The shopping area beneath the Plaça Major in Palma, largely abandoned for some years, has become a centre for drug addicts, especially heroin users.
Residents say that there are addicts at all times of the day and night. For the most part, they go unnoticed because the units are mostly all closed and there aren't the numbers of people there once were. The sight of syringes discarded on the ground is common; these syringes carry risk.
This is something of a throwback to the 1980s and 1990s, when heroin was widely available and there were numerous addicts, many of whom would congregate in the Plaça Major area.
Police sources say that heroin has made a comeback, especially among the dealers of the Son Banya shanty town, Mallorca's 'drugs supermarket'. It had been relegated behind other drugs like cocaine, but it is back on the black market, a drug that can have devastating consequences.