Magaluf, Ready To Blow

[cronus]

http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2014/ ... itors-year

Magaluf's debauched reputation looks set to stay despite pledge to crack down

It is 3am and the party is in full swing in one of Magaluf's wildest bars. A group of barrel-chested lads wearing vests emblazoned "Made in Middlesbrough … Destroyed in Magaluf" down rows of shots as the MC shouts: "If you'd rather be in Magaluf than the UK make some fucking noise! There's singing and sex everywhere!"

It is Thursday night – known locally as a chance to catch a breather between two nights of riotous pub crawls – and it is business as usual for the hundreds of packed bars and clubs that fill Magaluf's Punta Ballena strip.

There is little sign of the crackdown on pub crawls promised by local authorities this week in response to the resort's latest controversy, when an 18-year-old was filmed performing oral sex on 24 men to win a free drink. The video was picked up by, among others, the Sun.

The drinking game, dubbed "mamading" in Magaluf's bars, prompted the mayor of Calvia, Manuel Onieva, to order firms running pub crawls to apply to the town hall for a licence and warned organisers they would be fined if they exceeded 50 people – when numbers of 200 are not untypical.

The mayor spoke out to "express my total rejection and anger at the activities which were carried out in a video which is currently on the social media circuit" and proposed that "pub crawl guides" would have to wear a specific jacket to identify those that have been approved by the local authorities.

Ministers are also planning a €500,000 (£400,000) advertising blitz in British tabloids this weekend in an attempt to clean up Magaluf's hard-won reputation for drink-fuelled debauchery.

But it is that reputation that draws most of the estimated 1 million Britons to the Calvia region each year. The visits are incredibly lucrative, worth an estimated €800m a year to this picturesque corner of Mallorca.

(continued)

[JimC]

Sounds like a typical night in Adelaide...

[piscator]

Sounds like a typical night in Adelaide...

Or Whistler BC...

"Um...Yo? Tip?"
"We don't tip in Oz, mate."
"You aren't in "Oz", eh!"
...

"...Um, yeah. I know it's late, but it's morning here. They say I punched a waiter after he called me, "Digger Nick". Then an eppie-scoppie cocktail waitress started filling me in, from the bits I can piece togetha. You have to find a such thing as a, "Western Union Office" and telegraph the money to..."