"We have a new season, but with the usual problems. We have come through Covid, the tourists are returning. There is talk of improving the quality of tourism, but nothing changes. Rather, everything continues as before. Or worse. Magalluf fills up with prostitutes at night. They have no intention of 'practising', only robbing tourists when they return to their hotels, some with more alcohol inside them than they should have."
These were the words of Pepe Tirado, the president of the Acotur association of tourist businesses, towards the end of May last year. Four weeks into the 'official' tourism season, and he was insisting that nothing had really changed in Magalluf.
The official season 2023 now a day away (May 1 is the start), and Tirado's words are still applicable. Diego Belmonte is the president of the Emytra association of Calvia employers and workers. The Calvia he knows best is Magalluf, and in Magalluf, he knows Punta Ballena the best. It is the strip where the new Magalluf is most being put to the test, and Belmonte highlights just one of the issues that Magalluf has had to grapple with for years. "One of the great scourges we have here is the sale of drugs. The local police and the Guardia Civil are perfectly aware of the large amount of drugs being sold to tourists."
The weekend before the start of the official season, and Magalluf by night has its familiar visitors. The tourists are back in number but so also are the dealers, the thieves, the so-called prostitutes. Same as it ever was. Belmonte reckons that at weekends there are some fifty robberies a day. Young tourists, typically on drugs and/or having had too much to drink, are easy prey for the gangs who operate in the area. The frontline health service employees, as they have in the past, warn of the presence of drugs that result in a loss of control.
Belmonte says that "we must make it clear that the tourists who visit us, the great majority of them young people, should have fun, a good time and enjoy their holidays". "They are kids and they should not be criminalised under any circumstances. The real problems lie with others."
Businesses in the area, he adds, are very aware of the importance of working to improve the quality of tourism, though they feel that the law of tourism excesses should apply everywhere and not just to a specific area of Magalluf and to the three other resorts (Arenal in Llucmajor, Playa de Palma and Sant Antoni).
But while this law can come down hard on businesses in particular, there are other aspects of legality - or rather illegality - that might be said to represent the "real problems". Everyone knows what these are, and they have known them for years.