Lucky, Lucky, Lucky

They should be so unlucky. Unlucky, unlucky, unlucky. Ah yes, the power of the bottom-line, kick-ass self-interest. When all else fails, or more aptly, when nothing else has actually really been done, one can rely on commercial motives to rouse the slumbering leviathan of the Alcúdia town hall from its summer stupor.

ACOTUR is an organisation that represents Mallorca's tourist businesses. It has been sending letters, two of them in fact, both to the Alcúdia ayuntamiento, complaining about the "invasion" of what are formally here called "vendedores ambulantes" but more commonly are known as lucky-lucky men. (Why, by the way, are there no lucky-lucky women? Whatever.) Every season an invasion of some sort; usually it's jellyfish, but this year the sting is taking place on the streets, and especially along and around one street - Pedro Mas y Reus - which the "Diario" insists on saying is referred to as the dollar mile, when we know better. ACOTUR seems not to be saying that its members are being harmed commercially, but one can assume that the fact that they say that each of the lucksters can trouser 2,500 euros or more a month is a roundabout way of saying that these 2,500 euros are not being spent elsewhere. And I thought tourism spend was meant to be down. No accounting for taste or good sense I suppose. If a tourist wants to part with hard cash for crap, that's his outlook.

But ACOTUR is not solely taking the commercial line. It points out, rightly, that the street sellers give the place a bad name and that they are the cause for many a complaint. Just as important are the facts that the watches, the sunglasses, the CDs, the things that glow and spin and the jewellery are all fake and that the street sellers are plying their trade illegally and paying nary a centimo in taxes. The lucksters will indeed be unlucky, unlucky, unlucky if ACOTUR's protests are met with the sound of heavy boots in pursuit of a collaring.

This is not the first time that the local businesses have tried to gang up. Three years ago, the businesses along The Mile started issuing leaflets telling tourists to say "no" to the street sellers and pointing out that the business was illegal. It didn't do much good. And one does wonder quite what the town hall and therefore also the local police have been doing all this time. Step forward Miquel Ferrer, mayor of Alcúdia, who says that the plod haven't been sitting on their backsides and do represent a significant presence around The Mile. Of course they do. Last night I was in The Mile. Late on, I was down by the canal where there is a row of five or so bars. If the police had a mind, they could hang around in the shadows there and await their prey. They wouldn't have to wait long.

For all that ACOTUR do rightly point to the fact that many tourists do get hacked off with the street sellers, there is - for every pissed-off holidaymaker - another who will happily engage in the banter and the transaction. And then, one has to ask, why do the bar and restaurant owners tolerate the lucksters coming onto their premises? If they were to all tell them to piss off, the trade would not be stopped in its tracks but would be undermined.

There is another worry for the business organisation, another worry that is giving rise to complaints and a bad image - and that is the operation of tiqueteros (PRs as they are known). Now I am not sure what the "Diario" report is referring to when it speaks of the forceful way in which tourists are approached. Might they be talking about our friends the scratch-cardists?


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Culture Club (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgJq5QPkpKQ). Today's title - can anyone not know this?

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