Spring 2002. The Two of May Square, one of the nerve centers of the Madrid bottle, is full to overflowing. Thousands of young people gather every weekend to drink on public roads without any type of restriction.
In the streets of the Malasaña neighbourhood, the convenience stores – which everyone simply refers to as chinese– they have everything ready. The euro is new and the prices of everything have risen, but any whipper can afford to buy the economical pack of two bricks of wine, a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, a bag of ice and a couple of glasses of mini . It does not reach five euros. If you don’t want the glasses you can save a few cents mixing the calimocho in the plastic bag (which still no one charges) and then serve it in the empty tetabrick. Circular economy.
The neighbors they have been complaining about the noise for years and the dirt left by young people after leaving the streets at dawn. They do not lack reason. The only uniformed officials who enter the square – there are secret police kicking around – are the firefighters, who come almost every night to put out the oversized bonfires set up by some groups. Also the Samur, which does not stop treating alcohol poisoning.
Were the golden years of the bottle. A cultural phenomenon that spread throughout Spain and opened newspapers and news until, at the beginning of the second millennium, the Autonomous Communities decided to nip it in the bud, prohibiting the consumption of alcohol in the street.
The objective: displace consumption
Although Cantabria, Castilla y León and Catalonia had already tried some laws to stop the consumption of alcohol on public roads, the toughest was the Law on Drug Addiction and other Addictive Disorders of the Community of Madrid, which came into force on the morning of the 28 July 2002. Better known as antibotellón lawit was his model that spread throughout Spain.
These regulations were not created at any time with the perspective of improving public health.
Today, it is only allowed to drink alcohol on the street in seven autonomous communities: Andalusia, Asturias, Balearic Islands, Galicia, Murcia, Navarra and the Basque Country. Many of them, however, prohibited doing so during the pandemic and some of the regulations approved then have not been revoked. In addition, the bottle is prohibited de facto throughout Spain since the approval in 2015 of the Organic Law on Citizen Security -better known as gag law– which prohibits “causing disorder” on public roads as well as consuming drugs, even if they are not intended for trafficking. This is the law that, in fact, is being applied in the bottles in most communities, whether or not they have a law ad hocsince it does not even require proving that alcohol was being consumed.
Two decades ago, the antibotellón laws provoked a strong reaction among the girl –including several nights of police charges in the areas where most drinking was practiced–, but in practice they put an end to the most massive drinking sessions. But, far from it, they have managed to drink less. And it is that, as drug addiction experts explain, these regulations were not created at any time with the perspective of improve public health.
“A rule to have a pedagogical effect has to be respected and those that have to do with alcohol consumption are not,” he explains to DAP Miguel Angel Rodriguez Felipe, deputy director of programs of the FAD Youth Foundation. “Until now, and so the data continues, when you ask society and adolescents if alcohol is a problem, they tell you that the perception of risk is very low.”
Young people don’t stop drinking, they just move to places where it’s not so easy to get caught
In Rodríguez’s opinion, when it comes to public health, it makes no sense separate the alcohol consumption of young people and adults: “Youth alcohol consumption is absolutely linked to overall alcohol consumption. They are not Martians. They live with us, they drink from that law and that culture”.
Precisely what the antibotellón laws do is pursue the youth alcohol consumption –the one that is practiced in the street, because it is cheaper–, but in no case does it pursue the consumption of adults, who can drink outdoors without problems, spending the cost of a drink on a terrace. In addition, everyone can continue drinking at the patron saint festivities, for which there are always exceptions.
The young actually they can keep drinking, as long as they don’t bother. And this has unintended consequences.
Bottle, yes, but secretly
Young people don’t stop drinking, they just go to places where it’s not so easy to get caught. Something that they are clear about, even from the Police.
“We are aware that the problems what they do is move”recognizes WTP Alexander Sanz Ruiz sub-inspector of the Central Security Unit of the Madrid Municipal Police. “When they see themselves protected by the masses, they don’t care because they think you’re not going to catch them, you catch the one who runs the least or the most drunk, but what others do is hide, and what they want is not to bother the neighbor, because if don’t bother, the call doesn’t come and we don’t go”.
“If you are going to get a fine, you hide and this increases social lack of control and greater risk”
In 2016, a 12-year-old girl died in San Martín de la Vega (Madrid) after drinking with some friends in a vacant lot in the town. Her friends, at least, transferred her to the local medical center. Last year, a 15-year-old girl suffered almost the same fate after suffering a ethyl coma in a park in Madrid’s Parque de San Blas: his friends ran out scared for fear that the police would arrive.
These are isolated cases, from which it is difficult to draw general conclusions. But for the FAD spokesman, that young people hide so as not to be fined is a perverse effect of the rule: “If your priority is public order, not public health, there are unwanted derivatives. Consumption occurs like most of life’s decisions assessing risks and benefits. If you are going to get a fine, you hide and this increases social lack of control and greater risk, without a doubt. From common sense it is clear.
Consumption in young people falls, but thanks to the Internet
Sub-inspector Sanz joined the Municipal Police a year before the antibotellón law came into force and is aware of how the situation has evolved. When the law came out, he explains, the bottles were greatly reduced: about 10,000 calls were received a year. But since 2006, when the matter began to relax, the calls have not dropped from around 35,000 or 40,000 a year.
After the pandemic, when the bottle was drastically reduced, it has returned with the same force as always
The macrobotellones have not disappeared either. In Madrid, there are them every year in the Parque del Oeste and in Ciudad Universitaria, where there are no neighbors who can complain. When there are too many people, the action of the police is complicated. “People are protected by the mass and they go against us, there are even bottle throws”, explains sub-inspector Sanz. “Also from two years here in the bottles the thefts have multiplied.”
In Sanz’s opinion, after the pandemic, when the bottle was drastically reduced, it has returned with the same force as always.
The latest Survey on drug use in Secondary Education in Spain (ESTUDES), of 2021, indicates that more than half of students aged 14 to 18 have recently drunk alcohol (in the last 30 days), observing that 23.2% of students have experienced some drunkenness in this period and 27.9% have done what is known as binge drinking: that is, they have had 5 or more glasses of alcoholic beverages in an interval of approximately two hours.
These are high figures, but they have been going down since 2012. On the contrary, since 2002, when the anti-botellón laws came into force, until that date, what they have done is rise.
Logically, covid-19 caused a drop in alcohol consumption among young people. But although the pandemic has distorted the data of recent years, it seems that there is a change in consumption habitsnot derived from the confinements and, much less, from the effects of the antibotellón laws.
It is a far-reaching phenomenon that still needs to be studied in depth, but in Rodríguez’s opinion it is not negligible: “There is a reduction in alcohol consumption because there is a greater trend towards digital leisure and less face-to-face. Attendance is reduced by digital contact that makes them see each other less and consume less alcohol because they go out less. It is a trend to check, but it could be important in the coming years.”
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In any case, these are marginal improvements. Alcohol is, by far, the drug that causes the most problems in Spain. According to the Spanish Society of Epidemiology, the total social costs of alcohol consumption in Spain can be estimated at about 1% of GDP (more than 10,000 million euros).
And what Rodríguez has no doubt about is that these are not going to be reduced by encouraging people to drink on the street: “The best way to prevent the bottle is not to ban it, that is a utopia, it would be better if they started consuming more late and consume less, and this has to do with full awareness, that it began because the older ones consumed less”.
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