The Way We Were

And yet more museum news. Museums have suddenly become the flavour of the month. Maybe it's the silly season. And it all rather depends upon your view of museums as to whether you believe the 1.5 million euros that the culture ministry is setting aside to upgrade the ethnology museum in Muro is silly or sensible. I'll go with the latter, if that's alright by you. The only problem is knowing who actually ever goes to the museum. Tourists? Hmm, not in great numbers one would imagine.

What is the ethnology museum? It is, as the director says in "The Diario", a museum devoted to pre-tourist Mallorca, one that shows the life of people of the island in their domestic and working environments. Essentially, it is a memorial to a rural way of life that may not have totally died out but which has been forgotten by many Mallorcans and foreigners alike. The director says that, after the museum opened in 1964, everyone would have known what a plough was, for instance. But not now. The displays at the museum are to include rooms that show how things were for the pre-tourist Mallorcan. It is a splendid and laudable project, to be supported with audio-visual that one hopes will be correctly multi-lingual. Museums that deal with real lives are more vital, literally, than those which merely display pieces of ancient artefact with a sterility and lack of engagement of the visitor. They should consider special shows with music, dance and activities representative of different epochs before tourism.

This celebration of life as it once was has become a feature of local fiestas. Both Pollensa (during Patrona) and Binissalem have staged reconstructions or musical events indicative of a bygone era. It may not be every tourist's cup of tea, but it is a favoured brew for many who have formed an intimate attachment with the island and for whom the history, the real history, goes beyond the fleshpotism of sun and beach. Critical I may have been of attempts at developing an alternative tourism, but not of this, so long as it is done well and so long as people go. And that's the real problem.

Muro town has been the beneficiary of separate upgrade financing - two million euros worth of it (as reported on 10 June: Money For Nothing?). The tourism minister presided over the celebration of the completion of the redevelopment project, stating that it was an example of creating tourism de-seasonalisation in this interior town. But who ever goes to Muro? I've said it before, but it bears repetition: there is no bus route between the town and Playa de Muro. Thousands of tourists not exactly on the town's doorstep but on what would be a fifteen minute bus ride. The tourism office in Playa de Muro has material about the town, but how do you get to it?


Diosdado Carbonell is a Cuban street musician. He plays on the Calvari steps in Pollensa. When he dies, he would like to be buried in Pollensa. That is the headline of a short piece about Dio in "The Diario". Go here: http://www.diariodemallorca.es/part-forana/2009/08/13/muero-quiero-entierren-pollenca/493416.html

QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Police, "Roxanne", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3kG-7I_Y6k. Today's title - probably had this before, but it'll do for me.

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