Fade Away

How long ago was it? Forty years. More maybe. No one ever seems to be able to say for certain. It's their age catching up with them. Memory playing tricks, disappearing or revolving in circles of confusion. Let's say it was around 1970, shall we. Exactitude isn't necessary.

Back then, towards the far end of Playa de Muro, an area sometimes misleadingly referred to as Alcúdia Pins which is further on, was all but uninhabited. What lay by the sea was sand, dunes' scrub, reeds and grass from Albufera. Not far away a hotel was being put up. It was to be the Esperanza. The story goes that the hotel was named after the daughter of the man whose family owned much of the land that stretched from what became Alcúdia's Bellevue and Mile area down to the forest that separates current-day Playa de Muro from Can Picafort.

There were plenty of stones and bricks that went into the building of the hotel. So many that there were a lot spare. They went much of the way to the building of two houses, one a bungalow, the other a grander affair on two levels. There was an absence of utilities and no road as such. A machete was a useful tool to hack away at the scrub and grass.

The two houses took shape and became the first of an urbanization. The bungalow had to be all but re-built some years later; there were no proper foundations. The house was that much more solid. It was, still is just about, the seaside home of a couple from the hinterland. Not rich people. Straightforward, regular Mallorcans, but they were not stand-offish. They might once have been where foreigners were concerned, but they have known many over all these years and have become friends, such as with the German woman who owned the bungalow but who died a couple of years ago.

I hadn't seen the old man for quite some time. In summer it was usual for him to be there, tending the garden. His wife, rather shaky, pottered around inside or stood on the roof terrace and shouted at neighbours, as was her preferred form of communication. It was never unfriendly, just that, in a far from untypical Mallorcan manner, volume outweighed content. The conversation, such as it was, tended to revolve around the not infrequent "desastres" involving "clientes", those who rented two flats in the house.

I saw the old man the other day. It was a bit of a shock. He has gone downhill quite suddenly. I asked him how he was, but didn't tarry long. I didn't want to embarrass him. I could see how he was, and the words of another German neighbour, one who has had a chalet there for almost as long as the original two, came into my mind. "He was crying. He said that he knew that he was dying."

There had been tears when the German woman had passed away. The old lady, the wife of the old man, had taken my arm as we had gone to spread the word. Standing in the road, heads shaking, kind words being spoken. She, the old lady, was grateful for the gifts, such as the geranium pots. They would remind her of her long-time German friend.

The old man said that his wife was well, but I know she isn't. She doesn't come to the house now. She doesn't go with her husband for their little trip to the sea. They would do this on most occasions when they came to the house in winter. He would drive to the beach's edge and might forage for some bits of wood. She would hobble to the wooden sand-break, stare at the sea and then shout a bit.

And afterwards they would go to the house where there were no winter clients to be "un desastre", just the overwhelmingly musty smell and the icebox interior before the fire started to crackle and the rooms would fill with the sweet essence of woodsmoke. Incongruous amidst the antique and dark furniture that cluttered up their flat was a flat-screen telly chirping in generally incomprehensible Mallorquín.

The old man had come with a nephew, a cheery fellow who once chatted with me in the street and explained his prostate problem and, more alarmingly, his erectile dysfunction. I didn't exactly know him that well. So much for stand-offishness. You wonder, at times, why the Mallorcans have this reputation. The old man and he, even the summer before last, used to go together for their Sunday morning swim in the sea. The nephew was his usual happy self, unlike the old man who lowered himself uneasily into the passenger seat of the car he used to drive.

He's fading away, as is his wife. The German neighbour has already faded away. And their fading will end a chapter of Playa de Muro's history. Because they are its history in this particular part of the resort. They were the first, the pioneers if you like, they who tamed the wild east of Alcúdia all those years ago. It seems almost appropriate. The resort is not dying of course, but has it, like other parts of Mallorca that developed from little or nothing at around the same time, run out of the vigour, the life that took it so far? The resort is now no youngster. It has matured, along with the industry that created it. Life cycles are real enough. For resorts, for industries. And for people.

I don't know if I'll see him again.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.