It’s leap year in Spain!
The craze for balcony diving has the Spanish holiday industry worried, as Roger St. Pierre reveals
First published in ITIJ 116, September 2010
The craze for balcony diving has the Spanish holiday industry worried, as Roger St. Pierre reveals
When 23-year old Scottish labourer Leigh John Reeve took a flying dive into the crowd from a 20-ft balcony at a Prodigy rock group gig at Dundee’s Laird Hall in July, he escaped any injuries but landed himself in court and received a whopping £750 fine for his troubles. Imposing the financial penalty rather than a possible custodial sentence, Sherriff Richard Davidson acknowledged the heady influence of youthful high spirits but commented: “Hopefully, this stiff fine will discourage other idiots from jumping off balconies.” It’s a problem that’s been around the music scene since the head banging early days of punk rockers and heavy metal fans. In recent years, to the dismay of both tourism bosses and health authorities, it’s taken on an even more dangerous dimension.
Summer madness
This summer, Spanish holiday resorts have witnessed a veritable epidemic of what the Spanish now call ‘balconing’ – jumping 40 feet and more off hotel balconies into beckoning swimming pools – and it’s been encouraged by a veritable rash of YouTube video clip postings. It looks fun, exciting, crowd pleasing even – but it’s stupid and highly dangerous.
Says veteran Costa Blanca-based independent tour guide Gemma Ulrich: “We’ve all seen those Hollywood movies where the hero is thrown from a 10th floor window and is saved by landing in the pool and now youngsters, urged on by their friends and often fuelled by drinks and drugs, are emulating such big-screen feats by deliberately jumping from hotel balconies into the pool beneath.”
Emergency doctor Maria Azos, at Palma de Mallorca’s Son Dureta Hospital, said: “Too often, they miss or else the entry speed proves too high or the water too shallow.” One hapless diver mistook an only inches deep ornamental pond for a swimming pool, with disastrous results. Others have misjudged their plunge and hit concrete instead of water.
One hapless diver mistook an only inches deep ornamental pond for a swimming pool, with disastrous results
The problem of such foolhardy stunts has become so serious for hoteliers that some have raised the height of balcony railings or have taken to removing temptation by allocating young holidaymakers rooms on the ground or first floors. One has even put signs on his balconies proclaiming: ‘This balcony is NOT on the ground floor’.
“It’s become such a problem that our members are now tacking action to evict guests who indulge in such stupidly dangerous behaviour,” says Sebastian Darder of the Balearic Hoteliers Association, adding, “A strict no-tolerance attitude is now being adopted and we are being backed by the tourist board, the police and the civil authorities in our efforts to stamp out such behaviour.”
Some hoteliers are now putting up screens to block off jump areas. Others are making strenuous efforts to bar pool access to anyone who shows signs of having been drinking heavily or of indulging in drugs.
The injuries from balcony dives that go wrong can be truly horrendous and there has been a spate of recent fatalities: “More than a third of the patients currently in our hospital in a critical or serious state are the self-created victims of such stupid antics,” according to Son Durato’s Dr Azos.
According to official statistics, there have been nine deaths and more than 30 cases of serious injury from balcony falls and dives in Spain this year, the latest being that of a 25-year old Spaniard who died in July: “This year it has become a real plague,” a receptionist at an Alcudia hotel told the Spanish national newspaper, El Pais, adding, “When caught climbing between balconies, these young men often say they’re trying to access their own room from outside because they have left the key in the room but truth is they are trying to impress their friends or the girls with a dare.”
Most of the deliberate plunges seem to take place from third-floor balconies – high enough to create an impression of daring-do among watching friends, low enough to tempt, especially when the diver is being egged on and does not want to lose face with his friends. The trouble is, some jumpers miss and hit the concrete instead, resulting in serious spinal, neck or head injuries.
Costly care
The penalties for a balcony dive that goes wrong are fiscal as well as physical: “Too many of these young people are so excited about their holiday that they forget to take out any travel insurance, but even if they have done so, such foolhardy activities would not be covered,” comments an underwriter at travel insurers Aviva. Even if balcony jumping were to be considered a bona fide extreme sport, which it isn’t, then it would be excluded. Adds the Aviva spokesman: “Our policies provide the customer with a comprehensive list of the leisure activities that we cover when they are undertaken on a recreational and incidental basis during the trip. Such cover meets the needs of most holidaymakers. We clearly state that they will not be covered for anything that is not specifically included in the list – and that means any claim for death or injuries caused by balcony jumping would most certainly not be considered.”
