Stop The Press

The British Consul popped up again in yesterday's "Bulletin", along with figures of the numbers of registered Brits in the various municipalities of the island. The figures were a bit of a surprise. At some 15 and a half thousand, the total seems, if anything, to have actually fallen. They don't necessarily give a complete picture, as there are those who live part of the year and those who simply do not register - for whatever reason, and I leave that to you to figure out. There was also no number given for one municipality, Sa Pobla. Not that there aren't any Brits there; so I don't quite know why there was a line where there should have been a figure. Be that as it may, the "pobler" Brits would not make a significant difference.

When one looks at the figures, a clear picture emerges. Calvia has by far the largest population - at over 5,000 - followed by Palma. If one tosses in Andratx and Lluchmayor, then over half of the Brit contingent is in the main parts of the south. Pollensa can claim something over 1,000 and Alcudia fewer than 900. A figure of 2,000 or so in the northern area, a figure I have gone by for some time, would still be about right.

What makes these figures interesting and important is how they translate in terms of the media. It is an oft-heard gripe that "The Bulletin" is too focused on the south, at the expense of the north. How accurate that gripe is, is perhaps debatable, though perceptions play a crucial part, as much as the reality. Nevertheless, if 60% or so of the target market is in the south, it is hardly surprising that there is a weighting in favour of that market, in all sorts of respects. The northern market equates to roughly one-eighth of the total; not insignificant but not as significant.

But in total, the British form about 2% of the whole population of the island; that in the north 0.25%. How are you supposed to market to that? While the population is of course augmented in summer by seasonal workers and tourists, the latter only create a temporary additional market. For the media, there is a further problem to that of the smallness of the markets, and that is the diversity within the British population. While in the UK, newspapers can appeal to a broad range of socioeconomic groupings and political views, a similar scope does not exist locally. One size fits all is the only real approach, which has the effect of alienating some and of failing to create a recognisable "voice". With markets so limited, it is not surprising, or should not be, that content does seem, at times, thin or weak.

At this point ...

I started to get rather intrigued by this whole relationship between the media and the population in Mallorca. It will take me more time. Maybe tomorrow, the whole thing will appear. But what I have unearthed is, I believe, quite surprising; well, it surprised me. It may also give you all an appreciation of quite what we are talking about in terms of the local media. To follow ...


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Keane, "Spiralling": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-LZ7yH-JBM. Today's title - which film theme tune has this?

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

We're Tumbling Down

80%.

Following yesterday's 100%, a fall of twenty per cent, but no less significant. Not 80% home-made, but 80% down, as in 80% less revenue. This was the admission from the owner of a shop, a branch of which is on the front line in Puerto Pollensa. Stop for one moment and think what that means. You shouldn't need to think very long.

The economic malaise, especially that affecting the British tourist, was always likely to translate into a tough season for shops. More than places of food or drink, shops offer something purely discretionary, unless they are supermarkets or are selling underpants. The shop concerned is not alone. One nearby is reporting a similar tumble. Partly, this may well reflect the overwhelming Britishness of Puerto Pollensa. Another opinion is that there is a quasi-Club Mac-ist dumbing-down of PP, i.e. tourist stock with, in the main, less than bulging pockets. Even for places of food and drink, things are not universally rosy. Maybe there is some truth in the 60% decline at a well-known PP bar that helped to push a well-known bar owner to a breakdown.

There is a weakness in a place being essentially a one-product resort, as is the case with Puerto Pollensa. Contrast it with Puerto Alcúdia where there is a far greater diversity in terms of nationalities and relatively far greater numbers of non-Brits; the Scandinavians in particular are doing much to hold Alcúdia together, and reflect the historical importance of the Scandinavian market to the resort. Any one-product or largely one-product business is susceptible to adverse market conditions. And a mark of that one-product Britishness, it might be recalled, was reflected in advice to German tourists in "Bild" to give Puerto Pollensa a miss because it was a "well-known English holiday citadel" (4 June, 2008: Hans Plays With Lotte, Lotte Plays With Jane).

While bars and restaurants have long been potential victims of punters "doing a runner", shops have their own problems in the form of what the trade likes to call "shrinkage": shoplifting to you and me. It may not be peculiar to this season, but anecdotally there appears to be an increase. In a way, it is desperately sad. One shop owner in Alcúdia's old town tells of incidents that previously were rare. One such involved a lady who went off with a bag. When tackled, she said that she didn't have any money. A gift for someone back home, maybe? No money, so what to do? In the ensuing struggle, the lady did actually wet herself. Her camera was also taken from her, and she was told that she could get it back from the police. She did finally leave the scene with the bag, and presumably did not go and claim the camera.


More home-made
Coming back to percentages, my thanks to Ben for admitting to have been moaning in a Victor Meldrew-ish manner about the home-made claim for some years. He makes a good point in respect of an episode in a pub in England when the owner was challenged as to the home-made nature of the breakfast. Bacon, sausages and so on are prepared as opposed to being made, and prepared, moreover, on the premises, as opposed to the home. Theoretically, an establishment could make sausages or even go to the lengths of curing and smoking or whatever you do to turn Porky into bacon, but one suspects that this is not normally the case. And then one comes to the 100%. Could food be, for example, 85.7% home-made? It wouldn't have the same ring, I guess. "Our burgers are 85.7% made in the home." No, it wouldn't work. It either has to be 100% or not, and I leave it to you to decide as to whether 100 or zero is the more meaningful number.

There is always the alternative, namely "hand-made". This claim one does encounter from time to time. Much as it may sound like a Blue Peter exercise involving sticky-back plastic and your mum's best table, it isn't an altogether spurious claim. There are indeed restaurants where the chef slaves for hours over, for instance, the hand crafting of some ravioli. All good stuff, but invariably it costs an arm and a leg. Making by hand carries a premium; man hours, cost of, and all that. Nope, if the price is right, I couldn't really care less where or how it's made. Bring on that tex-mex; yumm, yumm.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - England football team. Here it is, but first you get the good one (Skinner and Baddiel): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8nkLV1V8B4. Today's title - line from a terrific song with a Byker Grove "ooh".

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Back Home

"Home-made. 100%."

I was parked by the Dakota Tex-Mex van. Home-made and 100% it said. I thought about asking the bloke who got out of the van about it; not that it would have got me very far. Which home do you suppose it's being made in? Are there kitchens in houses across Alcudia, Playa de Muro and Puerto Pollensa pumping out burgers and so on? No, I guess not. But were there to be, then they might well all be hooked up to a central database system. On a site operated by a software company called Cuiner is a notice about the migration of Grupo Boulevard's applications to the Cuiner Central Base (Boulevard operates the Dakotas and Café 1919, among other things), to allow for analyses of information from the establishments. Technology and home-made; the two don't really stand together somehow.

I only know about this application because I did a quick google. I wanted to know if maybe there was some substance to the "since 1965" that is also to be seen on the van and at the restaurants. Maybe there was or is some brand going back till then. Not that I found one. Or perhaps I should have gone past page four. Somewhere lurking in the Badlands may well be a Dakota Tex-Mex that is some 40-odd years old. But even were there to be, why I wonder would it be a Dakota Tex-Mex? Dakota is neither Tex nor Mex; indeed, the Dakotas are quite some way north of both Texas and Mexico. Mind you, the name "Dakota" has a certain cowboyish feel to it, but then again so do El Paso and Rio Grande, and they would be more Tex and Mex.

This home-made thing is not a promotional technique reserved to the Dakotas. Many places claim it. The word has, in a sense, acquired a new meaning. Strictly, one should say "made like in the home", but that would never do in terms of the marketing lexicon, rather like "British-style" bar wouldn't do either, even if it would be more accurate in many cases. But actually in the home? No.

