Off Their Faces: Underage drinking

58% of school students between the ages of 14 and 18 regularly consume alcohol. The average age of the onset of alcohol consumption is 13.6 years. The Spanish government intends to re-educate in order to stop alcohol misuse.

You might have read recent reports regarding the drinking of alcohol by Spanish youth. So you don’t need me to remind you of the figures. Perhaps not, but the above comes not from the recent survey of youth drinking, but from one conducted in 2000 and written up in 2002, one that was compiled in the context of growing concern as to the more widespread phenomenon of the botellón and of so-called binge drinking among Spanish youth. Just for the record, the new survey has found that habitual alcohol consumption between the ages of 12 and 18 is practised by 61% of the sample.

Allowing for a difference in the age ranges of the 2000 and latest surveys, the inference is that alcohol use among Spanish youth hasn’t risen significantly over the decade. Nevertheless, the latest survey has stirred up alarm, not least because it has found that it is so easy for under-18s to buy alcohol without showing any ID.

Incredible. Where have they been? Want to know how easy it is to be an underage drinker in Spain? Take a look at a few internet forums from the UK and you’ll find out. As one commentator put it, unless you’re in a pram, sucking on a dummy you won’t have any problem getting served in a bar or liquor store in Spain. In Valencia, just as an example, one survey discovered that there was virtually no request for ID for those of 15 or older.

Ah yes, you say, but this business of the average age of the onset of consumption, that’s the age at which children start drinking the odd glass of wine as part of the “responsible” attitude to alcohol in Spain. Sorry, but it isn’t. This is the age that youth start getting steamed up under their own steam as well as being “guided” by their parents. It is an unsettling fact for those who have the wholly misguided impression of alcohol and youth in a country which, because it isn’t the UK, is held up as some kind of panacea of responsibility. It is an unsettling fact, given that the Fundación Alcohol y Sociedad, which conducted the latest survey, has highlighted the “structural problem” of society as a consequence of alcohol as well as the levels of violence associated with drinking.

The UK alcohol charity Drinkaware revealed last year that the average age at which young people take their first alcoholic drink was … 13.4 years of age. Virtually no difference. It also discovered that 71% of 16 and 17 year olds drink more than once a week. Again allowing for a difference in age range and a not unreasonable assumption that older teenagers will be more inclined to drink regularly, then the Spanish and UK figures are similar.

If all that the Spanish surveys did was to point to the responsible odd glass of wine, then it might be legitimate to distinguish between a responsible drinking culture (Spain’s) and an irresponsible one (the UK’s). But they don’t do this. Both surveys point to the influence of the botellón street drinking party, while the latest highlights the almost complete failure of drinking-age law.

The survey of 2000 shows that the problem of youth drinking is not something of recent origin. And nor is the botellón, despite press treatment which might suggest otherwise. Back in 2002 the government was planning to prevent the drinking of alcohol in the streets and to ban the sale of alcohol to under-18s. Who was saying this then? Mariano Rajoy, now the national leader of the Partido Popular. His ominous-sounding, Khmer Rouge-style re-education programme, assuming it was ever launched, has been another failure alongside those to do with the sale of alcohol and street drinking.

The botellón phenomenon gathered strength in the 1990s. Yet it has been taken, without the slightest shred of evidence, as having been inspired by the drinking cultures of north European youth, especially the British. The conclusion that some would draw is that poor Spanish youth, previously all but teetotal, have been corrupted by an exported binge-drinking mentality. This is utter nonsense. One might add that British binge-drinking is, as far as the media is concerned, a more recent phenomenon than the botellón. Maybe, but it all depends on your definition.

The point is that youth culture is youth culture, of which drink is a part. It might once not have been so in Spain, but it now is, and the influences are the same – the lack of alternative forms of “entertainment”, peer pressure, drink is “cool” and so is getting off your face.

In the summer, in the light of excessive drinking, fears were being expressed as to the future of fiestas (in Mallorca) as they were being treated as excuses for the young to get drunk. These were fears being expressed in different towns and also by a local expert in popular culture Felip Munar. What was once a traditional alcohol responsibility has been eroded to the point of threatening traditions, but the threat stems from a societal shift. And it is one that negates the wrongheaded, rosy perception of attitudes to drink among Spanish youth.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Eyesight To The Blind: Youth drinking culture

On the same night as Alcúdia was celebrating the harmless Miss Drag parade, something else was being celebrated – something rather less harmless.

