I love to go a-wandering
I would love to go a-wandering were it not for the fact that many parts of Mallorca on which I could wander were in fact privately owned and deemed off-limits to the general public.
Along the mountain track
Such as along the mountain track that takes me from the Ternelles finca to the ancient Castell del Rei in Pollensa but which is only accessible by groups of a maximum of twenty people who need to get permission from the town hall's mayor.
And as I go, I love to sing
Oh yes, I love to sing. Songs such as the "The Happy Wanderer" by the Obernkirchen Children's Choir, a UK hit in 1954; they don't make 'em like that anymore.
My knapsack on my back
Being a mad beardy wandering sort, I always have a knapsack on my back even when not going a-wandering but to still ensure that I can transport useful items like an ordnance survey map, a Swiss army knife and a song sheet with the lyrics to "The Happy Wanderer".
Val-deri, Val-dera,
Val-deri,
Val-dera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,
Val-deri, Val-dera
None of this chorus should of course be confused with "Valerie" by Amy Winehouse who, while she loved to sing, didn't do so while going a-wandering, except under the influence. It should also not be confused with "Valleri" (a number-twelve hit in the UK in 1968) by The Monkees, none of whom were especially known for going a-wandering either.
My knapsack on my back
I've already explained this.
I love to wander by the stream
Not that there really are any streams as such in Mallorca. There are instead torrents, which are there to capture colossal rainfalls or get clogged up with the remains of palm trees or shopping trolleys that some socially-minded individuals have deposited therein.
That dances in the sun
Given that the torrents are only full when it rains, they tend not to be doing a great deal of dancing in the sun. Rather, as soon as it gets hot, the torrents dry up and look a mess (see above).
So joyously it calls to me
"Come! Join my happy song!"
Look, a stream can't joyously call to anyone or invite anyone to join in a happy song. Does a stream have a pile of gold-trimmed invitation cards and a fountain pen with which it can request an RSVP to its happy song event? No it does not.
I wave my hat to all I meet
Another item of attire for the mad beardy rambling sort, especially one of advanced age from Britain with knobbly-knees and an earnest expression, is a sun hat which is worn even in February, when the chances of being affected by sunstroke are remote to the point of non-existent.
And they wave back to me
They being the Mallorcans who, if they see a touristy rambling type waving a hat in their general direction, consider him (rightly enough) to be a complete lunatic and so look the other way or phone the police.
And blackbirds call so loud and sweet
Those blackbirds which hunters aren't out having a pop at.
From ev'ry green wood tree
These would be the ev'ry green wood pine tree which at this time of year is packed with sacs of processionary caterpillars from which the caterpillars break out and give you a nasty sting or can cause death to an animal stupid enough to eat one.
High overhead, the skylarks wing
Apart from those, like the blackbirds, which haven't been brought down by an air rifle.
They never rest at home
Well no, they wouldn't rest if there was someone with a bloody shotgun taking aim.
But just like me, they love to sing
Ah yes, I do love to sing. "The Happy Wanderer". Not sure that skylarks know it, though.
As o'er the world we roam
The world being some walks around Pollensa, most of which have barriers to stop you roaming.
Oh, may I go a-wandering
Well, may I? No, you may not. Not if rich landowners, for example the family of the March banking dynasty who own the Ternelles finca, are intent on making sure that no bugger sets foot on their land.
Until the day I die!
It'll be long after you die before the courts in Mallorca ever get round to making a definitive decision as to where you can go a-wandering.
Oh, may I always laugh and sing
Well, you may always laugh and sing, just don't try doing so while on some private land.
Beneath God's clear blue sky!
