Anywhere In The World: Mallorcan identity

The failure of the Playa de Palma regeneration plan has brought with it much soul-searching and navel-gazing. One of those who has been scrutinising her belly has been the president of the Council of Mallorca, Francina Armengol. While she believed that much of the plan was "excellent", she also felt that it had to be one which maintained a Mallorcan identity and was not therefore one that could have been a project anywhere in the world.

While the consortium overseeing the plan disputed her suggestion that it would not have had at least a "Mediterranean" flavour, the very mention of a Mallorcan identity highlights an issue which dogs much of the thinking surrounding Mallorca's tourism and its future. It is an issue for which there is clear blue water in the seas off the Playa de Palma and a clear line in the sand of the beach itself - those between the idealists and the pragmatists. It is an issue also that means little to most of Mallorca's tourists for whom Mallorca means, at best, a largely undefined and nebulous concept of Spain or for whom it means nothing other than a place of sun and beach - anywhere in the world, if you like.

What is this identity to which Armengol refers? If it is architectural, then it should not be beyond the wit of architects to conceive a resort in a Mallorcan style, whatever this actually is. But the architects have not always had a sympathetic Mallorcan design to the forefront of their plans when coming up with much recent construction of whatever sort - housing, hotels or commercial. Anywhere in the world? Yes, it might well be.

In the sixties, Mallorca and Spain willingly took the shilling of foreign exchange that was necessary to propel the country out of backwardness. It came in the form of mass tourism and of course at a cost. The rag-bag construction of many resorts that followed destroyed whatever identity there might once have been. Playa de Palma, much of Calvia and other resorts, such as Alcúdia and Can Picafort, were built for purpose rather than for the comfort of a mythical Mallorcan identity, one that hardly impinged upon the thought processes of planners and even less on those of tourists who were off to sunny Spain; it mattered not the slightest that they were going to an island off the mainland. And for most tourists, nothing has really changed.

A couple of years ago I wrote a series of articles on "Spanishness" as it applies to Mallorca. The starting-point for doing so was the type of question it is not uncommon to come across on the internet; the type which goes along the lines of is such-or-such a resort "Spanish". And note that it is "Spanish"; it is never "Mallorcan".

The question is hard to answer as it is most unlikely that the ones asking the question really have a conception themselves as to what "Spanish" entails, let alone Mallorcan. Few resorts can lay claim to Spanishness; they could indeed be anywhere in the world. There are exceptions, but even these are questionable. Take Puerto Pollensa for example. It hasn't suffered the same brutalism as other resorts and has maintained, so it is said, some of that Mallorcan identity. But what actually is it? Its most talked-about visual feature is the pinewalk. Are we saying that a Mallorcan identity can be symbolised by a pine tree? Perhaps we are.

In the same way as tourists might struggle to describe a Mallorcan identity, so also, I would suggest, would the idealists such as Sra. Armengol. My guess is that what she and others have in mind is the re-creation of the "pueblos" by the sea. But it is only a guess, because it is not elucidated.

Less unclear is the idealist retreat into other aspects of this identity. Gastronomy, for instance. In an ideal Mallorcan tourism world, all tourists would be tucking into tumbet or arroz brut. But they don't. Not in the major resorts at any rate. Take a walk along Alcúdia's Mile and you'll be hard-pressed to find anything that isn't pizza or grill. International. Anywhere in the world.

The pragmatic alternative is the one that has grown up since the '60s. Errors there most certainly were when the resorts were put together, but resorts, fundamentally, are places built for purpose and which have to be fit for purpose to serve their masters from overseas. Identity, even were it to be defined, is secondary, as it always has been. There is a standardisation in resorts, one that conforms to a more internationalist identity. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding more recent architectual abominations, a revision for resorts, given current-day appreciation of greater design sympathy, need not preclude something that is more discernibly Mallorcan or Spanish. Which is why Playa de Palma is likely to be a huge missed opportunity and which is why it should have spawned regeneration in other resorts. Or am I just being idealistic?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.