A young woman who joined her friends in Nadur for the carnival celebrations last week was left with a €1,500 repair bill after an unregistered float scraped the side of her brand new car.

When Angelle Xuereb returned to her Smart car in the early hours of Sunday morning, she found several scratches and a dent acrossthe car’s doors, with the side mirror shattered.

The 26-year-old soon realised that a carnival float had smashed into her car, which had been parked close to the main Nadur square.

Pieces of cardboard which had come off an Arriva-themed carnival float were stuck in the door handles and lying on the ground among the remains of the mirror. The dents were covered with remnants of aquamarine paint.

However, Ms Xuereb has been unable to track down those responsible, because the spontaneous carnival floats roaming Nadur streets between February 17 and last Tuesday were unregistered.

When contacted, the NadurCouncil said the only register available was the one detailing the floatswhich participated in the carnival event it organised on February 12.

Last weekend’s Nadur carnival was “completely spontaneous”, a council spokesman said, with participants from all over Gozo and Malta,so the council could not identify the culprits.

It was up to the police to decide which floats could enter the main street, the council added.

Ms Xuereb feels at a loss after the police informed her the search they carried out on two Arriva-themed floats on Sunday evening “resulted in the negative”. The Malta Council for Culture and the Arts was responsible for the carnival activities held in Valletta and Floriana on a national level, while the Gozo Ministry was responsible for the Gozo regional carnival activities, and not the Nadur carnival.

“This means anyone can build a float, barge through the streets, cause damage and then head back home with their mind at rest, because there’s no record of who’s responsible for the float,” the council said.

Questions sent to the police remained unanswered.