Now you're talking. Clear blue sky. Nice, hot blue sky in Mallorca. Best to go to the beach and forget all this a-wandering caper. No one's privatised the beaches. Not yet anyway.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Showing posts with label Rambling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rambling. Show all posts
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Monday, July 16, 2012
MALLORCA TODAY - Barriers along the Cami Pollensa-Lluc still in place
Despite an order having been passed by the Council of Mallorca, which claims ownership of the old road between Pollensa and Lluc, that owners along the "cami" should remove barriers and permit ease of access to ramblers, the barriers remain in place. The case of the Pollensa-Lluc walk is highlighted as an example of the legal battles over rights of way in Mallorca and also of the difficulties in establishing what actually is the original track.
See more: Diario de Mallorca
See more: Diario de Mallorca
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Walking, Talking
They came, they took a butcher's and they used ladders to climb over the barrier. On Monday, 500 or so people took part in the so-called "re-claim walk" along the camino de Ternelles in Pollensa and to the Castell del Rei. This is the camino, across the Ternelles finca, owned by the March family, which has been closed to ramblers and which has been the subject of much huffing and puffing, and not all of it by less-than-fit walkers.
Pollensa town hall, which ostensibly is on the side of those who want to see unfettered access, had stipulated that only twenty people would be allowed to make the symbolic re-claim walk. As this was a local decree (backed by the regional government), the local plod were duly on hand to enforce it. They didn't. And so it was that the march of the great 500 did come to pass across the land of the March.
The walk (not the re-claim one but the actual one) is in fact promoted among the rambles of the local area, but for years it has been off-limits. The mayor has talked a good walk and has taken notice of the will of the 500 (or more) to open it up, but still it remains a case of "walk, don't walk". The action on Monday was all the more notable for the fact that, amongst the ranks of the 500, were the regional government's transport minister, the parliamentary spokesperson for the Mallorcan socialists, a nationalist deputy and the director for heritage at the Mallorca Council. Swelling the numbers were various ecologists, representatives of the two main trades unions, doubtless a few agitpropists and even some genuine ramblers. All that was missing was the gangling sight of Janet Street-Porter whom I once saw arm-in-arm (just about) with a short bloke walking along London's Tottenham Court Road. A world away from the rambling hinterland of England's fair dales - and indeed Mallorca's finca-land - but I know how much you like these celebrity stories. And if you don't get the Street-Porter connection, then you'll have to google her together with rambling; up to you.
But where was I? I was rambling. Oh yes, take a look at that list above. What exactly has all this got to do with the transport minister? Was he sizing it up as a potential site for a new motorway? Or maybe he's a mad keen hiker. Of course, there is the probably not insignificant matter that he is also a member of the Mallorcan socialists. As so often, these things seem to come down to a touch of political handbagging, or backpacking in this instance; the mayor of Pollensa is Unió Mallorquina. And the mayor is, as you might expect, outraged and is due to be writing to the regional government's president, Antich, to protest at the breaking of an order from the government itself (one covering the camino) by at least one member of his government, albeit that the transport minister is from a different party to both Antich and Mayor Cerdà. The environment ministry, whose agents had been positioned to prevent a previous re-claim walk, had in fact sanctioned this latest one, but with the limit of twenty hardy souls out for a hearty yomp on what was a public holiday.
Anyway, one could nuance the dispute over the camino as an important battle for the heart of countryside Mallorca and for the right to walk. And one would be correct, up to a point, perhaps about as far as the barrier that was erected. There are, though, plenty of people who do enjoy a stroll off the beaten Pollensa track, and some of them are tourists. But the problem would then be, were the camino to be totally opened up, that the same ecologists would turn round and say that this was harmful to the environment, to which the environment ministry would add its centimo's worth. So you would end up with a different argument. Despite the claims for the right to walk, this has descended into politicking. As such, it seems as nuts as the football trophies of yesterday.
