The mayor of Calvia, Afonso Rodríguez, held talks with the national government delegate, Maria Salom, in Palma yesterday. Top of the agenda was policing in Calvia’s key resorts. Salom and Rodríguez agreed that not only will police numbers be increased, there will be much closer cooperation between the various security forces in the municipality.
They both also agreed that the facelift and overall improvement of hotel quality and standards over the past few years are helping to ease tension and anti-social behaviour, in Magalluf in particular, and that by getting the public and private sector involved, the authorities are winning the battle.
But it is not just Calvia and Majorca where police numbers are going to be increased this summer. The traditional "Operation summer" was revealed yesterday and there is going to be a doubling of state police officers in resorts this summer.
The national interior ministry will be ensuring that the number of additional Guardia Civil and National Police officers deployed in major tourist areas will more than double during the high summer. There will be 2,639 compared with the 1,227 in 2016.
The main regions being covered in July and August are Andalusia, Asturias, the Canaries, Cantabria, Galicia, Madrid, Valencia and the Balearics, and in the case of the Balearics the reinforcements will remain in September.
Interior minister Juan Ignacio Zoido says that this reinforcement makes him confident that Spanish and foreign nationals will be able to enjoy their holidays with total safety. "We want to offer ever more security to tourists when they are travelling to Spain and staying here."
This summer, there will be a new mobile app - AlertCops - that will be available in one hundred languages. It has been tested during events attended by large numbers of people and it will enable tourists to contact police forces and send photos and videos that can help with investigations.
Zoido adds that police from other countries, such as France, Italy, Romania and The Netherlands, will be returning and patrolling with the Guardia Civil or National Police. Special offices for attending to foreigners in resorts will once more be open, Zoido noting that some 42,000 foreign tourists used this service last year.
Álvaro Nadal, the national tourism minister, says that safety is the second most important reason cited by visitors for coming to Spain. He points out that the World Economic Forum considers Spain to be the second "most reliable" destination after Switzerland.