Selling Weirdness: Giants and tall tales

A tour guide of my acquaintance told me about an American couple he was showing around Palma. By chance the tour coincided with the gathering of giants for the Virgin Mary's birthday fiestas. The Americans were suitably impressed. You don't stumble across giants in the US as a rule. Not when history is as short as it is there.

Back in late June, a German friend, visiting with her partner and small children, asked about a what's-on event she had seen mentioned in a local German newspaper. It was the annual walk from Alcúdia town to the hermitage at La Victoria. Would the giants, who take part in the walk, be something the children would like to see? Why not, I suggested. They did see and they enjoyed.

On Monday they were dragging large boxes out of Alcúdia's council chamber and lugging them on to the steps of the town hall building. There were four boxes, just a sample, as there are other boxes which house the heads of the characters who make up the gang that follows the conquering king of Mallorca, Jaume I of Aragon. S'Estol Rei en Jaume is a motley crew of the historically factual and legendary invented. For the presentation of the annual fair's poster, four of the heads were on display - those of the king himself, that of his Moorish opponent, and then two who are inventions: the mad miller and the girl who tries to be nice but who is in fact utterly gross.

Impressed though the Americans were by the history parading through the streets of Palma, this is history of recent invention. The giants of Mallorca are invariably quite new, but the giants' tradition, and also that of big heads, is long: at least back to the sixteenth century. But something which Mallorca does very well is to make recent creations seem very old, and the giants and big heads are representative of this inventiveness.

These are creations which clearly impress both the young and the older, be it the small German children or the adult Americans, and I can include myself in the latter category. On one particular occasion, I happened to go into the town hall in Muro and was confronted by Toni and Joan, who, as far as I am aware, are the only all-male giants' pairing in Mallorca. There they were, in the reception of the town hall with their bagpipe, drum and whistle. They were shocking, given that I hadn't expected them to be there and because they were and are so enormous and so downright odd.

There is a strain of tourism potential lurking in Mallorca's culture that I'm not sure is entirely appreciated. It is tourism of the weird, and Mallorca has a great deal of weirdness. Odd, peculiar, strange, unusual, however you describe phenomena such as giants, big heads, dragons, demons and all the rest, they all contribute to a collective weirdness and difference. Yes, there are such characters elsewhere, especially Catalonia, but when there is talk of alternative tourism, there seems too little recognition of the fact that staring everyone in the face are manifestations of alternativism.

These are characters who put in appearances at fiestas and fairs and are then more or less forgotten, but it is here where I think a trick is being missed, not just in promotional terms but also in a wider marketing sense to include products and merchandise.

To come back to the Alcúdia figures, these have their own back stories. Characters like the mad miller come from folk tales, yet these stories remain locked in the Catalan language. This isn't a plea for translation but the suggestion of the possibility of making up stories related to these odd creations. S'Estol Rei en Jaume is like a mini-Canterbury Tale. The miller's tale, the gross girl's tale, the tale of the stupid boy who has grown donkey's ears, the water woman who stops children looking down wells and falling into them and drowning. Children's stories and so storybooks or audio books.

As for the figures and characters themselves, has it ever been considered that these might become dolls or figurines? Maybe it has been, but if so, I can't say that I've ever seen any. When it comes to souvenirs, and to a revitalisation of a part of the tourist retail market that has been in the doldrums for some considerable time, then might the characters of fairs and fiestas not provide an opportunity? The point being, of course, that everywhere in Mallorca has them - the giants, the big heads and what have you.

Mallorca, or some involved in tourism promotion, talks a good story about its history, but it ignores the stories themselves. Dates, facts, battles, they're all very interesting, but behind them are the stories, the legends, the oddities. Weird Mallorca - the stories and the souvenirs. They should do it.

Shine On: The trials of tributes

It was the days before decimalisation. I know this because it cost fourteen shillings, an astonishingly small amount even for what must have been either 1969 or 1970 and given the fact that they were already massive. They had embarked on a tour which took in some small college venues, and the prices reflected the fact. For fourteen bob at Farnborough Technical College, in whatever year it was, a young teenager and his mates got to see them. And to hear them, Azimuth Co-ordinator and all. They were of course Pink Floyd.

Around this time, the 14 or 15-year-old teenager got to see the Floyd twice for free. One occasion was in Hyde Park. The other was at the BBC's Paris Studios in Regent Street. John Peel walked along the queue outside, stopped to talk briefly. How many heroes could a teenager deal with on one evening. The Floyd premiered "Atom Heart Mother". Live on radio. They flunked the opening and had to start again.

Getting tickets for this latter performance was a random affair. You applied for any session. It just so happened that it was the Floyd. When the tickets arrived in the post, it was the nearest you got in those pre-interactive days to the "OMG, I don't know what to say" moments of Radio One on-air competitions to get tickets for the Big Weekend and such like: to see and meet, perhaps, One Direction.

By a twist of fate, these two worlds - old and new - have collided in their tribute form. Out of the blue, the Floyd - in the form of Minorca's The Other Side as part of their "Shine On Tour 2015" - will be turning up in the car park at Alcúdia's Hidropark on Friday, a peculiar twist in itself, given the similarity of Hyde and Hidro parks. Meanwhile, and close by, One Direction (the tribute version) will continue to smash the Delfin Azul on what now must be considered the farewell (possibly) tour. 

It's not easy being a tribute act if the original disintegrates or ceases to be. When Zayn left, there was no escaping the fact that five needed to become four. It was the same when Jason walked out on Take That. In the pursuit of authenticity, the Oranges had to be crushed.

There is no such similar necessity with Pink Floyd. They ceased to be years ago. One of them is not of this Earth any longer (two if you include Syd), The Other Side have no need for pretence. They are a show. A tribute, yes, but an impersonation most definitely not.

