Sunday, August 14, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Small forest fires in Alcúdia and Sa Pobla
The regularity with which forest fires have been breaking out in Mallorca has not stopped today. There have been two more today, one affecting 7000 square metres in the area of Crestatx near to Sa Pobla and the other affecting 5000 square metres in La Victoria, the mountain area north of Alcúdia town. Both fires were brought swiftly under control by a combination of fire crews and water-fighting aircraft.
MALLORCA TODAY - July hotel occupancy in Mallorca tops 90%
Figures for hotel occupancy in July show that 93% of Mallorca's hotel places were taken up, the highest percentages being recorded in Porto Cristo and Can Picafort (both 97.1%). The prediction for August is for a small fall in these figures - to 89%.
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 14 August 2011
A fine Sunday in prospect, following a steamy night. There may be some cloud around, but otherwise highs of 30 or more. Local maximum of 26 degrees by 09.00.
It has been an excellent day. A relieving breeze with temperatures up to 28 by the coast and near to 30 inland.
It has been an excellent day. A relieving breeze with temperatures up to 28 by the coast and near to 30 inland.
Football: It's not cricket
At five minutes past four local time yesterday afternoon Luis Suarez missed a penalty for Liverpool. It would have signalled the first cries of exasperation and the first curses of the new Premier League season in Bar Brits the length and breadth of Mallorca. The footy was back, the Saint Mick was flowing and the tills were alive with the sound of euros.
In a multi-screen Bar Brit would have been a corner of a bar in a foreign land that was forever, or at least on Saturday afternoon, England. An England that once was. Cheers there would have been, but they would have been a momentary distraction for the bellydom bemoaning Suarez's miss. At five minutes past four local time Kevin Pietersen caught Sree Sreesanth. England had thrashed India, had claimed the number one spot in the world test cricket rankings and had restored the order of Empire.
During the lunchtime interval before the confirmation of England's newly acquired status, there was an interview on "Test Match Special". It was with Dan Stevens who plays Matthew Crawley in "Downton Abbey", a period drama set at a time when Empire was starting its decline but when civility was encapsulated by the village green and a gentlemanly ethos of cricketing fair play and values.
Stevens went to Tonbridge School. Its annual fee of over 31,000 pounds is greater than the national average wage and, so, far greater than that earned by inhabitants of inner cities, assuming they earn at all.
Cricket is still a sport of the public school. As it always has been. Yet it was, until around the fifties and sixties, a game of the people as much as football was. It is popular now, but not to the extent it once was. The downturn in its popularity and the supremacy that football assumed coincided with the irreversible changes to English society from the sixties onwards.
Football reigned through the wasteland years of the seventies, the brutality of the eighties and into the newly aspirational nineties, the Premier League being born out of clubs' demands for ever more television money. So started the golden era of English football, golden in terms of the sheer amount of cash the game could generate. It became unquestionably the people's game.
Yet this people's game, at least in its Premier League manifestation, is far removed from the people. They have been taken in, exploited and made complete fools of. But they still lap it up. They still flock to the Bar Brits, donning their replica shirts.
The richness of the sport, the attitudes that surround the game and the exposure of the wealth and misbehaviour of players are the stuff of constant media fascination, fed to a fanaticised public incapable of discerning the degree to which it is being manipulated and driven by the game's marketing. Despite the cost of football, be it that of a Sky subscription or the cost of attendance and travel, the public refuses to turn its back on a sport which has lost any sense of moral compass. The most sickening word in the football vocabulary is a four-letter word - "scum". Teams are scum, other fans are scum. It is a filthy word that sums up the attitudinal wrongs of a sport that in its playing is the preserve of the filthy rich.
Cricket has acquired its own wealth, its own disposability, its own attitudinal failures. It is still played on the playing fields of the public schools, attended by the sons of bankers who can afford thirty thousand a year fees. Yet despite its wealth and a history redolent of Empire and the public school, it is more of a people's game in that it has not lost sight of its core values. It comes close to doing so, but somehow manages to pull back from the brink. Fair play just about prevails.
It fails, though, to capture the following of those who inhabit a Bar Brit and who have been sold and continue to be sold a game that is as socially divisive as bankers earning huge bonuses. Football constantly searches for role models, as though this quest were an admission that the game has no core values. And who does it throw up? Terry, Cole, Rooney. Millionaires all.
The Bar Brit football fan who bleats about the criminal avarice of rioters fails to appreciate that what's on a plasma screen on a Saturday afternoon is avarice gone mad. Football is a game lacking a sense of fair play. It is one dominated by its "scum" attitudes and its glamorisation of those of questionable intelligence and personal values. This, not cricket, is what you mainly get on a plasma screen. So why should anyone be surprised when someone smashes a shop window and helps himself to his own screen?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
In a multi-screen Bar Brit would have been a corner of a bar in a foreign land that was forever, or at least on Saturday afternoon, England. An England that once was. Cheers there would have been, but they would have been a momentary distraction for the bellydom bemoaning Suarez's miss. At five minutes past four local time Kevin Pietersen caught Sree Sreesanth. England had thrashed India, had claimed the number one spot in the world test cricket rankings and had restored the order of Empire.
During the lunchtime interval before the confirmation of England's newly acquired status, there was an interview on "Test Match Special". It was with Dan Stevens who plays Matthew Crawley in "Downton Abbey", a period drama set at a time when Empire was starting its decline but when civility was encapsulated by the village green and a gentlemanly ethos of cricketing fair play and values.
Stevens went to Tonbridge School. Its annual fee of over 31,000 pounds is greater than the national average wage and, so, far greater than that earned by inhabitants of inner cities, assuming they earn at all.
Cricket is still a sport of the public school. As it always has been. Yet it was, until around the fifties and sixties, a game of the people as much as football was. It is popular now, but not to the extent it once was. The downturn in its popularity and the supremacy that football assumed coincided with the irreversible changes to English society from the sixties onwards.