Still, the walk re-claimers have made their point and have created a spot of media frenzy (erm, slight exaggeration). Be grateful that there weren't 600 of them, as you would then had to have put up with me doing a line about into the valley of Ternelles walked the 600. Come to think of it, you just have.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Carly Simon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO8FZJ_UIn4. Today's title - what?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Pollensa town hall, which ostensibly is on the side of those who want to see unfettered access, had stipulated that only twenty people would be allowed to make the symbolic re-claim walk. As this was a local decree (backed by the regional government), the local plod were duly on hand to enforce it. They didn't. And so it was that the march of the great 500 did come to pass across the land of the March.
The walk (not the re-claim one but the actual one) is in fact promoted among the rambles of the local area, but for years it has been off-limits. The mayor has talked a good walk and has taken notice of the will of the 500 (or more) to open it up, but still it remains a case of "walk, don't walk". The action on Monday was all the more notable for the fact that, amongst the ranks of the 500, were the regional government's transport minister, the parliamentary spokesperson for the Mallorcan socialists, a nationalist deputy and the director for heritage at the Mallorca Council. Swelling the numbers were various ecologists, representatives of the two main trades unions, doubtless a few agitpropists and even some genuine ramblers. All that was missing was the gangling sight of Janet Street-Porter whom I once saw arm-in-arm (just about) with a short bloke walking along London's Tottenham Court Road. A world away from the rambling hinterland of England's fair dales - and indeed Mallorca's finca-land - but I know how much you like these celebrity stories. And if you don't get the Street-Porter connection, then you'll have to google her together with rambling; up to you.
But where was I? I was rambling. Oh yes, take a look at that list above. What exactly has all this got to do with the transport minister? Was he sizing it up as a potential site for a new motorway? Or maybe he's a mad keen hiker. Of course, there is the probably not insignificant matter that he is also a member of the Mallorcan socialists. As so often, these things seem to come down to a touch of political handbagging, or backpacking in this instance; the mayor of Pollensa is Unió Mallorquina. And the mayor is, as you might expect, outraged and is due to be writing to the regional government's president, Antich, to protest at the breaking of an order from the government itself (one covering the camino) by at least one member of his government, albeit that the transport minister is from a different party to both Antich and Mayor Cerdà. The environment ministry, whose agents had been positioned to prevent a previous re-claim walk, had in fact sanctioned this latest one, but with the limit of twenty hardy souls out for a hearty yomp on what was a public holiday.
Anyway, one could nuance the dispute over the camino as an important battle for the heart of countryside Mallorca and for the right to walk. And one would be correct, up to a point, perhaps about as far as the barrier that was erected. There are, though, plenty of people who do enjoy a stroll off the beaten Pollensa track, and some of them are tourists. But the problem would then be, were the camino to be totally opened up, that the same ecologists would turn round and say that this was harmful to the environment, to which the environment ministry would add its centimo's worth. So you would end up with a different argument. Despite the claims for the right to walk, this has descended into politicking. As such, it seems as nuts as the football trophies of yesterday.
Still, the walk re-claimers have made their point and have created a spot of media frenzy (erm, slight exaggeration). Be grateful that there weren't 600 of them, as you would then had to have put up with me doing a line about into the valley of Ternelles walked the 600. Come to think of it, you just have.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Carly Simon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO8FZJ_UIn4. Today's title - what?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Through The Barricades
Spain is set to have some new citizens. They are British. They are also very old. They are the few survivors of those who came to fight for the International Brigades against Franco's Nationalists during the Civil War.
The current government is intent on writing Franco's name out of history and on continuing to honour those who fought for or fell in the name of the Republic; citizenships have been conferred in the past. The small band of Britons being offered a joint citizenship are enjoying belated but greater honour in Spain than they did in their own country both during and after the Civil War. They were derided either for being communists, which many indeed were, or for being mercenaries. They were also anti-fascist. What was the greater evil in 1930s Europe - communism or fascism? It's a close call.