It is, though, precisely the sophistication of advanced software that helps to get the goat of the radical Luddite foodist tendency; one that would rather be eating the goat, preferably to the accompaniment of a bunch of old Mallorcans shouting at each other. Not for them the branding of a Dakota or the debatable 100 per-cent-ness of made in the home. Not for them the professionalism of business success. This sits uneasily with a mythical Mallorca of Francoist backwardness. But let it not be forgotten that the Generalisimo's urgent need for foreign currency and for building something resembling an economy was what opened the floodgates to all that has followed, and that includes businesses which offer restaurants that might just chime with a contemporary tourist. That "since 1965"? Maybe it refers to when it all started.


Spud u like in Sa Pobla
Rather more rural in culinary terms, Sa Pobla will this Saturday be putting on its first gastronomy event dedicated to the potato, a staple not only of the local diet but also the local agriculture. Perhaps it was the success of last year's potato-themed autumn fair (21 November: Potato Head) that inspired this gastronomic extravaganza. Whatever. But if you want, there will be 23 restaurants participating in serving up potato dishes from as little as one euro. Could it be, therefore, that you can get a plate of chips? Tell you what, throw in a burger or some tex-mex, and that will do nicely. But that would never do.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "French Kissin' in the USA", Debbie Harry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze4-M9wAqPg. Today's title - and this was? Don't all snigger at once.

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

Paris Is Calling

Rafael Nadal, darling of the Balearic tourism promotion courts to the tune of around six million euros worth of forehand, has inadvertently unleashed a back-handed lack of compliment to a French market to the Balearics that amounts to some 300,000 visitors. Or rather, his uncle, Toni, has delivered an overhead smash of a potentially damaging sort. Given that the islands' tourism bods had diverted 400k of promotion via the French Open - in the form of a video of Rafa inviting the French to come to the Balearics - it does seem a bit unfortunate that Toni should call the Parisian public "really stupid". On the back of Nadal's defeat at Roland Garros, his uncle and trainer, miffed at the apparent support of the tennis-goers for Roger Federer, launched his invective. To make matters worse, the director of Spanish tourism in Paris seems to have agreed with the Nadal uncle, saying that the Paris public has no style. The tourism ministry back on the islands is keeping a somewhat stupefied silence.


Terrace law - Pollensa
Pollensa political life has its own rent-a-quote politico. He has been mentioned several times before. He is the "alternative", the leader of the one-man United Left and Greens, Pepe García. He is a sort of Roger Gale of the local political scene. Anything needs saying, and up pops Pepe to deliver it. Not always without some justification, it must be added. I have previously drawn comparisons between local politics and those of university days, and Pepe reminds me of the Workers Revolutionary Party of my alma mater, albeit that there were two of them. But they were like Marc Almond and that bloke who played the keyboards who looked a bit dumb (indeed they had the same name, Dave Ball). Anyway, even the other hard left groups treated them as idiots, which is not to suggest that Pepe is one, just that he does make rather a lot of noise, as did the WRP - to no great effect, well to no effect at all in fact. It should be remembered, in his defence, that he was one of the most vocal critics of the aborted pedestrianisation scheme.

Whereas one was inclined to agree with him where that fiasco was concerned, his latest entry into the local press is unlikely to attract as much favour. He has had a go at the Pollensa town hall administration for not enforcing its own by-law in respect of the spread of tables and chairs on restaurant and bar terraces, arguing that the administration is looking to avoid confrontation. The question is, of course, why did they introduce the law if, seemingly, they don't want to antagonise business owners by seeing it through? I don't have the answer, but it was and is a petty law. It would mean, for example, restaurants in the square in Puerto Pollensa having to cut their terrace size substantially. Why? To do so would mean loss of tables and therefore potential loss of earnings and, just as importantly, the loss for tourists of the chance to sit outside on terraces, which is what most of them want to do in summer. Pepe reckons this all gives off a bad image. Sorry, he's wrong, and the town hall is right, but was also wrong in the first place.

Back in March, I drew attention to this law (20 March: Sitting Here On The Bench). It was then that one of the square's traders, José of Bony, met with the mayor who'd come on a recce. One might have expected José to have been in fighting mode, but he seemed strangely subdued and resigned to the whole thing. Around that time he also mentioned his problems, which many will know about. It's just sad that he is unlikely to be at Bony this season. It won't be the same.


Bellevue fire
There was a bit of an incident at Bellevue the night before last. It was a fire in a laundry room that led to an evacuation of some guests. It all seems to have passed off without any great problem. These things do occasionally happen. There was a fire at one of the Playa de Muro Iberostars last year. Quickly discovered, quickly evacuated and quickly dealt with.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Simon & Garfunkel, "Sounds of Silence": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZGWQauQOAQ. Today's title - French in the title.

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

People Talking Without Speaking

Following the demonstration on Saturday which demanded the right of choice in language matters, as opposed to the so-called "Catalan imposition", the regional government of socialist President Antich and his coalition supporters from the nationalists and the left has declared that there will be no change to the policy of the equally so-called "linguistic normalisation". Antich has added that he does not want language to be the reason for confrontation, while the nationalists feel that the demonstration represented a minority and the views of the conservative Partido Popular.

Hmm, well the rhetoric is all starting to sound as there could well be if not a reason then at least a ground swell of opposing views that could indeed lead to confrontation. One sincerely hopes not. Despite the unwillingness of the Palma police to issue numbers attending the Saturday demo, it would seem that there were more marching then than was the case three weeks prior when the pro-Catalan march was held. Perhaps both demos represented minorities. And there may well be some merit in that view. If one takes reasonably believable figures, no more than 30,000 people have turned up to the two demos put together. Hardly a mass movement either way.

One is left with the impression that this whole argument is one of minority interest. While most people on the island would have an opinion, one way or the other, one suspects that most people aren't really that bothered; certainly not bothered enough to go marching through the streets of Palma on a Saturday. There are better things to do - like going to the beach. So political and other groups have hijacked the language debate at a time when, in truth, there are rather more important matters to be concerned about. Not that language is unimportant, but it is an issue for more benign economic times and not times when emotion can overtake rationality. Underlying the Catalan case, one fears, is a certain nationalism, not of the generally sensible Unió Mallorquina one, but of a more radical nature. Poor economic circumstances feed all sorts of tendency, some more extreme than others.

It is against this background that the interview with the PP's Rosa Estaras in "The Bulletin" the other day takes on rather more significance. She pointed out that the PP did actually poll more votes than any other party at the last local elections, but because of the nature of the electoral system, the administration was made up of a socialist-led coalition. It is, as the editor of "The Bulletin" rightly pointed out, something of a lesson for British politicians who now favour a move to proportional representation. That is a whole debate that is not really for this blog, though God knows I could fill a whole month's worth of entries on the subject. But suffice to ask, had the PSOE won a thumping majority last time round and not been dependent upon coalition partners, would its administration now be so committed to the current language policy? Locally, it is less important an issue to the PSOE overall (and the PSOE is, of course, a national party) than it is to the likes of the UM. The theoretically greater democracy of PR gives rise to horse-trading through coalition governments. This is not altogether a bad thing if it results in greater checks and balances, but as much as there can be tyranny through the democracy as practised through the UK electoral system so there is also tyranny through the disproportionately strong voices of minor parties in coalitions. Moreover, PR can lead to a certain stasis in government. And that, when it comes to tackling the greater problems that exist in the Balearics, is perhaps the strongest argument against PR.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - 10cc: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJMF59OC64Y. Today's title - silence.

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

Art For Art's Sake

Jeremy Paxman believes that the British spend too much time watching television and that television they watch in great droves, like "Britain's Got Talent", represents time that would be better spent going to the likes of art galleries. There was a discussion of this on Stephen Nolan's Five Live show, with Rod Liddle basically agreeing with Paxman, while readily admitting he was being elitist.

