Teutonic trouble in Playa de Palma

A raucous brawl between drunken German tourists and African street vendors erupted at the seaside town of Playa de Palma.

The street fight involving around 30 men occurred at 7.15pm on Friday May 13 outside a pub near Balneario 5, in the party area known by Germans as ‘Ballermann’, a derivation of the Spanish word ‘Balneario’ (spa) used in Playa de Palma to divide the beach into various sections.

The Ballermann area along Playa de Palma’s waterfront is notorious for excessive drinking. Witnesses claimed that the fight was quite brutal saying that even people lying on the ground were kicked and beaten.

Police, however, had difficulty making sense of what the heavily intoxicated holidaymakers were saying when they tried to gather statements from them.

Local and National Police helped the injured until the arrival of medical teams. Ten Germans had to be taken by ambulance to hospital. A mobile Accident and Emergency unit was also brought in due to the worrying state of one of the tourists.

It is not known if any of the street vendors were injured as they fled the scene when police arrived. Questions are left unanswered regarding what incited the Friday the 13th brawl between the German tourists and African hawkers, but this type of incident is not new to the area with videos of previous years’ altercations between the two groups available for viewing online.

The fight marked a sombre beginning to the area’s image this season with residents commenting that this year has begun with high numbers of young Germans never before seen in the area, giving some credence to the popular German claim that Mallorca is ‘Germany’s 17th state’.

This reputation in recent years among holidaymakers around the island for rowdy behaviour has triggered a crackdown by authorities on excessive drinking.