07/04/2013 00:00
TW
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STAFF REPORTER

PALMA
PALMA City Council is currently developing plans to put a stop to street drinking parties, known as the botellón, before the end of this year.
Every Friday and Saturday some thousand young people get together across five principal locations in the city where they consume cocktails of alcohol, cannabis, cocaine and other drugs. A report recently published by the Council's Education, Equality and Citizens' Rights department looks at the problem in detail and analyses how effective efforts on the part of social and educational services have been to date in tackling the practice. The report was presented yesterday at the Pilar i Joan Miro foundation in Palma where local authority representatives from other Spanish cities - namely A Coruña, Bilbao, Zaragoza and Cordoba - also spoke on how the same problem had been addressed on their own home ground. Palma City Council is considering whether to introduce new bylaws to stop the botellón or whether it should be done through ones that are already in existence. The Council wants to have a clear policy in place by the end of the year.

Strategies which it will use in the meantime will include escorting back home those youngsters found participating in the drinking parties who are under-age, imposing fines for breaking city bylaws such as leaving rubbish on the streets (between 30 and 300 euros) and for making excessive noise which disturbs other residents (around 150 euros).

The report identified the five key locations in Palma where the botellón is practiced as falling within the commercial wharf in the port area, the Son Castello industrial estate and finally the Paseo Maritimo where there are three botellón “venues.” In all of these, cannabis and alcohol are consumed. In one of the locations along the Paseo Maritimo, a large group of under-age consumers has been identified.

Social and educational measures taken to tackle the youngsters have met with great resistance - only 20 to 30 percent of them recognised the contamination the street parties cause where most rubbish ends up being thrown into the sea. In the commercial wharf, a large concentration of between 250 and 300 people aged between 20 and 40 prefer their own mix of alcohol and “designer” drugs.

On the Son Castello industrial estate meanwhile, a similarly aged group numbering around 200 indulges in a complete “range” of narcotics including cocaine and “designer” drugs mixed with alcohol.