Football reigned through the wasteland years of the seventies, the brutality of the eighties and into the newly aspirational nineties, the Premier League being born out of clubs' demands for ever more television money. So started the golden era of English football, golden in terms of the sheer amount of cash the game could generate. It became unquestionably the people's game.
Yet this people's game, at least in its Premier League manifestation, is far removed from the people. They have been taken in, exploited and made complete fools of. But they still lap it up. They still flock to the Bar Brits, donning their replica shirts.
The richness of the sport, the attitudes that surround the game and the exposure of the wealth and misbehaviour of players are the stuff of constant media fascination, fed to a fanaticised public incapable of discerning the degree to which it is being manipulated and driven by the game's marketing. Despite the cost of football, be it that of a Sky subscription or the cost of attendance and travel, the public refuses to turn its back on a sport which has lost any sense of moral compass. The most sickening word in the football vocabulary is a four-letter word - "scum". Teams are scum, other fans are scum. It is a filthy word that sums up the attitudinal wrongs of a sport that in its playing is the preserve of the filthy rich.
Cricket has acquired its own wealth, its own disposability, its own attitudinal failures. It is still played on the playing fields of the public schools, attended by the sons of bankers who can afford thirty thousand a year fees. Yet despite its wealth and a history redolent of Empire and the public school, it is more of a people's game in that it has not lost sight of its core values. It comes close to doing so, but somehow manages to pull back from the brink. Fair play just about prevails.
It fails, though, to capture the following of those who inhabit a Bar Brit and who have been sold and continue to be sold a game that is as socially divisive as bankers earning huge bonuses. Football constantly searches for role models, as though this quest were an admission that the game has no core values. And who does it throw up? Terry, Cole, Rooney. Millionaires all.
The Bar Brit football fan who bleats about the criminal avarice of rioters fails to appreciate that what's on a plasma screen on a Saturday afternoon is avarice gone mad. Football is a game lacking a sense of fair play. It is one dominated by its "scum" attitudes and its glamorisation of those of questionable intelligence and personal values. This, not cricket, is what you mainly get on a plasma screen. So why should anyone be surprised when someone smashes a shop window and helps himself to his own screen?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Fly tipping in Pollensa increases
Following recent publicity given to the amount of rubbish dumped illegally in Boquer, there is evidence of fly tipping around Pollensa having increased, with S'Albufereta one particular area. In this wetland zone the dumping of palm tree remains is a concern as such disposal increases the threat of the palm beetle spreading.
MALLORCA TODAY - Cost of rubber ducks in Can Picafort
The town hall in Santa Margalida has slashed the amount spent on rubber ducks for the annual duck throwing (which occurs on Monday). Last year's spend of 7000 euros has been reduced to 1600 euros.
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 13 August 2011
Morning temperature at just over 23 degrees at 08.30, plenty of sun around but may cloud over this evening and stay a bot on the cloudy side tomorrow. Highs up to 30 being forecast.
Yep, very much warmer today with 31.9 in Albufera making the Playa de Muro area the hottest part of the local zone.
Yep, very much warmer today with 31.9 in Albufera making the Playa de Muro area the hottest part of the local zone.
Luis Salvador And The First Tourists
Luis Salvador María José Juan Bautista Domingo Raniero Fernando Carlos Zenobio Antonio. A name for each month of the year. Or a name for each member of a football team plus a sub. Are these the names of a football team? Actually not. They are, were, the names of an Austrian archduke. A Habsburg. One of Mallorca's most famous adopted sons.
It is an unpalatable truth for the patrimonially obsessed Mallorcans that the most notable figures in the island's history tend not to be Mallorcan. To a Frenchwoman, George Sand, you can add her Polish beau, Chopin, and the noble Luis Salvador. Unlike Sand and Chopin, whose contributions to Mallorcan culture are vastly overstated, Luis Salvador remains one of the most important figures in the island's history. Together with the remarkable and mystical mediaeval polymath Ramon Llull and the missionary Fra Juníper, who were both Mallorcan, the archduke forms a triumvirate of Mallorcan greats.
For Brits, however, and much like both Llull and Juníper, he is a largely obscure figure who is most likely to be known, if at all, as a street name.
The Germans, however, will know all about him. It was his opus "Die Balearen", a colossal travelogue and regional and ethnological survey, that endeared him to the people of the islands and to a succession of German visitors. Luis is credited with having introduced tourism to Mallorca; he went on to become honorary president of the Fomento del Turismo (the Mallorca Tourism Board).
Luis was not your typical royal wastrel. He attracted to the island not a cast list of late nineteenth century scoundrels but a diverse group of artists, poets and scientists who joined him at the Miramar finca in Valldemossa. Appropriately enough, given his association to him by Mallorcan fame, the finca included the monastery founded by Ramon Llull in the thirteenth century.
The interdisciplinary range of these first tourists to the island, as they are sometimes referred to, helped to forge Luis's ambitions to being a polymath in his own right and in a style similar to Llull. It was a combination of the arts and sciences that formed the basis for his interest in Mallorca and which went into the compiling of the astonishing "Die Balearen".
Luis, much though he was captivated by Mallorca and the islands, extended the scope of his inquiries into natural and social sciences and took off around the Mediterranean in his boats, Nixe I and Nixe II.
Nixe III is currently retracing Luis's travels in the Med. It set sail for the first time last year, departing from the yacht club in Puerto Pollensa; its five-year mission to boldly go where an archduke had gone before and to draw comparisons with what he discovered in examining the diversity of the Mediterranean and also in questioning whether there is such a thing as a Mediterranean culture.
This summer Nixe III has journeyed from Venice to Montenegro and to Lipari and the Aeolian islands which were also visited last year. The head of the Nixe team is himself from Pollensa. A doctor in the social sciences, Juan Ramis is journeying with a German expert on the archduke and a specialist in environmental studies.
