Nothing Lasts Forever

So, that article did not appear in "The Bulletin" - Michael Jackson got in the way it would seem - but it left some sufficiently hacked off because there was another piece about the Calvia bar association. Always Calvia, never Alcúdia - not my view, but what I hear. It is now meant to appear today. Ho hum.

This Calvia association. The desire is to get bar owners to become members and then act in some form of pressure capacity. I get a sinking feeling about it. The mover behind it is one of those who was involved in the ill-fated (Calvia-originated) British and Irish Business and Residents Association. It collapsed through lack of funding that was not forthcoming from the Mallorca Council; at least that's my understanding. There was probably also an element of here's an association, here's some publicity and here is then massive indifference. Which is not to say that these things spring up without good intentions; but it is to say that people, for a variety of reasons, do not wish to get involved. Those reasons include the fact that they do not wish to be identified, that they don't have the time and that they are just not interested. The only association that has ever truly established itself is ESRA (English Speaking Residents' Association). It exists primarily for one reason - English speaking. There is no real agenda, which probably explains why it's successful. People feel comfortable with an essentially benign group of fellow expats which courts neither controversy nor publicity. Plenty others feel uncomfortable if they are not straw-hatters, prefer not to wear black ties and attend dinner and dance functions or prefer not to play bowls; hence they do not join. ESRA goes about its admirable charity efforts and good works, its committees and gardening contests with all the gentility of an English shire country fête. Why, when I think of ESRA, can I never get out of my head the image of Matt Lucas and David Walliams as Judy and Maggie judging the marmalade?

It's all a bit last days of the Raj, and to hear some of what is currently being said one might well form the impression that ESRA - and every other association as well as agency of government - is bearing witness to the last rites of things as they are known in Mallorca. I was given a right old ear-bashing by a (Mallorcan) restaurant owner in Playa de Muro the other day. "What do I do?" he kept asking. "What's the solution?" he demanded of me. As if I know. Why not get all the owners together and put on some sort of protest, suggested I. It won't happen. But there is some sense in associations, that do represent interests, coming together to voice their legitimate concerns as to the direction in which the tourism economy (the summer one) is heading - or more accurately, has gone. Recession is temporary, but the underlying decline has been there for some years, a combination of competition, reduced spend, over-supply and all-inclusives. The depressing fact is that complacency has prevented more or less everyone - government, local authorities and yes bar and restaurant owners - from recognising or at least admitting the trend. It has taken the "crisis" to finally wake everyone up. But having had some choice words for Muro town hall, this particular owner said, "so we protest and then the tourists all end up going to Turkey". It's an exaggeration, but it contains some truth in that there is a general impotence in the face of tour operator power and tourist choice.

Though there can be sympathy for bar and restaurant owners, it is also in limited supply for some, especially, I'm sorry to have to say, the Mallorcan families who have enjoyed the benefits of and reaped the rewards from tourism. The hardships tend more to be confined to newcomers, often foreign. Many of these families, some of them doing the moaning now, are sitting on significant wealth, or at least the potential to release wealth. Mallorca grew fat and made many Mallorcans wealthy thanks to various factors that dropped into the laps of these Mallorcans: first, perhaps the only sensible policy that the Franco regime had (to develop mass tourism); second, the tourist benevolence of tour operators, airlines and the tourists themselves; third, the benevolence of Europe in creating a modern economy for Spain and the island. Nothing lasts. That is the real point and the real problem. The tourist is spread far more thinly, he has more options. He, the tourist, and the tour operator can give and have given; they can also take away.

Sympathy there is, but there needs to also be a serious dose of realism. One detects a sense by which some of these owners believe that tourists continue to owe them; that they most certainly do not.


QUIZ
Today's title - Liverpool band formed, remarkably it seems, more than 30 years ago.

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