Boats And Cuttlefish: A spring fair

Whereas the autumn fair comes with an in-built ominousness, the spring fair arrives only with the air of optimism: a spring in its step, rather than the arthritic creak of encroaching winter. It's the name of the season that does it of course, but in combination with fair, there is an abundance of vitality and expectation that attaches itself to the spring fair in a way that no autumn fair could possibly achieve.

They don't call Puerto Alcúdia's fair a spring fair, but this is what it is. It couldn't really be anything else, given that it is held in spring, but it comes with an alternative moniker, two in fact. It is both boat and cuttlefish. Or rather, boat and sepia. Cuttlefish simply doesn't do it as a name for a fair. Sepia, on the other hand, does. No one much may actually like sepia, but if there has to be a fair devoted to the rubbery cephalopod, far better that it adopts its Latin genus title.

Curiously, despite very few people holding their hands up and saying that they would normally give a cuttlefish the time of culinary day, the fair attracts an astonishing number of people. Any old excuse perhaps, but the boat/sepia fair, version 2012, was busier than it has ever been. All those crammed into the gastronomy marquees weren't eating meat, so either they do genuinely like sepia or are prepared to live with it for a day, especially if it comes at a special-offer low price.

Of the various fairs in the north of Mallorca which typically avoid making overt statements of their springlike quality (they hide behind saints names, farming, wine as well as cuttlefish and boats), the Puerto Alcúdia fair is by some distance the grandest. It was the boats that originally did it. They were spun off from the old town's autumn fair some years ago, shifted a few months and shifted also to where it had always been more appropriate that they should have been - by the sea, rather than by the town's walls. When they made the decision to move the boats, they decided to give the fair some added value, and it came in the form of cuttlefish. Strange, but true.

Were it not for the cuttlefish, it is questionable whether the fair, as a mere nautical exposition event, would be anything like as popular as it is. The boats are nice to look at, but whether any business takes place it is hard to say. It never seems to be, but then maybe this isn't what is meant to happen at a boat show. 

So much had the cuttlefish and the market that also forms part of the fair assumed the upper hand over the boats, it had seemed possible that the boats would make a dignified exit. But then Palma decided not to stage its boat show this year, and Palma, for once, came to Alcúdia this weekend; there were more boats than ever before. Where had previously been the knick-knackery of artisanal artefacts, there were boats, boats and more boats. This still didn't stop the hordes heading past the rows of boats and heading for the gastronomy marquees, but as boat shows go, or as Puerto Alcúdia's boat show goes, it would have to be deemed a great success.

There is a great benefit, naturally enough, from the great influx of islanders into Puerto Alcúdia over an April weekend. The fair is a pre-season warm-up for the restaurants, most of which had terraces packed to the gunwales. Not of course that restaurants have gunnels as such - boats do - but terraces jammed pack a week or so prior to the official start of the tourism season is jam on top for the owners.

What bars and restaurants in other parts of Puerto Alcúdia make of the whole event, though, is another matter. So many cars had turned up that parking, by not long after midday on Sunday, meant finding a spot by the Magic roundabout. There was a great deal of activity away from the actual port area, but it was activity that was manoeuvring itself into a parking space, disgorging its inhabitants and allowing them to walk the ten minutes or so into the port, away from and past other restaurants.

The success of the fair is genuinely to be welcomed, but it is a success that merely helps to reinforce the sense of imbalance in Puerto Alcúdia. There do seem to be rumblings, as myself had hinted at, regarding the siting of the new market. Why wasn't it located in the tourist area, an area that receives little or nothing by way of official events, be they for fiestas, fairs or whatever? This imbalance is something that the town hall should address. Whether it will is another matter, but in Alcúdia, unlike towns in which the old towns are very much divorced from their resorts (such as in Pollensa), there is an unmistakable division between the combination of old town and port on the one hand and the tourist centre on the other.

But for now, let's just be satisfied that the spring fair was so successful and that it perhaps puts into people's minds the idea of hope springing eternal, or at least hope springing beyond spring and into summer and to a similarly successful tourism season.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.