All In The Name Of Charity

A bar owner, when once confronted by a smiling charity representative who had entered the bar with the blissfully naïve assumption that this bar owner would automatically accede to the request for a tin to be placed on the bar counter, told the representative to leave and take the tin with her. Put the tin on the bar counter and the small change that might otherwise drop into the tips pot would be diverted to whatever charity it was that happened to make its smiling entrance that particular day.

I, for one, applauded the bar owner's rejection. Charity representatives have an aura of the religious zealot, a grinningly fanatical demeanour, born out of a smugness of goodness and a suffocating righteousness that makes them believe that they have every right to simply demand support for the charity, because for someone to turn them down is a sure sign that this person is not on the path to righteousness. Rejection for the supercilious charity rep is the rejection by one who will have a distinctly unpleasant after-life. The rejector can rot in hell.

Charities come with their own in-built religiosity, whether they are anything to do with religion or not, and indeed most aren't. Their righteousness stems from the righteousness of an eschewal of greed and materialism, of an unstated advocacy of a socialist redistribution, of a sense of inner worth and of inner and quiet reflection from having engaged in goodliness. The path to righteousness for the charity, the charity representative and the charity donator should come from a simple and unspoken satisfaction. But more often than not, it doesn't. Charity is ego, charity is business, charity is social-climbing or social-having-reached-the-summit.

In Mallorca, there is both not enough charity and too much of it. Demands on charitable organisations such as the Cruz Roja and the church's Caritas have rocketed over the past few years. They can't really cope with the demands. Yet there is so much charity knocking around, you wonder why not. It's why a bar owner would, for example, tell a tin-carrier to sling her hook. Another reason is a not unfamiliar suspicion as to what actually happens to funds that are raised or to items that are donated.

There are the charities, but then there are the charity events. There are clearly some people in Mallorca, mainly expats one has the impression, who spend their entire lives either attending or organising a charity event. Some will do this because they happen to want to for no other reason than a pursuit of that quiet inner worth. Like those who devote their time and energies in simple labour, offered for free and willingly in a shop or in some other endeavour, these are the goodly who verge on the Godly. They are the unsung, those who do not sing about their contributions; the foot soldiers who can make soldiers' lives better as well as the lives of others and who want no more in return than a reward of satisfaction.

But I'm not about to suggest that everyone is similarly motivated. There is also the glitterati of the gala charity event, the self-promotional prominente, the business-advantage-seeking brigade and the downright egomaniacs whose weeks are not complete without a photo opportunity.

The suspicions aroused by the presence of the charity event social circle and by its motivations, together with the assumptive waving of the tin, both physically and metaphorically, have added to an undermining of charity, one made even less tenable by the sheer amount of charity and demands made. Which is not to say that any charitable initiative in Mallorca is unworthy; quite the contrary. Nevertheless, priorities within certain communities, such as the expat community, would benefit all, assuming these priorities were the right ones. Those which might be, and I can think of Age Concern as a good example, suffer, one suspects, either because they don't have the same cachet in a social-circle sense or because they lack an emotional appeal, or at least an emotional appeal that is made emotional in a deliberate and unashamed manner in order to shame the bar owner to actually put that tin on the counter.

There is just simply too much of it. And much of it has become a means to an end. It's figuring out what this end actually is, or suspecting that it might be something other than only in the name of charity.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.