Incuriosité Tue Le Chat: Local tourists

Pollensa, as with the surrounding area, has a past with France. Some of the first "package" holidaymakers to the area were French; they used to fly in by seaplane from Marseille donkeys years ago. The connection between Pollensa and France may not be as historically strong as that which Sóller can boast through old trading links, but it is strong nonetheless, while a more ancient tie is a linguistic line that applies to the whole of Mallorca - that through Occitan and Catalan - and an even more ancient one which has it that the island was first inhabited by people from what is still sometimes referred to as the Occitania region of southern France.

I was showing a southern French couple around the old town of Pollensa. They had not been before. Imagining seeing the place for the first time, through their eyes, is to be impressed by the elegant chic that has been moulded from within the imposing scale of the town's churches, brooding mountain and steps for every day of the year to the Calvari oratory. Considering the place for the first time, in their minds, is to be captivated by its cultural overtones. Aptly enough an exhibition is currently taking place in honour of the artist Tito Cittadini, an Argentinian, yet one who further confirms a French lineage - one of having studied in Paris with Anglada Camarasa before the two moved to Pollensa and found the "Pollensa school" with its own ties back to French impressionism and most obviously Manet.

To go to Pollensa in November, even as one who is familiar with the town, is to feel almost like a first-timer, especially if it is you doing the guided tour. In summer, the bustle and the heat make you ignore everything and wish to scurry off for the nearest shade and cooling drink. In November you can actually look for once. Especially as you are undisturbed. But it is this that makes you wonder. Why are you being undisturbed? Where on earth is everyone?

It is a Saturday lunchtime. In the Plaça Major only one bar is open: the Café Espanyol, itself an iconic image of the town, one represented many times by an artist's brush and on the storage card of a tourist's digital camera. A short walk away is the Seglars square at the foot of the Calvari from where thousands upon thousands of photos have been taken of the steps which climb to its summit. You can reinvent through your memory the scenes of all the visitors milling, of their cameras being pointed, of their sitting on the banked terraces. But it is necessary to reinvent, because there is barely a soul to be seen.

Familiarity breeds familiarity. You cease to see a place until such a time as you're made to see it, as in telling a visitor or two about it. It's extraordinary the degree to which towns like Pollensa come to be taken for granted or are simply neglected even by those who might live close by. There are of course the "events" which attract, the town's fair having been and gone only a few days ago. But to visit these is to fall into the same summer trap of unseeingness. What is looked at is craftwork or the skill of a wheelwright and not, for example, the vertical immenseness of the parish church which seems to threaten with toppling on top of you or to be aware of its monolithic dominance in the main square or even of the streets which interlink churches or of the bells that resonate from them.

The absence of tourists at just the sort of time when a real appreciation of Pollensa can be gauged is a story too often told and too often debated. But what are also absent are local tourists. Is it just a case of familiarity breeding familiarity? Not necessarily. In fact, it's probably nothing of the sort. It's a case of incuriosity breeding incuriosity. You might live not far away, in Alcúdia for instance. But how often is a visit made to Pollensa, its port or its outlying Cala San Vicente? Never, might come the response. And so it is in reverse, be it to the city walls and Roman ruins of Alcúdia, the toy town timewarp of Barcarès or the scary twist and turn up the mountain to La Victoria.

Perhaps it takes visitors, be they from France or wherever to force you to stop and take in the spectacular that is Pollensa or other local towns. Perhaps. But it shouldn't be. Familiarity does breed familiarity, that of the comfort of the telly or of the telly in the regular bar in regular surroundings. So much time though in winter to go and look, and so much time and effort worrying about winter tourists who don't come, which means that the forgotten are the tourists much closer to home. Right on the doorstep in fact. We're all tourists now. Or should be.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.