The scientific nature of the expeditions is in keeping with the way in which Luis conducted his enquiries. And one of his greatest contributions was the fact that, travel writer that he was, he was an objective observer. This is what was said of his approach: "He observed everything with an absent, distant gaze and a contemplative attitude ... (he) never lapsed into the speculative, subjective introspection of romanticism. Instead he personally examined reality in the most direct manner possible."
I quote this because it is a strong statement of how a critical eye and an inquisitive mind can produce, as it did, some of the best travel writing that has ever been committed to print. Luis showed, and it should be a lesson to those who fall into the trap of adopting the indulgent and romanticised styles that one commonly encounters in describing Mallorca, that objectivity and knowledge plus a love of a place are what count.
And there is a twist to the tale of Luis. In Ramon Llull's "Blanquerna", often said to be the first European novel, the knight of the story turned out to be an emperor. He was in fact Rudolf of Habsburg, from whom Luis was descended. Nixe III might be said to be continuing a story of Mallorca itself that goes back to the thirteenth century.
Follow the journeys of Nixe III at http://www.nixe3.com which I acknowledge for the quote in this article.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
It is an unpalatable truth for the patrimonially obsessed Mallorcans that the most notable figures in the island's history tend not to be Mallorcan. To a Frenchwoman, George Sand, you can add her Polish beau, Chopin, and the noble Luis Salvador. Unlike Sand and Chopin, whose contributions to Mallorcan culture are vastly overstated, Luis Salvador remains one of the most important figures in the island's history. Together with the remarkable and mystical mediaeval polymath Ramon Llull and the missionary Fra Juníper, who were both Mallorcan, the archduke forms a triumvirate of Mallorcan greats.
For Brits, however, and much like both Llull and Juníper, he is a largely obscure figure who is most likely to be known, if at all, as a street name.
The Germans, however, will know all about him. It was his opus "Die Balearen", a colossal travelogue and regional and ethnological survey, that endeared him to the people of the islands and to a succession of German visitors. Luis is credited with having introduced tourism to Mallorca; he went on to become honorary president of the Fomento del Turismo (the Mallorca Tourism Board).
Luis was not your typical royal wastrel. He attracted to the island not a cast list of late nineteenth century scoundrels but a diverse group of artists, poets and scientists who joined him at the Miramar finca in Valldemossa. Appropriately enough, given his association to him by Mallorcan fame, the finca included the monastery founded by Ramon Llull in the thirteenth century.
The interdisciplinary range of these first tourists to the island, as they are sometimes referred to, helped to forge Luis's ambitions to being a polymath in his own right and in a style similar to Llull. It was a combination of the arts and sciences that formed the basis for his interest in Mallorca and which went into the compiling of the astonishing "Die Balearen".
Luis, much though he was captivated by Mallorca and the islands, extended the scope of his inquiries into natural and social sciences and took off around the Mediterranean in his boats, Nixe I and Nixe II.
Nixe III is currently retracing Luis's travels in the Med. It set sail for the first time last year, departing from the yacht club in Puerto Pollensa; its five-year mission to boldly go where an archduke had gone before and to draw comparisons with what he discovered in examining the diversity of the Mediterranean and also in questioning whether there is such a thing as a Mediterranean culture.
This summer Nixe III has journeyed from Venice to Montenegro and to Lipari and the Aeolian islands which were also visited last year. The head of the Nixe team is himself from Pollensa. A doctor in the social sciences, Juan Ramis is journeying with a German expert on the archduke and a specialist in environmental studies.
The scientific nature of the expeditions is in keeping with the way in which Luis conducted his enquiries. And one of his greatest contributions was the fact that, travel writer that he was, he was an objective observer. This is what was said of his approach: "He observed everything with an absent, distant gaze and a contemplative attitude ... (he) never lapsed into the speculative, subjective introspection of romanticism. Instead he personally examined reality in the most direct manner possible."
I quote this because it is a strong statement of how a critical eye and an inquisitive mind can produce, as it did, some of the best travel writing that has ever been committed to print. Luis showed, and it should be a lesson to those who fall into the trap of adopting the indulgent and romanticised styles that one commonly encounters in describing Mallorca, that objectivity and knowledge plus a love of a place are what count.
And there is a twist to the tale of Luis. In Ramon Llull's "Blanquerna", often said to be the first European novel, the knight of the story turned out to be an emperor. He was in fact Rudolf of Habsburg, from whom Luis was descended. Nixe III might be said to be continuing a story of Mallorca itself that goes back to the thirteenth century.
Follow the journeys of Nixe III at http://www.nixe3.com which I acknowledge for the quote in this article.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, August 12, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Called off: the Mallorca coach drivers strike
Following a meeting this afternoon and evening with the regional president, the coach drivers strike has been called off. The strike, which started at midnight today, has caused considerable disruption, with some tourists missing flights as a consequence of there not being transfer buses available. There has also been some trouble, with pickets being arrested and one tourist injured when a stone was thrown at a coach.
MALLORCA TODAY - Coach drivers strike in Mallorca
The strike of coach drivers began at one minute past midnight this morning. The strike which affects coaches for transfers is over pay. It is due to last all day and is set to be maintained throughout what is a holiday weekend up to and including 15 August.
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 12 August 2011
A sunny morning with local temperatures up to 22 degrees at 08.00. The skies should be clear all day with possible highs of 30 degrees. The weekend forecast is fine as is that going into next week.
A warmer day, with the local high just short of 29 degrees - inland in Pollensa - and the coastal high 27.6.
A warmer day, with the local high just short of 29 degrees - inland in Pollensa - and the coastal high 27.6.
MALLORCA TODAY - Puerto Pollensa businesses lodge complaints
Businesses in Puerto Pollensa, represented by the association of tourist businesses (Acotur), have met with the deputy mayor Malena Estrany to lodge complaints in respect of, e.g., a daily market in the church square, lack of parking and litter bins not being emptied. The town hall has agreed to set up a commission to look into the complaints.
