The designer Toni Sorell guides us into the jungle with the promise of intense thrills: “We might come across drunken Englishmen fighting, coupling in the street, leaping from balconies, and they could even bite us if they’ve taken the cannibal drug.” In October, however, almost every member of that species has migrated to their misty boreal islands, leaving Magaluf, the Mallorcan capital of mayhem, as a quiet refuge for retirees. Only two fifty-somethings in Bermuda shorts bark at us as we pass, staking territory with little conviction. They stagger out of the Britannia pub. On the facade the letters “tannia” glow in red neon. The letters “Pub Bri” are off, perhaps forever. “The neons disappear,” Sorell explains. “The technicians who know how to recharge the gas are retiring and now everything is LED.” He shows us signs of Cocobongos with their palm trees, the Showgirls with their dancers, the letters of the old Peter Sellers pub still visible beneath the banners of successive businesses: Chinese buffet, Indian cuisine, Pizza Kebab. The venues transform at a frenetic pace, and that is why Sorell grows excited at the sight of a Pompeian villa come to life through its frescoes: the Mesón Español, which has offered callos, croquettes and meatballs for half a century, with murals of Don Quijote. But the sign of a British real estate agency proclaims the demolition of any nostalgia, with a motto that could adorn Magaluf’s shield: “For sale”.