IN an open letter to the Mayor of Calvia, Margarita Najera, British visitor Dick H. Quozounian who has been visiting the island for the past 20 years, calls on the Mayor to take action in a bid to reduce the level of noise made by tourists in the early hours of the morning along the Palma Nova promenade which is preventing him, his wife and others in his apartment block from getting a good night's sleep.
P lease, Dear Mayor,I beg you to come to our rescue.
I know how important The Tourist is for the economy of the island, but isn't there a limit to bending over backwards?
Night, after night, month after month, the neighbourhood of Son Matias beach in Palma Nova has to suffer from the unruly behaviour of the drunken mob who pour out of bars and discos at all hours after midnight and especially from about 2am. onwards, shattering the peace and quiet of the night.
It is affecting the nerves of most decent citizens in the area who, surely, are entitled to as much civil right as the visiting drunkards.
Everyone deserves to have a quiet night's sleep.
There are hundreds of tourists as well as local residents who, as things are, are continually denied this most basic of human rights.
Surely such behaviour by a minority amounts to gross disrespect towards one's fellowmen and as such can be put to a stop by the authorities.
A perfectly respectable quarter of Palma Nova has now earned the reputation of being a very low class resort, a dump, because of the hooligans' behaviour, but there can be an immediate improvement if nocturnal peace and quiet is restored.
As I am sure you well know, other tourist places like Florida have made beach areas totally out of bounds from midnight till morning.
Just as it is illegal to create noise in the streets of a city after hours so it should be on the beaches of a resort town as well.
Please therefore, dear Mayor, do not treat this plea lightly but act effectively so that we may re-discover our sanity at night.
Thank you in anticipation.
Your sincerely
Dick H. Quozounian
A long stay tourist who has been coming to Palma Nova for the last 20 years.
Quozounian is the first to admit that he has one of the best views available and, while he has thought of moving to get away from the noise, he does not know if he would find such a wonderful view. He also knows that the local council would have liked to have demolished the block to make way for a park as it is one of the apartment blocks closest to the beach in Calvia. But, while he and his wife are on holiday here, he said yesterday that many of the foreign residents have moved out and Spaniards have moved in, some of whom work in Palma and have to get up early in the morning - they cannot sleep either, he said.
He also explained that when the council expanded the promenade, the apartment block lost eight metres of its garden, thus bringing people even closer to the block.
A copy of this letter will be passed on to Margarita Najera.