Free For All: Mallorca and the arts
If you caught Kenny Garrett and his quartet in Sa Pobla earlier this week or will be rocking up at Pollensa's Sant Domingo cloister to get a bit of the Chamber Orchestra of the National Theatre of Prague tomorrow, then I hope you have made and will make the most of them. Both the Sa Pobla Jazz Festival and the Pollensa International Music Festival could become dodos of Mallorca's arts world. Extinct.
The Pollensa festival very nearly didn't happen this year. It did thanks to a sofa-thon at the tourism ministry. Carlos Delgado had his people scrambling around on the ministry settees, hunting for any loose euros that had fallen down the backs, and they came up with a couple of hundred thousand in the nick of time. The mountain of coins duly deposited in the Sant Domingo cloister, the sound of their jangling competed with an ominous bass, the noise of the ministry saying we've helped you out this time, but don't expect us to in future.
The ministry will announce next week which events have passed a test that will guarantee funding from a reserve pot that isn't exactly overflowing. 600 grand is up for grabs for various arts festivals, but not all might qualify. As important is what happens to them down the line. For some the end of the line may well have been reached, and this includes the Sa Pobla Jazz and Pollensa festivals.
Arts funding is often at the bottom of the public spending food chain, though in Mallorca it has seemed to occupy a rather higher level. In part, this has been because the arts are seen as a "good thing" rather than there being any real attempt to quantify benefits. But this is the nature of the beast. Arts contribute to a general welfare, a general quality of life; they shouldn't always be the target of bean-counters. The attitude has not been wrong, far from it, but current circumstances have exposed the vulnerable sustainability of the arts, Mallorcan style.
Certain judgements do occasionally have to be made. In the case of the Sa Pobla Jazz Festival, it hasn't simply been a case of putting on some free concerts. There are also the workshops that take place each year, so there is a music educational element to the festival as well. But to come to the free concerts, for whose benefit really are they?
The concerts attract a "nice" Jazz Club crowd (of the type satirised by John Thomson's Louis Balfour character in "The Fast Show"), but they also attract the locals. Nothing wrong with this, the concerts are after all taking place in their town. However, a thing with jazz is that it is an acquired taste. Some of it can be a dreadful racket. Jazz is most certainly not Mallorcan folk music or the direness of the "orchestras" that get dragged onto the stages of Mallorca's fiestas and churn out kitsch cabaret versions of sixties' tunes; the sort of act that might once have been on the under card at Bournemouth's Winter Gardens below Norman Vaughan, the Rockin' Berries and Mrs. Mills. They're rubbish, but the Mallorcan oldsters seem to like them.
Put a McCoy Tyner thumping a piano, a Kenny Garrett wailing on a sax in front of an old Sa Pobla farmer who has pitched up with his missus along with their picnic of potato fritters, trempó and vino, and what exactly does the old farmer make of them? Not a lot probably, but it's free.
I might be doing old Sa Pobla farmers a disservice. Perhaps they are all avid jazz enthusiasts who have vast collections of Blue Note and ECM discs stashed in an outhouse, but I somewhat doubt it.
Free bring free, and free having been free for several years in Sa Pobla creates an expectation that free it will always be. Free is wonderful, and the provision of free entertainment in Mallorca has been laudable. It has enhanced the general quality of life. It would be sad for it to no longer be free, but the alternative has to be considered.
The problem is that charging probably wouldn't cover costs. It doesn't in Pollensa. You can fork out up to 45 euros for a concert during the music festival, but the festival still needs huge amounts of state funding. The Sant Domingo cloister is not exactly Wembley Stadium; it's tiny in terms of what it can generate through ticket sales.
We are, I'm afraid, going to have to accept that some of the cherished and sometimes superb free arts in Mallorca are likely to disappear. Unless, that is, they sell their soul to the corporate shilling of sponsorship. Were it available.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The Pollensa festival very nearly didn't happen this year. It did thanks to a sofa-thon at the tourism ministry. Carlos Delgado had his people scrambling around on the ministry settees, hunting for any loose euros that had fallen down the backs, and they came up with a couple of hundred thousand in the nick of time. The mountain of coins duly deposited in the Sant Domingo cloister, the sound of their jangling competed with an ominous bass, the noise of the ministry saying we've helped you out this time, but don't expect us to in future.
The ministry will announce next week which events have passed a test that will guarantee funding from a reserve pot that isn't exactly overflowing. 600 grand is up for grabs for various arts festivals, but not all might qualify. As important is what happens to them down the line. For some the end of the line may well have been reached, and this includes the Sa Pobla Jazz and Pollensa festivals.
Arts funding is often at the bottom of the public spending food chain, though in Mallorca it has seemed to occupy a rather higher level. In part, this has been because the arts are seen as a "good thing" rather than there being any real attempt to quantify benefits. But this is the nature of the beast. Arts contribute to a general welfare, a general quality of life; they shouldn't always be the target of bean-counters. The attitude has not been wrong, far from it, but current circumstances have exposed the vulnerable sustainability of the arts, Mallorcan style.
Certain judgements do occasionally have to be made. In the case of the Sa Pobla Jazz Festival, it hasn't simply been a case of putting on some free concerts. There are also the workshops that take place each year, so there is a music educational element to the festival as well. But to come to the free concerts, for whose benefit really are they?
The concerts attract a "nice" Jazz Club crowd (of the type satirised by John Thomson's Louis Balfour character in "The Fast Show"), but they also attract the locals. Nothing wrong with this, the concerts are after all taking place in their town. However, a thing with jazz is that it is an acquired taste. Some of it can be a dreadful racket. Jazz is most certainly not Mallorcan folk music or the direness of the "orchestras" that get dragged onto the stages of Mallorca's fiestas and churn out kitsch cabaret versions of sixties' tunes; the sort of act that might once have been on the under card at Bournemouth's Winter Gardens below Norman Vaughan, the Rockin' Berries and Mrs. Mills. They're rubbish, but the Mallorcan oldsters seem to like them.
Put a McCoy Tyner thumping a piano, a Kenny Garrett wailing on a sax in front of an old Sa Pobla farmer who has pitched up with his missus along with their picnic of potato fritters, trempó and vino, and what exactly does the old farmer make of them? Not a lot probably, but it's free.
