Demolition Man

Following on from yesterday and the chiringuito demolition story ...

I went to the Alcúdia chiringuito concerned. It is the Café Playero Club, aka the Boccaccio Snack Bar, and is next to where the canal comes out into the sea in Puerto Alcúdia. It is, essentially, the terrace of the Boccaccio apartments that are located just by the beach. Staff who I spoke to were fairly blunt in their appraisal of the situation. Why is to be demolished (and it will be at the end of October)? "Costas", came the retort. The Costas and the town hall can't agree, was another view. It's all politics, said another. The town hall's chiringuitos are actually on the beach; this one isn't.

This latter view is indeed true, though the Playero may well be sitting on what was once beach. Whatever the in's and out's, the chiringuito (and we are talking quite a substantial area here) is deemed to be illegal, and so it will have to go. It's a shame, and quite what good its demolition will do is open to serious question. There is another chiringuito some 200 metres along the beach, but the regularity of beach bars is what beach users want, not a walk in the heat. They want something convenient, close to where they might be able to keep an eye on their stuff, that is just a short way away for a refreshing beer or a snack lunch. Moreover, the Playero has made itself into something of a chill-out place. When I once enquired at the tourist office as to the chill-out zone on the beach, I was shown the publicity for the Playero. It was not what I was looking for, but it does seem slightly ironic that the café's business cards were piled up in the town hall-run tourist office.

And talking of that chill-out zone on the beach, unless it's been relocated, it is no longer. It certainly isn't where it was, which was just along from the Playero. Frankly, it was faintly ludicrous, and maybe someone at the town hall came to the same conclusion.


Bar noises
There are rumblings from Alcúdia's bars. To add to the "famous-five" fandango, I had a call yesterday. There is to be a meeting today, the aim of which is to get something into "The Bulletin" (and maybe elsewhere). The thrust of this seems to be our old friend the all-inclusive and the impact on bar trade, but there is almost certainly more to it, and some of that "more" may well include this new definition of what constitutes the "night". As mentioned previously, this has affected bars in Magaluf, which now have to stop music on their terraces at eleven and not midnight.

As so often with local laws, no-one really knows what's going on. Let me try and help. On 30 May, there was a modification to a law of 2007 in respect of "noise contamination", one emanating from the Balearic Government's environment ministry. What this has done is to re-define what is meant by daytime, evening and night. The important one is "evening", as it states - quite clearly - that this is now between "las veinte y las veintitrés horas". God knows why you need to state in law what this means, but the practical aspect is that, in the context of noise contamination, noise has to cease at 11 in the evening. It is this that has led to the problems in Magaluf, and it is this that could cause problems elsewhere. Questions: does this also apply to hotels, where is it going to be applied, are they going to shut Bellevue's Show Garden down at 11, does it apply to your own private party at home on the terrace? The answers are probably yes, everywhere, yes and yes. Whatever they are, the law is an ass. The wider motivation behind the new laws was to add dynamism to the economy. How on earth does this do that?


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Chumbawamba, "Tubthumping": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm4iU0yx9GY. (And congratulations to first-timer Cameron on getting that.) Today's title - originally by? (I think I'm right in this.)

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