The €750 sign in Sant Antoni is real. Here is what the rule actually says
Every summer a photograph of a Sant Antoni shop window does a lap of social media with the same caption: this can't be real. The sign says walking around in swimwear or shirtless can cost up to 750 euros.
It is real. It is also not new, and it is a good deal narrower than the internet thinks.
What changed, and what didn't
The rule is in Sant Antoni de Portmany's coexistence ordinance and has been for years. What changed this season is visibility: the council ran an information campaign in collaboration with the British Consulate in the Balearics and local business associations, with 10,000 postcards left in hotels, shops and restaurants setting out seven rules and their penalties, plus a QR code with the full text in six languages.
In other words, nobody passed a law banning bare chests this month. Somebody finally put the existing one on the wall where visitors would see it.
The numbers
- Up to 750 euros — minor infringements, which is where "walking through the town in swimwear or without a shirt" sits.
- 751 to 1,500 euros — serious infringements. Street drinking, the botellón, sits here at 1,500.
- 1,500 to 3,000 euros — very serious. Inhaling nitrous oxide is a 3,000-euro entry.
Where it does and does not apply
This is the part the viral posts leave out. Swimwear is fine on the beach, on the seafront promenade and on the direct routes between the two. The rule bites in streets, squares, shops and the urban centre — a supermarket, a pharmacy, a restaurant, the bus stop two blocks inland.
Practically speaking: keep a T-shirt in the beach bag and the rule will never touch you. That is genuinely the whole of it. It is the same convention that operates in every Mediterranean town that is also somebody's neighbourhood, and it is worth remembering that between the promenade and the sea, Sant Antoni is a municipality of around 27,000 residents who buy their bread on those streets.
The town after you put the T-shirt on
The strip is four streets. The rest of Sant Antoni is a working port town on a bay that faces due west, and the daytime half of it is genuinely good.
- The free walking tour of Sant Antoni starts at the fortified church, which is the reason the town is where it is.
- The bay is flat first thing, which is when the four-person paddle-surf session in a cove runs, and it is a different sport with three people beside you instead of fourteen.
- The snorkelling trip to a secret cove near Sant Antoni gets you out to water you cannot reach from the promenade.
- Two hours of beach yoga is the most sensible thing available the morning after a late one.
- And learning Spanish over a card game on the bay is the closest thing on the list to actually meeting anyone who lives here.
If you are around for the town's patron festival, the Sant Bartomeu programme runs to 13 September and is nearly all free.
Practical
- Carry: a T-shirt or a cover-up in the beach bag. That is the entire compliance strategy.
- Where the rules apply: streets, squares, shops, the urban centre. Not the beach, not the promenade, not the way between them.
- The full text: the council's campaign card carries a QR to the ordinance in six languages, and copies are in hotels and bars across the municipality.
- If you are fined: the notice sets out the appeal route. Paying at the roadside is not how any of it works.