It’s hard to know when the term “Shagaluf” was first used. The earliest mention I could find in print was a 1995 article in Scotland on Sunday, which detailed, with wet-lipped glee, the excesses of Magaluf’s British thrill seekers: “Comatose people with bloody noses, lying in pools of vomit”.
For decades, this sketch of the Mallorcan tourist resort was the defining image of the working-class Brit abroad, a paean to the supposed selfishness and cultural insensitivity of those who holidayed there. Magaluf, so the common wisdom went, was a place stripped of its locals, individual character and identity in the service of near-feral hedonism. Death by cheap air travel and caramel vodka shots.
In recent years, however, there have been indications that its gory days are long gone. The last true Magaluf outrage, once a stock in trade for the tabloids, was a 2014 incident where a young woman supposedly performed oral sex on 24 men at a bar.
The rise of Airbnb, the general decline of the 18-30 package holiday and the stringent restrictions put in place to tackle anti-social behaviour have meant getaways to the destination have changed. What happens, then, when the revelry ends at Europe’s naughtiest party destination?
Spanish authorities, for their part, want fewer, more affluent tourists — borne out by the fact that 80 per cent of hotels in Calvía and Magaluf are now four or five star. One such hotel is INNSiDE by Meliá Calviá Beach, which (along with independent bookstore Rata Corner) hosts the Festival Literatura Expandida Magaluf, or FLEM, a new free literary festival held each October in the adjoining plaza.
This year’s English line-up features headliner Helen Fielding, creator of the Bridget Jones series, and author Siri Hustvedt. The rest of the roster is Spanish speaking, with a something-for-everybody approach that features everyone from literary heavyweights such as Eva Baltasar and Javier Cercas to commercial romcom writers such as Megan Maxwell.
When I finally reach Magaluf on a warm, overcast October evening, I find it soporific, exhausted by the clouds hanging heavy over its high rises. The beach is near empty, many of its surrounding restaurants and bars already closed for the season.
Instead of the English accents I’d been preparing for, the voices I hear belong predominantly to French and Ukrainian families, their children building sandcastles near the water’s edge. The nearby tourist shops, offering “I heart hot moms” t-shirts and penis keyrings, are sparsely populated.
Meanwhile, at INNSiDE, the queue to see Siri Hustvedt speak about her new book, a memoir about her late husband, novelist Paul Auster, stretches all the way across and out the plaza. I’m stunned, both because I had no idea that Hustvedt was so beloved in the Latin speaking world and because the queue of mostly middle class, predominantly Spanish attendees is larger than I’ve seen at any comparable book event back in the UK.
I speak to a smartly dressed man and woman waiting in line, who tell me that they’ve come from Palma just to see the author speak. When I ask them if they often come to Magaluf, they laugh and shake their heads.
They’ve been to the festival before, though, and think it’s a “great idea”. The discrepancies are funny, the woman adds: “Last year, I saw André Aciman speaking around 9am, when there were already German tourists drinking beer in the pubs”. Alongside the disdain, there’s a note of affection in her voice.
Later, we take a taxi to the Hotel de Mar Gran Meliá for dinner — central Magaluf’s food scene, it turns out, hasn’t fully caught up to its rebrand — to eat vegetarian paella and look at the lights of Cala Major shimmering across the bay.
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Before bed, another journalist and I head down to the jetty on Magaluf’s main beach and sit on the edge, the water dark and calm beneath. We speak to a couple of boys with broad Yorkshire accents, who tell us they’re from Leeds.
One of them has been coming since he was a child, he says, and he knows everybody here. Everybody in the bars they frequent “also comes from Leeds”, he explains, “most of them don’t talk to any Spanish people, but we will”. He’s showing the resort to his friend; it’s the latter’s first time.
They’re sweet, excited for their holiday but surprisingly sober for a couple of teens in Magaluf. They already have a classic Brits abroad story, though, telling us through giggles that when they checked into their room at a nearby hotel they found “a dildo, on the bedside table!”
The next day is blue and beautiful, the sky cloudless, the temperature a perfect 26 degrees. We watch the festival’s headliner, Helen Fielding, in conversation with a Spanish influencer, translated through headsets. Charismatic, warm and effortlessly funny, Fielding charms the entire audience, mostly made up of young, gay Spanish men and older English women living in Palma.
After the talk ends, we head to the beach which, either because of the weather or the arrival of the weekend, is pleasantly busy, animated rather than crowded. The water is astonishing; crystalline, perfect, the colour of the unbroken sky.
I swim most of the afternoon, floating towards the yachts moored nearby and watching the shoals of tiny fish swim around my legs. I almost cannot bear to leave the sea. Only one beach club, packed-out influencer favourite Nikki Beach, is playing loud house music, though it’s far enough away to tune out.
In the evening, my new journalist friend and I drink beers on the balcony of my room, which overlooks the beach. The sky is nacre pink, the moon is in full bloom, and below the sea is lucent. Out of the French doors on the other side of the suite, the mountains of Mallorca glow orange. It is almost painfully beautiful, an experience of natural wonder that I was utterly unaware of before I came.
Later, we head out, initially to a beach club, where drunk Danish men on a golfing holiday gamely attempt to buy us drinks and then to Magaluf’s infamous strip, with its two-for-one shots and bright lights and dark dancefloors.
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The atmosphere is buzzy, excitable, with a certain freshers’ week nostalgia, and though it’s relatively laid back there are more people here than I’ve seen all weekend. I speak to a man handing out fliers for a club in the street and he tells me that soon everybody will be gone for the winter. “Even the McDonald’s closes here.” He tells me that he’s from Leeds, and he’s going home to his family soon.
After a brief detour down the Scandinavian street, with its cabins and elk-themed memorabilia, we settle on a couple of sticky, fog-machined bar-clubs. In one of them, which features the first and only hen party I encounter throughout the trip, we meet a group of left-wing Italian authors and journalists here for a football match, who become our companions for the rest of the crawl.
Lured by the promise of a free bottle of peach schnapps, the final bar we end up in seems to cater for the Mallorcan crowd; at any rate, they’re the ones going wild for the Spanish pop being played. Most of the people we meet are there for FLEM, or for some other kind of tourism outside of Magaluf and everybody is fairly amiable.
Aside from the ominous presence of a man in an Andrew Tate t-shirt wandering into a nearby TigerTiger, nothing particularly wild or troubling happens. We simply drink and dance and smoke too much under the neon lights, under the stars of Mallorca.
In the early morning, before we head back to the hotel, we go for a swim in the sea. It is still and warm, and the horizon has completely melted into the blackness. I don’t know what I expected from Magaluf, but I don’t think it was this: floating in the water, utterly at peace.
Hannah travelled as a guest of FLEM and INNSiDE by Melia
How to do it
Numerous airlines fly between major UK airports and Palma including easyJet (from £29 return) and British Airways (from £48 return).
FLEM takes place over the first weekend in October each year. Tickets are free, but events may require registration. Sign up for details about the 2026 iteration via the official website.
Where to stay
Rooms at INNSiDE by Meliá Calviá Beach start at £82 per night. The hotel has one of Europe’s highest hanging pools and overlooks the Bay of Palma.
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