The Last Supper: It costs too much

Lord, give me strength.

Don't worry, I haven't suddenly gone all religious on you. But I need to appeal to a Higher authority in my moment of despairing oh-no-not-again. I am nailed to the cross of the repetitious average. The spear of recurring inconsequence punctures my side. A crown of rote thorns cuts into my skull.

Look, I'm sorry, I know that it will seem that I am being repetitious, too, but this price stuff has become like the multitudes mocking; mocking, that is, perspective and balance. In Mallorca-land, the Last Supper, we might have to presume, could never have occurred because it would have been too expensive; there certainly couldn't have been any coffee served after the pie and custard. No, no, way too dear.

And so it came to pass that on the day of the Last Supper the price of coffee was held up for the disciples of anecdotal simplism to worship.

I am really sorry to have to do this. 'Twas it, "The Bulletin"; it spoke editorially yesterday of a coffee costing one euro, ninety. Was this just designed to provoke? Maybe so. It's provoked me. But you cannot take one example to try and prove a point. It just doesn't work like that. News of the inflated price of this "cortado" (and at 1.90 it is expensive I'll grant you) was then conveyed to the tourism minister. What was she going to do about it? She who is of those authorities who must always do something. Good for her. Nothing. Or more accurately, there is nothing she can do. Of course she can't. It's all down to businesses to decide. Of course it is.

In some make-believe world, Mallorca would be transported back to the days of Franco, controlled prices of drinks and menus, only a dodgy old Fiat 500 to hire and hotel workers packed off home to their tin-roofed shanty with a bowl of chick peas to feed their hungry offspring. Want controls on prices? Fine. Vote in a dictator or some other statist system. Except you wouldn't be able to because there wouldn't be any voting. Ministers nowadays don't go around ordering businesses to set prices, under threat of being transported off to some Spanish equivalent of the Gulag. Well, they can where certain industries are concerned, like the Spanish energy industry - and fat lot of good that's done.

But more than this is the fact that isolated examples (and those not explained other than by reference to a tourist area in Palma) cannot be put forward as evidence of anything; only the fact that in one place a coffee happens to cost more than it normally would. It doesn't prove anything. Unless you want it to.

When all the Mallorca-is-so-expensive junk was cracking off last summer, a letter-writer to the paper complained about the cost of a coffee. Again, one example. Other correspondents took the author to task. Rightly so. Yet here we have the paper doing precisely the same thing. Let's be clear, Mallorca is not cheap. If I had saved all the spending on cups of coffee over the years, I'd be able to buy ... hmm, a Fiat 500 possibly. Or maybe, if I'd bought that many coffees, I'd be the proud owner of some villa in Bendinat with marble bath taps. Which doesn't come cheap. Which is the point. It ain't cheap. Mallorca. Get over it, and understand why it no longer is cheap. Except. Except, you will always find exceptions. And those exceptions can often be the rule. Or if not the rule, then par for the course. But let's not talk about green fees, for God's sake.

Sorry, I'm really sorry. I'm going to stop now. You've heard it before. That's it. No more.

Until the next time.


Tonto S.A.
May I just thank those of you who were not taken in by yesterday's piece and mailed me to say so. Normally I look to respond individually, but on this occasion... . I sincerely hope that no one was taken in. It does rather concern me that if you google "Alcúdia" and "oil", yesterday's piece comes up on the first page of the search engine. Perish the thought that someone might actually think it true. "Ooh, better not go to Alcúdia. They've got oil rigs by the beach." This said, with a bit of luck nobody would actually want to search for Alcúdia and oil.

But even an April Fool on this blog serves an educative and informational purpose. In yesterday's piece, there was a reference to "día de engañar". Engañar can mean different things, but "to kid" is one interpretation. As far as I am aware, and here's your education and information, April Fools Day is not celebrated - if that is indeed the right word - anywhere in Spain, except for Menorca. And why Menorca? Because of its British past, as in the eighteenth-century British possession of the island. Otherwise in Spain, there is something similar - on 28 December. Oh, and "Tonto"? Those of you who mailed me did all get this. If not, "tonto" means stupid or foolish.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.