Walk A Mile In My Shoes

Alcúdia is like Blackpool. Whenever I read this, I want to kick the cat. Actually, there is no cat, but be that as it may. Cast your eye onto a forum somewhere, and someone will be pulling the Blackpool cat out of the bag and spreading fleas of misrepresentation.

It is years since I was last in Blackpool, but I have been there. One suspects that those who create the Blackpool brickbat have often not. Give a dog or cat a bad name. In this instance, the bad name is Blackpool, simply because Blackpool has had to carry its burden as some sort of resort anti-Christ, one formed over years and with a similar lack of justification, and then trotted out as shorthand for perceived seaside naffness.

When the B-word is given an airing in the context of Alcúdia, it is as a description of The Mile, which is ironic in the sense that most visitors don’t use The Mile moniker (despite its Blackpool connotation) and prefer the misguided but understandable other B-word – Bellevue.

Let’s be clear. Much of Alcúdia’s hotel stock is on or near to The Mile. That stock includes the monoliths of the Bellevue hotel and the sprawling density of tourist humanity that is Sea Club. Over 5,000 places between them. The only huge hotels or complexes that are not “in Bellevue” are the Club Macs, the Condesa and Sunwing, and of these, the walk to Bellevue is not that far (except from the Condesa) while Sunwing is little Scandinavia and not British in any form; Blackpool, one presumes, carries little weight in Copenhagen or Stockholm when it comes to Alcúdia comparisons.

As a result therefore, for many visitors Alcúdia is indeed The Mile. Those who ever leave may opt to sweat their way around the packed old-town market of a Tuesday or Sunday morning or take the beach walk to the port. But for many, The Mile it is, and The Mile it only is. How many ever venture to the coves of Mal Pas or to the mountains of La Victoria?

It is no surprise that, for these many visitors, Alcúdia is The Mile. They are also told, not least by some tour operators and misinformed websites, that The Mile is the centre of Alcúdia. It is the centre, but only as the centre for hotel colonisation. I once read on one site that, away from “the centre”, there is not much to see in Alcúdia. Of course there isn’t – no marina, no Roman town, no hermitage, no Barcares, no Coll Baix.

So people’s impressions are formed largely by their immediate surroundings. And those who don’t care for The Mile find a convenience of disparagement in and facile comparison with the B-word of Blackpool. Lots of bars, lots of restaurants, lots of people, lots of noise – all along one road. QED, it’s Blackpool. I have myself used the Blackpool line, here on this blog (13 September 2007, “Grease Is The Word”), but as a cultural marker in defence of the endearing and enduring nature of The Mile. Alcúdia is many things, but there are some who choose to see only one aspect and, more importantly, give critical voice to this selectivity by evoking a tired and condemnatory likeness to a town in Lancashire which, for all its apparent lack of sophistication, is the essence of the British heritage of seaside holiday; a town that helped forge and sustain that heritage.

Ok, Alcúdia, sorry The Mile, is like Blackpool, but not as this comparison is so unthinkingly and derogatorily intended. Alcúdia – the beach, the port, the yachts, the old town, the coves. It is all these things and still manages to retain an unpretentious tradition of holiday hedonism that was born along The Golden Mile – Blackpool’s that is.

What I want to know is, do you ever read somewhere that Blackpool is like Alcúdia?

Thought not.


QUIZ
Yesterday – Jack Rosenthal. Today’s title – a few recorded it, who wrote it and had his own hit with it?

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