Got back from my week in Cataluña a while back but haven´t had time to blog as I had a visitor and it took a few more days to sort myself out. So finally I can get down to blogging.
Salou is a great place for families, I must say. Lovely beach, long, safe
promenade for kids and the adventure park, Port Aventura, only a short distance away. It´s also a great centre for seeing other places in Cataluña - Reus, with lovely modernist houses and the Gaudi Centre; Barcelona - masses to see there; the Ebro Delta, a fascinating rice-growing area and a wonderful wild bird area; Cambrils - a picturesque town full of seafood restaurants - just to name a few. Plana, the local bus company had lots of tours at really good prices and some were guided by very interesting, profesional people of different nationalities.
The hotel was good and there was plenty of really nice food. So it should have been perfect. Trouble was, my holiday coincided with the annual SalouFest. This has apparently been held for the last 10 years. Thousands of British University students decend on the town, ostensibly to be doing sports but from what I observed they were there first and foremost to get totally, senselessly, drunk.
We had 350 of them at our hotel. The worst ones called themselves the Trent Army and were from Nottingham. The restaurant looked as if demented monkeys had been in there when they left it for the other guests. We were actually advised by the Head Waiter not to go in until he and his staff had had time to clean up after them.
Every evening from about 11pm they were outside on the street making an unholy racket, some of the lads urinating, some- both boys and girls- stripping down to the bare essentials, until the coaches carried them off for an evening in the discos. Then it all started again from 2-3 am onwards as they came back , this time lots of them so drunk that they were vomiting on the buses and in the street outside the hotel. I saw one girl collapsed on the pavement, totally out of it, who was taken away by police and ambulance. (One newspaper report said there were 60 cases of alcohol poisoning treated at the hospital).
It was widely reported in the Spanish press and on TV and I felt ashamed on their behalf. They may think it´s great to reel about shrieking at the top of their voices but most of the Spaniards in the hotel (both guests and staff) had a pretty poor opinion of them. I don´t think my hotel was a a special case. There were thousands of them, all over Salou, creating mayhem.
I can´t help but wonder if the money made by the bars and restaurants is sufficient to outweigh the aggravation felt by the service staff in hotels, bars and hospitals, not to mention the police and, of course, the ordinary inhabitants of Salou and the other guests in hotels all over Salou who had their holiday soured by these idiots.
So - I did actually enjoy my holiday but was really disturbed at the behaviour of these students and wonder what on earth it will be like in 10 years or so from now when they are in managerial/administrative positions, since they don´t seem to have grasped the basic concepts of consideration and courtesy. Not to mention the damage that quite a few of them are doing to their own bodies by pouring so much alcohol into them.
I´m off on another trip quite soon. This time it´s with other half in tow and we´re going to Mallorca. Just hope the weather´s a bit better by then and that there aren´t too many riotous drinkers about.
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