"Balconing" accidents jump on Spain's holiday isles (News Feature)

By Hubert Kahl Aug 14, 2010, 3:06 GMT

Madrid/Palma de Mallorca - Hotel balconies on Spain's Balearic islands are dangerous, it seems. Ambulances on Majorca and Ibiza dash off several times a week after holidaymakers go over railings and plunge to the ground.

Faulty construction is not to blame for the terrible spate of accidents, though. The cause is youthful recklessness fueled by alcohol and drugs.

The scenario is almost always the same. A group of young tourists return to their high-rise hotel in high spirits after an evening of bar and disco hopping. Then, on a dare, someone leaps towards a ground-level swimming pool or nearby balcony, or swings Tarzan-like from balcony to balcony.

So far this summer more than 30 people have had accidents playing this dangerous game, known in Internet forums as 'balconing.' At least four have been killed - eight, according to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

Most of the victims are Britons between the ages of 18 and 25. Occasionally they are young Germans or Spaniards.

'Due to alcohol and drug consumption they've lost their sense of risk,' said emergency physician Maria Angeles Lecinena. 'Their perceptive faculties are so impaired that they can't even correctly judge the distance to the pool.'

The phenomenon is not new. High season plunges from balconies have been occurring on Majorca and Ibiza for several years. The locals seem to have accepted them as unavoidable.

As a Majorcan policeman wryly put it, 'When the year's first holidaymaker has fallen from a balcony, we know that summer has started.'

Some of the young daredevils now film their feats and put them on the Internet.

'We've been familiar with these falls from balconies for a long time,' a hotel employee in the Majorcan tourist centre of Alcudia told the Spanish newspaper El Pais. 'This year they've become a real plague, though.'

Last Sunday there were three falls in the space of just 12 hours on Majorca and Ibiza. Two of the tourists were not seriously hurt, the third was hospitalized in critical condition.

Hoteliers are at a loss to prevent balconing. Many have made balcony railings higher or added bars. Some even give young tourists rooms on lower floors whenever possible.