Yet raising that question is too simplistic when applied to Spain. Neither the country's communism nor its fascism can or should be viewed in the same way as Stalin's or Hitler and Mussolini's. The Communist Party was essentially wedded to the notion of democracy. It had connections with Stalin, as did the UGT union and the PSOE socialists (the UGT is still closely associated with PSOE in the current-day political scene). The Soviet Union came to supply the Republicans with weaponry, but the strain of communism was a more conservative phenomenon lacking, as it did, any real support among the working class. The altogether more frightening elements that were to side with the Republicans were the anarchists.
Franco was not of a same mind as either Hitler or Mussolini. One indication of this was the fact that he chose not to pursue a war tactic akin to Blitzkrieg against Republican centres, much to the amazement of both Hitler and Mussolini. His justification was that he wanted to avoid unnecessary killing, rich though that may sound. Let it not be forgotten though that it was German bombs that destroyed Guernica, not those of the Nationalists. Franco also sought and got the submission of the more extreme elements of his supporting groups, most obviously the Falangists and the Carlists. What came to be Francoism was not totalitarianism; it was authoritarian, militarist, Catholic and monarchist. Arguably, it was also not strictly fascist.
It is usual to categorise the Civil War as a fight between two competing and extreme political ideologies. The Republicans, though, were communists only in the sense that the Communist Party came to be an ally of the Socialists and the left-leaning Republicans in government at the time of the Civil War's outbreak and at the end of the Second Republic, the failure of which lay largely in the inability of the various political groupings to establish stable government and which had lurched between right and left throughout its five years. The coup of July 1936 was, in no small part, predicated upon this failure. Franco considered political parties unworkable, and after victory in 1939 he ensured that groupings that might have resembled parties were kept submissive, and these included the Falange, despite the philosophy of Francoism being largely based on its agenda of fundamentalist Catholicism. Though the Nationalists are and were portrayed as merely defenders against Communism, the prime concerns for Franco were the restoration of Spanish conservative interests (which precluded therefore such things as Catalan autonomy) and an end to the political parties.
But the story of the Civil War has required the neatness of the fascist-communist polarities. The International Brigades were communist in terms of the various bodies involved in creating them, but they also cannot be summed up quite so neatly. The motivation of those who joined them can be - a detestation of and a will to defeat fascism, whether they personally were communists or not. They failed to effect that defeat, and Spain languished for years as a consequence (and no one can tell what would have ensued had there been a Republican victory). Those who fought against fascism were denied the honour of what was an honourable cause. And now, finally, some have received it in the form of citizenship in a Spain that is doing its utmost to lay to rest the wounds of their defeat.
POLLENSA AND SOME MORE DISSENT
The main surprise regarding a touch of civil dissent in the normally serene calles and caminos of Pollensa is that it doesn't, for once, involve the town hall. This time around it is the local environment ministry which is the target in that a walk across finca land north of the old town has been denied, and it's the ministry doing the denying. This finally brought out a posse of militant ramblers the other day, determined to storm the barricade in order to gain access to the walk to the old king's castle on the camino de Ternelles (if you don't know, this runs from somewhere close to the Roman bridge). All they needed was a Janet Street-Porter; might have helped them, too, in tackling the jobsworths of the forestry wing of the ministry and the security guard who had tried to prevent the taking of photos. Needless to say, the ramblers were told to sling their hook, or something like that, and so they had to leave, dragging their tails of backpacks between their legs. I say that this doesn't involve the town hall, but the mayor was requested to order the opening of the camino, which he hasn't. Maybe because he can't.
What I would like to know though is where is GOB, the enviro pressure group, when you need it. This is a case of nature lovers versus environment overlords. How does GOB reconcile the two? We demand an answer.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Cher - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JElkPACfz_M. Today's title - before two of them became Krays.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The current government is intent on writing Franco's name out of history and on continuing to honour those who fought for or fell in the name of the Republic; citizenships have been conferred in the past. The small band of Britons being offered a joint citizenship are enjoying belated but greater honour in Spain than they did in their own country both during and after the Civil War. They were derided either for being communists, which many indeed were, or for being mercenaries. They were also anti-fascist. What was the greater evil in 1930s Europe - communism or fascism? It's a close call.
