Your weekly news catch up in Mallorca

When you think about it, there is something distinctly odd, not to say wrong, about a local authority feeling the need to fence off its beach to prevent tourists from going onto it. Spanish students, it perhaps need reminding, are tourists. They fall into that classification of tourist branded by excess, but such is their reputation that they are deemed capable of exceeding the excess more typically associated with, for example, young Britons in Magalluf or young Germans in Playa de Palma. The reason why is because there are that many of them at any given time and in a given place. Arenal in Llucmajor tops the list of places. It is here where the beach will be fenced off at night until the last student has returned to the mainland some time in the first fortnight of July. It's as if Arenal has been preparing for a siege, a ridiculous situation and one that should raise serious questions as to why it is allowed to happen.

The first batches of students arrived last weekend, looking forward to some days of partying and not very much sleep. Fair enough. They're young, the great majority of them - one imagines - away on holiday without their parents for the first time. They're in Mallorca for fun, but this doesn't remove the bad taste of the sense of siege.

The Bedlam of resorts

Their holidays last no longer than four nights. Any longer and they would probably suffer from sleep deprivation. As one student put it, she'll be resting after she returns from Mallorca. Tour operators organising the trips are said to be making their student clients sign forms acknowledging their liabilities in the event of breaches of local laws. One sanction for misbehaviour is being thrown out of hotels, a measure that is apparently commonly applied to another tourist excess classification - young Germans heading to Arenal in contributing to turning the resort into a Bedlam that surpasses anything that Magalluf can offer.

Taking advantage of low-cost flights, these tourists often don't bother with the hotel accommodation; they just grab some sleep on the beach. Their stays are shorter than the students - 24 hours to 72 hours - and are characterised by one thing above all, getting totally drunk and remaining totally drunk. But as the beach in Arenal has been fenced off, they may have to stagger over the borderline with Palma in order to find an accommodating area of sand.

Too much flesh

So much for quality tourism, talking of which there is also dress code (or the lack thereof). Residents in Paguera posted a photo on Instagram of three female holidaymakers - taken to be German, given that Paguera is a predominantly German resort - wandering along the sea front with thong bikinis. From the rear, one could see a substantial display of bare buttock. Well, at least they weren't drunk. In fact, they looked to be stone cold sober. But that's not the point. Ladies, show some decorum. And the same goes for all those who, for instance, feel that is acceptable to enter a supermarket in a state of virtual total undress.

A less hot very hot summer

Not wearing very much is of course a reality in a Mallorcan summer - it all depends on how little - and the Aemet met agency has informed us that we can expect a "very hot and humid" summer. But how hot will very hot be? "We are not expecting temperatures above 40 degrees," observed the Aemet delegate in the Balearics, Maria José Guerrero. Given that the all-time high in Mallorca was registered last year - 44.5C in Montuiri - the Aemet forecast suggests a less hot very hot summer.

The met agency went on to predict that there will be "some days of instability" starting in the second fortnight of August, which was a statement of the obvious, as mid-August is typically when instability (aka unsettled weather) tends to kick in. Just as obvious was the forecast that temperatures are expected to drop and rainfall increase in October. Whoever would have suspected that?

Flooding the roads

Aemet also reckons that there will be "possible tornadoes", which one suspects was a slight exaggeration in interpretation of the 'cap de fibló', which is similar to a tornado but rarely as destructive. It is normally at sea rather than on land. The summer will be wetter, but flooding doesn't seem to be on the cards as rain will mostly be light and of the muddy variety.

A flood of a different type is said to be occurring on the roads of the Balearics, which will have to withstand the pressure of some 85,000 hire cars. Compared with 2022, the association of car-rental firms reckons that there will be between 4,000 and 5,000 more - some slight local flooding then.

Uber ok

By contrast to this additional influx of hire cars, the Uber fleet - all of around some fifty vehicles at present - is neither here nor there. But it does have the potential for creating a hot summer because of the opposition to Uber. The taxi drivers insist that arrangements are illegal in that there aren't the necessary licences to operate in the four municipalities in which Uber have a presence - Andratx, Calvia, Llucmajor, Palma. Uber refute this, and meanwhile some taxi drivers are said to be deserting their taxis and signing up with Uber in the anticipation of earning more.

The taxi driver associations believe that it is no coincidence that Uber have arrived in Mallorca so soon after the elections, their suspicion being that new administrations will be more amenable to Uber. Which they may be, but in the meantime checks are being carried out at the airport to ensure that documentation is all in order and that the rules are being observed. Palma police and transport ministry inspectors have been checking various types of transport. On Tuesday, ten fines were issued. None of them were for Uber vehicles.

"Helping" tourists at car parks

There has been a suggestion that floods of tourists, German in particular, will be disrupted for a few days because of flight alterations. This is due to NATO's Air Defender 23, described as the alliance's largest air defence exercise ever. It is taking place in three areas of Germany and ends next Friday - some 250 aircraft from 25 countries.

With any luck, tourists who manage to be unaffected by NATO won't run into any issues at car parks in Palma, these issues being of a theft variety. A gang of three were arrested at the Parc de la Mar car park. Two of the three had been "helping" baffled tourists when they went to pay. This help extended to observing the PIN numbers that were being entered. They then helped themselves to the tourists' wallets before disappearing in a car driven by the third gang member. Palma and National Police set up a joint surveillance operation and nicked them in the act.

The noise of Palma

In Palma, meanwhile, residents have once more being highlighting the problem of noise. The sheer number of tourists is one reason, specific causes include all the illegal holiday lets and street musicians. But the spread of nightlife activity has been identified as the principal culprit. There is no control, according to the federation of residents associations. A resident of Santa Catalina says: "The wild party has come here, to my neighbourhood. Junkies, urine, faeces, vomit and people who have sex."

In the city's La Lonja district, where the town hall had decreed that terraces had to close at 11pm because of noise, bar and restaurants are demanding that the town hall complies with a Balearic High Court ruling and allows them to keep the terraces open as they used to - midnight or 12.30am. There is a town hall appeal against the ruling.

City noise, one trusts, won't affect turtle eggs on Can Pere Antoni beach. The turtle in question would have been unaware it was choosing a popular urban beach to lay its 106 eggs, so this has required some protective intervention by the regional environment ministry. The first recorded occasion of a loggerhead sea turtle laying eggs in Mallorca, the site has been cordoned off. A rather different kind of beach fencing-off to that in Arenal.