It is this - impersonation - where the tribute edges blur. There are acts which, while clearly tributes for one thing or another, don't set out to impersonate. They are shows in their own right. Abba Angels, for instance. You would never have got Agnetha cracking jokes during an Abba set. Then there are those which do, well, perhaps take things a little too seriously. I once fell foul of a Take That Gary for having committed to print the suggestion that they should team up with the Robbie who was on the same benefit event bill and re-form. The Robbie seemed more than happy with the idea. The Gary, less so.

There again, it was understandable. The potential to mock - and this hadn't been such an attempt - is too simple. But if mocking occurs, it fails to take account of the hard work and professionalism of many a trib act. There are many good acts knocking around Mallorca. They are entertainers, the providers of shows. They are not the absurdity of the playback, the cheap miming option that has got entertainment a bad name.

The tribs are very much a feature of a Mallorcan summer. It wouldn't be quite the same without them. Of course, not everyone appreciates them, but when there exists a volume of work that is as well known as, for example Abba, and packaged professionally into a specific show, then what's there not to like?

This all said, it can depend on the volume of work and that part of it which forms the show, which brings me back to Pink Floyd. The Other Side's promotion is full of allusion to comfortably numb, to shine on. The name itself is an indication. "Dark Side Of The Moon" was an enormous commercial success, but it represented the transition from weird and wonderful Floyd to discernibly rock group Floyd. Will The Other Side engage in half-hour improvisations of "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun"? I somewhat doubt it. There are the pre-Dark Side and post-Dark Side camps. I'm firmly in the former.

Nevertheless, there will be plenty who don't take such a fundamentalist view, and rightly so. Tributes, of whatever type, members departing or members passed away, are shows. For enjoyment. Shine on.

The Last Of The Summer Melon

24 August is a feast day but it is also a day which epitomises religious violence - both legend and fact - that is the historical background to some fiesta tradition. The legend has to do with Sant Bartomeu, Saint Bartholomew the Apostle, whose feast day tomorrow is. There are alternative versions of his death, but the most popular (if this is the right word) is that he was skinned alive and then crucified (or possibly beheaded or maybe all three).

This gruesome end seems somewhat appropriate for what occurred some fifteen hundred years later on the day of his feast: the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre. This occurred during the French Wars of Religion and the Huguenots were the targets. The 1572 massacre took place in Paris five days after the marriage of the sister of France's King Charles IX to the protestant Henry III of Navarre. Many Huguenots were in town. They would have wished that they hadn't been. Charles's mother, Catherine of Medici, is generally credited with having been behind the massacre, but others have been fingered by history, including Spain's Philip II, who was to later be the monarch behind the failed Armada.

While Saint Bartholomew's day is celebrated in Mallorca with the occasional violent burst of fireworks or cracks from demons' tridents - Consell, Ses Salines, Soller - it is a day of charming innocence in total and merciful contrast to the outrages perpetrated in the name of religion. In Alcúdia, there is a festival that originated in the town and which has spread to other parts of the island. It is the festival of the lanterns.

One says originated, yet in its recent incarnation the festival is comparatively new. As with other traditions that had for varying reasons disappeared, it was part of the revivalist movement of the late 1970s: a time when those forgotten traditions were being remembered and reactivated.

The festival is very simple. It involves melons (or peppers) being scooped out, faces carved and candles placed inside (other means of light are acceptable and can involve batteries). The watermelon is clearly preferable in order that the largest lanterns can be claimed. A fairly substantial pepper would be needed, but then there is always a place for mini-lanterns. The pepper, though, is something of a johnny-fruit-come-lately to the lantern scene, as the roots of the festival have to do with the melon.

Around this time of summer, the last of the summer melons are being harvested. There will still be enough for the good people of Vilafranca to consume in their famed melon-eating contest and to throw at each other during the equally famed melon battle of the town's fiesta/fair early next month, but generally speaking the melon is coming to the end of the summer line. And it was this that inspired the one-time predominantly farming community of Alcúdia to celebrate what it considered to be summer's end: approximately a month before everyone else.

The last of the summer melon had its poignancy and its sentimentalism. The children of the farming community would eat the final sweet fruit, but the melon's passing was something to celebrate as well. Hence, they made lanterns, and the lanterns' festival became a rather peculiarly pre-emptive lament for the passing of summer as well. The children would carry their melon lanterns through the streets and sing songs as they did so.

This is, as you can appreciate, a world away from the barbarity associated with poor old Bartholomew, but he could take solace from the fact that he was being appreciated in such a gentle fashion: one appropriate for an Apostle. Bartholomew's day was chosen because it coincided - approximately - with the final melon harvest.

It isn't known when the tradition actually started, but it is known that it had ceased to be by the start of the 1960s. It took the cultural association Sarau Alcudienc, along with the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB) promoters of Catalan culture, to bring it back. Sarau Alcudienc was in fact the Alcúdia offshoot of the OCB, and it was the lantern festival which was the reason for its formation. It has since become - and remains - one of Mallorca's most important cultural associations.   

The lanterns will be paraded from a quarter past nine tomorrow evening, but there's no need to go to Alcúdia. Do it yourself. It would be rather splendid if, at the same time, the whole of Mallorca lit lanterns. As a way of rejecting the unwanted symbolism of Sant Bartomeu. Religious violence.

Stories Of The Squares: "Café de Plaça"

Plaça. Plaza. Square. Anyone fancy having a guess as to how many squares there are in Mallorca? A thousand? Ten thousand? More? I've no idea and I'm certainly not about to try and count them, but even were I to, the task would be made more difficult by what constitutes a square. It should be obvious - things on all four sides, as a general guideline - but there are squares that don't conform to this model: they are just parts, bits of something else, a promenade or a street which, for unknown reasons, acquire a plaça in their names.

The square is the heart of the village, but at times it's hard to be sure which square is most at heart. A Plaça Major should be a clue. Or a Plaça de l'Ajuntament perhaps, the square in front of the town hall. In some places, they could have either name. Sa Pobla, for instance. Its Major is looked across from the Ajuntament, and from the Major one can look to the first floor and observe the mayor on the phone. Squares, town halls, mayors - essences of Mallorcan life.