For some years, Puerto Alcúdia has been the location for a vast gathering of island youth, coming together at the end of the school year. In itself this may seem harmless enough, but the event has got completely out of control. It has become a massive botellón (street drinking party), accompanied by fights, vandalism, robberies; one played out on the beach and around what is the main “local” night area, that of the Magic Centre.

Organised with the aid of Facebook and other social networking sites, the “party” is not all bad news. It does, after all, bring to Alcúdia a fair amount of business. But it degenerates as the night goes on. Arrests and injuries follow.

With ages ranging from 14 to 18, the Alcúdia school-end bash gives lie, once more, to the absurd argument that Mallorcan and Spanish youth have a respect for alcohol and do not engage in the level of anti-social behaviour that their British counterparts do. This is a view perpetrated by some visitors but also by some Brits who live locally and who either haven’t a clue what life is really like outside their make-believe, expattery “paradise” worlds or who would rather not know, preferring to justify their existences in the “paradise” worlds by ignoring what goes on or by pulling the ah, but it’s all so much better here, it’s just a small minority and the UK is so much worse line. Sorry, but it’s only partially true. One reason why things seem much worse in the UK is that there are an awful lot more people to make them worse.

Perhaps the main difference, though, is that – for the holidaymaker or resident -trouble from events like the botellón is easily enough avoided. They tend to be confined to certain areas, while rarely do they give rise to the more British desire to have a go at anyone who might be in the vicinity. Random attacks on people in the streets are not unknown (a gay couple were attacked in Alcúdia recently, for example), but to over-emphasise them would be quite wrong; the streets are generally safe, so long as certain places are avoided at certain times.

Violence there is, and there were of course two deaths early in the season last year, but it isn’t extreme and is just as likely, more likely perhaps, to occur within the confines of certain hotels and to be solely the action of holidaymakers (and not just the British). However, the drink (and drugs) element, among local youth, cannot be brushed aside as though it were not an issue, as it most certainly is. One wishes, once and for all, that some would remove their tinted-the-turquoise-of-sea Raybans and see local society for what it really is. But they won’t, because they need justification and also a need to lambast a home country for societal ills that they pretend do not exist in Mallorca. They are blind. Deliberately and delusionally.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Seven Drunken Nights

There has been a thread over on Holiday Truths concerned with the legal age of drinking alcohol and specifically the suggestion that Mallorca does not have a problem of a British nature with alcohol among the young, over or under-age. It’s all a cultural difference, goes the argument.

 

It’s true that there is a cultural difference, it is also true that the Mallorcan young are not in the same league as their British counterparts when it comes to causing trouble or getting drunk, but it is a complete fallacy to suggest that a problem does not exist. In Palma the authorities are now starting a campaign of communicating with parents over the specific issue of the botellón – the street drinking party – that is the most obvious manifestation of youth drinking, and a growing social problem not only in Palma but in many towns across the island. These parties, usually on a Friday or Saturday night, involve cheap booze being brought to or sold at locations in different towns from where the youth will often go on to nightspots, having got tanked up on drink that would otherwise cost vastly more in clubs. In the case of some, those under 18, they wouldn’t, or shouldn’t be allowed into these venues anyway.

 

While the main consequences of the botellón are noise and mess, they have also contributed to occasionally serious incidents. The death of Gabriel Marquet in Alcúdia was partially attributed to the botellón by the Magic roundabout, while the authorities in Manacor moved swiftly to outlaw street drinking following an attack on a local citizen – again attributable to a botellón. The delegate for the Balearics to the central government, Ramón Socias, was moved to say that those who could not control themselves when with drink should not drink. It was a pretty pointless statement, but the fact that he was referring to self-control and drink at all gives the lie to the mythical notion of Mallorcan youth all being well-behaved and having been brought up to treat alcohol with respect. 

 

Someone on that thread made the point that at fiestas, and especially the dance parties during fiestas, there is no trouble. It’s a fair point, but it is not to say that there are never incidents. There is the further issue of drugs, one that affects the whole of the island. A parent in Puerto Pollensa once expressed to me her worries for her son as he entered his teens where the availability of drugs was concerned. The taking of drugs is as much of a problem in the small towns of Mallorca as it is in Palma. 

