Filthy Water: Renaming Magalluf

In 2005, a local plebiscite in the village of Dingle in Ireland voted overwhelmingly in favour of a proposal for the village's name to be bilingual, with Dingle, the English version, being retained. Despite this, the village's name appears only in Irish on road signs, except where Dingle has been sprayed onto them.

The curious case of Dingle was one to do with the Irish Official Languages Act and the advancement of place names in the Irish language. It has echoes of the suggestion made by the Balearic Government that there should be a "castellanisation" of Mallorcan place names, but there are other issues that come into the equation if a place name might be changed, and one of them is tourism. The people of Dingle, where there is a good tourism industry, were concerned that visitors would no longer be able to find the village were its English name to be dropped.

Dingle has some old Spanish connections. Its parish church was rebuilt in the sixteenth century with the help of Spanish money. Pilgrims sailing from the port in Dingle to Santiago de Compostela would, in all likelihood, never have ventured further, such as along the western seaboard of the Iberian peninsula, into the Mediterranean and thence to what was once just another small Mallorcan coastal village.

1234 is the year in which the name Magaluf ben Jusef was first recorded. The toponomy of Magalluf (or Magaluf with one "l" if you prefer; no one seems to really know which it should be) reveals that the resort's name has a less than edifying history; it is derived from the Arabic "ma haluf" and means filthy water.

Magalluf and Dingle have something in common, or may get something in common. There is talk of changing the name of Magalluf, not for linguistic reasons but in order to shed its reputation and graft onto the resort a new name. Unlike Dingle, it probably wouldn't keep the old name; it would become something different and that would be that.

The talk doing the rounds at Calvià town hall has a familiar ring to it. Now, where have I heard the suggestion that Magalluf might get a name change before? Oh yes, that'll be it. On this blog. I made the suggestion and wondered (back in early October last year and in light of the re-development by Meliá Hotels International) how long it would be before Magalluf ceased to be Magalluf.

There is, however, a problem with changing the name. In fact, there are several problems, one of them being around 800 years of history. But the greatest problem would be, as the people of Dingle were aware of, the confusion that would arise from a change, especially for tourists. Magalluf's reputation may not be all that it might, but, as resorts go, it has, as marketing people like to put it, high name recognition and awareness. Everyone's heard of it.

A suggestion as to a new name is Nova Calvià, hardly a novel suggestion for a town which already has the odd other nova. But the presence of Palmanova next door to Magalluf offers something of a precedent. Palmanova was an invention of a name. It was meant to have replaced Son Caliu, though this name (and indeed area) still exists. So, does here come a new and super nova? Possibly, though new Calvià might cause a touch of resentment in the rest of the municipality.

Even if Magalluf were to acquire a new name, it would take years for it to lose the old one, if at all. People aren't stupid, and that goes for tourists. They can call it Nova Calvià, but it might backfire, not because the name would necessarily be bad but because it would be seen for what it is - marketing. And as soon as the road sings were altered, there would be the Brotherhood of ben Jusef (1234) taking to Facebook, conducting a campaign and creeping around in the dead of night with their spray cans.

Of course, if everyone was aware of what Magalluf's name means, then this might be reasonable grounds for changing it as it is. There again, why wasn't it changed years ago? Nevertheless, in Nova Calvià or Meliá New Town, be it what it may be, there is some sense to a name change. Who wants to be heading off to a brand spanking new, re-developed resort that goes under the name of Filthy Water?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.