What's The Story?

At one time when I lived in London, before they closed the station, I used occasionally to get a sudden urge to travel to the far end of the Central Line. Ongar. Like many place names in England, it was one with no immediately obvious connection to any other. The beauty of English towns and villages lies as much in their obscure nomenclature as any picture-postcard green, millpond or church. Ongar. Was it on guard or "en garde", was it on the gar, in which case what was a "gar", might it have once been one gar (same question)? What tribal and linguistic back story gave Ongar its handle? Celtic, Roman, Germanic, Danish, Norman? Perhaps it had been invented, or there had been a Mr. Ongar. If so, how had he come by his name? I never did make the journey, that urge being quelled by an all too rationally opposing view that it was a bit of a waste of time. Such rationality should never be allowed to intrude in the pursuit of pointlessness. For there is no pointlessness in wanting to head onward to Ongar, or indeed anywhere else. If it simply comes down to the fact of its being there, this should be reason enough. And then there is the name.

Everywhere has a story. No place exists without one. And within each place, every house, street, wood, shop, pub has a story. Maps are the factual and cartographic frontispiece to the stories which lie behind those place names and places themselves. In Mallorca there are hundreds of places. How many of them do any of us really know? For many, outside of their immediate area, there is little or no knowledge. There is often little knowledge of the places they inhabit. There is an incuriosity that denies someone in Alcúdia a visit to Cala San Vicente, or someone in Pollensa to investigate Coll Baix. The names themselves should be sufficient to spark curiosity. The very fact of their being there. But no. In which case there has to be a more compelling reason. And this is often just a restaurant recommendation, a friend living there, or a day out at a different beach. The stories of the places are neglected, largely because there are none, or rather none that are made manifest.

All the places in Mallorca. Take one - Esporles. I know nothing of it. There is the annual sweet fair this weekend. Why is there a sweet fair? Indeed where is Esporles? Why is it there? What's the story about its name, its people? The answers are not simple records of historical fact. The factual approach is sterile, it is the dating of kings and queens approach that led much history teaching into irrelevant disrepute before teachers, and indeed historians, had the good sense to realise that stories held as much if not more relevance. This shift in emphasis is one that has given rise to the quasi-story historiography of Peter Ackroyd or to Gilda O'Neill's anecdote collection from London's East End.

Take a look at a map of Mallorca. Punxuat, Biniali, Ariany, Moscari, Galilea. Where are they? What do any of us know of them? What knowledge there is tends to be confined to what local tourist boards pump out. Superficial, matters of historical record, but lacking personality or insight. The same applies to better-known places. The Roman Cecilio Metelo may have been important in the BC history of Alcúdia, but so what? The more interesting story is why poor old Cecilio has lent his name to such an uncharming street as he has. The unlovely and the derelict are every bit if not more interesting than some grand manor house or the revisionist history regarding Chopin and Valldemossa. He hated the place, the winter dampness and cold, and was damning of the local medics who couldn't treat his tuberculosis. That's not what you normally hear. The small town of Maria de la Salut is, on the face of it, unremarkable. For many, it will be the place in which is located a rather splendid restaurant - Cas Metge Monjo - but behind the otherwise unremarkable facade is (or maybe was as I haven't been there for some years) the semi-dilapidated state of the church. Here is a story worth knowing as well as a photographic opportunity more striking than the terrace at Cas Metge. In Playa de Muro there is a villa by the beach that has been a ruin for years. Why? What's the story? And then there's Es Foguero in Alcúdia. The giant fun-palace ruin abutting the nature park of Albufera and the unused industrial estate - three stories in one.

Mallorca is not big. Its very compactness, allied to its combination of great antiquity, modernity but also recent backwardness, grinding poverty, agrarianism and semi-isolation enrich it with thousands of stories, and stories that are manageable in their relating because of that compactness. Tourism, for the most part, is the pursuit of the anodyne, and indeed one of the alternative takes on tourism - the cultural one - elevates itself little higher than this state of being mentally uninspiring. Yet tourism should, in its purest form, be about inspiration, and about discovery of the different, the strange, the disconnection with the normalcy of back home.

The stories of Mallorca. This should be the real alternative tourism. But of course it isn't, because the stories of Mallorca are Mallorca. Alternative tourism is in fact sun and beach, bucket and spade. There are stories surrounding the resorts as well, thousands upon thousands of them, but their stories are of recent origin, they are the alternative. In the whole story of the stories of Mallorca the resorts are but the epilogue.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Laurel and Hardy. Today's title - not the actual title, though it was in brackets for the album title.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)