I will never understand what it is with tourists falling off balconies in Spain. Particularly British tourists, who sadly seem to number a huge percentage of those holidaymakers plummeting off balconies in Spain every year.
Not just falling either but, quite a large number of them fall to their deaths.
In only the last month for instance, eight people have fallen off balconies on Spain’s Balearic Islands alone, with the eighth person falling off a second-floor balcony on Formentera just a couple of days ago.
Fortunately, that 23-year-old Italian man didn’t die, but he was seriously injured and with several broken bones.
Three of the eight that have fallen off Spanish balconies so far this month include a 14-year-old Irish boy, who sadly died in a Mallorca hospital of his injuries, and a 42-year-old British man who fell off a balcony while on holiday on Ibiza.
The man is still in intensive care in Spain.
And even a 23-year-old British Labour Party councillor for Edmonton Green, Tolga Aramaz, was seriously injured this week when he fell from a second-floor balcony at his hotel in Ibiza. In his case, an awning broke his fall.
Aramaz is now in hospital fighting for his life. (Update: He did survive and was eventually able to travel back home to the UK).
Much of the problem of falling off balconies in Spain is associated with alcohol, and particularly with British tourists who, sadly, seem to be one of the worst nationalities when it comes to being able to control their alcohol use while on holiday.
I am British and live in Spain, and I have seen fellow Brits drunk all over Spain and behaving badly many, many, many times.
But you do have to wonder why, with the news being practically flooded every year with instances of tourist deaths in Spain due to people falling off balconies of Spanish hotels and apartment buildings, more people would not be careful about going out on their balconies while drunk.
Or while engaging in other risky behavior.
In other words, if you plan on coming to Spain on holiday, please, please, please do not go out on your balcony while drunk.
And please do not engage in silly behavior like ‘balconing‘ — the idiocy of trying to jump into a swimming pool from a balcony, or of trying to jump from one balcony to another. It can, and very likely will, kill you.
And yes, according to the British Foreign Office, 97% of people that decide to try balconing are men, and 61% are British. Go figure!
Related: British diver Tom Daley in campaign to try to stop ‘balconing’ in Spain