EASTER campers on ground close to Lluc monastery were talking yesterday of how vandals turned what should have been a peaceful holiday weekend into a nightmare.
Witness Antonia Sastre, one of around 500 on the camp site said: We'd erected the tents on Thursday evening and put the children down to sleep at about 10pm, when at about two or three o'clock in the morning, a group of drunk youths arrived, shouting and being sick over the tents. The children were crying but calls from the campers for the noise to stop didn't have any effect.
Apparently, the hooliganism didn't stop there. They reportedly descended on the public toilets wreaking wholesale havoc.
The following morning, the branch of the Guardia Civil responsible for nature protection (Ibanat) appeared on the scene and saw for themselves the extent of the damage.
The floors of the toilets were completely flooded, the basins of the toilets blocked with filth, and a drain had been littered with stones. The group, said an officer, had been on the rampage the whole night in nearby built-up areas.
Throughout the whole of Good Friday, 10 officers worked ceaselessly to try and restore normality but the vandalism had been so destructive that they weren't able to effect repairs and had to call on the help of a private company.
Around 1'000 people normally use the facilities during their Easter visits to Lluc but the toilets were closed off until late on Saturday evening.
Excursionists voiced their displeasure claiming that more security should have been on site with so many people depending on the public toilets, both from the camp site and elsewhere.
Another witness, Miguel Sanso, said that the whole episode had been a disgrace because not only had there been the incidents of vandalism, but this year, people were bringing dogs onto the camp site and legislation strictly forbids animals there. Government sources meanwhile claimed that the area had been under surveillance by a private security firm who had reported the incidents and tried their best to get the toilets working again.