Some Don't Like It Hot - Bar Temperatures And Other Confusions

There are certain things I don't understand. I could do an entire blog with things I don't understand about Mallorca. But I'll stick with one - for the moment. What I don't understand is why certain stories seem to provoke such little attention. At least, I thought I didn't understand until I started to realise that there was a common thread - legislation. I've concluded that these stories provoke little attention because no one else understands them. We all go round and round in blind circles of non-apprehension.

There was the story about the change to what constituted the "evening", a bizarre matter on which to legislate in any case, but this is how politicians seem to want to justify their existences. The evening was between eight and twelve, and then it wasn't; an hour had been lost, as though the clocks had been permanently turned back and it was to ever more be 2am on the last Sunday morning of October. Except that the hour was lost in June, by decree, by a law from the environment ministry. Henceforth, bars would have to close their terraces and their doors and windows at eleven. Or that was what was being assumed and even put into practice, until the ministry said something to the contrary - possibly.

Then there was a story that was just buried in a small column of a paper. It had to do with "venta ambulante", street selling to you and me, a term that covers a multitude of practices and even some sins. It had to do with some European decree. Town halls would have to backtrack on measures they had taken against street selling. What did it mean? No one knew, and no one said anything about it for this very reason: they didn't know and they didn't understand.

And now we have the story about temperatures in bars and keeping doors closed. It is, like the change to evening, a potentially significant piece of legislation, but who's talking about it? Hardly anyone. No one's saying much about it, because no one much understands it. And that probably includes the town halls and even the politicians who have drafted the laws - all of them: evening time, impact on street selling, and temperatures.

The lack of understanding gives rise to the tyranny of interpretation, at some future date, by some zealous town hall or police operation. Maybe the interpretation is correct; maybe it isn't. Calvia town hall and its police thought they understood the evening ruling and went about telling bars that they had to put up the shutters at eleven. Then the ministry said that wasn't what they should be doing.

With the temperatures story, no one seems sure, even those few who might be talking about it or are aware of its existence and whether it is intended to apply in all cases. "The Diario", for one, seems to think it does. It sent its chaps off to check on temperatures and whether doors were permanently open in different establishments, including bars. They found most were warmer than the 21 degrees winter level that has been decreed, found that many had doors permanently open, which they would not be allowed to under the new law, one that is designed to make for more efficient energy use and to cut carbon emissions, one that the local environment ministry would be very keen on. What building registered 23.5 degrees do you suppose? What building, according to the reporter, was much too hot? The environment ministry's building. Outside this building, there is a sign informing people that, in rationalising energy consumption, temperatures should not exceed 21 degrees. Even the ministry doesn't seem to understand the new law. Or it probably does, but isn't actually doing anything about it. At the Tráfico building, the temperature was 23.9 degrees, and the doors were open. The reporters also found a café. The temperature was 20.9 degrees, but the doors were open - which would contravene the law: maybe.

Fair play to "The Diario". The paper is a rare example of the media locally trying to get to grips with the often ungrippable. It also, perhaps not consciously, aids our understanding a bit when it comes to this temperature law. It reports the government as saying that the law will also have the impact of stimulating a sector of the economy - that of businesses offering energy-control services. Ah yes, I wonder who might monitor all those contracts, especially those for government and other public-sector buildings.

You can add to all the above the law on smoking. Will it apply to terraces, to streets, to beaches, to what? No one knows, because no one understands, so no one much talks about it, until the smoking gestapo come along and start issuing fines. Like the temperature gestapo will probably also do. And remember, it's not just in winter that the temperatures will have to be regulated. It will be summer, too. 26 degrees and the doors closed. So the law on evening and closing the doors at eleven, were it in fact meant to mean this, would be irrelevant, because the doors will have to be closed, except when they are opened via an automatic door-opening system, in any event. Understood?


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