A Strange Thing In Playa de Muro

There is a strange thing happening in Playa de Muro. It is losing its abandonment. That of the unlovely row of units across from the sumptuous summer palaces by the beach. This removal of the abandonment that has been the resort's permanent winter is the consequence of winter, a winter in a Mallorcan style that refuses to be termed otherwise even in warm spring; a Mallorcan winter means that which isn't summer, and a Mallorcan summer, in turn, is partly real summer, partly spring, partly autumn.

Holidays on two wheels are to blame. Or to be praised. Where units were once the resting place for the leaves of winter to mound up and rot until the council sent in the boy with the blower, they are now opening, being converted into off-season and main-season palacetes to serve the palaces o'er yonder. Palacetes of two wheels.

This dismal and forgotten row had first been remembered a few short years ago. The devil's work of the Grupo Boulevard demolished some of the unloveliness and built a different type of palace, one of black glass, and placed beneath it a shop of high-classness, a café of high-classness, a restaurant of ... ah well, there's the devil's work, some would maintain, those some being the Little Mallorcans of British origin who rail against commerce that advances the cause of restaurants as marketing opportunities. They should look at Boulevard's palace and marvel, marvel at how it has brought life and light where there was dinginess. Following its lead have come the revamped units where once only vamps of the darkness of night would have trod. But it has been a lead enabled by the two wheels. Playa de Muro lives, and it lives in phoney summer and phoney spring as well as in real summer and real spring.

It has been a movement over recent winters, but that movement has gathered such pace that Playa de Muro has come alive in phoney summer. Playa de Muro lives. Even I am shocked by the extent that this new life has been breathed into the resort. I hadn't expected it. Not so soon. If ever. Playa de Muro is evidence of how transformation can occur. It helps if there are summer palaces by the beach which can command an audience in phoney summer. But then there are many summer palaces across Mallorca that stand forlorn and gathering sand and dust in winter. They are not unique to Muro. What is, it would appear, is a determination, about which there had been great scepticism. Mine. Next to the palacetes of two wheels there will be a festival of two wheels this week, one that has been stolen from the island's south, packed into pantechnicons and transported sixty or so kilometres to the north. Then comes a race. The Mallorca 312. Did you know that if you take a coastal route around Mallorca, one that starts in Playa de Muro and ends in Playa de Muro, the distance is 312 kilometres? 312.2 kilometres, to be precise. It will be 312.2 kilometres of road closures and cursings to add to the normal cursings directed at the two wheels, but these cursings are so misplaced, as narrow in their mindless mutterings as the narrowness of the Little Mallorcans of British origin who curse an establishment that fails to conform to quaint Mallorca.

Summer hasn't started. It doesn't, as most people understand summer, start for over two months. In Mallorca it starts in a couple of weeks. But it has burst forth already. In Playa de Muro at any rate. The resort has left behind the permanent winter it had inherited so many years ago when those unlovely units were abandoned. It has been revived, and summer has arrived. To become a permanent summer instead? That would be nice. But no. Or at least, you would think no. There again, we hadn't (I hadn't) thought this revival would occur as it is occurring. Strange things happening indeed.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.