This is not a discussion for this blog, but it acts as a neat point of entry to Alcúdia town hall's current list of events - painting exhibition, pottery exhibition and a theatrical production in Catalan. These should have tourists turning up in their droves. Ah but, you say, these are just for local people. In the main yes, but not exclusively. Either way, they still fall firmly into the category - worthy but dull. Well can one imagine the excitement generated around the pools of Bellevue at the news that a German artist has got a few pictures hanging in the library in the old town. Don't all rush at once.

It was pleasing to hear views on the Nolan programme that museums and their like should be places of interactivity and of entertainment, a point I have made myself in respect of the planned new Pollentia museum. For the couch-potato, TV-watching, double-Susan Boyle-sized Philistine Brits, read the sun lounger-potato, double-Susan Boyle-sized Philistine Brit tourists, also TV watching, be it "Talent" or the Cup Final at the nearest bar, when they could be looking blankly at some ceramics or attending a play in an indecipherable language.

This is not to say that the town hall shouldn't put on these events, but it is to say that if they seriously believe tourists are going to take much notice, then they should think again. Recently, it was announced that the summer Via Fora programme (the dramatised street productions) would be held inside the walls of the old town and not just outside them - as has been the case. Boy, that's a major innovation. Sadly, much as the Via Fora historical representations are quite good, they also fail to inspire the tourist to vacate his bar stool. Why not do one in English and stage it in the Bellevue show garden? The history of Alcúdia with loads of flashing lights, blokes with swords, hologram religious icons weeping; that sort of malarkey. A sort of Pirates with only the odd pirate and loads of Romans and Moors. Far too unauthentic probably, and Heaven forbid it shouldn't be in Catalan, but you know something, I reckon they'd be packed out. Actually, forget it, Alcúdia town hall. Don't bother reading this. I'm on the phone to a theatrical impresario. Or maybe Paxman's got a few bob knocking around he'd care to invest.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Scott Joplin, "A Real Slow Drag". Today's title - despite the normal story advanced, apparently their name came (sic) from a dream that Jonathan King had. But what had he been dreaming about to lead to that name?

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

Marching Onward

There was another march on Saturday, another one to do with language. Responding to the pro-Catalan demo of three weeks back and also in the context of the pro-Catalan "Acampallengua" in Sa Pobla, the latest one expressed the desire for people to be able to choose their language, be it Castilian or Catalan. Bit by bit, demo by demo, the whole language debate is being elevated into public consciousness to a degree that begins to suggest more serious divisions in local society. While Saturday's march was said to be non-partisan, the presence of the Partido Popular gave it a political dimension, while a group of youths shouting "no to fascism and yes to Catalan" said something for how the language debate is still linked to old wounds. Separately, in an interview in yesterday's "Bulletin", the PP's Rosa Estaras stated that the "local government (i.e. the Balearic one) has gone over the top on this issue". That the two languages enjoy joint official status in the Balearics has not prevented Catalan from becoming THE language for many working in the public sector and official documentation from some town halls being issued in Catalan only.

A curiosity of this march was the fact that, though the organisers claimed that there were between 20 and 30,000 people, the police, the national and the local forces in Palma, did not issue numbers. Government sources said that the priority was security not counting people, which all seems a little odd when one considers that the police did issue figures for the pro-Catalan march (and their figures were just a bit more than a quarter of those claimed by the marchers).


To Holiday
There was an advert in "The Bulletin" over the weekend. It was for "British sales representatives". The name of the company was To Holiday. And To Holiday is? The holiday club scratch card mob. In "The Bulletin" last June was a letter from a veteran holidaymaker to Alcúdia complaining bitterly about the abuse he and his wife had been subjected to by scratch card personnel.

Interesting that it says "sales representatives" because when someone local intervened during an exchange between one of the scratch-cardists and a gullible couple, the girl said that she was not selling anything. Maybe not, so maybe the ad is just for those at the office who do the real sale. After all, the ones on the street are only interested in doing so-called market surveys. As if.


Euro elections
The Euro elections are almost upon us. It is at such times, well it is on this occasion, that recipients become "friends" to Sr. Bean. The PSOE has sent its mailshot. In English. How very thoughtful of them. And it actually makes sense for once, as in the English makes sense, even if all the words don't; if that makes sense. "Dear friend", it starts, and is bottomed - to use a term that can have other connotations - with "warm regards" and signed by José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and the lead candidate for the socialists, a certain Juan Fernanado López Aguilar. And very happy they look in the photo at the very bottom.

This is all fascinating stuff. That the PSOE has taken the time to do an English version, which the PP has not, does suggest that they are quite keen to curry favour with the Brit voter, or maybe they're desperate. However, when one gets to the actual text of what the PSOE has to say, there is one thing that stands out and requires a bit of taking to task. Talking about the economic crisis, the letter says: "The crisis was not brought about by workers, entrepreneurs or families. It was caused by the greed and lack of control over financial markets espoused by conservative politicians and policy". While not wrong, this does rather fail to mention the fact that politicians of a different political hue, i.e. the Spanish socialists, as with New Labour, were quite happy to endorse the policy.

There was another advert, one linked to the Euro elections. It was in "Euro Weekly". It was on behalf of a party called Alternativa Española. The ad was calling on "Costa Brits" to vote AES. And this party is? A far-right splinter from the PP. On the Tel Aviv University's antisemitism and racism site, there is a reference to a meeting in 2005, of "right-wing extremist and neo-fascist parties" in Vienna, one of which was AES. It was a meeting organised by the late Jörg Haider's FPÖ. The British Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan puts his name to the advert. There is some confusion as to whether the British Conservative Party has allied itself with the AES. I sincerely hope not.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh0n2mSN110. Today's title - not sure I expect anyone to get this, but you never know. This comes from a ragtime song by probably the most famous exponent. Who was he and the song?

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

On The Wrong Side Of Town

I ate in the port the other evening - the port of Alcúdia. I had salmon with a sauce and some vegetables. Fifteen euros and some centimos. Not particularly expensive but not particularly good. I don't indulge in naming places that don't impress, so I'm not going to now. Just let's say that the meal was at a well-known and long-established restaurant.

The salmon was ok, nothing wrong with it. However, it was covered in a quite thick, brown sauce. It drowned the taste of the salmon, and brown just doesn't do it for me where pink salmon is concerned. The vegetables were a couple of boiled and only just soft potatoes and some mange-tout and carrots and something else in too much oil. The vegetables seemed to come as standard; my companions had the same. No-one was that impressed. One could not help but feel that we were at the end of the mass production line. The service, to be fair, was very good.

The point about this is that, for fifteen euros, it is quite possible to eat out very well and very much better than I did the other evening. It is also quite possible to eat out very well for around half the price. I have no wish to discourage people from going into the port, or anywhere else that has a good atmosphere and location, but it is the location, and not the quality of the cuisine, that often dictates the size of the bill. There is also the fact that this restaurant was "Spanish", whatever that means. Authenticity can also command a price, even if the authenticity is vague and the food impossible to define as being from anywhere in particular.


Some of you who have been following this blog over the months and years will know that wrong definitions get my goat; wrong definitions as in, for example, what constitutes Alcúdia. These wrong definitions are the result of ignorance, lack of knowledge or because people are given the incorrect information. With this in mind, let me pose this question: what is the "town" of Alcúdia, the town in some tourists' minds? The old town? The port? Neither. It is of course The Mile. And it is plain wrong. On a forum someone was offering instructions as to how to get to the "town" from the Club Mac complex. The directions were to head for the Bellevue hotel. Give me strength.

