I've Had A Lidl Time

The traffic was unusually heavy. There were balloons and bunting. A grand occasion. Somewhere new was opening. The day that Lidl came to Alcúdia.

It must have been like this when the railway first came to town. Victorian women in Sunday-best bonnets and Victorian gentlemen with top hats and stout canes, an image courtesy of period dramas. Flags hanging along the platform and small children holding their ears against the noise of the steam-engine.

They were holding their ears against the honking of horns by drivers attempting to exit from car parks: Lidl's one side of the main road, conveniently right opposite the longer-established one by the Magic roundabout. The art of traffic planning. It was of course nothing like the arrival of the train, except in there being a mêlée of people (and cars) and in there being the curiosity of a populace, thrilled by the appearance of modernity and some shiny new commerce to confirm that Alcúdia had indeed been connected to the outside world.

Since the colonisation by hotels, there have been only sporadic new arrivals - a civic building here, a swimming-pool there and even the occasional newer hotel. But Lidl is something different, not least because its time has been so long in the expectation and anticipation. Every year for donkey's years the karting was going to disappear and Lidl was going to rise from the tarmac and tyre-enclosed track. So long and so certain had been the coming of Lidl that maps had even started to show it, before it had been approved let alone built.

After years of is it or isn't it, suddenly this summer the ground was being cleared. Telecommunications engineers were among the first on the scene. Discussion in bars centred on the construction itself, the pillars and beams, the prefab sprouting of slab exteriors, the apparent absence of any notice on the wire fence around the building site which might have made clear that it was indeed to be a Lidl. Everyone knew that it was going to be, or thought they knew, but there were competing theories: a hotel or a supermarket from a different chain.

As it did become clear, so then the discussion turned to when. When would it open? "I've heard November." "No, I've heard January." "Can't be. It'll be sooner." Lidls rise up very quickly, and as its shape became more and more apparent and more and more obviously Lidl-esque, the chatter increased in its excitement. "Lidl is coming. Lidl is coming." Only over at Eroski, with four supermarkets in the town, was the excitement probably less palpable.

What finally clinched it was the re-classification of land, the land on which Lidl now stands. No sooner re-classified, no sooner built upon. Lidl has appeared, if not overnight, then over not so many nights. And the grand opening was well heralded. "Nueva apertura" flyer-newspapers filled letter boxes or were stuffed into the persianas of the houses without a "buzón". Mallorcans are never ones to miss out on an inauguration, especially if it requires giving the place the once over of approval or affords the opportunity for a social gathering.

"It'll be ok," someone said. "How do you mean, ok?" "Although it's German, Lidl that is, the land's owned locally." "So if the land hadn't been, then it wouldn't have been ok. For the locals, that is." "Probably not." "That's ridiculous." Except it isn't, when you consider that it is not unheard of for a Mallorcan restaurant to be vetoed if the chef isn't from the right part of Mallorca.

So it was as well for the grand opening that the locals could attend, confident in the knowledge that beneath every German supermarket there is some corner of a former karting track that is forever Alcúdia. The wait had been long, more than just a little time. It was like the arrival of the railway and it was maybe the best next thing. Lidl has been some years in the coming, but the railway has been over 70 years in the building. And it's not still not arrived.


QUIZ -
Milk won't turn sour at Lidl. Substitute "little" for Lidl, and you have one great pop song.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.