rounds of drinks in German. No one in the trendy chill out bar spoke either Spanish, Mallorcan or English. Plus, there was a National Police riot squad parked outside.
With the new government having now announced that the anti-social behaviour law is to be expanded to include the whole of the Balearics, not just Magalluf, Playa de Palma and Sant Antoni in Ibiza, it is time to put it into force. Small councils like Capdepera, which wanted to sign up to the previous government’s Law of Excesses, neither has the money nor the personnel to police the resort. So, it’s time for action not words.