MALLORCA TODAY - Safety zones for Pollensa's Moors and Christians

Pollensa town hall has issued advice about attendance at the Moors and Christians battle simulation on 2 August and is to create "safety zones". The battle, participation in which is meant to be limited to people from Pollensa, attracts people unfamiliar with what happens who get caught up in the swell and crush of the participants.

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There's No Such Thing As Unfair Competition

Time was when only scant attention, if any attention at all, was paid to health and safety in Mallorca. There are still examples of this attention being scantily clad but an unsafe and an unhealthy cultural tradition has been replaced by one that bears more resemblance to Anglo-Saxon fastidiousness than the previous Latin-Mediterranean couldn't-care-less-ness. And when it suits certain interested parties to come over all safety-concious-righteous, they will play the H&S card for all it's worth.

Safety, or the perceived absence of safety, is invoked as a means of attacking unfair competition. Go back a couple of years, and you might recall all the fuss about the Mallorca Rocks hotel in Magalluf. Objectors to this dealt the safety card (all those thousands of people packed into a hotel inner square with a swimming-pool slap bang in the middle). But the safety thing was really only a healthily-safely correct smokescreen to disguise the main source of objection - the alleged unfair competition that was being provided by an upstart operator who had allied with a hotel chain to provide music concerts and so threaten the years of dominance of certain clubs in Magalluf. One in particular.

Safety isn't really the issue. It wasn't in Magalluf and it isn't in Alcúdia, where the taxi-drivers, to no one's surprise, have launched their objections against the tourist mini-train. When it was announced some while back that the tourist train was making a comeback, I wondered how it could make a comeback. It was primarily the taxi-drivers that ganged up in order to ensure the demise of the old train. Yes, there was a fair old dose of politics as well, but while these might have changed in the thirteen years since the tourist train hit the buffers, taxi-driver business hasn't. Bringing the train back was always going to prompt objections from the interested party that is the taxi-driver collective of Alcúdia, and it has taken only a few days of the train being operable for the objections to surface.

The taxi-drivers see the train as a competitor. This is the issue. There isn't another one. They append the "unfair" adjective to competitor, because unfair competition is a regular way for interested parties to seek sympathy for their cause. The competition was unfair at Mallorca Rocks (for reasons that were never that clear, given that concerts finished by midnight and that clubs don't get going until midnight), the competition to bars and restaurants from all-inclusive hotels is unfair (when in fact it isn't, as it is competition driven by a free market), the competition to hotels from so-called illegal accommodation is unfair because this accommodation does not adhere to the same standards of safety, quality and tax disclosure (a spurious argument, as it would adhere to these standards if such accommodation could be fully regulated rather than exist in a legal vacuum).

The unfair competition gambit goes only so far, however, in creating sympathy for the cause. It is not as emotional an argument as the safety one; hence, the reason for safety being invoked. In the case of the train, think of all those little tourist kiddies who might be thrown to their deaths from a vehicle with no doors. Or something like this. Yes, there is, in theory, a safety risk. But have there ever been any incidents? There are tourist trains in Playa de Muro, Can Picafort, Cala Bona and elsewhere, but I have never heard of there being any accidents, or any that have been at all serious.

The taxi-drivers simply can't accept any competition. As established operators, they will object to anything that might be. It was similar when the Alcúdia sightseeing bus started. There were objections to this from the taxis and also from the local public-bus operator. In fact, the sightseeing bus was denounced. On what grounds? It was an excursion bus. People couldn't just hop on and off and use it as a means of getting from A to B.

The tourist train is as much an excursion as it is a way of getting from one place to another. It is a pretty inefficient way of, say, travelling from Bellevue to the port. It goes slowly, it stops en route, it doesn't go right into the port. It is also, for a family of four as an example, more expensive than a taxi. If two kids qualify for the kids' rate, the family of four will pay eight euros, forty. A taxi wouldn't cost as much.

