Discrimination?: Puerto Alcúdia's restaurants

Discrimination comes in various forms. Restaurants being discriminated against is not the first form of discrimination that might immediately come to mind when the D-word is being bandied about, but discriminated against is what the poor restaurant owners of Puerto Alcúdia's Paseo Marítimo believe they are being.

The reason for this lies with the marina, within the marina and with the entrance towards the marina. According to the restaurant owners of the paseo, Alcudiamar (to give the marina its actual name) has benefited this season from its evening market having started a month earlier than that along the paseo and does benefit from the way in which the paseo is designed (or not, if you consider the bridge that goes nowhere to be a total nonsense of design).

The evening market is one thing, though it must be said that the marina's market has not escaped criticism of a different sort in the past, i.e. that it is tacky, so it may not be the great draw some might believe, the paseo's layout is another. The restaurant owners seem to believe that the presence of the bridge somehow shuffles people into the marina. It is frankly a strange conclusion, and it is one that has taken years to arrive at, all the years since the damn thing was erected.

In restaurants along the paseo, you can order drinks that come replete with straws, and in the restaurant owners' arguments there are an awful lot of straws being clutched at. They may have a point where the different starting times for the markets are concerned (the marina's from the beginning of May, the paseo's from June), but not when they say that the bridge and the tourist office create a sort of visual impediment that add to a sense of discrimination. To be honest, I haven't a clue what they're going on about.

Well actually, I think I do have a clue. And the clue may lie with the recently formed restaurant association (it is one for the bay of Alcúdia, but its power base resides partly along the paseo, with one restaurant in particular). Though restaurants in the marina are a part of the association, as evidenced by the current restaurant association-organised gastronomy event which is going on, one has to appreciate that Alcúdia has its rivalries, and they are at their strongest in the port area.

Alcudiamar is essentially under the control of two people/families. I am not going to identify anyone or any companies, so you'll just have to take my word for it, but this is the situation. Along the paseo, there is certainly one family, two perhaps, who are the big cheeses. The restaurant association is very closely linked with one of these families.

I don't accept the claims of discrimination in favour of Alcudiamar. Not for one moment do I. Yes, it has benefited from a great deal of investment and yes, it does attract a great deal of attention, but the discrimination charge is one that stems from a power battle, and the battle is one of looking to influence the town hall. Which is fair enough, but the specious argument about the paseo's layout and the presence of the bridge reveals the lengths to which one side (the paseo's restaurant owners) will go in attempting to create a case for more town hall action in their favour and against the marina.

The argument is not just specious, it is also ridiculous. Of course people will walk into the marina. This has nothing to do with the paseo's layout, it has everything to do with the fact that there are boats to look at and that it seems like a nice place to walk. That restaurants in the marina might then benefit, well good luck to them, but I'm not convinced that they always have. The level of turnover among the relatively few restaurants in the marina has been much higher than that along the paseo, which suggests that they either pay rents that are too excessive or they haven't attracted sufficient business or both.

More can always be done to make the paseo more "dynamic", and the association is insisting that the town hall add some dynamism, but when you learn of some of the criticisms of a lack of dynamism, you have to ask why aren't the restaurants doing more themselves and not simply expecting the town hall to do it all for them.

A case in point. There are restaurants at the far end of the paseo, heading towards the commercial port and Alcanada, to which comparatively few tourists go. The reason why they don't is because it looks as though there isn't a great deal there. So what do you? You try and ensure that people keep walking, yet I once spoke to a restaurant owner in this part of the paseo who said that he didn't need to advertise because his "table" was his publicity. And so good was it, he is no longer there.

Discrimination does not exist. Power battles do, as does a need to shift blame, as in onto the town hall, and as does an inability on behalf of restaurants to assume the initiative. But if you really want to talk about discrimination when it comes to restaurants in Puerto Alcúdia, then let's talk about those which are located in the main tourist centre around Magic and Bellevue. What do they ever get?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.