A group of young Mallorcans have taken to social media to complain that numerous restaurants in Soller only have their menus in English. They have organised their very own protest by buying food from local pastry shops and eating it on a park benches next to restaurants.
"We will do this until menus are not just in English," they say in a social media post. Their campaign, on Tik Tok, has enjoyed some success receiving a large number of "likes" and numerous favourable comments.
"I am from Sóller and you have done very well", "The same thing happened to me in Benidorm" or "I was in Mallorca and there were shops where neither the shop assistants understood Spanish nor Catalan," where just some of the comments which were posted online.
It comes after 20,000 people marched through Palma on Sunday calling for fewer tourists and a return to the "old Mallorca." The Balearic government has vowed to take action and is drawing up plans to ease tourism overcrowding.
It is illegal for restaurants to have their menus only in English and owners can be fined by the local authorities.
12 comments
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There are menus in restaurants only in Arabic in the west end of London. It's a disgrace. By all means show other languages but in Spain the menu must at least be in Spanish.
Fake news. Restaurant has menu in spanish, catalan, german and english.
@chris g Hi Chris. Ahh. No I don't. I have been living and working and SUPPORTING mallorca going on 30 years. Paying lots of taxes every month. Nobody is "hosting" me here. I do agree with many of the "locals" complaints. To many tourists, cars, etc.. But this is a government problem. This is where all the social problems begin. The" locals "need to focus there and make there elected politicians actually do something for them. (And for all of us living here) And stop crying/blaming other people (tourists) for there problems.
I fully agree that it is a disgrace. Locals are kind enough to be using Spanish here and not only catalan (like often happens in restaurants in barcelona). So menus and service in local language first, then english and German as most used and whatever other language you want... BTW...- there are places that have their menus in German only as well
AmbergrilloYou really need to learn to be a little more sympathetic to the concerns of the people who are hosting you here. Their concerns are very real and if not addressed properly will badly affect this beautiful place in the long term for locals and the foreign residents.
Full credit to these people for exposing this. If restaurants in Soller, or anywhere else, are indeed only offering menus in English, or if none of their staff speak Spanish and Catalan then they fully deserve to be called out on social media and ridiculed.
OMG. I'm so sick and tired of hearing all the crying from locals. Buying your food at the supermarket is for sure better and cheaper then going to most restaurants on the island anyways. And you don't have to learn English.
I suppose this will mean the end of the English Breakfast then.
I'm sorry but MDB seems to have just become the mouthpiece of the PSOE. Trying to fan the flames to teach us all a lesson about voting the wrong way in the last election....
Let's have the menu in Catalan. That's should help the international community in their quest to sample the delicacies on offer. To be honest, food on the island is substandard compared to the mainland with regional culinary offerings far superior to what,in general, Mallorca has to offer ( some good resteraunts, I must admit ). Perhaps eating hedgehog , snails or offal on a bench is getting back to the good old, frugal, days of the 70s. Yeehaa.