The taxi-drivers reckon that the train has already meant that their local business is down by 40%. Perhaps it is, there is no way of being able to dispute or verify this, but it would be a surprise if it were, but not a surprise because such statistics are tossed around as further evidence for building up the case for sympathy. But sympathy is in limited supply. There is none from the town hall and there will be none from tourists. The tourist train is back, and competition or not, unfair or not, tourists like little tourist trains.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Go Fly A Kite, Kitesurfers

You probably have a Dutch dude by the name of Gijsbertus Adrianus Panhuise to thank or blame for kitesurfing in Mallorca. G.A.P. took out his first patent on a kite for kitesurfing in 1977, thus indicating that kitesurfing has been around rather longer than might have been imagined and also indicating how quickly different forms of surfing developed: board surfing was really only popularised in the late 1950s.

The history of kitesurfing in Mallorca is more recent - around the turn of the century was when it started to catch on - and it is a minority sport, the consequence in part of the absence of available beaches from which to practise it in summer.

For a time, kitesurfers would turn up on regular beaches, leading, as I once witnessed, to a fist fight when a kite almost decapitated a child. This was on Playa de Muro beach. There are no longer any rogue kitesurfers taking to the waters in summer where the beach is populated, though the same stretch of beach does attract kitesurfers in winter when there aren't sunbathers or swimmers to maim. Further along the beach, the part known as Es Comú, a rustic beach backed by dunes, there is an established kitesurfing presence in summer, one sanctioned sufficiently that during the recent fiesta in Playa de Muro, it was possible to give kitesurfing a go.

The Es Comú beach, because there are no hotels, houses or road next to it, is not contentious. The beach itself, except on Sundays, is quiet during the summer months. It is awkward to get to, if you have to hump your kitesurf kit, but its location is more or less perfect, the winds from the exposed coastline of the bay of Alcúdia affording good conditions for the sport.

Another beach, also exposed, is altogether more contentious when it comes to kitesurfing. As I understand it, Es Comú and the beach at La Marina by Barcarès are the only two locations on Mallorca where kitesurfing can be performed to any great extent. There is a further beach in the south, but the area is strictly limited. In the bay of Pollensa, kitesurfing has grown to the extent that it is no longer confined to La Marina, it is also practised from beaches by the two hotel complexes along the road between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa - Club Pollentia and Club Sol.

But it is kitesurfing at La Marina which has caused most of the controversy, especially since the extension of permission for its practice earlier this summer and the establishment of a training school. The number of kitesurfers has increased significantly, and the local residents are distinctly hacked off as a result.

For some time, banners have been hanging from houses overlooking La Marina beach. One says: "Flysurf school, no thanks" (flysurf is the same as kitesurfing). The residents object to the kitesurfers for different reasons, one of them being safety.

Kitesurfing can be dangerous, but the danger is not only that from a kite which goes out of control, there is the danger that also comes from the location at La Marina and at others along the bay road. This particular road is notorious for accidents, some horrors having occurred on it over the years, especially by the bend in the road, right by where the objectors' banners can be seen. The road is dangerous because vehicles go too quickly or too slowly. Too quickly and they might collide with the constant movement of people crossing the road with their kitesurf kit. Too slowly, which is the case with many spectating drivers, and someone smashes into the back or takes it upon himself to overtake and go head on with a car that is moving too quickly in the opposite direction. Cars can also suddenly just stop or slow to park off the road with barely any indication, if at all.

The problem with the kitesurfing at La Marina is, from a road-safety point of view, that it has become a tourist attraction, and La Marina will continue to attract more and more kitesurfers because, and unlike Es Comú, it is right next to a main road and so easy to just park up and disgorge the kit. And the parking is another complaint the residents have, which is understandable. At times, there are vehicles all over the place, poorly parked. To this, there is noise, rubbish and everything else that goes with a concentration of people.

A compromise needs to be found and measures put in place to ensure safety, but it is difficult to know what this compromise or these measures could be or indeed who would initiate them. As too often with matters by the coast, there is confusion as to which authority does what, as the residents have discovered over several years in getting no joy from the town hall and the police and the Costas, to which should also be added the Council of Mallorca which is responsible for the road.

There is going to be a nasty accident one of these days.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.