There are squares in some towns or villages which have attained such square-like status that they no longer both referring to it by name. It is just the square. Sa Plaça. Sineu is probably a good example.

The squares have their stories to tell, the ones that exist in some of the names. Some stories are simple and obvious. Mercat, the market. Vila, the town. Others require explanation. Puerto Pollensa has its market/church square, but the name is actually Plaça Miquel Capllonch, a composer and pianist who was born in Pollensa. Lloret has Jaume I, the conquering king of the thirteenth century. Petra has its Ramon Llull and its Fray Juniper Serra, tributes to two of the greats of Mallorca's history, one of whom, Serra, was born in Petra.

Integral to the stories of the squares are the bars and cafes. The social lives of the years have been played out, related and discussed and been abstractly engrained into their walls by the coffee, wine and cigarettes of reminiscence. Their stories are those of the oral tradition, the hand-me-down, word-of-mouth transmission of the collective memory. Some bars become iconic, enduring; some change, modernise. But whatever happens to the bar, the square remains unaltered, save for paving, for new town hall street furniture, for renewed lights.

Alcúdia has its squares but it is a town that has more than just the conveying of stories over tables and on terraces. It has a story, a written one and one that has been dramatised. The bar, the cafe, the square combine. In 1965, Alexandre Cuéllar put them together. He wrote the "records" of the "Café de Plaça", loosely based on a cafe in the Plaça Constitució - Constitution Square.

Cuéllar was actually born in Catalonia, but he came to Mallorca and was, from 1943 to 1959, the secretary at Sa Pobla's town hall. He then returned to Olot in the Gerona province and worked at its town hall until he retired in 1979. But he had retained his links with Mallorca and was to strengthen them on his retirement. He had a summer residence in Barcares, a hamlet of enchantment on Alcúdia's Pollensa bay extremity.

It was while he was summering in Alcúdia that he would go to the square. He was, as he said in a 1996 interview (he died in 2006 at the age of 92), suffering a great nostalgia for Mallorca back in Olot. He felt separated from the island and from the people. Hence, he wrote his finest work - "Café de Plaça". The stories in the book, or the records as they are referred to, were, he was to admit, a reflection of an idyll, of a passing from a former time to a modern one, with the regret that came with it. In 1965 tourism was changing everything, even though the square remained as it had been and the cafe was still unaffected.

Cuéllar's book can be misunderstood. A key theme of it was what he called "blessed laziness". It can be taken as a criticism, but mostly everyone at the time he wrote it (and nowadays also) fully understood his point. The laziness was part of life, as was the contrariness that the stories identify. They were stories that accurately portrayed the almost total stillness of Mallorcan village existence. Nothing much happened. Everyone would congregate at the cafe and when there was actually work to be done, a good excuse would be found to have lunch instead.

The dramatisation is the final scene of the five-part Via Fora production which takes place around Alcúdia's walls (the next one is on 27 August). It is of course all in Catalan, but the high farce of the laziness is easy to appreciate. It is a performance of a story of one cafe, in one square, in one village at one time in the past: fifty years ago. It could have been written about any of the ... . How many squares do you reckon there are?

Horsing Around: Sassu and THAT sculpture

There was a time when I had this thing about roundabouts: not the fact that no one has the faintest idea how to drive around one, either with or without the aid of an indicator; not that most roundabouts appear to have been created in order to give Trafico ever more places to hang out: not even the comparatively short history of the Mallorcan roundabout (first one, 1976, Palmanova). No, it was what was on them. Sculptures, artistic works, some of which look like the scrap-metal man's taken up residence, others which are just weird, some which do pass as worthy additions to the landscape. As is my wont, I started to research them, i.e. those responsible for the sculptures. Or irresponsible some might suggest.

This was all a long time ago. Perhaps I became inured to the bits of old tat, the surreal, the occasionally splendid. So much roundabout furniture can leave one blind, as it was no longer having any impact. However, there was one roundabout, one roundabout sculpture that still had the power to overwhelm because of its sheer audacity or what some would describe as monstrosity.

In this former life of rotonda research, someone asked me - in 2008 if you must know - when they were going to get rid of that "thing". Who, came the question, must have had a mate in the town hall to have allowed such a "thing". Whatever possessed anyone to dream up this Angel of the North with its complete absence of angelic quality?

Those of you with knowledge local to Alcúdia will almost certainly have got the gist by now. This is the "Horse which looks to the sky (or maybe heaven) of Alcúdia". It is the horse of the Horse Roundabout, the Rotonda Caballo. Or is it a horse? Other interpretations have been made.

It is a horse of course, as Mr. Ed might have said. The sculptor specialised in horses, often kicking ones, styled in a futuristic fashion. He was Aligi Sassu, Italian, who had shared his time between Italy and Pollensa (Cala San Vicente) from the start of the 1960s. Sassu was well-known to the art world in Mallorca. In 1996, Sa Nostra Bank acquired a sculpture of his that had been crafted in 1989. The "Caballo Airoso" (airy horse, if you like) is still to be found in the gardens of the Sa Nostra Cultural Centre in Palma. But it, and other horse works, were on nothing like the scale of the Alcúdia horse, while, for all his futuristic style, Sassu had never created anything quite like it in appearance. When it was first unveiled - winched into position that is - the reaction was ... . Well, the reaction was somewhat mixed to say the least.

The horse arose in February 1997. A few months earlier, at a different roundabout - Magic - another sculpture had been given the crane treatment. This was "Leonardo's Knot", the work of Ben Yakober. In July of 1997, the roundabouts were officially inaugurated along with their sculptures and indeed roads. Both sculptors were in attendance. Alcúdia had needed a better system of roads, so Alcúdia got them, together with the roundabouts and the sculptures.