I might be doing old Sa Pobla farmers a disservice. Perhaps they are all avid jazz enthusiasts who have vast collections of Blue Note and ECM discs stashed in an outhouse, but I somewhat doubt it.
Free bring free, and free having been free for several years in Sa Pobla creates an expectation that free it will always be. Free is wonderful, and the provision of free entertainment in Mallorca has been laudable. It has enhanced the general quality of life. It would be sad for it to no longer be free, but the alternative has to be considered.
The problem is that charging probably wouldn't cover costs. It doesn't in Pollensa. You can fork out up to 45 euros for a concert during the music festival, but the festival still needs huge amounts of state funding. The Sant Domingo cloister is not exactly Wembley Stadium; it's tiny in terms of what it can generate through ticket sales.
We are, I'm afraid, going to have to accept that some of the cherished and sometimes superb free arts in Mallorca are likely to disappear. Unless, that is, they sell their soul to the corporate shilling of sponsorship. Were it available.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 11 August 2011
Another chilly night, with temperatures down to 14 degrees. At 08.30, things are warming up to just around 20 degrees. The forecast for today is fine and today is the the day when temperatures are due to increase, so a predicted high of 29 might be achieved; yesterdays' forecast high was comfortably not met.
Seemed to be quite a bit warmer this afternoon under a cloudless sky, but the local high was apparently only 26. Very pleasant.
Seemed to be quite a bit warmer this afternoon under a cloudless sky, but the local high was apparently only 26. Very pleasant.
Rationalising Tourism
A fortnight is not a long time in Mallorcan politics. It has proven to be a very short time when it comes to the organisation of the island's tourism politics. Two weeks ago, 27 July (Guilty By Associations), I wrote about all the various bodies that litter Mallorca's tourism industry, little knowing - but always hoping - that there was about to be some tidying up. One of these bodies, the Fundación Mallorca Turismo, is to have its foundations dug up. It will collapse into the island's dusty ground whence it should never have been allowed to rise in the first place.
Responsibility for all tourism promotion and affairs is to be handed back to the regional government and to the Delgado tourism ministry. The Fundación, which falls under the Council of Mallorca, will be wound up.
One imagines the decision was not a difficult one. The Partido Popular, in charge of the Council and the government, has made it clear that it will seek to eliminate duplications in public administration, and the divvying up of tourism responsibilities between Council and government was one of the most obvious and one of the most absurd.
During the last administration, the Council and therefore the Fundación had acquired ever more responsibilities for tourism. Not all were duplications, but some, especially those in respect of promotion most definitely were. Quite what the thinking was, was hard to fathom, yet one partner in the old administration coalition, the PSM (Mallorcan socialists), had sought even more tourism powers for the Council. It was hard to fathom because tourism is central to Mallorca's economy, and so should be right, slap bang in the heart of the government, not in an island authority. The PP is righting this mysterious wrong.
One area of responsibility that will stay with the Council is that for the Mallorca Film Commission. Going to the ministry, in addition to general promotion, are various others, such as the commercial missions to China and so-called product clubs - for cycling tourism and the other tourism "alternatives". What happens to staff is not entirely clear. There will probably be some jobs found for them at the ministry, but underlying the scrapping of the Fundación, in addition to the wish to get rid of duplication, is an unstated sense of the PP being determined to also get rid of a system of jobs for boys and girls. And it is this system which raises a huge question mark over the whole of the Council of Mallorca.
Maria Salom, the president of the Council, has announced that the Council is up to its neck in debt to the tune of 329 million euros. It is some way short of the debt that the regional government has, but it is a public debt that Mallorca can ill afford to have hanging over it and it is a debt that is hard to understand, for the simple reason that it is hard to understand what the point of the Council is.
Salom, you begin to think, is like a chief executive sent in with the express purpose of rationalising a business within a conglomerate; rationalisation that is usually a euphemism for elimination. The left are expressing their concerns that this might in fact be the intention. Coming on top of the announcement of the closure of TV Mallorca, also under the Council, the winding up of the Fundación might indeed represent a step in the direction of what the PSIB (the Balearics wing of the PSOE socialist party) is claiming is a process of seeking to "liquidate" the Council. Salom, to emphasise the point, has said that were the Council a business it would be declared bankrupt.
I make no bones. I'm not a PP fan. But the left are surely barking up the wrong tree when they see a political agenda to what, were it to come about, would be sound public administration. I've argued the case for cutting back the Council or getting rid of it for some years. Not for political reasons, clearly not in my case, but for organisational reasons. And with the island's public finances more or less down the pan as it is, then quite how sustainable the Council is, is a very reasonable question to pose.
PSIB seems to think that responsibilities for the highways and social well-being would disappear along with the Council. This is crazy. The government is just as capable of administering these as the Council is. The fact that such responsibilities are granted to the Council under agreements relating to the running of the autonomous community of the Balearics doesn't mean to say they have to be granted.
I see no political agenda. This would not be a Thatcher-style vindictiveness, one that put paid to Ken Livingstone's GLC. It would be straightforward pragmatism, something that the left seem not to appreciate.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Responsibility for all tourism promotion and affairs is to be handed back to the regional government and to the Delgado tourism ministry. The Fundación, which falls under the Council of Mallorca, will be wound up.
One imagines the decision was not a difficult one. The Partido Popular, in charge of the Council and the government, has made it clear that it will seek to eliminate duplications in public administration, and the divvying up of tourism responsibilities between Council and government was one of the most obvious and one of the most absurd.
During the last administration, the Council and therefore the Fundación had acquired ever more responsibilities for tourism. Not all were duplications, but some, especially those in respect of promotion most definitely were. Quite what the thinking was, was hard to fathom, yet one partner in the old administration coalition, the PSM (Mallorcan socialists), had sought even more tourism powers for the Council. It was hard to fathom because tourism is central to Mallorca's economy, and so should be right, slap bang in the heart of the government, not in an island authority. The PP is righting this mysterious wrong.