It isn't necessarily the holidaymaker's fault that he or she might define The Mile as the "town" and therefore issue instructions accordingly. The ill-informed tour rep is quite likely to be the source of such intelligence, or the rep who has a vested interest in directing people to a particular bar or restaurant in the "town". But this misinformation has a habit of perpetuating itself, handed down across the internet and around the poolside, with the consequence that the holidaymaker is unaware of what actually is the town or indeed the main centre of Puerto Alcúdia, which is also not The Mile. And then the misinformed discover that the "town" is not to their liking (and believe it or not there are those who think this way about The Mile) and then go and slag off Alcúdia. All because they have been to the wrong town.


Tony Hadley
Ok, folks, I got a comment on the Wordpress version of the blog to yesterday's piece. It came from the lady who runs Tony Hadley's fan site:

"I think this article is a bit unfair to Tony Hadley. I run a fansite about Tony Hadley http://www.tonyhadleyfansite.co.uk and have seen him play with the Barcelona Jazz Orchestra several times. This type of show is very different to his pop/rock shows or his forthcoming Spandau Ballet Tour. He usually sings ‘True’, ‘Gold’ and ‘Through the Barricades’ but with a different arrangement to the originals along with many songs from the Passing Strangers album. This is Tony with the Barcelona Jazz Orchestra in Marbella last summer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RVlmaas4k4 (I didn’t post this video). I will be going and I am really looking forward to what I expect to be an excellent evening."

I'm really grateful for the comment. I need to make it clear, I think Tony Hadley's great. No, really, I do think that. Fabulous singer. It's just a shame that Tony seemed to have dropped off the musical radar for so long. And I too will be looking forward to an excellent evening, as I'm sure it will be. Oh, and for Denise, if you see this version, do send me a direct email to the address below.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - PM Dawn, "Set Adrift On Memory Bliss" (Tony Hadley's in this right at the end): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AOVf9p9ht4. Spandau Ballet, "True": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYb83KM4at4. Today's title - missing one word (love), which band, with a strong connection with Bruce Springsteen, did this?

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


Index for May 2009

Acampallengua - 25 May 2009, 26 May 2009
All-inclusives - 19 May 2009, 24 May 2009
All-inclusives' wristbands - 18 May 2009
BBC Holiday programme - 19 May 2009, 20 May 2009
Bridge, Playa de Muro - 22 May 2009
Building work in summer - 29 May 2009
Bypass roads, Puerto Pollensa - 4 May 2009
Can Picafort frontline - 21 May 2009
Canals & bridges, Puerto Alcúdia - 26 May 2009
Cap Roig restaurant, Puerto Alcúdia - 27 May 2009
Catalan - 11 May 2009, 25 May 2009, 26 May 2009
Dallas steak house, Puerto Alcúdia - 11 May 2009
Demonstrations against violence, Alcúdia - 6 May 2009
Employment, lack of - 3 May 2009
Estación náutica, Alcúdia - 17 May 2009
Eurovision Song Contest - 17 May 2009
Fire on the Sa Pobla train - 16 May 2009
Floral tributes - 9 May 2009
Footballers - 23 May 2009
German individuality - 8 May 2009
Greenpeace - 23 May 2009
Holiday club scratch cards - 15 May 2009, 21 May 2009
Holidays, how they have changed - 20 May 2009
Industrial estates - 18 May 2009
International Museum Day - 13 May 2009
Mallorca railway history - 14 May 2009
Manners - 10 May 2009
Miguel Nadal, Unió Mallorquina - 12 May 2009
Military bases - 1 May 2009
Noise from sound systems - 25 May 2009
Nordic walking - 8 May 2009, 21 May 2009
Pedestrian crossings - 10 May 2009, 29 May 2009
Petrol stations closing - 7 May 2009
Pickpocketing - 3 May 2009
Pollensa Music Festival 2009 - 30 May 2009
Portuguese Man O' War - 7 May 2009
Price comparisons - 14 May 2009
Puerto Pollensa's water - 15 May 2009
Recycling - 2 May 2009
Restaurant prices - 31 May 2009
Ses Casetes des Capellans, Playa de Muro - 5 May 2009
Son Bosc golf course - 15 May 2009, 16 May 2009
Street cleaning, Pollensa - 5 May 2009
Street drinking - 28 May 2009
Tea - 27 May 2009
Tony Hadley - 30 May 2009
Tour reps - 26 May 2009
Tourism promotion - 24 May 2009
Water-sports resort, Alcúdia as - 17 May 2009
What is Alcúdia town - 31 May 2009
What tourists take on holiday - 27 May 2009, 28 May 2009

This Much Is True

The Pollensa music festival is one of the cultural highlights of the local summer. This is not a thing for the hoi and the polloi, the general riff and the general raff of lager and chips; this is the extreme sophisto wing of musical culture in the northernmost parts of the island, nary a karaoke machine within the vocal carry distance of a Leona Lewis wannabe, not one tribute act an Abba-ing or a Take That-ing. This festival, started not by a Mallorcan but by a Mancunian, Philip Newman, is classical heavy, pop lite, or usually pop non-existent. However, once in a while, up pops a pop sort of act. When I say pop, I mean old rocker or, in the case of Tony Hadley, old new romanticist. And why should I mention Tony Hadley? How sharp of you. Very good question. Why would I or indeed anyone mention the Hadster? The answer lies in the fact that he is in a short line of long-ago pop/rock artists who have been invited to appear at the Pollensa festival. The line is so short, it comprises only one other - Roger Hodgson - and he was a replacement for Paul Carrack.

The question is, of course, why book Tony Hadley? Here is a singer set adrift, sent into a rock winter Russian front, consigned to be the Rudolf Hess of the pop world, ever associated with Spandau, languishing in the long-years of the incarceration of memory bliss of Musclebound and Through The Barricades pop-Lebensraum, but without having been the führer behind the whole gig, a role reserved for the foppish Adolf of the Spans, Gary Kemp. And when the Kemp twins decided to go and play at being Krays and Martin ended up leaving it aht, you slag, on Albert Square, Tony ceased to register either on the pop charts or in the pop stratosphere, save for endless plays of "Gold" on Capitol Gold or as the mind-numbingly unoriginal theme accompaniment to athletics championships.

A clue perhaps as to the question, why Tony Hadley, may exist on his website*. For there, if you go to "calendar", you will find that rare is a box per day that contains anything other than a number. For the whole of May, just one event: "opening couture brasserie, delicatessen and food hall, Neptune Quay, Ipswich". There we go, everybody, Ipswich, and not even a vocal performance by the sounds of it. Let's just put it this way, Tony's calendar does look a little light, though to be fair it fills up in the autumn because of course the Spans will be on their comeback tour. But till then, very little. Indeed there is so very little, that if you go to the month of July, and look at day 11, which is when Tone is due to appear, you will find ... only the number eleven, no more, no less. No mention of Pollensa, a music festival, Mallorca, nothing, nada. Perhaps it's not been updated. Don't know, but this much is true, as the title says today, as he appears on the festival's running order.

* http://www.tony-hadley.com/

(As Hadley is due to be appearing with the Barcelona Jazz Orchestra, I imagine he will be reprising his jazz-swing phase from the "Passing Strangers" album, so don't necessarily expect Spandau. See the WHAT'S ON BLOG - http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com - for a full schedule of concerts. Oh, and before anyone thinks otherwise, Tony Hadley was and is a damn fine singer.)