Add in the factor that many of these youngsters also fail to carry a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) and a frightening scenario unfolds for the ill-fated jumper’s family. Even if an EHIC is carried, it does not cover the cost of repatriation, which can run into thousands of pounds.
The parents of 20-year old Ryan Elley, from Portsmouth, UK, who suffered a brain haemorrhage after jumping from a second floor apartment balcony in the Mallorcan resort of Playa d’en Bossa in August, faced a £15,000 bill for an air ambulance to repatriate their son to the UK. Only through public donations did they manage to reach their target.
It isn’t just travel insurance that will be invalidated by acts of balcony climbing or jumping. Most providers of PHI (Permanent Health Insurance), which gives an income to policyholders who are unable to work due to illness or accident, will not pay out if injury arises from participating in such highly dangerous activities as balcony jumping. Says Colin Young of specialist health insurer Unum: “We only provide cover for so-called adventure sports if they are carried out in a regulated environment, following strict safety procedures. Balcony jumping would certainly not meet such criteria.”
The most worrying version of the craze involves jumping from one balcony across to the adjacent one – often in a foolhardy attempt to impress the watching girls. The risk of death is far greater because such leaps often happen at far higher levels, in tower block hotels. Falls have been recorded from as high as the 10th floor. While most balcony jumpers seem to be British, young German tourists and Spaniards too have figured in the injury list.
“We only provide cover for so-called adventure sports if they are carried out in a regulated environment, following strict safety procedures. Balcony jumping would certainly not meet such criteria.”
Nor is balcony climbing and jumping confined to the popular resorts of the Balearic Islands and the mainland Spanish Costas. Increasing incidences have been reported in Mexican resorts like Cancun and in Florida too – especially at Spring Break time when the American student population traditionally lets its hair down. The phenomenon has even made the pages of USA Today, as well as being splash-headlined by British and German tabloids. It’s all been taken so seriously on America’s sunshine coast that climbing – and jumping from – balconies in the state of Florida has now been made specifically illegal and is today punishable by substantial fines.
One of the latest victims in Spain was 21-year old Briton, Andrew Henderson, who was on a weekend away with the lads at the Torremolinos Beach Club and after an all-day drinking session tried to jump between two fifth-floor terraces to reach his friends’ room. He slipped and plunged to the ground, sustaining multiple injuries from which he died later in Malaga General Hospital.
Berkshire coroner Peter Bedford returned a verdict of death by misadventure and commented: “This was not an unusual scenario, lads going abroad together and consuming large amounts of alcohol over a short period. There is evidence that Andrew had been jumping back and forth between balconies on one or more occasions. It is reasonable to say he was the worse for drink at the time he fell.”
Conclusion
Insurers are at pains to point out that even at vastly inflated premium rates they would not grant cover for such foolhardy and anti-social antics: “Besides the frightening risks for their own good health, these fools ruin other people’s holidays with the massive splashes they make when they hit the water. In some places it may not strictly be against the law but it does break the rules of common sense and social good behaviour,” comments Ashley Gibbins of the International Travel Writers Alliance and allwaystraveller.com.
Even Finnish Goth-metal band H.I.M have come out against balcony diving following an incident at one of their gigs, at London’s Astoria, which left an innocent member of the crowd off work for six weeks with a cracked vertebrae: “Our long-time fan Bam Margera, of ‘Jackass’ fame, took a controlled leap into the crowd. He does this for a living and knows what he is doing but some idiot then tried to emulate him and it all went wrong. Whether it’s at a gig or at a hotel pool, leave this kind of thing to the professional stunt artists.”
Balcony jumpers who end up maimed or killed do not receive much sympathy from their peers either: “I don’t like to get preachy,” says American blogger Naomi Rockler-Glasden, “but for heavens sakes, students, don’t climb on balconies. If you are smart enough to get into college, you’re smart enough not to do something so stupid.”
Insurers are at pains to point out that even at vastly inflated premium rates they would not grant cover for such foolhardy and anti-social antics
As the alcudiaguide.com website puts it: “The annual ritual of people falling out of hotels has been taken to a new level this year, to the variant on audience-surfing and stage-diving which has become known as balcony-diving. Rather than a sea of people in an audience waiting to catch the diver there is, he hopes, a small sea of a pool to break the dive. The trouble comes when there isn’t and the medics and hotel staff have to scrape up the mess.”