One observer from the time who didn't doubt the necessity of the roads or the roundabouts was more sceptical about both sculptures. He could appreciate that there was something of the avant-garde about them but that they would divide opinion between futurists and those who preferred something more classical. But he was concerned that neither said anything about Alcúdia nor indeed Mallorca, and the culture and customs. He believed that, although Sassu and Yakober were highly respected, perhaps there should have been some consultation, to hear what people thought. He also wondered about who had made the decision. The horse cost four million pesetas, roughly equivalent to 25,000 euros, albeit that this was around 20 years ago.

The cost was shared between the town hall and the Council of Mallorca with its dual responsibilities for culture and for roads. Who actually made the decision regarding the horse, who actually commissioned it is unclear. The observer who asked the question might now be in a better position to discover the answer. His observations came from the March 1997 edition of the "Badia Alcúdia" magazine. He used to write regular opinion pieces. He was and is Antoni Mir, the new mayor of Alcúdia.

Perhaps the best thing one can say about the horse is that it is a talking-point. But there's no escaping it. It is so massive, while lacking a quality, like say the Angel of the North, of some emotion, some appeal to those who seek inspiration and meaning. The horse, sad to say, lacks this and also sad to say, Sassu was so much better. There is an exhibition of some of his horse lithographs at the Hotel Molins in Cala San Vicente from tomorrow evening.

The Understandable Exaggerations Of Alcúdia

It did of course make an eye-grabbing headline. "Businesspeople on Dollar Street fear that the area is the new Punta Ballena." This is the headline in translation, as the article was in "Ultima Hora". You could tell that the origin was Spanish, as very few Brits, save for some veterans, now ever refer to Alcúdia's Mile as Dollar Street. Apart from anything else, such as the alternative names that have been acquired over the years, the street ceased to be lined with dollars many years ago.

The headline was an exaggeration. Some of the views expressed by the "businesspeople" were exaggerations. Because Magalluf now has a stronger police presence, the excesses of tourism may be replanted along the Mile. It might make for good copy, but this is not how tourism works, while an allusion to Punta Ballena has become a form of shorthand for any example of bad-behaviour tourism.

Nevertheless, the reference was understandable. Far less understandable was the fact that a very similar article - in English and not in "The Bulletin" - appeared elsewhere without explaining what the businesspeople were referring to. Or perhaps it is understandable when there is a lack of appreciation of the issue and when the only source of information seemed to be an article which, in its body text, didn't explicitly refer to it either.

It was the sub-heading of the "Ultima Hora" piece which offered the explanation. All-inclusives were one, but then we've known about these for years. The other was "estudiantes": students. When the English article spoke, as the original had, of noise, drinking, disturbances from 4pm to 8pm and then again from half eleven until two in the morning (themselves not completely accurate because the disturbances, in effect, last all night and up to seven in the morning), it failed to mention the students. Consequently, it is quite possible - probable in fact - that an uninformed reader would see Punta Ballena and disturbances, put two and two together and come up with the five of British youth out on the lash and on the rampage. The conclusion would be totally wrong. The correct one is Spanish students, those who have taken over a great part of Bellevue for the past two weeks and who have turned the area into a living hell.

Misreporting is one thing, another is the apparent shortsightedness and resignation of others. To give an example. According to one source, the hell of the students is "not a community issue", as in the community of one of the residential apartment buildings most affected. How can it not be a community issue, and not just the community in its administrative sense as applied to a building? It is a community issue for the whole area: the businesspeople might have been exaggerating with their Punta Ballena references but these were, as I say, understandable.

There again, what is community? I'm damned if I know, because I witness precious little of it, just as I witness, hear and read other expressions of shortsightedness and resignation. "Oh well, that's how it is." "It's business." "There'll be backhanders." All the usual shrug-of-the-shoulder nonsense that comes from people of different nationalities - Spanish and others. Yes, it is business, but there are limits, and when blatant disregard to a fundamental of Spanish life, enshrined in the Constitution and laws, that of "co-existence", is practised through the organisation and marketing of holidays to a specific sector which itself shows total disregard to this principle, then limits need to be imposed.

This resignation is, I accept, also understandable, but perhaps there needs to be greater awareness of what - in political terms - is happening at present. Podemos, rather than be berated, should be applauded if only because they have shaken administrations into realising who it is they act on behalf of. Communities. Proper ones. Town halls, regional government, even businesses know that the goalposts have been moved. They are under scrutiny like never before. Transparency, participation, dialogue: these are not mere slogans any longer. But they will be if people fail to act on the opportunity that has been presented. 

It has been quite encouraging to see how Alcúdia town hall - the mayor, Toni Mir, and the local police - have reacted to the students' affair. Mir had already acted swiftly in putting a stop to Red Electrica digging during the summer on account of the God awful racket. He was on to things the day after a meeting I had with him. Subsequently, the police responded rapidly to what was akin to a riot at two o'clock one morning, one that was partly caused because the organisers had failed to adhere to a measure that the town hall and police had insisted upon. But the police can only do so much. To help them, sources of their need to intervene have to be eradicated, which is where the "community" comes in. I'm not holding my breath, though, because the shortsightedness and resignation will doubtless prevail, leading to constant muttered complaints and the perpetuation of inaction that is the consequence of an inability and unwillingness to act and to be seen to act for the greater good of more than just selfishness. Punta Ballena? Maybe.

Nightmare On Bellevue

It starts at four in the afternoon. The set is much the same each day. Its intrusiveness, its loudness may have something to do with wind direction. There are days when the thumping bass is incessant. Four hours of pool party each afternoon. Then, from eight until around half eleven, just before midnight, things are relatively peaceful. Before the crowds gather, that is. The coaches begin to arrive. Football chants, other singing, clapping, shouting, general hubbub. It ends around half two in the morning. The first coaches, returning from the club, come back around two hours later. It takes a further two hours for them to all return. Drunk, drunker than they were when they left - or stupefied - the shouting, the singing is ever louder. Bottles are smashed, pools are jumped into, fireworks are let off. The security, such as they are, mill around. Useless or helpless. Then, from eight in the morning, the crowds start to gather again. Many of them haven't slept, rather like everyone else. The coaches - as many as eight of them - stand with their engines running for up to an hour, no more than twenty metres away from residences, their fumes choking the morning air before they depart with their loads to take them to Palma so that they can return to Barcelona, whence they came. These are the ones who are leaving after their four or five nights. Others take their place.

