A British tourist has been arrested in Majorca for failing to settle his €19,000 (£16,600) bill after spending almost 50 days in the luxury hotel. According to reports, he allegedly left without informing the hotel reception.

The man was only caught when he cheekily tried to extend his month-and-a-half stay by trying to check into another hotel owned by the same company in Palma. The fraud, known in Spain as a “simpa”, happened in a luxury hotel in Santa Ponça, Calvià, a municipality in the South-west of the Balearic Island.

The Citizen Attention Group (GAC) went to a hotel in the centre of Palma, where staff had located a man accused of an alleged crime of fraud. Once at the hotel, officers were warned by the manager, who informed them that moments earlier, an English tourist had appeared at the establishment and attempted to register as a customer.

The employees in Palma received an alert that the man had been staying in the Calvià hotel of the same chain for more than a month and had left the complex the day before without paying the bill. Once the facts were known, the officers located the suspect, who was identified by hotel staff. The tourist, who was sitting in the lobby, was then arrested.

Palma police have not released any further details of the man, only that he was holding a British passport. 

He has since appeared before a judge in Palma and was released on bail with charges. Police say their investigations are continuing as they suspect he may have done the same thing at other holiday hotels on the island.

This news comes just months after a British OnlyFans model was jailed for three years after admitting she tried to smuggle nearly £200,000 worth of drugs into Spain in October. Clara Wilson, 36, from Huthwaite, Notts, was arrested at Barcelona’s El Prat airport after travelling from Thailand with more than 34 kilos of cannabis in her suitcase.

On October 11, it was reported that she had accepted a plea bargain deal after being offered a more lenient sentence in exchange for her full trial. Wilson accepted a three-year prison sentence and a fine matching the estimated value of the Class B drug she tried to smuggle into Spain of £185,000.

Wilson was arrested at the Catalan capital’s El Prat airport as she got off a flight from Bangkok. Police held her after finding 60-vacuum packed packages containing a green-coloured substance weighing 34,074 grams that tested positive for marihuana.