Drunken Britons annoy Spaniards at tourist resort

Tarragona, Spain - Thousands of British students have descended on a north-eastern Spanish seaside resort, annoying locals with their rowdy behavior, media reports said Wednesday.

More than 8,000 students from dozens of universities are participating in an annual event called Saloufest in Salou south of Tarragona during the Easter holidays.

The event, organized by a British travel agency, is supposed to feature sports contests, but the students were also being given discounts at bars and pubs, reports said.

They had come to Salou in search of partying, cheap alcohol and sex, according to the daily El Pais.

The students were drinking so heavily that several of them were hospitalized for alcohol poisoning.

"Of course it is drinking tourism," a hotel manager said. "But these young people are good clients."

A municipal spokesman said there had been no official complaints, but many residents expressed outrage over the presence of scantily or fancily dressed revelers who vomited and urinated on the streets at night.

"We cannot sleep, they do whatever they want and nobody prohibits anything," Jose Maria Ciria complained.

"And these holidaymakers are among the educated ones," a reader wrote to the daily Diari de Tarragona. "What will happen to us when the uneducated ones come here?"

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/316610,drunken-britons-annoy-spaniards-at-tourist-resort.html.