'The Balearics street drinking rules are a classic government own goal – and totally unworkable'

And what’s more, it’s totally unworkable. It’s not against the law to drink a beer from a can in one street but it is in another? It’s a nonsensical impractical law that’s designed purely to garner headlines and send a message.

In other words the worse kind of law that sits on the shelf gathering cobwebs until it’s wheeled out twice a year to send a message that can’t be enforced because there’s no will or workforce to do it.

Playing devil’s advocate, Ibiza’s excessive side has always been there and does needs controlling but in proactive ways working with local businesses rather than arbitrary laws that prejudice a few and don’t get to the root of the problem.

The island’s relentless surge to a more lucrative market has only increased the fervor, but it doesn’t take a sledgehammer to crack a nut especially one that screams negativity and sends exactly the wrong, and in this case, incorrect message.

Local police in San Antonio have enough to do over a busy summer tackling real crime such as organised theft, drug dealing in plain sight and illegal street selling. These headlines paint the picture of a swat team swooping in on an innocent tourist sipping a can of beer in the evening heat. A classic own goal!

Martin Makepeace is managing director of Ibiza Property Shop. He moved to the island in the early-1990s and writes the Man in San An blog. You can read his original column here.