Balearic leader is voted the favourite drinking companion

LEADER of the Balearic government, Jaume Matas, has ousted Real Madrid Player Raúl González as being the drinking companion most sought after by people of the Balearic Islands. Ipsos-Eco Consulting, having undertaken the study on behalf of Spanish breweries, released the results of this, their second set of research yesterday, on the subject of “With whom would you most enjoy having a beer?” According to Ipsos-Eco's enquiries, which took the form of 2'000 telephone interviews conducted between 24 February and 3 March this year, Matas was chosen as the most sought-after Balearic drinking companion. He managed to secure 13.9 percent of the vote, the largest single choice. In the first study carried out by the consultants, the honour had fallen to the footballer, Raúl, who on this occasion only managed a poor fifteenth place. Following on down the list from the Balearic government leader, the favourite personalities that people singled out for “a chat over a beer” were: the singer, David Bisbal (11.1 percent of those interviewed), the Majorcan tennis player, Carlos Moyá, the singers Chenoa and Julio Iglesias, all three with the same percentage of 8.3. To find another politician on the list of Islanders' “favourite” drinking companions, readers have to go to the sixth place where, curiously, former Prime Minister José María Aznar and the newly-elected Premier José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero share 8.3 percent of the votes. Judging from the interviews, Islanders expressed the same amount of interest in going for a beer with the leader of the Balearic Socialist party (Francesc Antich), as they did with the pop singer, Alejandro Sanz, footballers Ronaldo and David Beckham, film star Antonio Banderas and the leader of the Opposition in central government, Mariano Rajoy: all of them registered 5.6 percent of the vote. Other personalities, who like Raúl, were occupying top positions in the results of last year's research, now find themselves in “less sought after” positions, as is the case with footballer Miguel Angel Nadal, Antich, and singer María del Mar Bonet. However, one thing is fanciful imagination, but reality is quite another. Authors of the report, showed quite clearly in another study carried out for Spanish breweries, entitled “The Spaniards' favourite aperitif”, that Balearic Islanders choose to “have a pint” with members of their own family (58 percent), their partners (24 percent) and friends (13 percent). According to the same set of data, 38 percent of the Islands' inhabitants go out regularly to enjoy a beer, above all at weekends (58 percent), although 9 percent imbibed three or four times during the working week, and 6 percent did it every day. With 37 percent of the vote, beer proved the most popular aperitif for Islands, followed by soft drinks (28 percent) and wine (17 percent).
Linked questionnaires showed tht 66 percent of those interviewed enjoyed tapas with their aperitif, a figure 3 points over and above the national average.