One area of responsibility that will stay with the Council is that for the Mallorca Film Commission. Going to the ministry, in addition to general promotion, are various others, such as the commercial missions to China and so-called product clubs - for cycling tourism and the other tourism "alternatives". What happens to staff is not entirely clear. There will probably be some jobs found for them at the ministry, but underlying the scrapping of the Fundación, in addition to the wish to get rid of duplication, is an unstated sense of the PP being determined to also get rid of a system of jobs for boys and girls. And it is this system which raises a huge question mark over the whole of the Council of Mallorca.
Maria Salom, the president of the Council, has announced that the Council is up to its neck in debt to the tune of 329 million euros. It is some way short of the debt that the regional government has, but it is a public debt that Mallorca can ill afford to have hanging over it and it is a debt that is hard to understand, for the simple reason that it is hard to understand what the point of the Council is.
Salom, you begin to think, is like a chief executive sent in with the express purpose of rationalising a business within a conglomerate; rationalisation that is usually a euphemism for elimination. The left are expressing their concerns that this might in fact be the intention. Coming on top of the announcement of the closure of TV Mallorca, also under the Council, the winding up of the Fundación might indeed represent a step in the direction of what the PSIB (the Balearics wing of the PSOE socialist party) is claiming is a process of seeking to "liquidate" the Council. Salom, to emphasise the point, has said that were the Council a business it would be declared bankrupt.
I make no bones. I'm not a PP fan. But the left are surely barking up the wrong tree when they see a political agenda to what, were it to come about, would be sound public administration. I've argued the case for cutting back the Council or getting rid of it for some years. Not for political reasons, clearly not in my case, but for organisational reasons. And with the island's public finances more or less down the pan as it is, then quite how sustainable the Council is, is a very reasonable question to pose.
PSIB seems to think that responsibilities for the highways and social well-being would disappear along with the Council. This is crazy. The government is just as capable of administering these as the Council is. The fact that such responsibilities are granted to the Council under agreements relating to the running of the autonomous community of the Balearics doesn't mean to say they have to be granted.
I see no political agenda. This would not be a Thatcher-style vindictiveness, one that put paid to Ken Livingstone's GLC. It would be straightforward pragmatism, something that the left seem not to appreciate.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 10 August 2011
A cool night, surprisingly so for August, and morning temperatures still under 20 degrees by 08.30. However, the unsettled weather of the past two days seems to have gone and today and the rest of the week into the weekend looks set to be very sunny and with temperatures going back up to 30. Today's high likely to be 28.
It has been a pleasant day, breezy by the coast and not unduly hot, with highs just shy of 25 degrees.
It has been a pleasant day, breezy by the coast and not unduly hot, with highs just shy of 25 degrees.
The Revolution Is Televised
The riots have claimed Mallorcan victims. Bar Brits. The cancellation of the international footy has deprived them of an important date in their calendars; those, that is, for whom the "season" revolves around the peaks of the football season and England internationals in particular.
Rather than cries of "England till I die", Bar Brits reverberate to the calls of "shoot 'em" and not "shoot, come on Rooney, shoot". These calls mix with demands that the army be brought in, that water cannons be used, that the birch be brought back along with National Service and, for good measure, hanging. Enoch is invoked, as Enoch tends to be invoked at such times.
There isn't a whole load of sympathy as Sky plays over and over scenes of unrest, looting, burning cars, burning buildings and fights with police. The Bar Brit punter doesn't want any of this; he wants to be able to watch the telly in order to vent his frustration at another dismal England performance and to shout abuse about Capello.
Sky though, along with the rest of the media, have played their own part. Social media may have been significant (why should anyone be surprised by this?), but rolling 24-hour news and constant images are also significant. They fuel greater disturbances as the hoody class seeks to find itself captured on camera.
This is, after all, the happy-slapping generation, one brought up on actual and personal depictions of unruliness and violence and on its self-aggrandising glorification. Being seen, albeit with a face masked or covered by a hood, is what counts. Being caught on digital film is the esteem maker for those without esteem. Attacks on reporters are not attacks to prevent filming, but attacks for attacks' sake. To prevent filming would undermine the ethos of riot in 2011; these have been riots by media and not social media. They disprove Gil Scott-Heron's poetry of the revolution not being televised.
And in Bar Brits, as in bars in Britain, the public is served its media diet and only too willingly regurgitates it. Words on the lips of Bar Brit occupants are "pure" and "criminality", a curious juxtaposition of adjective and noun, but one spouted as the on-message spin-bite by police, the Home Secretary and a Prime Minister forced to leave his tennis kit behind in Tuscany.
In 1981 the revolution was televised, too. A difference, however, was that there wasn't the cachet attached to being at the end of a lens. It was a televised revolution which gave an incomplete and at times false picture. Ealing, where I lived then, was caught up but not to anything like the way the trouble was represented. Unlike this time.
The revolution is televised not only on Sky and the BBC but also on Spanish TV. Riot by media is a global event, and the whole world can have its say. Spanish telly and press are lapping it all up, as are the chatterers on news sites. Spanish explanations for the riots cover easy access to benefits, Muslims, British imperialism, Conservative governments, a British mob mentality dating back to the Mods and Rockers, and the absence of a middle class in Britain. Some will be the same explanations of Brits themselves; others will make no sense, like the belief that there is no middle class and only rich and poor.
The Mods and Rockers one initially seems odd, but may not be as the riots are only partially a race thing. Whitey is engaged as well, finally finding a cause about which he can riot, one that The Clash called for as long ago as 1977. And the cause is a pair of Nike trainers.
Buried among the Spanish prescriptions on the internet, which have expanded into a free-for-all aimed at Magalluf and Benidorm tourists and demands for Gibraltar and the Malvinas to be returned, are the occasional voices who wonder if the same thing might happen in Spain. But as Spain has a middle class, and Britain doesn't have, then presumably it won't. You do get some pretty weird and distorted views, as you do from the Brits themselves.
