The Mallorca Story

One of the things that an American comes to realize about life in Europe....is the control or strong nature of oversight of alcohol usage.  It kinda differs from state to state.

In Germany, as long as you aren't driving....there's a fairly open view about alcohol.  Even at the age of fifteen.....you can buy wine or beer.  If a guy gets a bit drunk down on the walkplatz.....people generally don't say too many bad things about it, unless of course he is urinating against a wall or just laying on the street.

Germans for the most part, control their inhibitions and monitor their consumption of booze to some degree.  Well....up until the party where they've departed Germany....for their vacation.  For most vacation hot-spots...they might drink a bit more than normal.

Places like Crete and Rhodos.....will see some Germans who drink a fair amount more than normal.  It's probably true in Turkey, Cyprus, and the Canary Islands as well.

Then you come to the isle of Mallorca (off the coast of Spain), which is considered the 17th German state of Germany....where a lot of Germans frequent, and drink excessively.

For several decades, it's been a fact that Germans come to Mallorca to party, drink hard, and wake up tomorrow morning to repeat the whole experience....for a week straight.

Mallorca was legendary in some ways.  It's the place where the Ballermann club defined heavy drinking by selling you a bucket (full size bucket) with Sangria and ice.....and a couple of straws.  You and a couple of friends would sip a lot of Sangria wine out of the bucket, then buy another bucket and repeat the experience again, over and over.  Guys were totally drunk by mid-afternoon, and stayed drunk till after the clubs closed.

At some point over the past decade....enough folks in Mallorca got upset about the status and wanted drinking curtailed.  Oddly, a change in government occurred, and the new guys actually carried out their threat to curtail massive alcohol consumption.  Big shocker?  Yeah, especially to the Germans.

The bucket of Sangria has been generally banned unless you are sitting inside the club itself.  Authorities don't want people walking around anymore, with the bucket in their hand.

There's a good introduction article to the change up over at Focus (the German news magazine), and it relates the problems associated with this.

The chief issue?  Less booze consumed....less profits....some nightclubs and pubs are failing.  That profit would sustain the community and the isle....is decreasing week after week.  In some ways, Mallorca got exactly what they wanted....a lot less booze drunken by customers and visitors.  That booze related to cash flow and jobs.

Eventually, some Germans will look over the change and make a determination....why vacation in Mallorca?  Some other folks looking at this....from various Greek islands suffering from marginalized tourism or cash flow.....will decide to advertise themselves as the new Mallorca.  It might take five years or even ten.....but I suspect that Mallorca will see some great loss on capitalism, and the flight of thousands to the next big tourist magnet for Germans will occur.