Backlash against Mallorcan Covid students continues

The backlash continues against hundreds of students who partied in Mallorca while not following Covid safety measures. Their behaviour has led to almost 2,000 new cases of the infection across Spain.

Spain’s former ombudsman for children has criticised the students and parents involved in the mega-outbreak for not being able to think about other people’s needs. Other commentators have been far more blunt labelling them ‘posh’ rule breakers and ‘Cayatano’ which is the Spanish equivalent of a Hooray Henry with no respect for anyone below them on social ladder.

“Since they were children, they have not been educated to put themselves in the place of others, Javier Urra Spain’s former ombudsman for children, told La Sexta on July 3.

He added that the vacationing students may have accepted the risk of being infected themselves, but they had failed to “demonstrate an intergenerational respect” for others who would be at a greater risk of serious illness or death than themselves.

Eight out of the 77 Andalucian students who came back from Mallorca on July 1 have tested positive for Covid-19. The students were shipped back to mainland Spain on a specially chartered vessel after a judge ruled quarantining them in a hotel in Palma de Mallorca was illegal.

The British School in Cordoba, which some of the partying school leavers attended, has distanced it from the scandal saying the school was not involved with any aspect of the trips.

“Our students made the trip on their own, the British School in Cordoba has nothing to do with it,” the school’s director, Ana Ortiz, told ABC on July 4.

Antonio Maestre, Spanish author and social commentator, however accused both students and parents of crying “crocodile tears” over their predicament.

When unruly students compelled the police to place guards in the four-star hotel they were quarantined in, he wrote, “There should not be a policeman at the door – none of us would have needed it – if only they would comply with their quarantine in a civic way.”

“This parasitic class has no conception of solidarity as a way of living in society … Returning class contempt is a moral duty,” he added.

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