The Senses Of A Mallorcan Winter

Heidi was her name. A German in a suburban ordinariness and unremarkableness. She was the wife of a colleague of my father's. There was a lot of snow in Germany. There still is. If you came from somewhere that had taught you how to smell the imminent arrival of snow, Germany was as good as other countries.

"What does it smell like?" My question was met with silence and a pinching of her nose as she sniffed the air. It smelt no different to me. When the snow didn't arrive, I felt let down.

All I can smell now is wood smoke. The burnt sulphur that rises from the wetland marshes in summer and sometimes in winter has been turned off by the cold tap of the pipe that funnels a Tramuntana or Gregal wind which erupts from its aperture and slaps you across the face with a lash like palm fronds dipped in molten ice. You feel the weals of its cracks. This is the feel of winter in the absence of a feeling for snow.

The tortuous Tramuntana that tumbles in atop the snow-capped foam of cinereous seas, the waves of the "ola de frío", is unfeeling and tormenting. Across the bay, clouds grow from the horizon behind a monochromatic and vaporous veil, indistinguishable from the ashen water. These are the mountains that only some days before had been aflame with a sunset burning into the deep shadows of their scarps sculpted against a rich sky. To the other side of the bay, above Alcúdia, an orange beacon blinks through the veil like a car foglight spotted in the distance on an obliterated motorway.

This is the sight of winter, the eyes moving in and out of focus as they recoil with the spiteful spitting of what might be rain or droplets ripped by the wind from the monstrous sea which, from a distance, roars with the terror of a bodysnatcher or rumbles as though there really were a motorway, one of constant and unrelenting heavy traffic.

The sound of winter bangs shutters and is the clanging street sign that chimes above the rattle and hum of closed doors beaten by draughts and whistled under by the piccolo obbligato counterpoint to the bellicoso orchestral movement of the wind. Sonorous winter, deep with a deep winter dragged in from ice-fields far away, brings the touch like tundra of floors and walls.

All that's absent is the taste of winter, save for stews or hot coffee that chills rapidly in cups around which you wrap hands forever bitten by the refrigeration of surfaces.

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A Mallorcan winter comes as a shock, but it isn't a shock. The strength of the "ola de frío" is stronger than usual, but a wave itself is not unusual. Poor old Chopin was of course one who discovered that a Mallorcan winter can indeed be hibernal and miserable, to boot, especially if it is as damp and cold as it was during his stay in Valldemossa. How he ever kept his hands warm enough to play the piano is a mystery.

The array of vast pantechnicons that have disgorged equipment for numerous cycle teams and which are parked up in Playa de Muro are there because it is hoped the Mallorca Challenge will be staged in reasonable weather. They'll be lucky if they don't have to shift some snow when they head off into the mountains.

Team Sky will be without Mark Cavendish. He must have known something, as he has gone off to Qatar for a different race, leaving some of his team-mates to be lashed by the icy winds as they ride along Mallorcan roads.

And all the time, as Mallorca suffers a freeze, it is 20 degrees in the Canary Islands. Winter tourism? Enough said. For this is February. In 1956 the coldest weather on record was registered in February. Minus 13.5 degrees at Lluc; it was minus ten in Palma that year. It happens. Not as dramatically, but to expect that a winter in Mallorca will pass with consistently fine and mild weather would be a mistake.

There is one reason and one reason alone why there is not a buoyant winter tourism season in Mallorca and that is the weather. End of story. The good weather that there is can lull one into a false belief that the weather is good enough for airlines and tour operators to make more of a commitment, but it is a false belief because the truth can be painful. And it is often spoken in February, whether there is snow or there isn't and whether you can smell snow or not.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.