Magaluf has come under heavy media fire this year as concerns are raised over teenage behaviour taking place at the holiday resort. Today it suffers another blow.
Ibiza Rocks Group has announced that it is pulling out of Magaluf. It means that Mallorca Rocks 2014, which has already hosted gigs from the likes of Tinie Tempah and will bring Ed Sheeran, Duke Dumont, bastille and more to the Spanish island this summer, will be the final edition of the festival. It has run for five seasons. Mallorca Rocks Hotel and their retail stores will also close at the end of the season.
Ibiza Rocks Group Founder and CEO Andy McKay says that their "strategic agenda has changed".
While flocks of Leaving Cert students heading to the resort since their exams concluded, Magaluf has been heavily criticised in the Irish and UK press for the lewd behaviour its lax laws permit – and possibly encourage.
Officials have enacted laws this summer aimed at deterring pub crawlers but with reports of parents travelling to the Mediterranean holiday spot to bring home their children – singer Mary Coughlan among them – and the 'Magaluf Girl' case, in which an Irish teen was filmed performing oral sex on 24 men in two minutes, it looks like the controversy isn't going away any time soon.
Mary Coughlan was forced to bring her 17-year-old son home when his money was stolen and his passport torn to shreds.
“I got that phone call you dread getting in the middle of the night," Coughlan told Newstalk recently. "He said ‘Mam will you come get me, I need to come home, you have no idea how bad it is here.’”