The raucous party resort of Magaluf is being tamed.
Its new major believes the crackdown on lewd behaviour and binge drinking has cleaned up the party town of Majorca.
Alfonso Rodriquez claims that the problems have practically gone within months of the new rules coming in.
Recent photos by tourists with cameras show evidence of people drinking and being drunk on the streets although the crackdown introduced fines of up to €3,000 for anyone caught drinking, urinating or being nakes in the street.
Limits on the number and type of organised bar crawl also came into effect as well as laws prohibiting the trend of jumping from hotel balconies.
But Mayor Rodriquez claims that anti-social behaviour has decreased.
“We didn’t actually foresee (the efforts to cut down on drunken behaviour) being so smooth,” said Mr Rodriguez,
“People are quite surprised that it worked so fast. We have improved the experience for tourists and we are now no longer in the news for bad coverage. There has been a major decrease in violations, arrests, balconing and all kinds of illegal or anti-social behaviour.”
“Pub crawling is disappearing,” he added. “The establishments have cooperated in enforcing the regulations,” he said. “There is a consensus about what needs to be done. There is evolution in the resort.”
Arrests he said had fallen by 50% in the year, 66% fewer cases of balconing and the number of pub crawls outside the rules dropped from 14 in 2013 to only one this year.
Ultimately, Rodriquez would like to turn Magaluf into an up-scale resort for families while retaining an element of “party tourism” and hopes that this will be achieved in two to three years.
