The president of the Balearic Government, Francina Armengol, today stated that “the rules must be complied with” in reference to the proposed sanction by the Balearic government for those who participated in an illegal party in August 2021 in Palma.
A total of 114 people face a fine of 6.8 million euros, as each one could have to pay 60,000 euros in fines.
They attended a party in August 2021, at the height of the pandemic when there were still restrictions on social gatherings and on the number of people allowed to attend.
At that time, Palma Local Police were alerted to a party at a rented villa on the luxury Son Vida estate.
On arrival at around 03.30 hours they found 114 people at the party with loud music.
Armengol said: “at the time”, the Covid restrictions were very clear as were the penalties for not complying with them. We must think that we are talking about public health and protecting everyone’s health”.
However, she stressed that the sanctions “were perfectly clear” because they were set out in the rules and regulations, “which was public knowledge.
“The rules are there to be complied with because we live in a state governed by the rule of law,” she said.
On October 22, 2020, in the Balearic parliament, the leader of the opposition, Biel Company of the Partido Popular, made a veiled reference to a “very well-known” politician having been in a Palma bar at two in the morning.
His reference was to President Armengol and to an incident on October 7 when Palma police reported the Hat Bar next to the Sant Felip Neri Church for having been open beyond 1am. Under Covid regulations, all bars had to close by then.
Some witnesses said that Armengol was outside the bar when the police arrived.
It was also said that officers recognised her outside the bar.
The officers apparently did not ask Armengol or anyone else at the bar for identification. The report indicated that there were nine people inside.
Timed at ten minutes past two, the report included a statement from the bar’s owner. He wished to express his disagreement with the police “denuncia”. He hadn’t closed because there was an “authority” on the premises, namely the president of the Balearic government.
Among those to have voiced their criticism was José Ramón Bauzá, president of the Balearics between 2011 and 2015.
It wasn’t a case of double standards, it was “an absence of standards”.
He wondered how many hours of national television time would be devoted to this matter, if “instead of the socialist president Armengol, it had been the liberal president Bauzá who had skipped the drinks’ lockdown”.
Former Palma mayor and then Palma councillor for culture and coordinator of Més in Mallorca, Antoni Noguera, told IB3 radio that he didn’t wish to offer a view about something for which he didn’t have any information.
The incident caused a great deal of controversy at the time.