Yet raising that question is too simplistic when applied to Spain. Neither the country's communism nor its fascism can or should be viewed in the same way as Stalin's or Hitler and Mussolini's. The Communist Party was essentially wedded to the notion of democracy. It had connections with Stalin, as did the UGT union and the PSOE socialists (the UGT is still closely associated with PSOE in the current-day political scene). The Soviet Union came to supply the Republicans with weaponry, but the strain of communism was a more conservative phenomenon lacking, as it did, any real support among the working class. The altogether more frightening elements that were to side with the Republicans were the anarchists.
Franco was not of a same mind as either Hitler or Mussolini. One indication of this was the fact that he chose not to pursue a war tactic akin to Blitzkrieg against Republican centres, much to the amazement of both Hitler and Mussolini. His justification was that he wanted to avoid unnecessary killing, rich though that may sound. Let it not be forgotten though that it was German bombs that destroyed Guernica, not those of the Nationalists. Franco also sought and got the submission of the more extreme elements of his supporting groups, most obviously the Falangists and the Carlists. What came to be Francoism was not totalitarianism; it was authoritarian, militarist, Catholic and monarchist. Arguably, it was also not strictly fascist.
It is usual to categorise the Civil War as a fight between two competing and extreme political ideologies. The Republicans, though, were communists only in the sense that the Communist Party came to be an ally of the Socialists and the left-leaning Republicans in government at the time of the Civil War's outbreak and at the end of the Second Republic, the failure of which lay largely in the inability of the various political groupings to establish stable government and which had lurched between right and left throughout its five years. The coup of July 1936 was, in no small part, predicated upon this failure. Franco considered political parties unworkable, and after victory in 1939 he ensured that groupings that might have resembled parties were kept submissive, and these included the Falange, despite the philosophy of Francoism being largely based on its agenda of fundamentalist Catholicism. Though the Nationalists are and were portrayed as merely defenders against Communism, the prime concerns for Franco were the restoration of Spanish conservative interests (which precluded therefore such things as Catalan autonomy) and an end to the political parties.
But the story of the Civil War has required the neatness of the fascist-communist polarities. The International Brigades were communist in terms of the various bodies involved in creating them, but they also cannot be summed up quite so neatly. The motivation of those who joined them can be - a detestation of and a will to defeat fascism, whether they personally were communists or not. They failed to effect that defeat, and Spain languished for years as a consequence (and no one can tell what would have ensued had there been a Republican victory). Those who fought against fascism were denied the honour of what was an honourable cause. And now, finally, some have received it in the form of citizenship in a Spain that is doing its utmost to lay to rest the wounds of their defeat.
POLLENSA AND SOME MORE DISSENT
The main surprise regarding a touch of civil dissent in the normally serene calles and caminos of Pollensa is that it doesn't, for once, involve the town hall. This time around it is the local environment ministry which is the target in that a walk across finca land north of the old town has been denied, and it's the ministry doing the denying. This finally brought out a posse of militant ramblers the other day, determined to storm the barricade in order to gain access to the walk to the old king's castle on the camino de Ternelles (if you don't know, this runs from somewhere close to the Roman bridge). All they needed was a Janet Street-Porter; might have helped them, too, in tackling the jobsworths of the forestry wing of the ministry and the security guard who had tried to prevent the taking of photos. Needless to say, the ramblers were told to sling their hook, or something like that, and so they had to leave, dragging their tails of backpacks between their legs. I say that this doesn't involve the town hall, but the mayor was requested to order the opening of the camino, which he hasn't. Maybe because he can't.
What I would like to know though is where is GOB, the enviro pressure group, when you need it. This is a case of nature lovers versus environment overlords. How does GOB reconcile the two? We demand an answer.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Cher - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JElkPACfz_M. Today's title - before two of them became Krays.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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