On 11 June last year (It Doesn't Add Up), I wrote a piece about Cala San Vicente. It started with a quote from someone who was staying at La Moraleja, the charming, high-class hotel as you come into the Cala. "It's paradise." "Well, there's nowhere quite like it." "Is there?"
Amidst all the pining for the close to the pinewalk Sis Pins in Puerto Pollensa before it reopened, it was easy to overlook the fact that there was another, grander hotel that was closed. Easy to overlook because it's in the Cala, as indeed it sometimes seems easy to overlook the Cala, full stop. La Moraleja. Paradise it may be. Nowhere else like it, very possibly. But it's not there, as in it's not open. The gates are firmly closed and locked. It's very sad. And it makes three, the number of hotels now not open in the Cala. The Mayol has been shut for ... for how long; can't remember. The Simar is into its second year of closure. And now the Moraleja.
It seems almost an annual thing for me to have to bemoan the fate that has befallen Cala San Vicente. It is such an awful shame. One restaurant owner said yesterday that there is "mucha cree-sis" in CSV. The truth is that there was mucha cree-sis before the cree-sis took hold. The place has been going down the pan for years. But why? Ok, apart from the fact that there's nothing much to do there, other than relax, lie on Molins cove beach, snorkel, have a drink or a meal, it is still, just about, a little piece of heaven. And it's not that no one's interested. Curiously, when I was in the Alcúdia tourist office the other day, not one but two sets of people went to the desk to ask for information as to how to get there. From Alcúdia. People want to go there, and so they should. But the bus schedule isn't great. You really need a car or take a taxi. The Cala is end-of-the-line Pollensa tourism, backwaters Pollensa.
Several years ago, a colossal error was made. It was when the Don Pedro went all-inclusive. It could be argued that a place out of the way, like the Cala, is more suited to all-inclusive than bustling resorts with everything immediately to hand. But it wasn't suited, because it changed the nature of the small resort and also began to undermine the businesses there. Elitist this may sound, but the appeal of the Cala was its very sleepiness and its quaint, quasi-colonial exclusivity, one that La Moraleja has, or had, in abundance. Its appeal was also to be found in the semi-mystical reverence in which the place is held by Mallorcans, the consequence of a reputation, part-Bohemian, part-intellectual as an oasis for artists and free thinkers.
It still has an air of exclusivity, granted, for example. by the eponymous Cala San Vicente hotel, and the refinement of the Molins hotel. But the fault, the fault-line if you like, in Cala San Vicente is that it wasn't somehow ring-fenced and preserved in its own time warp of days of the Raj in back-of-beyond Pollensa. And that it wasn't spared the development that has taken away some of its character.
The building of the apartments by Molins cove was the last straw for some and became the subject of a rallying cry from the environmentalists. The apartments, I think, look ok, so long as you approve of the trend towards somewhat anonymous and formulaic neutral-coloured blockettes of apartments. No, in themselves they are far from offensive; just that they really aren't in the right place.
The nostalgia of the Cala, for me, remains the vision looking down to Molins cove and to Bar Mallorca and to what was once a dustbowl behind it. When the resort still had a shambolic appearance, one of a grand old dame, shuffling around under a wide-brimmed straw hat, taking a gin on the verandah or a sangria and fish supper in one of the still unpretentious restaurants, it had its barmy exclusivity. It's gone I'm afraid, and it ain't coming back. But one might hope that the Moraleja will return. If anyone still cares.
QUIZ:
Yep, it's back: "Closest Thing To Heaven". Who?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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