 

One needs to be careful and not overstate the problem, but there is a lingering perception among those who merely come to Mallorca for holidays that the island -its people and its youth – exists in some idyllic other world where social problems of other countries do not manifest themselves; that the youth sit around a café table and discuss music or art over a coffee and then go quietly home. It simply isn’t true. One doesn’t like to have to shatter people’s illusions, but many, including some expats residing on the island, have a misguided impression as to life in Mallorca. It is not the social paradise they would like to believe that it is.

 

 

The last supper?

On a lighter note, the Sant Jaume fiesta in Alcúdia, that came to its firework-blazing conclusion last night, recorded record numbers attending the open-air supper that is an annual feature during the fiesta week. For two and a half euros, more than 3,000 people were able to tuck into different pa amb olis, a dessert, some wine and water. Not a bad price. Perhaps it was so popular because it was so cheap. A sign of the times maybe. The supper was also, however, a potential demonstration of popular rejection of authority. An aspect of the supper is that there is a grand bingo. The interior ministry, as mentioned here previously, has sought to ban these open-air bingos on the grounds that they are illegal. It’s daft. Could this have been the last supper and bingo? But the size of the prizes on offer is maybe also indicative of the current times. Like the cheapness of the meal, so the incentive of a not insignificant cash payout is possibly a way of registering a record turn-out.

Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting

Manacor may be a bit off the beaten blog track, but some little local difficulties there are not without relevance to Alcúdia. Early on Sunday morning, a 31-year-old man was attacked by two youths and suffered injuries that have resulted in the loss of sight in one eye. The incident, and there were others, appears to be related to the Manacor version of the botellón, the street drinking party, and it also occurred in the context of the Manacor spring fair. It will be remembered that the death in Puerto Alcúdia of Gabriel Marquet was said to be related to a botellón. Residents of Manacor are attributing the violence, in part, to a lack of things for the local young population to do. So there we have it: feckless and reckless youth, without facilities and activities to divert them, getting drunk and having a bundle. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But let’s not get too precious. Or at least I’m not going to be. Had there been street drinking parties when I was a youth, I would probably have partaken; in fact I’m pretty damn sure I would have.

The town hall in Manacor is wanting to put in place a law to tackle the issue of the botellón and to impose certain sanctions. Good for them, but Alcúdia enacted a by-law last September specifically to stop street drinking – of any sort. Why do the parties still occur then? It’s all a police issue. Nothing more, nothing less. The argument about there not being things for the youth to do is almost completely fallacious. God knows, when I was at university there were all manner of things to divert you, some of them even related to studying, but it didn’t stop excessive drinking and “high-spirited” anti-social behaviour. Many left university with first-class honours in alcohol abuse, and some could also claim higher degrees in acts of vandalism and brawling. The local problems are hardly unique to the island or to its youthful generation.

Anyway, to matters more light-hearted. Following yesterday’s teabags, I would like to thank Sheila for itemising some of the things she brings on holiday to Alcúdia. Included among them is one food item that I would not have expected. And it is … frozen haddock. Yes, everyone, frozen haddock. I really should quiz Sheila a tad more closely on this, as in the means of transporting said haddock. But haddock, frozen or not frozen, would, I suggest, take some beating in the league of odd foodstuffs taken on holiday, though it should be pointed out that the fish is intended for friends, so there’s another category for you – strange things I have taken on holiday to give as presents. For my part, some years ago I grew addicted to a particular bottled satay sauce, so much so that several of the bottles were flown across the Channel to France. Not in the same class as the haddock, but indicative of something you just can’t do without. Sheila also listed English mustard and curry powder, and with curry in mind, in case you didn’t work it out, Cap Roig in Puerto Alcúdia will be the new Kashmir, making four the number of Indian restaurants in Puerto Alcúdia, which is still, relative to its size, a small number when compared with the relatively petite Puerto Pollensa and its foursome of Indians.

And, are we seeing the green shoots of sterling recovery? Up to a whopping 1.15 against the euro. Come on lads, let’s push it even higher. 1.20 by June. Then finally, who said that Barça had no defence. Two to nil I think you’ll find. Cue much outpouring of Catalan solidarity in the bars of Alcúdia and Pollensa – and quite right, too.