After “out of control behaviour” and a rape of a 20 year-old Englishwoman in Malia, Abta is planning to hold meetings with Cretan authorities. I’m not sure what Abta will be able to do to help the Cretans. They can’t stop the likes of Club 18-30 from doing pub crawls as that’s how they make their money. The reps also make their money from the pub crawls. Do the pub crawls encourage people to get drunk more quickly? Probably. Are they responsible for rape and other violent behaviour? Of course not.
Apparently Malia is set to be the hotspot this summer for the youth market. At the start of the 1990s Club 18-30 moved its Crete base down the road from Aghios Nikolaos to Malia. Since then Malia has seen numbers peak, then lose out to Ibiza and Falaraki then rise again. Currently Club 18-30 has more properties in Malia than anywhere else. If you asked residents in Malia if they wanted to lose the youth market they would probably say yes. If you asked residents of Aghios Nikolaos if they’d have them back they would also say yes. There is nowhere to go after you have been a “Club 18-30 Town”, other than a sad and sorry decline. Aghios Nikolaos may be a more pleasant town now, but the clubs and hotels that have closed down only remind you of more vibrant days.
What can Malia do? Probably not much. Part of the problem Malia faces is that as a town it has no centre; it is just one road with hundreds of small bars where trouble can flare up anywhere. There are no big hotels, everyone is spread out over the whole town.
Crete police are also more low-key than their Spanish counterparts. It is commonplace in Crete for disputes to be sorted out with no police involvement. In Spain I have been in bars where the Guardia Civil have waded in with batons flailing happy to beat anything in sight. You’re unlikely to see that in Crete where the police favour a more laid-back and discrete approach.
It will probably be a long summer for the residents of Malia, but at least there is no major football tournament. They have all that to look forward to next year.
