Winter At The Start Of Summer

George Sand, Chopin's cigar-smoking OH, bequeathed to Mallorca a title. "A Winter In Mallorca" isn't particularly original, but it is accurate enough. It wasn't a spring, a summer or an autumn; it was a winter. It could have been something else, something less neutral, such as "The Chopins In A Cell (whichever one it was)" or "How To Aggravate Your TB" or "Valldemossa: Our Three Months Of Hell". But no, Georgie Girl settled for the purely and informatively bland.

The title has, over the years, become quite useful. Any reference to a winter in Mallorca, whether intentionally a reference to Sand or not, can nevertheless be interpreted as evoking the odd-couple tourists from the first half of the nineteenth century. Winter in Mallorca will, therefore, forever be associated with Mr and Mrs C, not that they were a Mr and Mrs, but be that as it may. Because of who Chopin and Sand were, or more importantly, what they did, winter in Mallorca means culture. Piano and dull classical music, thanks to Chopin, and literature, even if it was mainly a work of slagging off Mallorcans and the island's health service (nothing different with that, therefore), thanks to Sand.

Winter in Mallorca has been extremely useful, because it has enabled an entire programme of events, primarily of a cultural nature, to be developed in winter. And this culture is of course appropriate because of the Chopins. I say enabled, but the programme has been disabled for a couple of winters. "Hivern a Mallorca", "Winter in Mallorca" has ceased to exist; there is no winter any longer.

To the rescue, however, comes the Fomento del Turismo (aka the Mallorca Tourist Board). Intimately involved with the original Winter in Mallorca programme (it was pretty much the board's idea), it is now asking the Balearics Tourism Agency to revive it this coming winter.

There wasn't a Winter in Mallorca programme last winter, and if there was one the previous winter, they were keeping it quiet. It fell victim to a lack of financing, confusion within the tourism ministry as to who was actually running it and to a consequently poor system of promotion; a PDF with monthly information was either not updated or updated late, while certain tourist offices, such as my own local one in Muro, never used to receive the leaflets. It wouldn't necessarily have fallen victim to a lack of interest among what tourists happened to be about, but the inadequacy of the promotion wouldn't have done anything to generate interest.

There was a further reason last winter why the programme was probably abandoned, and that was the lack of senior tourism that had been promised but fell through because the Balearic Government wouldn't pay to help subsidise it. Whether this tourism will reappear this coming winter must be doubtful, but the Mallorca Tourist Board still wants to press ahead and make the programme a feature of the Mallorcan scene that it had been since the 1990s.

As ever, one does have to ask what contribution has been made. The Winter in Mallorca programme had become a mix of guided walks, cultural excursions and music events. Of the latter, there were typically chamber orchestra concerts, the occasional organ recital, Mallorcan folk and every now and then a "spectacular". None of it really set the pulse racing, to be honest. Nevertheless, stage a Mallorcan folk evening or have a quintet play in a hotel (one which happens to be open), and it's still worth the effort, and it amounts to making an effort when precious little effort is normally made.

If the Winter in Mallorca programme is to be revived and to be revived properly, by all means have the guided walks and excursions and the concerts, but make it, from a promotional point of view, far more dynamic. Such dynamism does exist, as with for example the fiestas in January. Build the programme around these, make them the real attention-grabber, because they can grab attention and they can be worthy of strong promotion.

The problem has been that promotion for winter has been too passive, apologetic almost. The Winter in Mallorca programme has lived off the Sand title rather than being forward-thinking; it has been something of the past in its marketing. There is one hell of a lot that Mallorca has in winter, but one would think that it were confined to a few guided walks and a string quartet. It most certainly isn't.

My advice to the Mallorca Tourist Board is do it yourself. I know you have lost your grant, but don't leave it to the government. You are the private sector. Engage with the attractions association, engage directly with the towns with the spectacular fiestas, such as Sa Pobla for Sant Antoni, and make Winter in Mallorca a truly vibrant programme. George Sand, and Chopin come to that, were bloody miseries. Forget about the association and make winter a joy.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.