This is the pattern for three weeks. Residents, other tourists (until they get moved) can sleep little, if at all. The noise can seem dangerously loud. Loud enough to be a health risk. Loud enough and, for several hours, constant. The bars may as well close. There is all-inclusive around as it is, but this is not a tourism from which they will derive any business other than from the handful of cents  commission from cigarettes bought from a machine. It is a tourism that hasn't gone unnoticed on Trip Advisor. "Rude" is putting it mildly. The behaviour is generally appalling and it is not just one or two. There are hundreds, well over a thousand at any one time. And they attract the dross: drug dealers (not the lookies; white boys) parked up by the road as they pass back from the beach.

This is the Mallorca Sin Profes (also dubbed Mallorca Island Festival) spring break vacation at Bellevue organised by Viajes Finalia, based in Barcelona. Sin Profes - without teachers. The students who come before, younger ones, are well-behaved: the teachers come with them. Yes they make some noise, but it's only to be expected and it isn't an issue. It also isn't health-threatening.

Among the "collaborators" for this vacation are the Generalitat de Catalunya, i.e. the government in Catalonia, the Balearic Government's ministry for tourism and, though it's hard to be certain from the logo, probably the Spanish Government's ministry for industry, energy and tourism. Does one suppose that these collaborators are aware of what they are collaborating with? The question needs asking of them.

At least Alcúdia town hall isn't mentioned as another collaborator (it looks as though the Council of Mallorca is though). The previous administration was aware of the situation, exactly the same, last summer. No response was ever received. The new mayor, Toni Mir, an impressive, businesslike guy, wasn't aware of the situation. He is now.

It is for he, for the town hall and for other agencies to draw their conclusions. I'm not making them for them. I'm simply informing them.

Politics Of The Fiesta Programme

"Not possible, it is fiesta." That was 29 June out of the equation. "Thursday not possible, it's fiesta." So it is. I had been seeking an appointment with the mayor. As it turns out, on account of my insistence and the pressing nature of the need to make the appointment, it is possible for tomorrow. Initially it hadn't seemed to be: new mayors do have very busy schedules; one can accept that.

These busy schedules do have to take into account fiestas. Town halls, mayors have many responsibilities but none more defines the function of a town hall than the organisation of its fiestas and its participation. And this does of course entail being shut on certain fiesta days.

Sant Pere is the fiesta for the port of Alcudia. The town has its own fiesta - Sant Jaume in July. But then the town hall is a town hall for the whole of Alcúdia. It has its days off even if these days off don't, strictly speaking, apply to others in the whole of the municipality. Sant Pere one can understand, but Mare de Déu de la Victoria as well? In fact it is perhaps even more understandable. The hermitage at La Victoria, the camp-over of the night of 1 July, the fiestas for the Mare de Déu up the mountain above Alcúdia are hardcore tradition: more so even than Pere and Jaume. Few visitors attend; they are fiestas for the people of Alcúdia. For the town hall and for the mayor there is a very well-defined role in these fiestas. On Thursday next week, as is the case each year, the mayor will lead the ball de bot folk dance before there are showers of sweets and hazelnuts. The town hall does of course need to be shut on that day, even if the ball de bot isn't until half past four. There again, the traditional arrival of dignitaries, accompanied by the band of music is at half eleven in the morning. "Thursday not possible, it's fiesta."

The arrangements for La Victoria are the same each year: exactly the same. From the climb and the whistling to the hermitage of the evening of 1 July through the fritters and mistela wine, the folk dance, the offer of camomile and the paella, they never vary. Yet there is always the programme; it is tagged on to the one produced for Sant Pere, even if it is an exact repeat of years gone by.

Fiesta programmes are themselves matters of great town hall importance. So much so that they can often not be released until late, much to the annoyance of those who would rather like to know, more in advance, what will be going on: La Victoria doesn't alter, but Sant Pere, some of it, does. There has been an added reason this year for any tardiness in the programme publication - and it will have applied to other municipalities as well - and that is the mayor's introduction and mayor's photo with the introduction. Woe betide any printer who accidentally uses the photo of the ex-mayor.

These mayoral intros, replete with the correct photo, can be rather like a football manager's programme notes, and with the arrival of a new administration they are even more so than usual. The new mayor hopes that the people will have confidence in the town hall's ability to organise fiestas and cultural acts and, after the fiestas are over, will also have confidence in the town hall to deal with their concerns. The town hall is at the disposal of the people of Alcúdia. "Molts anys. Bones festes de Sant Pere."

There is other stuff about thanking the fishermen of the port and being honoured to express the significance of the celebration of the port's patron saint, but then it goes on to speak of Alcúdia not being able to live without the sea and its role in tourism, the primary sector of the local economy. As much as it is a greeting for the fiestas it is also a political statement. Is this appropriate? Should the greeting not simply confine itself to the fiestas themselves and to their tradition and cultural significance? Perhaps, but the fiesta programme is a prime source of town hall communication. The fiestas themselves are the most visible manifestation of town hall involvement in the lives of local people; they are the town hall's face, and the face of the mayor and his or her message is a key opportunity to communicate.

It is perhaps for this reason, as much as providing information about the schedule of events, that so much attention (and money) can be lavished on fiesta programmes. They can seem to be an unnecessary expenditure, especially if the schedule never alters, but they are a statement. Produce a rotten one and it can appear as if the town hall doesn't care.

