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MAJORCA

Neo-Nazi wanted in Germany over attempted bombing arrested in Mallorca

Spanish police said Thursday they have arrested a German neo-Nazi on the holiday island of Mallorca who is wanted in his home country for allegedly trying to set off a bomb.

Neo-Nazi wanted in Germany over attempted bombing arrested in Mallorca
The man was arrested in Majorca, which has a large German population. Photo: DPA

Officers arrested the 28-year-old as he stepped out of a luxury villa on the island, which has a big German population, where he had been hiding, the police said in a statement.

The man, who was not identified, “remained the majority of the time hidden inside the villa to avoid being detected by Spanish police officers,” the statement added.

He is considered “very dangerous” by German authorities who suspect him of placing a homemade bomb in February in the German town of Burglengenfeld in the southern region of Bavaria.

The bomb, which included a vial of mercury to make it more powerful, was spotted by a local resident who alerted the authorities and it did not go off.

Police suspect the man is a member of the Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich) group, who do not recognize modern-day Germany as a legitimate state and insist the former, far larger Third Reich is still alive despite Nazi Germany's defeat in World War Two.

SEE ALSO: What is Germany's extremist Reichsbürger movement?

German authorities estimate that the Reichsbürger has around 20,000 members in Germany.

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TOURISM

Mallorca closes bars in crack down on hard-drinking tourists

Regional authorities on Spain's Balearic island of Mallorca on Wednesday ordered the immediate closure of bars on three streets popular with hard drinking tourists to limit the potential for coronavirus outbreaks.

Mallorca closes bars in crack down on hard-drinking tourists
AFP

Concerned many tourists are not respecting social distancing guidelines, authorities elected to close the venues on the Platja de Palma strip in the capital Palma and Magaluf, a favoured haunt with young booze-fuelled Britons.

One of Europe's hardest-hit nations with almost 30,000 deaths, Spain last month exited one of the globe's toughest virus lockdowns.

But as the summer season starts to take off authorities on the island feared matters could get out of hand unless they took tough action.

Earlier this week, Germany's health minister had expressed concern after hundreds of German tourists were seen partying on the island without masks or keeping a safe distance, fuelling fears of another coronavirus wave.

Local media on the Spanish island voiced outrage after video footage showed mainly German holidaymakers carousing outside bars and terraces on Friday evening, leading the German-language Mallorca Zeitung to note “it was as if no one had ever heard of the corona pandemic”.

The regional government last week had already announced hefty fines for those caught organising illegal parties or flouting rules on social distancing and face masks.

“We do not want uncivil tourists on our islands,” said regional tourism minister Iago Negueruela.

Negueruela warned that if the tourists simply took their boorish behaviour elsewhere then the crackdown would simply be widened.

Authorities in the Balearic Islands off Spain's eastern coast say they need to protect public health even as summer tourism, on which some 200,000 local jobs depend, begins to ramp up.

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