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.
