Spain holidaymakers are being urged by police to steer clear of cocktails sold on Spanish beaches by illegal vendors as footage emerged of ingredients being stored under manhole covers in disgusting conditions.
Beach vendors regularly sell drinks to sun worshippers on the beaches of such tourist hotspots as Barcelona and Benidorm.
It’s believed that they even tell the tourists that the cocktails are from nearby bars, reported MailOnline.
At €5, they may seem like a bargain, but in fact you could be dicing with your health as it’s revealed everything from bottle and straws to ice and glasses are sometimes stored down filthy drains.
A video posted on Facebook shows police officers pulling up manhole covers in the pavements in Barcelona and extracting bags of cocktail equipment stored in less than sanitary conditions.
The officers claim that the drinks are then mixed on dirty surfaces, sometimes in bathrooms.
The fruit used in the cocktails is washed under beach showers, the officers said.
The Facebook video shows holidaymakers thrilled with their cheap drinks but are horrified when they find out where they’ve come from. A mojito in a legal beach bar costs around €10.
Tourists should avoid buying from illegal beach vendors, no matter how tempting the price and buy instead from established bars and restaurants.
This is not the first time Barcelona has hit the headlines this week. It has been revealed that locals are growing increasingly angry with rowdy tourists.
The tourists are accused of urinating in public, being noisy late into the night and leaving drug paraphernalia in children’s playgrounds.
Furious residents are now demanding that action is taken to prevent further damage being done to the Catalonian capital.
They are blaming Left-wing mayor Ada Colau for allowing ‘overtourism’ to damage Barcelona and demand that a council-appointed expert take over responsibility for the city’s security.
Critics have highlighted three areas where they claim the problems in Barcelona lie. The first is the rising number of short-term rental sites such as Airbnb which damage renting for residents in the city, the second is the violence and anti-social behaviour around the drug trade and thirdly, the expansion of illegal street selling.
Spain’s popularity with tourists has been highlighted recently as the most-loved beaches in Europe were unveiled by beach holiday specialist On the Beach who surveyed 1,000 families – most of them were in Spain.
Almost one in five agreed that Tenerife was their favourite. The popular Spanish spot welcomes two million British tourists every year
Spain overwhelmingly dominated the list of best, with the sun-kissed island of Majorca coming in second, with the vote of 18 per cent.
The Costa del Sol featured in third place thanks to being backed by 13 per cent of those questioned.
Fourth place was taken by Spain’s neighbour Portugal, with 11 per cent of Britons naming the Algarve as their favourite.
Tenerife’s fellow Canary Island, Gran Canaria, brought Spain back into the top 10 in fifth place.
