All Along The Watchtower: And roundabout sculptures

I was out on the hunt for information again yesterday. What I wanted to know about had to do with the watchtowers that are dotted along the coastline and the background to sculptures on roundabouts. Why would I want to know this? Because the information could form further articles for this newspaper thing. And because no information seems to exist, well not in any detailed form.

First stop, the Playa de Muro tourist office and the ever-helpful Cati. The towers, she thought, stemmed from the Civil War, which sounds right but I had an idea that they were older. There's a historian chappy at Muro town hall apparently. So she phoned him up. I'm waiting to collect the info he's going to provide. He said that the towers do indeed pre-date the war, but that was about as far as I got for the time being. What I was also told was that questions about the watchtowers are not uncommon, as in tourists ask about them, which did rather make me wonder why there isn't anything that gives their history. The towers seem, to me, and have long seemed like an obvious subject of interest, and yet they have been ignored where it comes to information provision. In Playa de Muro, other than Albufera, there isn't exactly much by way of "attractions". Except for the towers.

As for the roundabout sculptures, there was an explanation as to their "symbolism", which will be largely obvious, assuming you know what they represent, such as the tangle of eels by Albufera. But there was also some confusion as to sculptures outside of Muro, such as the one in Puerto Alcúdia. What is it? A horse, I said. Even other tourist offices don't know what it's supposed to be.

Second stop, the tourist office in the port of Alcúdia and the ever-helpful Cristina. These roundabout sculptures, I asked. The two famous ones are in fact included in a leaflet produced by the town hall, though the information is only very brief. The linkin' donuts one, that on the Magic roundabout; when was it put there for example? She wasn't sure. Why did I want to know? Well because people like to know this sort of thing, don't they?

Coming back to the watchtowers, I was told that they were "faros" (lighthouses). "Faros?" No. Surely not. During wars, you wouldn't light up beacons to guide ships in or away, unless, I suppose, you did want to guide them in and then take a pop at them. I would be most surprised if they were ever lighthouses, except possibly that they, at some point, doubled up as such during peaceful times.

How do you find out more information? That's when you run up against uncertainty. Do you talk to the heritage departments at the town halls? Or to the Council of Mallorca, given that the sculptures appear on main-road roundabouts? And if the latter, then who do you contact? There is nothing on the Council's website, for example, which leads you to information about roundabout sculptures.

I don't want to be critical, especially as the tourist offices are always helpful, but it seems a little odd that they are not themselves better informed. However, maybe this is understandable, because the tourist offices, like the whole tourism authority set-up on the island, are geared to a kind-of top-down information provision, that of what it has been determined that tourists should be told about - food, produce, historic buildings, walks and so on. But no one, it seems to me, has stopped to think about the curios - the watchtowers, the sculptures; the very things that can startle a visitor because they are a bit weird. The tall Dalek-pronged towers, the incomprehensible horse, if it is indeed a horse. Why are they there? How did they get there? When did they get there? Who put them there? The questions are very simple. But the answers are far from being so.


The season about to kick in, let's re-introduce a previous theme but with the emphasis on "holiday" in music, in whatever form. An irregular item no doubt, but here is the brilliant Chambao, "Ahí Estás Tú" (otherwise known as the Andalucia advert song). Not Mallorca, but who cares:




Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Horse With No Name

The horse, the horse of course. The Mr. Ed roundabout to offer a name, not that it is has one, or not one that I know of. Alcúdia's most famous landmark. The horse that isn't a horse of course; well not to everyone it isn't. But horse it is, despite any similarity to a farm animal with two legs and a beak. Look the horse roundabout sculpture up on the internet and it is usually described as being orange. I would have said more a brick reddish. At least it was. It's showing its age. It's the old nag roundabout; the waiting for the knacker's yard rotonda. It needs a coat of paint. It has not faded to old grey mare so much as been weather-beaten to variable shades of sand. They should opt for something more durable. Plastic perhaps. I was sure I saw a giant Homer Simpson bouncy castle in Puerto Pollensa yesterday. That would be a good idea for a roundabout. A huge rubber or plastic, vivid yellow Homer wobbling around in the wind.

I was trying to research these roundabout sculptures. I found a piece from "The Diario" dated 20 March 2006. It expressed the concerns of Balearic artists who were worried about the selection process for sculptures and the fact that the responsible artist's name was not identified. The same artists also wanted an independent commission of experts to select the art and to avoid an "increase in the visual contamination of public spaces". I suppose this would mean that Homer would never find a place on a roundabout.

I'm wondering if anything ever came of this. It seems an oddity that there could be a commission for roundabout sculpture, but they take this stuff seriously. As for identifying a sculptor's name, it does look as though there is some sort of plaque for the "eels" roundabout in Playa de Muro. But I wonder quite how many people will dare to cross the road onto the roundabout to examine said plaque. I'm not. Then there is "visual contamination". What an excellent expression. Does the Las Gaviotas deckchair qualify as such? Personally, I quite like it.

But if all this roundabout art is so important, and it must cost a few centimos which therefore means that it is important, why does there appear to be no website devoted to it? I once received an enquiry from someone doing a school project on Alcúdia who wanted to know the sculptors responsible for the horse and the "linkin' donuts" of the Magic roundabout. I did manage to find out, but alas have completely forgotten not only who they were but also how I came by the information.

All the money that is spent on adorning all these roundabouts, you would think there might be some sort of "catalogue" to tell you about them. If nothing else, they are a talking-point and useful points of reference. There again, it's an expensive way of provoking discussion in a bar. A plastic Homer would be a lot cheaper (so long as they didn't pay image rights).


And apropos of nothing other than the fact that I was there... Shamrock in Puerto Alcúdia. Don't know, Girls Aloud seemed to have turned up and Wayne Rooney is at the back of the photo. Very odd. He'd been pasting Spurs on the TV, barely an hour before. Oh, and you can see Fernando, the man, in the second row.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "I'm Mandy, Fly Me", 10cc. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ANr-OXMork). Today's title - a country, a big one.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)