London Pride: The Olympics seen from Mallorca

The New Year in London was brought in with the words of a Belgian. "The city of London" echoed into the fireworked night sky. 2012 had started and so, it appeared, had the Olympics.

That Jacques Rogge should have ushered in the New Year was heartening; Belgium is one of Britain's oldest allies, and Britain right now can do with any it can lay its hands on. Allies or more begrudging friends, it won't matter when the Olympic flame is lit on 27 July, as London and Britain will be able to stand proud in the world for once. Or once again.

I have personal history with the Olympics. East Ham, where my mother's family hailed from, is about two and a half miles from the Olympic Stadium. The much-spoken-of legacy of the Games should not be underestimated. It is the second great rejuvenation of London's East End, the conversion of downtrodden areas into parts of a modern city.

The other bit of history has to do with the Olympic flame. In 1948 my father ran with the Olympic flame through the city of Guildford. My family still have the torch he got to keep. A few months ago some old newsreel cropped up on "The One Show", and there was my father. Not that I saw it and not that I will get to see the transformation of the old East End; well, not this summer anyway.

The '48 Games were the Austerity Games. History is repeating itself, even if current-day austerity comes in a high-tech format and is considerably better-heeled than it was in post-war Britain. It was to be some years after running through Guildford that my father met my mother and some years more before I turned up, so my memory of those Games is confined to old photos. And now, there is something wrong in not being a part of the 2012 Games.

The Olympics in London pose a real question. Not one of justifying the cost but one for those who now live away from Britain. They ask a question of the relationship with "home". This relationship is a strange one. You are as one with it but you are not a part of it. Matters of importance to Britain are no longer so important. Only occasionally do they become so. Cameron's playing of the Little Englander card is one example, if only because it places you, i.e. the Brit in Mallorca, in an unwelcome limelight.

Why should matters of importance to Britain be important any longer? If you are so long out of the country that you can't vote, then they aren't so important, and if you are so long out of the country but no so long that you can still vote, why would you bother? Why, apart from expressing your enfranchisement, should having an influence in an election be of any importance if you no longer live there?

An answer may lie less in a determination to exercise a democratic right than with an enduring identity, one that has not been supplanted by a sense of having gone native. And assumptions are often made that the expat is uninterested in native affairs in Mallorca and Spain. It's an assumption I have often made, but it is one that I increasingly find myself challenging.

Ease of communication thanks to satellite and internet has made it easier to remain rooted in matters of "home", but it has also made it easier, and is making it easier, to discover more about matters of importance in the new home, the expat home. Even those who don't do the native in terms of speaking the language can put stuff from Spanish (or indeed Catalan) websites into Google and get some idea as to what is being said. This is a real positive.

You don't lose your identity, of course you don't, but the issue is to what extent you assume another one, one that is less rooted in matters of "home". There are, though, occasions when "home" is all that matters: sporting occasions, for example. And this year these will mean the Euros and the Olympics, and an Olympic Games staged at "home".

Olympic deniers and those who truly have gone native will pooh-pooh the Games. They are entitled to if they so wish. I for one won't be. "The city of London." "London pride has been handed down to us." I just wish I was going to be there. Old flame has a certain connotation, but in my case, it has a rather different one.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.