BRITISH Consul in Barcelona Lloyd Millen has urged Spain not to jump to conclusions about balcony fall deaths and injuries in Mallorca this summer, saying all those reported this year have been accidents.
Millen's patch covers Catalunya, Aragón, the Balearic Islands and the Pyrénéen country of Andorra, meaning his office deals with a high number of incidents involving young Brits on boozy holidays with groups of friends in party districts such as Magaluf and Palmanova – part of the town of Calvià, Mallorca – and in Ibiza.
Whenever a British holidaymaker is killed or badly injured in a fall from an apartment or hotel terrace, the Spanish media immediately refers to 'balconing' – a foolhardy stunt usually involving alcohol and peer pressure where victims attempt to jump from their balconies into the swimming pool below.
“This trend is over now. There are no cases of 'balconing' among young Brits these days,” Millen insists.
“The cases seen this year have been accidental falls, which is different; although it's true there have been a lot of such cases this summer.”
Falls reported in the press have all been onto pavements or internal courtyards with no pool, showing they cannot logically be the result of 'balconing'.
“Brits do not tend to live in flats with balconies and perhaps they are not used to them,” the Consul explains, adding that this is why the UK foreign office recommends tourists take extreme care when they visit holiday hotspots in Spain.
Cheap alcohol is also partly behind accidental falls: “If they go to the Punta Ballena strip, on a 300-metre strip there are 113 cashpoints. It's designed to get money out of people,” Millen says.
“And we always send out the message that tourists should closely monitor their alcohol consumption, because measures here are very different to in Britain. A gin and tonic in the UK tastes of tonic; here, it tastes of gin.”
Reactions in the Spanish media and public, however, have largely been of mirth or outrage.
Tongue-in-cheek suggestions of signs being attached to all terrace railings reading: “Warning – balcony ahead, please do not jump,” as well as complaints about alcohol measures being 'criticised' – missing the point that the comments were a statement of fact and a note of caution rather than a negative judgment – have been seen on social media and discussion threads.
But parents of victims and of victims' friends in the UK have called for action in some cases: balcony railings below waist height can easily be toppled over if a person is unsteady on his or her feet after drinking, and families have criticised one hotel complex which saw two deaths this summer on an unlit walkway with just a foot-high (30 centimetres) wall either side that appeared to border a garden, but in fact was all that stood between the hotel guest and a seven-metre (23-foot) drop.
This said, some deaths and injuries have been caused by young guests accidentally locking their room keys inside and attempting to climb through their own windows by edging along a neighbouring balcony.
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