I've Changed My Name

Who remembers that old TV film "The Knowledge"? It highlighted the lengths that London cabbies have to go to in order to learn the street names and routes of the capital. I knew some cabbies when I lived in London. They did indeed have to endure a test of that "knowledge". It was the case that if you took a mini-cab, rather than a London taxi, you might well have ended up telling the driver how to get to A or B. Very rarely would a cabbie not know.

London is very much bigger than Palma, but spare a thought for the Palma taxi driver. There is due to be a change to no less than 141 street names in the city. This is the consequence of linguistics, place-name usage and the law of "historic memory", for which, read Franco. Under this law, all symbols of the Franco era are to be dismantled. And that includes street names.

Now just think about this. Suppose you lived in a city in the UK of similar size to Palma, say Bristol, and one morning woke up to find that, following some political or politically correct decision, you now lived in Gordon Brown Way or Archbishop Tutu Close. Don't expect the postman to necessarily deliver to you that morning. Changing a street name here or there is not that problematic, but to do it wholesale ... Maps, post-office records, land-registry records, one's own registration with the town halls, business addresses, advertising and of course the poor old cabby.

A few days ago, I mentioned that Muro town hall is being pressed to change names of roads associated with Franco. I daresay this applies to other municipalities locally. I really wouldn't know. Presumably, local Mallorcan people do know; possibly. And if they do know, perhaps some take exception, or perhaps they don't. The linguistics aspect of street names applies, I would guess, to those in Castilian; Catalan is the PC in a land where PC generally counts for very little.

Palma may be different, simply because of its sheer spread and size, but in small towns, such as Alcúdia or Pollensa, the street name, if not irrelevant, holds very much less significance purely in terms of locating a place. Very few people use street names; very few could tell you the names of streets in their immediate area. Like time is a vague concept here, so too is location from the point of view of street naming. Perhaps it all has to do with the fact that names have changed in the past. Whatever the reason, street names are not often referred to.

The British don't operate in such a vague fashion, until, that is, they have lived here for some time. You will get a new incomer here who fastidiously uses a road name, only to be greeted with a blank expression or a correction. "Pere Mas i Reus." "Oh, you mean the Mile." Alternative names become the norm, even to the point of inaccuracy. In Puerto Pollensa, the pinewalk is often used to describe the whole of the current pedestrian promenade, i.e. from the roundabout along what is the Paseo Anglada Camarasa. This isn't the case; the pinewalk is the Paseo Voramar. But, importantly, no one would ever use either name, so pinewalk it is, however you define it.

Changes to or new street names are nothing new. Competing and changing political parties have seen to this, with their preferences for Castilian or Catalan. But there are names that suffer from almost complete lack of recognition, despite their being attached to relatively important bits of road. The Carretera Artà, which runs from the port of Alcúdia to Can Picafort and beyond (to Artà rather obviously), is, for the whole of its length as far as the forest in Playa de Muro, a series of sub-avenues. Not that many would know this. The avenidas Reina Sofia, Juan Carlos, Albufera and Playas de Muro are the side roads of the carretera, but again, no one refers to them as such, or very few do. Moreover, they don't always appear on maps. And with pressure for de-Francoisation, cartography faces a confused immediate future and no doubt many a confused tourist working from yet-to-be-updated maps. Even one or two isolated street-name changes take time to filter into the public domain of street plans. For a time, a few years back, I could lay claim to having designed the only accurate street map of Can Picafort, and I only found out by walking around one afternoon. On some maps you can still find a Carrer Dunes; you won't if you go looking for it. Then there are street names that confuse as a consequence of recent duplication. In Puerto Pollensa the Carretera Formentor is the road that runs parallel to the front line (of the pinewalk). It was the old road to Formentor, but not any longer since they built the bypass, which is - possibly - the Carretera Formentor.

It all makes you wonder why we bother with street names and indeed why they ever came about in the first place. It's probably all the fault of the Romans, but, apart from names that lead somewhere, as in Carretera Artà, why not just use numbers. Street One, Two, Three. The only problem is that someone would find a Francoist association or they would argue the toss over whether they should be Castilian or Catalan numbers. Just leave them alone.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Strawberry Fields Forever" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywg-PdeGVL0). Today's title - "... but no one wants you when you lose."

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