Everyone knows what the causes of the riots are; or rather, they reckon they know. I have my own views as to the causes, but why should you be interested in knowing them? They might be right, they might be wrong. However, unlike 1981, when I lived in a part of London that was caught up in the riots, albeit to nothing like the extent that the media suggested, and lived in a city where I knew well enough the issues in Brent, Brixton, Southall, what do I know now?
Perhaps I know far more, however, because these are riots by media and the revolution is very clearly televised.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Rather than cries of "England till I die", Bar Brits reverberate to the calls of "shoot 'em" and not "shoot, come on Rooney, shoot". These calls mix with demands that the army be brought in, that water cannons be used, that the birch be brought back along with National Service and, for good measure, hanging. Enoch is invoked, as Enoch tends to be invoked at such times.
There isn't a whole load of sympathy as Sky plays over and over scenes of unrest, looting, burning cars, burning buildings and fights with police. The Bar Brit punter doesn't want any of this; he wants to be able to watch the telly in order to vent his frustration at another dismal England performance and to shout abuse about Capello.
Sky though, along with the rest of the media, have played their own part. Social media may have been significant (why should anyone be surprised by this?), but rolling 24-hour news and constant images are also significant. They fuel greater disturbances as the hoody class seeks to find itself captured on camera.
This is, after all, the happy-slapping generation, one brought up on actual and personal depictions of unruliness and violence and on its self-aggrandising glorification. Being seen, albeit with a face masked or covered by a hood, is what counts. Being caught on digital film is the esteem maker for those without esteem. Attacks on reporters are not attacks to prevent filming, but attacks for attacks' sake. To prevent filming would undermine the ethos of riot in 2011; these have been riots by media and not social media. They disprove Gil Scott-Heron's poetry of the revolution not being televised.
And in Bar Brits, as in bars in Britain, the public is served its media diet and only too willingly regurgitates it. Words on the lips of Bar Brit occupants are "pure" and "criminality", a curious juxtaposition of adjective and noun, but one spouted as the on-message spin-bite by police, the Home Secretary and a Prime Minister forced to leave his tennis kit behind in Tuscany.
In 1981 the revolution was televised, too. A difference, however, was that there wasn't the cachet attached to being at the end of a lens. It was a televised revolution which gave an incomplete and at times false picture. Ealing, where I lived then, was caught up but not to anything like the way the trouble was represented. Unlike this time.
The revolution is televised not only on Sky and the BBC but also on Spanish TV. Riot by media is a global event, and the whole world can have its say. Spanish telly and press are lapping it all up, as are the chatterers on news sites. Spanish explanations for the riots cover easy access to benefits, Muslims, British imperialism, Conservative governments, a British mob mentality dating back to the Mods and Rockers, and the absence of a middle class in Britain. Some will be the same explanations of Brits themselves; others will make no sense, like the belief that there is no middle class and only rich and poor.
The Mods and Rockers one initially seems odd, but may not be as the riots are only partially a race thing. Whitey is engaged as well, finally finding a cause about which he can riot, one that The Clash called for as long ago as 1977. And the cause is a pair of Nike trainers.
Buried among the Spanish prescriptions on the internet, which have expanded into a free-for-all aimed at Magalluf and Benidorm tourists and demands for Gibraltar and the Malvinas to be returned, are the occasional voices who wonder if the same thing might happen in Spain. But as Spain has a middle class, and Britain doesn't have, then presumably it won't. You do get some pretty weird and distorted views, as you do from the Brits themselves.
Everyone knows what the causes of the riots are; or rather, they reckon they know. I have my own views as to the causes, but why should you be interested in knowing them? They might be right, they might be wrong. However, unlike 1981, when I lived in a part of London that was caught up in the riots, albeit to nothing like the extent that the media suggested, and lived in a city where I knew well enough the issues in Brent, Brixton, Southall, what do I know now?
Perhaps I know far more, however, because these are riots by media and the revolution is very clearly televised.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Spanish baggage handlers strikes called off
The unions which had called for strikes of ground staff at Spanish airports on 18 and 26 August have now called them off. Panic over.
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 9 August 2011
A cloudy morning again, the product of a cold front that is going to keep things cooler until Thursday (according to the met office). By cooler it means temperatures reaching a maximum of 27. The current high locally at 09.00 is 23.6 degrees.
And it was pretty much a repeat of yesterday, cloud going in the afternoon but breezy and temperatures only making a local high of 24.3.
And it was pretty much a repeat of yesterday, cloud going in the afternoon but breezy and temperatures only making a local high of 24.3.
Image Rights? The right image of Mallorca
Gabriel Escarrer is the president and founder of the Mallorca-based hotel group Sol Meliá, now renamed Meliá Hotels International. An interview with him appeared in "Ultima Hora" at the weekend. When someone of Sr. Escarrer's eminence speaks, it is worth taking note.
A newspaper interview can only go into so much depth, which is unfortunate as it would have been instructive to have had more detail, such as that to do with the improvement of Mallorca's image.
This, in a way, was one of the more surprising parts of the interview; surprising because the image has improved, certainly when compared with one that the island had not so long ago when Mallorca was looked down upon and when it was very much Madge-orca, a place lumped in with Eric Idle's Watney's Red Barrel Torremolinos of so many years ago.
In part, it still is, but the image has shifted and the shift has been ongoing for quite some while. So a question I would like to ask is, what image do you believe Mallorca has? Your answers are likely to be diverse, which is what might be expected, as Mallorca is a place of huge diversity.
Recently I was asked to write about some of Mallorca's towns and villages. I was given a list of those to be covered. The piece ended up as a sort of tour. It started in Sóller, cut down to Banyalfabur, went across to Campos and Colonia Sant Jordi, up to Porto Cristo and then Artá and ventured inland via Santa Margalida, Campanet and Santa Maria until it came to an end in Lloret de Vista Alegre and Sineu, the geographical and arguably spiritual centre of Mallorca.