Before And After: Mallorca Observed

The photo was taken in the 1960s. By today's standards, its colour was not well defined and indeed the colour was partly unnecessary as much of the land was, in any event, grey. It was an aerial photo of what was to become the City of Lakes in Alcúdia. The greyness, with tinges of brown but an almost total absence of green, was marked with the boundaries of plots. Here were to be buildings: hotels, apartments, villas, houses, restaurants, bars, shops. There were few landmarks on the photo. The Boccaccio apartments were there; they had arrived some time before the hotel of the same name. What were to be named the Ciudad Blanca apartments by the beach could be detected. Otherwise, there was little that stood out.

Today, if there were to be a similar photo, you would probably be unable to distinguish the Boccaccio apartments. They aren't much to look at anyway, but a claim can be made for their history, one that is longer than most of the City of Lakes. As for the Ciudad Blanca apartments, not many people realise they are apartments or that they were the first apartments to be built in this part of Alcúdia (right at the start of the 1960s). Are they not just a part of the hotel with the same name? Well no, not really. They occupy the same large plot but they were there many years before the hotel was built.

Had a photo been taken some thirty years before, the view would have been different. The reclamation of Albufera - the greyness of the photo can be attributed to the ash from the power station that was used for this reclamation - had only been partial. It might have been possible to see the old golf course, the old pumping station, the road that ran parallel to the coast. There wouldn't have been other roads, except for one or two tracks. There wouldn't, for example, have been the rudimentary street of the 1960s photo that was named after one of those who had been responsible for the first phase of Alcudia's transformation in the 1930s - Pedro Mas y Reus. And had there been a photo some thirty years before this, there would have been nothing, save for the track that was the coastal road and vast acres of wetland.

The reason for mentioning the Alcúdia photo is that it was taken at a time when the change to the landscape was only just beginning. This was to be a change that was absolute. The City of Lakes, the Venice of Mallorca as it was claimed it would be, was the largest single urban tourism development undertaken in Mallorca. Much of the island's coastal areas was subject to similar development, but not on the scale - for a single project - as was the case in Alcúdia. The photo represents a transitory phase in the before and after: it is one of the more striking of the "befores" or "in-betweens", if you prefer.

There is an abundance of photographic records of how Mallorca once looked. Much of this, especially because of social media, has been brought into the public domain. Resorts, as they were, are there for all to see. But these photos become most striking - poignant even - when they are compared with the current day. That track is now a main road. That field is now a hotel. That small shop which once sold milk is now a hypermarket.

I have recently been involved in a project about the Tramuntana mountains. A key point about this is the fact that, despite human intervention over many centuries, the mountains have not been harmed. Indeed, where this intervention has occurred, it has been beneficial in giving the mountains the characteristics they now have. But then, mountains are mountains. They are not, generally speaking, conducive to mass urbanisation. They are also obstinately irremovable.

The same cannot be said for wetlands, fields, dunes, forests of the sort that once proliferated in greater abundance than they now do. This is not a criticism, it is a statement of fact: something (or some things) had to give way in order that Mallorca could have its tourism, its economic development and its industrial revolution.

For all that today's tourists benefit from this transformation, there are many who are fascinated by how things were. It is an interest driven by curiosity rather than sadness necessarily. Before and after is fascinating. It is why talk in the past of a tourism museum for Mallorca should have been much more than talk. But there is, by way of compensation, that abundance of photographic evidence now available. And there are also co-ordinated projects designed to demonstrate the before and after. Jaume Gual is a photographer who has been involved in such projects. Urban scenes, rural scenes, he specialises in Mallorca's before and after.

"El Paistage Observat", the landscape observed, is a collection of art held by the Council of Mallorca and photos by Jaume Gual. It shows how painting and photography contrasts but also how scenes now contrast. As part of the PalmaPhoto season, the exhibition is at Palma's La Misericordia Cultural Centre.

Rebuilding Bridges In Alcúdia

Are there really 28 bridges over Alcúdia's waterways? Perhaps there are. I confess I have never bothered counting them, but I'll accept that the number is accurate just as I'll accept that it will cost 1.2 million euros to return them to a condition that might warrant their being called bridges. How long have we had to wait for movement on this? Far too long.

The bridges, as with the canals and the lakes, are not ultimately the responsibility of the town hall. The Costas Authority is responsible. This division of the national environment ministry, far away in Madrid, has appeared to wish to take absolutely no responsibility for the bridges. Until now. Why, though, it is really necessary to get Madrid actively involved is a good question. There is, after all, an entire delegation of the Costas knocking around the Balearics. What do they do with themselves?

Madrid it is, though, and so it was to Madrid that Coloma Terrasa went, accompanied by one of her mayoral predecessors, Miquel Ramis, in order to meet the sub-director for the Costas, Angel Muñoz. (It can't have been deemed that important if it was only the sub-director.)

But Sr. Muñoz will be getting the authority to cough up the 1.2 million euros for the 28 bridges, and work on them is scheduled to start after the coming tourism season. The work cannot be done during the season, said Coloma, as it would "cause inconvenience to tourists and residents". And she was right to say this of course, though why she said nothing to similar effect when work was going on at the new Viva hotel last summer one doesn't quite know.

The work to be done on the bridges will represent a "partial" renovation of the area: 30% of a total budget that is due to be spent on the whole pedestrian area around the lakes and canals. When the remaining 70% of the budget will be made available is not known. Nor is it known what it will actually be spent on. However, one can always refer to the town's touristic development plan 2014-2015 to get some clues. Under this plan, a recreational zone is supposedly going to be created by the big lake (Lago Esperanza) and new "touristic attractions" will be created "with the Lago Menor and canal spaces", whatever this means. There is also scope for the "revitalisation of the Avenida Pedro Mas y Reus zone".

It's an interesting document, this plan. The ideas for the Mile (Pedro Mas y Reus) include a plan for its modernisation: not of the infrastructure but of the businesses. Really: that is what it says. Which businesses do you suppose they have in mind? And how do you think they are proposing that this modernisation might be effected? Answer: there are no proposals. Just an idea.

