The Division Belles

It can't be much fun if you live in Lloret de Vistalegre. No one has heard of you, no one ever talks about you and no one ever visits you. Lloret is "middle" and is not so much in the middle of nowhere as simply nowhere. Middle in Mallorca, to all intents and purposes, doesn't exist. 

It's not dissimilar on the west and east. Though west and east grant some place in the scheme of things thanks to their being compass points, middle has no place. Middle is an explanation rather than a location, its sole purpose being to hold north and south together.

North and south dominate geography. They determine affiliations and structures. England is south, France is north. Only rarely, as on mainland Spain, does middle, i.e. Madrid, get a look in.

North has come to prevail over south or vice versa partly as a quirk of history. Not always, as geography and climate do play a part. Norway is south as no one in their right minds would have ever considered otherwise. But at some point in Mallorca's past, south assumed the upper hand, though in Roman times north and south were pretty much on a par.

The south's dominance in Mallorca is obvious, and it is obvious that it should dominate; concentration of population wouldn't have it any other way. And apropos of this, Frank Leavers' excellent piece ("The Bulletin", 30 March) should hopefully have stirred up some feelings, as it considered both the north-south thing and expat small-town mentality.

One thing I don't quite agree with Frank on is the existence of a Palma-Calvià-Port Andratx triangle; Andratx is stuck on the end of Mallorca and for most people just a solitary place name on the first and utterly confusing road sign on the motorway coming from the airport. Calvià is a different matter, but even Calvià doesn't register outside of Calvià itself and probably not with many in it. It is a collective noun, a "calvià" of tourist resorts.

A Palma-Calvià axis does exist though, and for some in the regions of Mallorca (note regions and not just north) it is one that generates a resentment simply because it does exist. But division is less one of geography, of population concentration or of commercial and media domination. Division is more personal than this.

Small-town mentality breeds a further type of smallness, the small pond in which big fish seek to swim. These are big fish primarily of a self-made variety, their bigness largely one of their own publicity-seeking and of their appearances at the end of a camera lens. Mallorca divides along social lines, one of them represented by a social club for self-proclaimed and self-important celebritism in which the inhabitants talk to each other about each other, and only ever to each other and about each other.

It is the fact that this social club manifests itself almost exclusively within the municipal boundaries of Palma and Calvià which creates the division. The social club may be surprised to know that the great majority of expatriate Brits have not the slightest interest in it, other than to be provoked into expletive expressions, an example of which was communicated to me not from someone in the sticks but from someone in Calvià. Regarding a recent event at which the social club was out in force along with its collective dental treatment, reference was made to his "bollocks" dustbin. Division is one of division belles and their beaus and it causes division regardless of where one lives.

Expats come in all types of guise. They are easy prey for the British press, such as with the story of the shallowness and vacuity of Portals life which the "Daily Mail" once ran and which seemed distinctly plausible, despite its truth being challenged.

There are expats who are charlatans and flimflammers. Others who are dreamers and Mittys. Those who do lunch and very little else. And then there are those who are none of these. They are normal and regular, confronted with normal and regular issues. A bar owner in Magalluf has the same concerns as one in Alcúdia. There is no division other than a seventy kilometre distance; the bar owners are one and the same, and the last thing they are concerned with is what a self-publicised prominent-oscenti is up to.

This normal and regular hoi polloi is united by the everyday. North, south, it doesn't really matter, and those in the north should be grateful for a geographical tradition in which the north is at least acknowledged. As for the middle, forget it.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.