Shape Of Things

The towns of Alcúdia and Pollensa are two of Mallorca's most extraordinary bequeathals. Their histories are a conjoint immensity of pre-Christendom, occupation, imported cultures, war, religion and architecture. These are the histories that reside within the city walls and in the ruins of Pollentia in Alcúdia and about the Plaça Major, up the Calvari steps and to the Roman bridge of Pollensa. Here is the architectural heritage of an old Mallorca. And then there is the rest.

Drive along the road from the motorway and glance to your left as you pass Pollensa, and you might well be inclined to just carry on. The impression is, if not of brutalism, then of a modernist fudge of non-description. Locally, one refers to the "pueblos" (small towns). Yet in reality Alcúdia and Pollensa are old and new towns, the latter nailed on as minor urban sprawls of unintelligent design. The idea that a sympathetic contemporary architecture might have mimicked the town-house style of the hearts of the towns was lost in planning offices stripped of foresight and amenable to a developer's lack of heart. The old centre of Alcúdia is protected by law as a heritage site; the surrounds were and are unprotected against an architectural dog's breakfast. Even something as "cultural" as Alcúdia's Auditorium looks like it has been transported, brick by glass facia, from a Robbins university campus lecture theatre in England; new, in the sense that the sixties might be defined as new, and utilitarian in both design and its lack of sympathy. It is not just Alcúdia and Pollensa. Sa Pobla, Santa Margalida, Muro all suffer in varying degrees; Muro's outer reaches, for example, could best be described as dreary, though some might spin this as light-industry chic. I'm not sure how one would describe them at worst.

There is not the same competition between the new and the old in the two towns' resorts, but it hasn't prevented them from being hotch-potched according to the latest whim, mainly of apartment block construction. Glass, less glass; white, less white; colour, less colour; however it is decreed by current trend, the effect is uniform in its very lack of uniformity - an absence of an overarching sense of purpose in terms of there being some symmetry to the towns' appearances. The ports of Alcúdia and Pollensa are the victims perhaps of their success and of their continuity. By contrast, Can Picafort, largely built from scratch over the past five decades, has a certain consistency and regulation, certainly in the residential areas of Son Bauló and the Avenida Santa Eulalia. In Son Bauló, there has been some success in marrying tourist and residential real estate with a degree of harmony; in the avenida, the two Viva complexes add grace to rather than detract from a wide-streeted elegance. Can Pic is a kind of Mallorcan Singapore: out with the old, in with the new, and applied with a degree of autocracy.

The ever-onward development of the ports, demonstrated by the various apartment sites in a state of permanent non-completion that may yet see them completed, has made the ports Lego architectural irregularity. One shape here, one shape there. It is only the old towns, the real old towns, that have the satisfaction of order.


And, in the case of Alcúdia, there is another shape that looms - that of the train. Where will it go? Will it go? The other evening, there was a meeting of local people to discuss the proposals for the siting of the line and the terminal. The advantages of the train coming to Alcúdia should be obvious, but there are those who are opposed to it, wherever it might end up. And then there are those opposed to specific sitings. You can, for example, see a "no-to-the-train" sign along the road from the roundabout as you enter Alcúdia going towards the roundabout for Puerto Pollensa. Anywhere but in the backyard of my finca, or right through my finca. Despite the sense of a terminal somewhere close to the centre of population, i.e. towards the back of the lovely auditorium, there is a lack of sense in respect of the changes to the landscape across the finca areas and their expropriation, to say nothing of the links to the proposed tram routes. Francesc Antich wanted an age of the train. It could be he will get an age. An age of debate with potentially no end.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Martika, "Toy Soldiers" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpJy46o_7b0). Today's title - '60s greats.

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