Anyway, a revitalisation "action" for the Mile is the control of the "venta ambulante ilegal": that's looky-looky men and lady hair braiders to you and me. The control is such that it seems that many of the lookies have decided to get off the streets and make a damn nuisance of themselves around the pools in Bellevue. And, because there are few if any physical obstacles to prevent them from doing so, they can get access to holidaymakers with ease. Trip Advisor reviews note this activity: yet another black mark against Bellevue. Where are the security personnel to kick them off?

Alcúdia's Language Of Tourism

Well, you know how it is. You wait an eternity for a fair and then three of them turn up at once. Let's be grateful there are only three, though. The Pollensa Wine Fair (next weekend, 18-19 April) has often coincided with one of this weekend's threesome - the Puerto Alcúdia cuttlefish and boats jolly - in the past.

Before everyone has the chance to troop off to Pollensa and get drunk next weekend, the town has its April Fair, one that is loosely based on the Seville Fair and is organised by the local Andalusian Cultural Association.

Something rather curious has happened with this fair this year. They have actually got round to publicising it rather more effectively than in the past. Accordingly, I was sent the programme by the tourist office and asked if I could supply a translation. Not, to be honest, that there was much to translate, but I'm always happy to oblige, as I am when Alcúdia tourist office makes a similar request. Could we have the boats and cuttlefish in English, pretty please?

The poster and programme that has been put out for the April Fair is a revealing document. It notes the "special collaboration" of both the regional government and Pollensa Town Hall, yet here is a piece of promotion that is not in Catalan. Andalusians don't speak Catalan, except perhaps for some who live in Pollensa, so Castellano it is.

Appropriate though the use of Castellano is, its use highlights, and not for the first time, the curious relationship between languages and promotion of events: curious primarily because there isn't a relationship, save one - Catalan. This subject is an old chestnut, I do recognise, but it is one that doesn't go away and indeed becomes ever more relevant. April is an odd month in tourism terms. Despite Easter falling in April this year, it isn't a month which is considered to officially form part of the tourism season. It is an off-season month, one which local authorities would love to develop in order to lengthen the season and so reduce the harmful impact of tourism seasonality.

The trouble is, as I think many of us are aware, there is a sizable gap between what is hoped for and said and what is actually done, and the promotion of events that occur this weekend pretty much sums this up. Pollensa's April Fair is, in the scheme of things, a minor event, but those in Muro and Puerto Alcúdia are not. Yet, if one takes the boat show and cuttlefish gastronomy extravaganza as an example, what does Alcúdia do? It asks some sucker to supply an English version. Free. This, to me, does not suggest a town hall fully committed to effective promotion. Rather, it suggests one that is content to put up with an ad-hoc arrangement so that English-speaking visitors might be aware that "sipia" is in fact cuttlefish.

Alcúdia has something called the consortium for overseas promotion. It is one rarely referred to and usually only when it has gone off to Miami to try and entice the odd cruise ship to put in an appearance. What does this consortium actually do? Who is on it? Does it not believe in a touch more professionalism, such as establishing a formal arrangement for having its promotional literature in foreign languages? (And I'm sorry, you Germans, I'm not about to put myself out and translate into German as well - there's probably some other mug doing that.)

The apparent indifference towards effective foreign promotion and so evidence of the lack of genuine commitment to lengthening the season can be found in the programme for this weekend's fair. It isn't simply that it is all in Catalan, it is what is to be found in one of the greetings. It comes from the councillor with responsibility for fairs, Carme Garcia. It starts: "Benvolguts Alcudiencs i Visitants". Dear people of Alcúdia and visitors. It is the "visitants" which gives the game away. If you are greeting dear visitors, do you not seek to do so in a fashion that they might understand? Or are the "visitants" considered only to be people from, say, Inca or Santa Margalida? I suspect that they may be.

Carme is a councillor from whom Castellano has to be wrenched out. Passion for the language is fine, and I have no objection, but not when it positively discriminates against precisely some of the people who should be being greeted. With such an attitude, and Carme also has responsibility for "linguistic normalisation" (i.e. the promotion of Catalan), what is she doing in charge of the fair?

I fail to understand, and Alcúdia is not unique in this regard, why fairs, fiestas and tourism are the responsibilities of three different councillors. Yes, there is administration required for fairs and fiestas and yes, of course, they are events for the people of Alcúdia, but they are regularly held up as being for tourists. And this weekend's fair is a prime example. But the town hall's own structure has an in-built mechanism which undermines what should be a principal objective: tourism development.

A Nice Day For A Picnic

A Mallorcan Easter, like a Mallorcan Christmas, is a lengthy affair. Holy Week is something of a misnomer. It is a Holy at least ten days or getting on for a fortnight. Its starting-point of white palm fronds in procession and being blessed on Palm Sunday is a fixed feast. It's the end-point which is the movable one. It all depends where you are, and even then it can seem to have come to an end, only for something else to crop up a few days later. Alcúdia is a good example.

Easter in Mallorca doesn't come to a sudden halt like a British bank holiday when the brakes are slammed on in order to avoid ploughing into the back of the massive tail back caused by the faithful departing the temples of out-of-town shopping centres. It carries on in gentle cruise control, the traffic that of pilgrims on foot or those less holy ones who prefer to carry their leftover empanadas in the boot of a car or even in a shuttle bus. Welcome to the Mallorcan post-Easter picnic.

Once upon a time, Holy Fortnight was indeed Holy Fortnight, and credit for this has to go to the Guardian Angel, in whose honour the citysfolk of Palma established an Easter of ever-longer extension by having a picnic two weeks after Palm Sunday. (In strictly numerical terms of days, this would really make it the Holy Fifteen Days.) By picnic, one doesn't mean it was an occasion for hauling large wicker hampers and cool boxes off to a shady spot in the countryside, it was a day when the poor were given bread that had been blessed. This custom changed markedly over the centuries, so much so that by the nineteenth century it was an excuse for yet another round of merry-making, but the name survived. The pancaritat.

