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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