The San Pedro (Sant Pere / Saint Peter) fiestas kick off in Puerto Alcúdia tomorrow. The programme has a familiar feel to it - giants dancing, humans towering, demons running, San Pedro an-imaging and a-floating. The less familiar will be a "pirates" night party and Michael Jackson, or someone like him. It is, though, the very familiarity that makes one wonder as to the "brochure" that has been produced. Not for the first time, I have to question the expense of this promotion. I had questioned it B.C., but A.C. or D.C. if you prefer (after or during crisis), it should be questioned even more.
A fish. That's the brochure. Pages sprung together in the shape of a fish. Inevitably, it's only in Catalan. There may only be 15 pages of it, but the process of cutting it into the shape of a fish doesn't do a lot to limit costs. (I'm presuming it's been done with a custom die-cutter, and anything with the word "custom" when it comes to printing brings with it a premium.)
The result may well be different, but what's the point of it? If you are local, and especially local Mallorcan, who lives in Alcúdia or Puerto Alcúdia, you know full well when San Pedro occurs; you also know pretty much, with some exceptions, what the programme will comprise. Much of it is the same every year; same "events", same time, same day, same place. If you are local, but non-Catalan-speaking local, then the fish doesn't really address itself to you. If you are not local, but a visitor who hasn't a clue about Catalan, then you are deep-fried and battered into incomprehension. Always assuming you ever see a fish, which is unlikely.
At the tourist office in the port, they had a fish yesterday. One fish. Not several. Not a whole load. One. What they also had, and have had for about a week is a couple of A4 sheets in English, giving the programme. I should know because I did it for them. The tourist offices across Alcúdia and Pollensa and in Playa de Muro and Can Picafort also have these English sheets. The fish only appeared in the flesh, so to speak, yesterday.
I struggle to understand the impulse, especially during a period when belts are meant to be being tightened, to go to the trouble and expense of a fish. It's clever, of course it is. It's also well done. But this is not the point. And if you think that they haven't actually printed many, given that the tourist office had but one fish, then think again. A waiter at a nearby restaurant said there were a whole load of fish tossed into the entrance of his block of flats. Aimed at locals, but not visitors, one has to conclude. Perhaps if the tourist office had two fish, it could feed, via some miracle, the information appetite of a multitude of five thousand tourists. There again, I'm not sure if Saint Peter was involved in that particular gig.
Meanwhile in Muro, the bullfight on Sunday having been rained off, there is talk of hurriedly having to do a replacement poster for the re-arranged bull-off this coming Sunday. Bullfight posters, as much as the fight itself, have a symbolic power, but might they not just stick something over the existing one giving the new time. Not that they would need to, because anyone who plans on going will surely know anyway. Daft.
If you want to see the fish, you can download it here: http://www.ajalcudia.net/documents/santpere010.pdf. The English version is available on http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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