I should tell you that there is another version of this blog. I started it fairly recently through another blog provider, i.e. Wordpress, the reason for doing so being primarily as a sort of back-up but also so I could see how Wordpress works, and it works quite well, having certain standard features that the Blogger system doesn't. Anyway, while this "mirror" gets barely any visitors as it will not rate in Google to the extent that this original does, and is also not linked, it has had some visitors, and one - at least one - has stumbled across it through a string word search, probably through Google. I know this because one of those standard features tells me so, and the most popular (a slight exaggeration I feel) searches have been "jellyfish Mallorca" and ... "nude Nordic walking". Seriously, nude Nordic walking, which I did refer to in some jest several days ago. Clearly, though, such a thing does attract some interest. Each to their own.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Beach Boys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Hryc5t2wQ&NR. Today's title - ok, so Spandau Ballet, but who sampled it and made a terrific record in the process? The title of this is contained in the above.

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All Summer Long

The Balearic Government's environment minister has reversed the previous decision that permitted, for this season only, building works during part of the tourist season, namely up till the middle of June and throughout October. This reconsideration comes after concerns expressed by hoteliers and by tour operators, and indeed a hint as to legal action. These concerns centred, unsurprisingly, on the likelihood of tourists going elsewhere; there will have presumably been tourists who have already been affected, and the chances are that some might even have pursued the tour operators for some compensation if they had a disturbed stay.

The normal situation is that all building works in tourism areas are suspended during the official season - 1 May till end October - but this year, in recognition of difficulties faced by the construction industry, it had been agreed to relax this suspension. It was a relaxation that was always likely to cause a problem, and I would guess that the works in the heart of Puerto Pollensa and slap bang next to Hotel Daina might have been one of those that had been brought to the minister's attention. The reports on this from "The Diario" actually refer to work "durante el verano", which could be construed as meaning the whole summer. I'm not sure that this was ever envisaged, but perhaps it was, and so therefore not just into June and in October. Whatever the period of "relaxation", the unrest that it has caused could have been predicted, which does make one wonder why the decision was taken in the first place. The now new problem may be what builders do with workers they had employed.


Back to the roads. All the new crossing-points and the new roundabout along the carretera in Playa de Muro make driving very stop-start, and you can not only sense but also witness the impatience rising among drivers, especially as the heat of the afternoon takes its toll; another crossing, another load of tourists with lilos and baby buggies to allow across. It's hardly the tourists' fault. Except. So I stopped and waited while this lady made up her mind to cross or not, and when she did, she did so very slowly because she was in the middle of texting. There you have it, let me just hold this traffic up a bit while I compose "c u later". If it's an offence for drivers to text while driving, maybe the same should apply to pedestrians when crossing a road. Indeed, I was thinking, while going along the now not-pedestrianised coast road in Puerto Pollensa, that perhaps they got that all wrong, and maybe they should have made it a non-pedestrianised zone. No pedestrians. None of them. Verboten. That'd learn 'em. Go do your texting somewhere else.


Oh, and the great frozen haddock mystery. A cool bag, well wrapped and put in the suitcase. Just hope it doesn't un-freeze. The great smell of fish all holiday if not all summer long.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Elton John: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTJCnidpgfM. Today's title - well it won't be all summer long; this has been a title before but previously it was that lousy Kid Rock thing. From 1964, the far better song.

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Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting

Manacor may be a bit off the beaten blog track, but some little local difficulties there are not without relevance to Alcúdia. Early on Sunday morning, a 31-year-old man was attacked by two youths and suffered injuries that have resulted in the loss of sight in one eye. The incident, and there were others, appears to be related to the Manacor version of the botellón, the street drinking party, and it also occurred in the context of the Manacor spring fair. It will be remembered that the death in Puerto Alcúdia of Gabriel Marquet was said to be related to a botellón. Residents of Manacor are attributing the violence, in part, to a lack of things for the local young population to do. So there we have it: feckless and reckless youth, without facilities and activities to divert them, getting drunk and having a bundle. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? But let's not get too precious. Or at least I'm not going to be. Had there been street drinking parties when I was a youth, I would probably have partaken; in fact I'm pretty damn sure I would have.

The town hall in Manacor is wanting to put in place a law to tackle the issue of the botellón and to impose certain sanctions. Good for them, but Alcúdia enacted a by-law last September specifically to stop street drinking - of any sort. Why do the parties still occur then? It's all a police issue. Nothing more, nothing less. The argument about there not being things for the youth to do is almost completely fallacious. God knows, when I was at university there were all manner of things to divert you, some of them even related to studying, but it didn't stop excessive drinking and "high-spirited" anti-social behaviour. Many left university with first-class honours in alcohol abuse, and some could also claim higher degrees in acts of vandalism and brawling. The local problems are hardly unique to the island or to its youthful generation.


Anyway, to matters more light-hearted. Following yesterday's teabags, I would like to thank Sheila for itemising some of the things she brings on holiday to Alcúdia. Included among them is one food item that I would not have expected. And it is ... frozen haddock. Yes, everyone, frozen haddock. I really should quiz Sheila a tad more closely on this, as in the means of transporting said haddock. But haddock, frozen or not frozen, would, I suggest, take some beating in the league of odd foodstuffs taken on holiday, though it should be pointed out that the fish is intended for friends, so there's another category for you - strange things I have taken on holiday to give as presents. For my part, some years ago I grew addicted to a particular bottled satay sauce, so much so that several of the bottles were flown across the Channel to France. Not in the same class as the haddock, but indicative of something you just can't do without. Sheila also listed English mustard and curry powder, and with curry in mind, in case you didn't work it out, Cap Roig in Puerto Alcúdia will be the new Kashmir, making four the number of Indian restaurants in Puerto Alcúdia, which is still, relative to its size, a small number when compared with the relatively petite Puerto Pollensa and its foursome of Indians.


And, are we seeing the green shoots of sterling recovery? Up to a whopping 1.15 against the euro. Come on lads, let's push it even higher. 1.20 by June. Then finally, who said that Barça had no defence. Two to nil I think you'll find. Cue much outpouring of Catalan solidarity in the bars of Alcúdia and Pollensa - and quite right, too.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Nirvana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH8fQT-147A. Today's title - always seemed a rather strange song for whom?

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Pennyroyal Tea

One of those holiday survey things. What the Brit holidaymaker takes with him or her on holiday. Apparently, 43% of tourists take their own teabags with them. Do you?

At least teabags don't take up much room in a suitcase or indeed weigh very much, so squeezing a load of bagged-up Tetleys inside a shoe isn't too much of a problem, unlike, for example, cans of Heinz baked beans or some sliced loaves. But the British enduring imbibing love affair with tea demands that the right tea is on the table wherever the Brit may wander, Mallorca or further afield. Some while ago I spoke about tea (4 November: Storm In A Teacup), remarking that "whatever that sachet with a piece of string contains, you can be confident that it isn't actually tea". And that was because local tea bears only a passing resemblance, and usually not even that, to the brackish stuff that floods out of a PG Tip. For Mallorca and Spain, read also many other countries. That 43% are probably right.

Still, if you need to go out and buy some tea, you might try one of the local so-called discount supermarkets. Since when was a discount "hard" do you suppose? But hard it is if, that is, you go to the Royal Cheapest at the top of The Mile or, allegedly, Aldi in Playa de Muro. Now I may be wrong, but I have a funny feeling that this isn't Aldi as we know it, Jim, or should that be not as "wir wissen" it, Hans.


One of the great truisms of local business is that bars come and bars do go, that restaurants come and restaurants do go. Puerto Alcúdia has lost, finally, one of its less attractive but damned good eateries. Cap Roig. What a fine place this was. The stuffed peppers and the battered cod were excellent. Toni may have occasionally sported rather eccentric head furniture in the form of his haircut, but haircuts have never been a crucial factor when it comes to culinary skills. The restaurant had been for sale for at least three years and it has now passed into other hands, or indeed haircuts. It will still be a restaurant, but a different style. It will be ... an Indian. And, your starter and main course for ten euros or so, who is behind this new Indian? Think Puerto Pollensa. All will be revealed ... . But you probably already know.


