Three off-duty police officers who were dropping their own children at a primary school in Palma de Mallorca tackled and restrained a man caught masturbating in front of hundreds of arriving pupils — sparking a political row over deportation and renewed public anger about the policing of public spaces around schools.
The incident unfolded at around 8.45am on Tuesday 26 May outside the Colegio Madre Alberta, a state-assisted school in the Mallorcan capital, as children in infant and primary years arrived for the start of the school day. The suspect, a 30-year-old South American national, was found with his trousers down and a one-litre bottle of beer beside him, in plain view of parents and children entering through the main gate. Parents began screaming and called the emergency services on 112.
Two off-duty National Police officers who had just dropped off their own children immediately got out of their cars and moved to restrain the man. A third off-duty officer also intervened to help hold him until uniformed local police arrived and took him into custody. He was arrested on suspicion of exhibitionism.
According to Ultima Hora, which first reported the story, the school filed an immediate protection complaint and requested a restraining order. A judge from Palma’s Court of Instruction 11 issued the order on Wednesday, prohibiting the suspect from approaching the school, after releasing him without charge pending further proceedings.
The incident has not come as a complete surprise to residents in the area. Neighbours told reporters that the suspect was not unknown to the local community — he had reportedly been seen in the vicinity on previous occasions and had been living in a makeshift shelter nearby, with residents saying they had repeatedly complained about his presence to no effect.
The case has provoked an immediate political response from the Vox party in the Balearic regional parliament. Vox spokesperson Manuela Cañadas demanded the “immediate deportation” of the suspect and called for legislative changes to impose tougher sentences for such offences and establish automatic deportation for foreign nationals convicted of crimes in Spain. “The school acted, the police-parent officers acted,” she said. “The only ones who have not acted are those with the obligation to do so.”
The rapid intervention of the off-duty officers has been widely praised across Spanish social media, with footage of the arrest spreading quickly online. For many observers, the contrast between the three officers’ immediate response and the failure of the relevant authorities to address the suspect’s prior presence in the area was the sharpest element of the story.