With the exception of touching on Can Picafort (as part of Santa Margalida), there was little by way of vast tourist resort in this tour (I would exclude Colonia Sant Jordi and Porto Cristo from such a description). Instead it was a route that embraced orange and lemon groves, an old railway, mountains, the terraces of Banyalfabur, Es Trenc, the view to Sa Cabrera, the caves of Drach and Hams, Talayotic Bronze Age settlements, the fiesta of La Beata, peculiar water phenomena, ancient hermitages, old markets, a baroque church with a blue bell, rural culture and the palace of the kings of Mallorca.
Want diversity? You've got it. The problem is that diversity does not mean image. Or not as the island's image is largely perceived. Sr. Escarrer said in the interview that the image needed to be cleaned up, that there needed to be a repositioning of Mallorca and one at an international level.
He was not wrong in saying this, but there is something distinctly not right about it. Because all this diversity, this different image is meant to have been part of a repositioning, one at an international level. Is Sr. Escarrer saying that the efforts of all that promotion that has gone on, or is supposed to have gone on, has been ineffective? One suspects he may have been being diplomatic.
I shan't be. It has been ineffective. Partly it has been ineffective for the right reasons, those of sun and beach, which remain Mallorca's most enduring attractions and reasons for being. Despite promotion of alternatives, sun and beach constitute the island's number one product and the most important of the elements of the island's promotional mix. And rightly so.
But sun and beach bring with them attendant problems. They are ones we are only too aware of and may well be to what Sr. Escarrer was alluding when he spoke of cleaning up the image.
In another newspaper at the weekend (the "Diario de Mallorca") there was an article which delved into crime in one of the main tourist centres of the island, Playa de Palma: pickpocketing, prostitution, drug dealing. To this can be added the periodic reports of violence. The need for an image clean-up has moved on from the days when Mallorca and some of its resorts were simply considered as being naff.
Despite media negativity and reporting of crime and violence, Mallorca's image has changed. But the change in image has a way to go, a long way to go. The question is how this image change is truly effected, how the diversity of the island is truly conveyed, and in such a way that the harmful consequences of seasonality, to which Sr. Escarrer also referred, are mitigated.
It's the sixty-four million euro question. And it has been ever since the euro was introduced. Prior to this, it was the the ten billion plus peseta question. It's a question, the answer to which no one has found. Sadly, one fancies it will never be discovered. Yet it should be. Start in Sóller, cut down to Banyalfabur ... .
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
A newspaper interview can only go into so much depth, which is unfortunate as it would have been instructive to have had more detail, such as that to do with the improvement of Mallorca's image.
This, in a way, was one of the more surprising parts of the interview; surprising because the image has improved, certainly when compared with one that the island had not so long ago when Mallorca was looked down upon and when it was very much Madge-orca, a place lumped in with Eric Idle's Watney's Red Barrel Torremolinos of so many years ago.
In part, it still is, but the image has shifted and the shift has been ongoing for quite some while. So a question I would like to ask is, what image do you believe Mallorca has? Your answers are likely to be diverse, which is what might be expected, as Mallorca is a place of huge diversity.
Recently I was asked to write about some of Mallorca's towns and villages. I was given a list of those to be covered. The piece ended up as a sort of tour. It started in Sóller, cut down to Banyalfabur, went across to Campos and Colonia Sant Jordi, up to Porto Cristo and then Artá and ventured inland via Santa Margalida, Campanet and Santa Maria until it came to an end in Lloret de Vista Alegre and Sineu, the geographical and arguably spiritual centre of Mallorca.
With the exception of touching on Can Picafort (as part of Santa Margalida), there was little by way of vast tourist resort in this tour (I would exclude Colonia Sant Jordi and Porto Cristo from such a description). Instead it was a route that embraced orange and lemon groves, an old railway, mountains, the terraces of Banyalfabur, Es Trenc, the view to Sa Cabrera, the caves of Drach and Hams, Talayotic Bronze Age settlements, the fiesta of La Beata, peculiar water phenomena, ancient hermitages, old markets, a baroque church with a blue bell, rural culture and the palace of the kings of Mallorca.
Want diversity? You've got it. The problem is that diversity does not mean image. Or not as the island's image is largely perceived. Sr. Escarrer said in the interview that the image needed to be cleaned up, that there needed to be a repositioning of Mallorca and one at an international level.
He was not wrong in saying this, but there is something distinctly not right about it. Because all this diversity, this different image is meant to have been part of a repositioning, one at an international level. Is Sr. Escarrer saying that the efforts of all that promotion that has gone on, or is supposed to have gone on, has been ineffective? One suspects he may have been being diplomatic.
I shan't be. It has been ineffective. Partly it has been ineffective for the right reasons, those of sun and beach, which remain Mallorca's most enduring attractions and reasons for being. Despite promotion of alternatives, sun and beach constitute the island's number one product and the most important of the elements of the island's promotional mix. And rightly so.
But sun and beach bring with them attendant problems. They are ones we are only too aware of and may well be to what Sr. Escarrer was alluding when he spoke of cleaning up the image.
In another newspaper at the weekend (the "Diario de Mallorca") there was an article which delved into crime in one of the main tourist centres of the island, Playa de Palma: pickpocketing, prostitution, drug dealing. To this can be added the periodic reports of violence. The need for an image clean-up has moved on from the days when Mallorca and some of its resorts were simply considered as being naff.
Despite media negativity and reporting of crime and violence, Mallorca's image has changed. But the change in image has a way to go, a long way to go. The question is how this image change is truly effected, how the diversity of the island is truly conveyed, and in such a way that the harmful consequences of seasonality, to which Sr. Escarrer also referred, are mitigated.
It's the sixty-four million euro question. And it has been ever since the euro was introduced. Prior to this, it was the the ten billion plus peseta question. It's a question, the answer to which no one has found. Sadly, one fancies it will never be discovered. Yet it should be. Start in Sóller, cut down to Banyalfabur ... .
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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