And ... some of you may have noticed that today sees the United of Manchester playing the Barcelona of Barcelona. Watch your hats around the bars tonight as the locals demonstrate their sound Catalonian credentials. But in celebration of this, and my thanks to Danny Baker, here is one of Mallorca's Z-list celebs performing a peerlessly awful thing called "Soccer Superstar". Enjoy, or more likely, don't. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Jess Conrad, and to be honest you can have him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_urjNkxaLz0.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Ewan MacColl wrote it. Here are The Dubliners doing "Dirty Old Town" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCYpgVZ4HrE. Today's title - who was this? Clue: suicide leader.

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By The Old Canal

Further to yesterday's piece regarding the "Acampallengua", there was a bit of controversy surrounding the Sa Pobla event. The vice-president of the Obra Cultural Balear, the organisation that promotes the Catalan language and culture, was detained for a couple of hours by the Guardia on the Sunday morning whilst the night party was in full swing. Quite why is unclear, though the Guardia suggest that there may have been some sort of "disobedience". The president of the organisation dubbed it an "absurd provocation". (Quotes in translation from the report in "The Diario".)


The canals and bridges of Puerto Alcúdia have sometimes been subjected to criticism by tourists. The bridges themselves are in need of upgrading, something everyone pretty much accepts, and now the Costas authority, which is responsible for the canals, the lakes and the bridges, has presented a plan costing close on 5 million euros to upgrade the walkways and the canals. The original project that formed the lakes and canals from Albufera was intended to create a "little Venice", and the further development will require some expropriation, for example, from Bellevue. The creation of new walkways and possibly also bridges for the Lago Esperanza (the big lake) was talked about well over a year ago when a plan was also put forward for the lake to become a canoeing centre. While an upgrade in appearance and in facilities is to be welcomed, the thing that may remain a point of concern is the cleanliness of the canals. The odd plastic bottle here or there is almost to be expected, but when whole rubbish bins get deposited it means that someone needs to be doing the rounds rather more regularly than they seem to. One hopes that they also have a plan to keep them up to standard and also to keep the fountains going, all year if necessary, in order to create better water circulation. The other aspect of both the lakes and the canals that really should be addressed, but probably won't be, is the mosquito population. And with regard to mosquitoes, they seem to be bigger and more abundant than ever this spring.


Coming back to all-inclusives and tour operators etc., I'm grateful to Anne Marie for pointing out the some time erroneous information that tour-operator reps give out. She cites the example of one rep who explained to a coach load that the "old town of Alcúdia and its walls had been built by the Romans in the 11th century". Apart from the fact that the Roman Empire had collapsed several centuries previously, by the 11th century Alcúdia was under Islamic control, and it was from Arabic that the town's name was derived.

Not all reps are useless. There are some experienced reps who are extremely knowledegable and would never have made such a mistake, but unfortunately too many are ill-informed or maybe just take no notice of what information they are provided with. Whatever. Many tourists may not be interested in local culture and history, but the tour operators and their personnel still have a duty, or should have, to present the area correctly.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Trevor Horn and Paul Morley. Today's title - this comes from a song strongly associated with Ireland but was in fact written about Salford.

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Art Of Noise

5am. There's a bass sound coming from somewhere. Is it from a car in the street? No, sounds too far away. Onto the upper terrace, and it is a little clearer; not loud but discernible. It's coming from across Albufera. Sa Pobla. It's travelling some eight kilometres or so; it's coming from the party for the "Acampallengua". 5am. Hopefully, no-one in Sa Pobla was desperate for a good night's sleep; they wouldn't have had one.

And what is this "Acampallengua"? Literally it means camp language. It's pretty accurate. This is an annual occasion that moves around the island. It is a celebration of Catalan, and particularly popular with the youth; hence the party and the sports that had been arranged during the day. The camping part is that they pitch up and pitch tents and then head off to the sports, the night party, the fire run, the arts workshops, the giants and the pipers and the worthy speeches by politicos and the head of Obra Cultural Balear, the Catalan promotional organisation - "we will not make a step backwards in the struggle for our language", says he (as quoted in translation from "The Diario").

On the face of it, this event seems fair enough, a bit of camping out, a bit of football and a bit of techno. Yet I can't help feeling there is something slightly sinister about the politicisation of the event and therefore of the language. Statements such as that by the head of the Obra makes this pretty clear, and in his audience are teenagers who are being made more aware of their language (which is fair enough) but also potentially being radicalised (which may not be fair enough). Whatever. It's not my argument.


More noise. The tourism season cranking up and the sounds of entertainment are wafting across the resorts; no, wafting is way too weak, make that reverberating. By no means for the first time, there are a number of mutterings about the loudness of the Bellevue show garden sound system. I'm told that it is louder than last year. Every word can be heard clearly as far away as Magic and probably further. "Do you like The Beatles? Scream and shout ... " And so they do, and then once the show has finished at the midnight deadline they continue for some more minutes, demanding more and shouting some more.

This was a theme last year, as it will probably be a theme next year and the year after. Whether the sound system is excessive is not for me to say, but there is an ongoing difficulty in reconciling the noise of holiday and the sleeping and peace requirements of residents and probably also some holidaymakers. Were this a "problem" only occasionally, it might not all be so annoying to some, but it is every night. Not sure how you resolve it, especially when the wind is in the right (or perhaps that's the wrong) direction.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - it was about a nuclear attack on Britain and the nuclear winter that ensued, and it was horrifying. Today's title - who were the driving forces behind this outfit?

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Threads

I have mentioned the Holiday Truths website here before; it is a pretty good site, if only because it is so easy to navigate. If one looks at the first page of the Majorca forum at present, you will find the usual hotch-potch of threads, but among them there is something that stands out - well, stood out to me. This is the common thread that runs through threads related to specific hotels in both Alcúdia and Can Picafort. Let me list them and see if you can work out that common thread - Delfin Verde, Club Mac, Condes, Condesa, Holiday Village Viva, Platja d'Or. With the exception of a seventh - Bellevue - these are all all-inclusive, or so all-inclusive as to not make much difference, and Bellevue is at least a third all-inclusive. There is another thread that asks about the price of AI in June, and included in that are the likes of the Condes as well. All-inclusive is the common thread. A snapshot and unrepresentative it may be, but it nevertheless does indicate where priorities are tending to lie, those of both the holidaymaker and the tour operator. Last year, Playa de Muro's Continental Park became flavour of the month, or months, in the same forum; it had gone AI.

While there have always been those who have discovered a particular hotel and kept on returning to it, the holiday decision has usually been based on choice of resort over anything else. But perhaps this is changing, or has indeed changed. It is possible to hypothesise that the resort is now secondary (or lower in the hierarchy) behind the top spot of a good-value AI. For many who opt for all-inclusive, the resort itself is largely irrelevant anyway. If indeed it is the case that the decision process is skewed away from the resort, where does that leave the promotion of the resort? The tour operators that exalt this or that resort whilst interspersing their brochure or website space with the best possible AI deals may be seen as promoting the particular resort, but in truth it is neither here nor there. Much of the resort promotion is very similar in any event, and where it differs in terms of certain specifics, one has to ask how much impact those specifics have. Do, for example, the Roman town and city walls of Alcúdia have any bearing upon the fact that your average Joe and Joan Holidaymaker send off their booking form for the Condes or the Club Mac? I would very much doubt it. Or rather, yes they may have a bearing, but only as an informational element; they are not crucial and nor are they necessarily going to form part of the holidaymaker's itinerary. In the case of Can Picafort, a resort lacking any obvious points of differentiation, the choice of the Viva Village is purely and simply an AI one, which is not to say that there is anything wrong with either the Viva Village or the decision process, but it is to say that Can Picafort is an incidental, a fact of geography and town naming.

