Mourad Lambaratte arrived in Mallorca a few days ago with the whole family. He was going to spend a few days off enjoying the Balearic sun and bathing in the calm Mediterranean waters, but his expectations were dashed by an imprudence last Thursday. That day, together with his partner and his two children, they rented a boat to visit the coast.
They went to the Malgrats Islands, where the former Dutch league soccer player was ecstatic with the cliffs. He decided to disembark to climb to the top and jump from there as if it were a diver. An experience that his wife agreed to record from the boat.
Lambaratte, with a reputation as a tough guy, did not hesitate to jump from the top, 20 meters. In principle, the depth of the sea at that point was adequate to do so safely. What he didn’t calculate is that she could crash into the rocks. She did not achieve the necessary forward momentum and as she fell she hit the ground before falling into the water.
He died minutes later, as it has been known, drowned. I mean, the crash left him injured and dazed and when he fell into the sea he couldn’t swim to the surface. All this, before the horrified faces of his relatives. His body was rescued by Civil Guard divers.
Lambaratte was a well-known athlete in the Netherlands, where he had played for Vittesse, a team that after hearing the news showed his condolences through his social networks. “We wish family and friends a lot of strength and strength,” they wrote on Twitter. Before, the footballer, who debuted under the surname Besselink, for NEC, AGOVV, Go Ahead Eagles and Jong Vitesse, the first team subsidiary.
In the town of Arnhem and its surroundings, in the east of the country, he was a well-known character. Also in the field of kickboxing, to which he dedicated himself after hanging up his boots. One of the reference coaches, Mesut Cam, shared a message on Facebook in memory of him: “We will miss you, Mourad. I always called you the Moroccan lion. That’s how you’ll always be to me.”
The Judicial Police of the Civil Guard, for its part, have tried unsuccessfully to take a statement from the widow, who is still in a state of shock. Apparently, she was the one who broadcast the climb to the cliff live on an internet platform and the one who recorded the tragic fall. The president of the Balearic Government, Francina Armengol, has assured that excess tourism “is not welcome” in the community. “It is not the model that we want, nor do we desire or deserve as citizens,” she has affirmed. A few weeks ago a campaign was presented to stop it aimed at British tourism under the slogan ‘Stick with your mates’ (Stay with your companions).
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