Tolo Cañellas is one of the health emergency team based in Palmanova. This team operates an advanced life support ambulance, a hospital on wheels, and it is regularly called to Magalluf, and to the Punta Ballena area specifically.
He calculates that 80% of the emergencies they attend to in summer are tourists. "This means that we give less quality care to those who are paying taxes to have public health. That is the problem we have. You want to cover the population, but then you have the overload in this area. There are nights when there are up to four or five ambulances, and the same thing happens with the police. Someone may be robbing you at home, but all the resources in the area are in Magalluf."
The worst hours, he says, are from one to four in the morning. Some tourists who go to Magalluf, he believes, are typically aggressive and don't show respect. They are often threatened, but he adds: "You say to a German, shut up and sit down, and he shuts up and sits down. But a Briton always wants to hit you; well, those who come here in order to get out of control."
Dr. Juan Luis Sánchez explains that there are no weekends; it's the same every day and at any time. On one particular day, his shift started at eight in the morning. Soon after, he was treating a 17-year-old who had had an epileptic seizure. "Due to his condition, he should sleep eight hours and not drink alcohol, because he shouldn't mix it with the medication. But epileptics come here, forget the pills, go out partying, do not sleep and have seizures." The 17-year-old in question had only arrived the day before.
Sánchez adds that people come to party but without any control. Those who have never taken drugs before "take them all together on the same day and it is a disaster". "It used to be that they would take some risk, now they go all out, there is no holding them. When they tell you what they have done, you put your head in your hands."
The medics are perfectly aware of the realities of Punta Ballena. Cañellas refers to "gangs of women who appear to be prostitutes and who capture potential clients, most of them very drunk or older". "They take them to an alley, beat them up and rob them."
And they highlight a different form of "excess", that of the heat. It is usually older people who are affected by the heat, but "there are also young people who go out for a run or a bike ride in the middle of the day, in the middle of a heat wave". "These are some people who simply don't take any measures to protect themselves."