To come back to the theme of 40 years since the BBC started its "Holiday" programme, back in 1969 your average holidaymaker would have taken notice. But he is now far more sophisticated in an unsophisticated fashion. He may know that there are city walls, but these are not what he wants; he seeks unsophistication and pure convenience, and is thus more sophisticated in making a choice without the trappings of what to him are largely irrelevancies. He is less adventurous but content in the knowledge that he does not have to justify his holiday in terms of anything other than the ease of the pool, the entertainment and the beer, all on tap at the all-inclusive. He can pick and choose if he wants to indulge in those "extras" of the local culture, and if he doesn't wish to, then who is to say he is wrong?

The promotion supporting mass tourism has always been inexact; by definition, mass tourism demands a mass promotional message. It has always been wrong for the simple reason that tourists differ. The all-inclusive has forged a quite different and large niche within the mass-tourism market, and the promotion to this niche falls in the main to the hotels and the tour operators. Resort and island promotion is ill-directed. Consequently, there has to be an admission that, while mass tourism is not finished, its mass has been diluted into numerous categories, all of which require different messages and different promotion. One size fits all was never the best option, and it is now totally discredited. For this reason, the "estación náutica" branding of Alcúdia could be a very sensible thing, so long as it is understood that it is one facet of the resort and pitched at a defined market (or markets), one that, by and large, is not all-inclusive. Different promotional messages can co-exist as part of an overall promotion of a given resort, but if they are not presented the danger is that the all-inclusive, given its seemingly inexorable rise, will become the new mass tourism. And if it reaches critical mass, then the resorts do indeed become irrelevant.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Deep Blue Something (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcmH1LdPNKA). Today's title - this is a TV question. The title is that of a controversial drama from 1984. What was it about?

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Breakfast At Tiffany's

One of the oldest of truths regarding footballers is that they always take their holidays in Mallorca. Not so long ago, Frank Lampard was seen in the VIP lounge at Magaluf's BCM; Graham Le Saux, albeit he has retired, is a not infrequent visitor to the island's west coast; Brian Clough had a holiday home in Cala Bona, and Mallorca features in the film about him, "Damned United". Well, it used to be the case that, the season finished, the airlines would be filled with footballers heading for the fleshpots and beaches of Mallorca. Until, that is, they started to earn huge amounts of money and new resorts sprang up in which they could spend those vast amounts - Dubai, for reasons best known to them, for instance. If the Premier League is nowadays more likely to decamp to foreign playing-fields further away, Mallorca is still the stuff of Leagues One and Two. And so indeed it was yesterday at Puerto Alcúdia's Foxes Arms. For there was Tranmere Rovers central defender Ben Chorley, one time of Arsenal and Wimbledon. The "other" Liverpool club just missed out on the play-offs, so time to head for the sun and also to partake of the full English breakfast. Away from the gaze of Ronnie Moore and the Rovers dieticians and nutritionists, Ben was happily tucking into bacon, sausage and a fried egg. Those were the days, before pasta for breakfast, when Cloughie would send his sides out full of a steak and chips lunch and a whisky, and John Robertson would have double helpings. But they are still here, up to a point. Bear in mind, though, that when Chorley pitches up as Leicester City's new strong man at the heart of the defence, it was probably all due to a chance breakfast and thereafter the direct line to Nigel Pearson.


In the environmental pressure groups league, local agitators GOB remain something of a Blackburn Rovers compared with the Champions League-spot top four of Greenpeace. GOB may aspire to playing in the Nou Camp, but they have to settle for a Monday evening away date with Stoke. Greenpeace can court the Hiddinks and Ancelottis of the enviro lobbying world, while Blackburn make do with a Bill Oddie-style Sam Allardyce. And so it is that, when Greenpeace make a pronouncement, the world is inclined to take a bit more notice - possibly. Greenpeace offer a regular assessment of the island's environmental blackspots. It's a sort of footballers of the year award without the footballers and only aimed at the turkeys of the Premiership. Step forward, therefore, the Son Bosc finca and its damn golf course. Yep, it's still there on the roll call, and perhaps rather more controversially is a list of four municipalities grouped under what is termed "corrupción urbanistica", one of which is ... Pollensa.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Dave and Ansil Collins, "Double Barrel" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAujhAFx8wU). Today's title - well, Tiffany's may not be Foxes, but sounds like a footballer's wife, so it'll do. But ... who did the song?

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I Am The Magnificent

There was a sort of official opening a couple of days ago. The mayor of Muro and some worthies from the Mallorca Council stood on the bridge over the untroubled water of the canal in Playa de Muro and posed for the camera, announcing - in the words of the Council's president - that the works that have created the newly laid-out stretch of road that runs the five kilometres between Can Picafort and the fish-hook, some say pointed thing, roundabout are "magnificent and emblematic" (taken in translation from "The Diario"). Fine words indeed - for a bit of road. The crowning glory of the five kilometres of Muro tarmac is the bridge itself, now with pavements to both sides and a not unattractive metal barrier on one side. It's all been done, so says the report, with the safety of different users in mind, be they on foot, in car and probably also on trike, in road-going train, on roller blades or in baby buggies as a roller-blading mother pushes them across the bridge and down the road. I'd like to believe that there will indeed be an avoidance of accidents, an aim of the road and bridge.

The problems with the new bridge are that the road has effectively been narrowed, that people cross over it, not at a crossing-point, but from the path from the sea to the entrance to Albufera, and that the not unattractive metal barrier has a gap in it where a tree remains - what chance some likely drunk lad fancying a bit of a dive into the canal on his staggering walk back to the hotel one night? The concrete barrier on the other side of the road is really something of a hazard; it requires not a great deal of imagination to foresee a vehicle coming into heavy contact with it. Of course, the design of the road and of the bridge is such that, so long as drivers and others use it sensibly and so long as drivers do not speed, there should be no accidents. "Sensibly." Not a word one hears too often in connection with road use of any form. I wonder if the starting-point for such design should be irrational behaviour rather than rational. Take for example the cyclist who suddenly emerged onto the bridge and made a car swerve and almost go head-on the other day. Where was the rationality with that cyclist? I have previously mentioned the fact that pedestrians are obscured by hedges, cars and trees at some of the crossing-points.

I once referred to the bridge road as being "nuts". At least there is now a pavement where there used not to be one; it is less nuts than it was. But it is still nuts in that it doesn't take full account of the nutcases. I hope I'm wrong.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Arctic Monkeys (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLS_CAzJCwQ). Today's title - well no, not me, but the road. This is from ... ?

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Too Much To Ask

"We're doing a survey. We'd like your views about ..." It's the oldest trick in the book. Stop someone with an apparently innocent request to ask if you might do some seemingly legitimate market research, and use it as a means to something else. It's a trick that the scratch-cardists are using. They want to know if people are satisfied with things in Puerto Alcúdia. How dare they? Without wishing to sound like "disgusted of Tunbridge Wells", it is an absolute disgrace - at different levels. It is the thing that the market research industry has fought against for years, and for the scratch-cardists to even vaguely suggest that they might be doing something that is a) market research or b) has Alcúdia's interests at heart is little short of scandalous. They are not conducting market research and they care not one iota about Alcúdia. If they did, they would not be helping to harm the resort's reputation.


Can Picafort and its frontline
Can Picafort's hoteliers had a meeting with tourism minister Nadal the other day. Top of the agenda, as reported by "The Diario", was the state of the frontline, a project for the improvement of which has been on the cards for five years, but which has yet to come to fruition. This project started to take on greater urgency last year when the German newspaper "Bild" laid into Can Picafort beach, the frontline included, and went so far as to recommend that tourists go to Playa de Muro beach instead. It was exaggerating the state of the frontline and the beach area, but the paper had a point, and some local politicos appeared to take the report's sentiments to heart. Yet still no plans are concrete - so to speak.

