Some bars offer free drinks to attract young holidaymakers

But a few drinks with friends very soon turned to tragedy for Antonio Antonopoulos.

The thirteen year old met up with a group of friends at Santo Tomas on the island of Minorca for a beach party to mark the final night of his summer break.

After drinking beer and tequila bought from a nearby supermarket, Antonio complained of feeling unwell and his friends contacted his parents who took him back to their hotel.

The teenager's heart stopped beating and although doctors were called they were unable to revive him. An autopsy found he died from heart failure.

Antonopoulos, who was from Porthcawl, in South Wales, was on a two-week break with his family last summer when the tragedy happened.
 
His death refuelled persistent calls in Spain to reduce the drink culture so prevalent among foreign tourists coming to Spain. 

But so far no steps have been taken to cut sales of alcohol to young people.

Just days before Antonopoulos' death, Spain's tourism chief had called for a crackdown on travel companies and bars that encourage drunkenness among young tourists.

Those that actively promote the excessive consumption of alcohol should be "sanctioned or shut down" said the secretary general of tou rism, Raimon Martínez Fraile. 

Asked at a Madrid press conference what he felt about the number of drunken incidents in holiday resorts, Martínez Fraile replied: "We don't want to give publicity to this type of event.

"It can only be counter-productive to our image of quality tourism."

But Martínez Fraile was especially critical of tour operators that offer free drinks at bars as an incentive to attract young holidaymakers.

One newspaper in Catalonia, in north-eastern Spain, recently reported that a German operator was offering five hours of free drinks a day for its clients at their hotels in the Costa Brava resort of Calella.

Some Dutch operators arrange to take their customers on a crawl of more than 10 bars on the first night of their holidays for a cost of just EUR 9, the newspaper added.

Martinez Fraile's comments have been echoed by Catalan regional government Counsellor Montserrat Turat who accused some operators of encouraging "drunken tourism" - "turismo de borrachera" as it has been dubbed in Spain.

It was time that action was taken against those bars which made it easy for youngsters to get drunk, Turat said, resulting in drunken rampages and damage to property in resorts. 

Per capita alchohol consumption is much higher in tourist resorts

Various bars in Lloret de Mar had no licences or broke bye-laws, while several hotels had reached a state where "they should be closed down", she added.

Turat said she had expressed her worries to the regional tourism authorities and suggested they start trying to change the resort's image, "although that should have happened 10 years ago," she added.

The town Lloret de Mar had "veritable circuits for those seeking a drunken coma", with some bars organising routes by bus, which ended up with the customers being left in the town centre.

Lloret de Mar has long been a favourite resort with British tourists, but last year, reports from the major tour operators said, the traditional visitors had tired of the package tours which started in the 1950s.

However, it appears that though the operators are looking to other markets, the traditional visitors who enjoy traditional pursuits like binge-drinking, are still flocking to this part of the Costa Brava.

Of course, the "turismo de borrachera" is not confined to north-east Spain and has been a common sight elsewhere, particularly in the Costa del Sol, Costa Blanca and the Canary and Balearic Islands.

A snapshot from an article in the Spanish daily El Mundo illustrated the size of the problem in Benidorm, a traditional haunt for British tourists in the Costa Blanca.

The report said the average yearly consumption of beer in Spain was 75 litres per person, while in the holiday resort the level was 300 litres. The figures speak for themselves.

In this moderate-sized town, tourists can chose between 482 bars and 25 discos or 56 disco-pubs.

Incidentally, the article was about the efforts of the local council to monitor the noise levels from the discos and pubs - but no efforts is mentioned to police drinking itself.

In another newspaper, El Pais, an article dealt with the notorious resort of Magaluf in Majorca.

A typical sentence ran like this: "Uncontrolled hooligans ran singing Celtic songs at the top of their voices."

The picture of drunken, Scots, Irish and English tourists was all to clear.

But Spaniards do not stand by ignoring the problem.

In El Mundo, the Spanish writer Carmen Rico-Godoy had this to say: "In the same way that some Spaniards go to the Caribbean for 'sex tourism', without any interest in where they are, those from North Europe arrive in Spain for "sun and alcoholic tourism".

"During the sunshine, they go to the beach, then get drunk, then to hospitals to get attention for their burns or their hangovers."

Quite whether there is a real will among tourism bosses to end this side to Spanish tourism is another thing.

Updated October 2005

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Subject: Tourists drinking too much; Life in Spain