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TOURISM

Majorca ‘sex contests’ not police matter: Spain

The Spanish secretary of state for tourism has weighed into the controversy over an alleged fellatio contest in a nightclub in the Majorca resort of Magaluf, saying that such activities should not be "criminalized".

Majorca 'sex contests' not police matter: Spain
File photo: Pascal/Flickr

Speaking in Palma de Majorca on Tuesday, Isabel Borrego said that while Spain wishes to offer "quality tourism", the response to such lewd behaviour must be to boost awareness of what is and is not acceptable.

"Above all, it is a question of making the business community and the tourists who come to this area conscious; we have to do this together, the online news site Público quoted Borrego as saying.

"Sometimes, imposing a ban does not resolve problems," she added.  

Borrego said that on Tuesday afternoon she would be meeting in Madrid with the Balearic Islands tourism chief, Jaime Martínez, representatives of the British Embassy and UK tour operators to drive forward a joint institutional campaign to prevent such unsavoury incidents in Spain’s reports.  

The secretary of state said that members of the Balearic government and Spain’s tourism office in London were already working on a publicity campaign that would be finalized in the coming days.

The idea is that internet sites and the UK media outlets which have reported on an incident in which a young British woman was filmed performing oral sex on a number of men before being rewarded with free alcohol will be chosen to run the resulting campaign.

The story was met with widespread indignation in Majorca, with the Balearic government appealing to Spain’s national administration and the local authorities in Magaluf to form a common front against what is being described in the media as ‘mamading’, coining from the Spanish word 'mamada', which means fellatio.

The regional government decried what it saw as a “degrading image of women and the Balearics.”

The Balearic branch of the Women’s Institute announced that it would be informing public prosecutors of bars where such “contests” took place. No legal action against any venue has yet come to light, however.

In Palma, the secretary of state for tourism stressed that the Spanish and Balearic governments wish to offer an image of “responsible” tourism, while claiming that the problem was limited to “a few streets” in Magaluf.   

British tourists made up just under a third of the Balearic Islands record international tourism figure for 2013, when 11.1 million non-Spaniards travelled to the archipelago, leaving a combined €10.6 billion ($14.4 billion) behind them.

"For British tourism aimed at young people, sadly this is the best advert you could come up with," one Majorcan resident said to Atlas news agency when asked about the oral sex controversy.

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FOOD AND DRINK

Why do they pour cider like that in Spain’s Asturias?

The green northern region’s drink of choice is cider but it’s the method waiters have of pouring it from a great height that catches the attention of ‘out-ciders’.

Why do they pour cider like that in Spain's Asturias?

They say Asturian blood is 50 percent water and 50 percent cider, and given the 40 million bottles produced every year in the region, it doesn’t seem too hard to believe.

However, it’s the method of serving cider in Asturias which really captures the imagination. 

The bottle will either come attached to a contraption which sucks up the cider and splurts it into a wide but thin-rimmed glass.

Or the waiter will come out every few minutes to grab your bottle and glass, lift the former high up with one arm and the latter down low around waist height before pouring some of the cider into the glass from at an arm’s length. 

There’s even a verb for this action – escanciar – to decant.  

The objective is for the cider to be shaken and aerated so that its natural carbon dioxide ‘awakens’.

When it is poured from above and hits the glass, carbon dioxide bubbles are produced that make the aroma of the cider come alive.

It’s good and normal for there to be splashback when pouring Asturian cider, but the aim is still to get most of it in the glass. (Photo by MIGUEL RIOPA / AFP)

These bubbles go away quickly so once served, the customer should quickly drink the culín (small bottom) up in one swig. 

The action of escanciar imitates how cider would be traditionally served when it went directly from big oak barrels to the glass, as cider has been the drink of choice in Asturians since before Roman times. 

READ ALSO: Why Spaniards’ habit of drinking alcohol every day is surprisingly healthy

This is after all natural cider which doesn’t come with the sugar, additives and pre-carbonated mixes of brands such as Strongbow, Magners or Kopparberg.

“It took me some time to get the hang of pouring cider, I missed the mark a lot, and my arm used to get very tired at first,” a Latin American waitress at a bar in Gijón told The Local Spain. 

Many sidrerías (cider houses) and restaurants have cylindrical tubes on wheels where escanciadores (the waiters in charge of pouring cider) can put the glass in to avoid making a mess on the floor or splashing customers, as there is always some splatter even if they don’t completely miss the mark. 

A waiter pours cider for customers at a cider bar in the northern Spanish city of Oviedo (Photo by RAFA RIVAS / AFP)

The more old-school chigres (cider house in Asturian) prefer to have sawdust all over the floor to absorb the spilt cider.

To pour, tirar (throw) or escanciar (decant) cider like an Asturian, you should tilt the bottle slowly from above and aim for the cider to hit the top part of the inside side of the glass, which has to be held at a 45-degree angle. It’s this that brings out the effervescence out in la sidra natural.  

So when you visit the beautiful region of Asturias and you tuck into their famously ample servings of fabada asturiana (Asturian bean stew) or cachopo (meat, cheese and ham all together in breadcrumbs), washed down with one or two bottles of sidra, now you’ll understand what’s behind this eye-catching tradition.

READ ALSO: Eight fascinating facts about Spain’s Asturias region

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