Can Picafort, despite the over-abundance of hotels, is not an unpleasant place. Lacking in character perhaps but appealing in a let's not pretend this is anything but a holiday resort way. The paseo marítimo (promenade) is one of its main drawbacks. There may be some gripes about parts of Puerto Pollensa's frontline looking a tad tacky nowadays, but it is a thing of beauty compared with the in-parts ramshackle appearance of Can Picafort's. One has to admire how Puerto Alcúdia transformed its main prom, in order to appreciate what some TLC can achieve.

The hoteliers were also interested in the minister creating a Nordic walking area. Oh, here we go. Alcúdia's got one, so we'd better have one as well. That said, Can Picafort is holiday home to a large German contingent and so it may well make sense for there to indeed be a Nordic walking zone. No reason why not. However, this request does once again highlight the degree to which there is a "follow-the-leader" mentality; golf courses being the prime example. It also highlights the apparent lack of some, what one might call, lateral thought in terms of doing something different. In defence of Nordic walking, however, if a special "park" is established, it would in all likelihood reside in a natural environment - forest land, rather as it does in Alcúdia. It would be essentially environmentally neutral and healthy; it would not be something which should raise any great objection. They should do it.


Alcúdia Nordic walking event
And while on Nordic walking, this weekend will see something of a stick-in or pole-in, however you call it, of Nordic walkers in Alcúdia. On Saturday afternoon, a grand trek will start in the old town and then, from 18:00, one to Barcares. On Sunday, there will be a second go, with - from 11:15 - a walk from the old town to Sunwing via the beach. This is all part of the "Alcúdia Living Sport" summer programme of healthy activities.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Madonna (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNdxbWXmH3U). Today's title - from something fluorescent. Who? Think "Dancefloor".

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Holiday, Celebrate

Forty years ago and forty years on. This blog has celebrated all sorts of anniversaries, but in a sense the forty years since the BBC started its "Holiday" programme somehow seem imbued with greater pathos than even anniversaries such as 30 years since Elvis and ten years since Diana. Those years are more personal, more intimate, more understandable.

How it's all changed - holiday that is. I guess the BBC decided to finally ditch the "Holiday" programme two years ago because there was no need for it. Why would there be, when the internet can offer you videos, webcams, forums, informed and misinformed sites, when there are any number of books, of DVDs, any number of this and that. The "Holiday" programme was, though, its own portal, one into a world that was new, different, mysterious. In 1969 foreign holidays were the exception. The destination was largely unknown. What information that was available came from the brochure and was often a work of fiction.

My first Mallorcan holiday was in 1969. Arenal. See how things change. Arenal barely raises a mention on the Brit Mallorcan itinerary nowadays; it's Berlin, Bremen and Baden-Baden. I can remember little of it, except that it was August and at times unbearably hot; except the scene from the hotel room of what amounted to a shanty town on some scrubland where one family appeared to live under a tin sheet. How things change. Except a bar across from the beach where my father and his mate spent many an hour and was memorable if only for being an establishment of alcohol that was not denied to minors. Except going out one night to some show - no idea where or what it was (a manor house maybe) - where they came round with one of those thin-tapered wine/sangria dispensers and literally poured it down your neck, even the necks of minors. Except my older sister and her friend meeting some local boys and there being a bit of a to-do, from which I was excluded. I guess some stuff doesn't really change.

Perhaps there was an element of it all being a status symbol. "We're going foreign this year. Mallorca." Though of course we would have certainly spelt it with a "j" and probably pronounced it with one. We got a colour TV the following year, just in time for the World Cup, but we could also now see holiday destinations as they really were, rather than stripped of their blues and yellows.

The telly was our eye on holiday, it was our only eye. The "Holiday" programme - Cliff Michelmore, John Carter, Frank Bough, Des Lynam, Kathy Tayler, Anne Gregg, Jill Dando, Monty Don. It begat the ITV version with Judith Chalmers, wishing we were there. And so it remained our eye until the devil unleashed the internet and spoiled us with information, spoiled us into becoming virtual tourists, denied the excitement of the unknown. There is of course excitement about holiday, of course there is, but we now know everything we need to know before we even arrive at the check-in. The mystery's gone. The fascination has disappeared. No more are we innocents abroad with innocence as to where we are going. As tourists we are like lovers from whom the spark has gone after the initial lust of newness. Instead we merely cuddle up to our destination and fall asleep in a familiar touch and embrace.

And what of the Mallorcans? Were they to know that on an island many kilometres north were people watching a man in a suit with sturdy-rimmed glasses imparting knowledge as to resorts such as Arenal? Were they to know that the name of their island was to become, for many years, a pejorative by-word for total naffness? Were they to know that this holiday movement was to bequeath Alcúdia its Mile or Can Picafort a whole new town of unrelenting hotelness or Muro a length of road running parallel to its playa and to even more hotelness?

Forty years. Not a lifetime, but millions of holiday lives. No, I don't suppose the Mallorcans or even Cliff Michelmore could have anticipated all those.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The band was Love and the theme tune to the original BBC "Holiday" programme was by them and was actually called "The Castle". There is a youtube but thanks to WMG you can't hear it. Shame. Today's title - probably had this before, but seems appropriate.

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Forever Changes

Continuing with an all-inclusive theme from yesterday, the endless debate about AI hotels is the extent to which they result in guests staying put and never going out and therefore not spending, thus depriving local bars etc. of much-needed custom. It is a sore point with many traders, and not without justification. There are undoubtedly those who never or hardly ever venture beyond the confines of the hotel, but, certainly in the Mallorca context, I have never been wholly convinced by the argument that no-one much does go out. There is a thread under the all-inclusives section of the fine Holiday Truths forum which I thought was quite revealing. One angle is the "convenience" factor, in the sense of not having to take money to the pool and worry about purses and wallets. Anyway, here is the link; it does make quite interesting reading -
http://www.holidaytruths.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=133895

Much as many would wish the all-inclusive away, it is not going to happen. Convenience, otherwise known as lack of hassle, is a far from unimportant factor in the holiday decision. Gone are the days when holiday was an adventure into the largely unknown. Had all-inclusives existed 40 years ago, they would probably have cleaned up. Or maybe not. Perhaps then, tourists were so excited by going abroad that they would go out and discover their holiday environment, regardless of what board they had booked. Today's holidaymaker is too damn blasé by half and wants it all on a plate, preferably a plate next to the sun lounger and ordered by means of waving a wristband. But had AIs been around and been the sort of all-round entertainment Butlins they have become (and Butlins would have resonated far more strongly with the late '60s tourist), they would have completely re-shaped resorts and the nature of holiday. It is perhaps salutary to try and imagine such a scenario. What this would have meant for all the bars and restaurants. What this would have meant for the resorts. It's hypothetical, of course, but it just goes to emphasise how holiday has changed and how markets change, and all-inclusives are a major force in changing markets - not for the best, many would say. But to continue the chain of thought, suppose that somewhere like Alcúdia had predominantly offered all-inclusive deals since the late 1960s. How would this have affected the place as we know it? Massively. It would not be the size it is, it would not have the atmosphere, it would not have put the money into the local authority coffers. Maybe it's this last aspect that should create most pause for thought. Say, also, Puerto Pollensa had been AI since the days when Cliff Michelmore introduced the first "Holiday 69" programme - and note that 69 (a mere 40 years ago this year). How very very different things would be now.

All-inclusives are not going away, but where - ultimately - do they lead?


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Fratellis, "A Heady Tale" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oojlvGjGbdk). Today's title - which American band recorded this important '60s album, and what connection does this band have with that "Holiday" programme?

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