Streets Of Your Town

Neighbourhoods. In the ‘hood. Some of us live in neighbourhoods, uncharmingly known as urbanisations. My own was started by the people who built the Esperanza hotel in Playa de Muro. I was on the upper terrace of one house in my neighbourhood earlier today. In all directions there were villas and chalets, each with a story, some of them not repeatable. Germans, French, Mallorcan, Spanish, British, a small enclave of part European Union, even though most keep themselves to themselves. Like anywhere.

Some live in neighbourhoods where the neighbours do not just keep to themselves and kick up a fuss about poor service from the local town hall. In the villa-graced residential area of Gotmar in Puerto Pollensa, with a similar demographic to my own, but bigger and partly built into a hillside, the neighbourhood group has taken cash-strapped Pollensa town hall to task over deficiencies such as collapsed pavements, lack of lighting and flooding when it rains heavily. And it looks as though they might be getting somewhere, which all goes to show what some co-operation and determined action can achieve.

Then there are some who live in ‘hoods that are far more in keeping with the gangsta implication of the ‘hood term. Take Son Banya in Palma, not much more than a shanty town, and the scene of a heavy police presence each weekend for the past three weeks. Drugs. Road blocks, tear-gas and Molotov cocktails, hardly the normal stuff of Mallorcan life, and a world away from my neighbourhood. The determined action there is now to try and secure a truce.

I first came to Mallorca in 1969. From the balcony of our hotel, I could see what was a shanty town, a small one, just a few ramshackle lean-tos or corrugated-roofed huts. These “dwellings” backed onto the neighbouring hotel. And now the shanties still exist with all the added problems handed down over a generation and a half.

Mallorca – one place, different worlds. Like anywhere. From the Mercedes and Audis of Playa de Muro and Gotmar to the burnt-out shell of an old Escort somewhere in Palma.


QUIZ
Yesterday – Bing Crosby. Today’s title – probably a few that might apply, but this is the title of a song by a great Australian group, which seems appropriate given the neighbours bit.

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