At some point in time, most of the villages of Mallorca realised that what was good for Palma was good for them too. As best as I can make out, 43 pancaritat picnics take place, certain municipalities having more than one, e.g. Alcúdia. Given the Guardian Angel origins, there is a religious element, one that involves trooping off to the nearest hermitage and holding mass before organising the tables and chairs and whipping up some paella. And while 22 of the 43 have kept faith with the Day of the Angel, i.e. a week today, 21 have not. Monday or Tuesday are the preferred alternative days, unless you happen to live in Lloseta, where it is Wednesday.

In the northern area of Mallorca there are six pancaritats; seven if one includes Colonia Sant Pere. The six are in Campanet, Muro, Pollensa and Sa Pobla plus Alcúdia with its two, the first of which - at the hermitage of La Victoria - is on Tuesday, with the second at Sant Martí next Sunday. This is the cave of Sant Martí and not, you'll be relieved to learn, Red Electrica's much-hyped Sant Martí substation. The cave, with its icon of Christ, is within microphoned vocal range of Bellevue's Show Garden, though it is probably as well that the outer limits of Bellevue in closest proximity to the cave are uninhabited at this time of the year. Otherwise, curious bearers of wristbands might head off in hot pursuit of the pilgrims, the lager of plastic glasses slowly being warmed by the spring sunshine, and anticipate that the picnic forms part of the all-inclusive offer. 

The pancaritats of La Victoria and of the Puig Maria in Pollensa (Monday) are ones for the committed pilgrims, involving, as they do, hacking up the side of a mountain with the picnic goodies in tow. The others are mercifully far less strenuous, even if Campanet's requires the climbing of the soapy pine tree. Not that everyone is obliged to climb the pine. I mean, the Bishop of Mallorca is turning up for mass, and I fancy his devotion doesn't extend to such frivolity.

Of the different picnics in the north, those of Campanet, Muro and Sa Pobla are the grandest; they are like mini-fiestas. In Muro, it all kicks of with rockets being let off in the town at 10am on Monday, the signal for the picnic-goers to gather items from the fridge and larder and trek to the hermitage of Sant Vicenç Ferrer. The hermitage, being as hermitages generally are, is not the location for events later in the day. The clubs of Muro go into overdrive from four in the afternoon, offering an alternative type of dance to the ball de bot folk dance at the hermitage and so an alternative pilgrimage: to offer thanks for the DJ deck and USB stick.

But Sa Pobla's is probably the best-known of all the picnics. It is the one that takes place at Crestatx every Tuesday after Easter, when seemingly the whole of the town takes itself off to the hermitage, some say oratory, of Crestatx with the image of Santa Margalida, one of Sa Pobla's patron saints: indeed, the original patron, as Santa Margalida was associated with the tiny populace of Crestatx before it was relocated in 1300 to the new town of what was to become known simply as Sa Pobla.

A big thing of the Crestatx day out is the wearing, by men, of the barretina hat which, though it is not unique to Catalan culture, is most closely identified with it. The red hat was commonly worn in rural areas, such as Sa Pobla, until the nineteenth century. It is now more symbolic than fashionable, and the Crestatx picnic is when it gets taken out of the wardrobe and dusted down for the day. A further important element is the t-shirt. The town hall organises an annual Crestatx t-shirt competition (first prize one hundred and twenty euros), so far from it being a case of been there, got the t-shirt, it is one of going there each year with a different t-shirt in the hope of securing the prize.

A common element of all these picnics is the hermitage. The history of the various ones in the north is something I shall delve into on another occasion. But for now, I shall just mention that the oldest of them, by some considerable distance, is Alcúdia's Sant Martí. This cave-shrine was a catacomb for early Christians during the time of the Roman occupation. Strange that, of all the hermitages therefore, its neighbours should be Bellevue and an industrial estate with a new substation named after it.

Spring Breaks: Where's the quality?

The history of the spring break vacation for university and high-school students can be traced back to a film made in 1960 with the same name as the novel "Where The Boys Are". Prior to this, Fort Lauderdale in Florida had been a destination for college students, but the influx was not huge and nor did it cause any problem. The release of the film changed this. It was a kind of promo for the spring break. The number of students heading for Fort Lauderdale doubled, and so the spring break became an established tradition. By the 1980s, the numbers had reached over a quarter of a million. Residents became distinctly hacked off with noise, damage and drunkenness. Within a short space of time, a change to Florida's drinking law, which raised the age to 21, had all but put an end to the spring break in Fort Lauderdale.

American students moved on to other places where the law was not as restrictive, but the spring break vacation, for all its popularity in the US, took years to cross the Atlantic. It is perhaps surprising that it took so long, but it is now firmly established, and its growth in recent years can probably be attributed to one thing - lower numbers of tourists in the non-peak months of the summer tourism season coinciding with the impact of economic crisis. Resorts and hotels needed different markets, and one that offered itself was the Spanish and European student spring break market.

This Easter in Magalluf, there is an offer for four nights of a "Spring Break Festival Mallorca". It is an offer aimed at Spanish kids and includes entrance to different clubs, drinks and pool parties. Here is just one example of the organised spring break holiday. There are others. Several others.

May is a month when hotel occupancy is not at its highest. In Magalluf and Palmanova it might not even reach 50% of the total hotel places open. 1200 or so Swedish students will thus do nicely for the odd hotel that needs to bump up its occupancy rate and for the odd club owner who wishes to increase low summer season trade. These Swedish students, typically aged 17 and 18, have, so we are told, rather more money to spend than, say, their British counterparts, but it is not solely spend on alcohol. It probably isn't, but who's to say that a good chunk of it isn't. The Swedes as a whole have a reputation for being good tourists, well behaved, well mannered. But there is big attraction other than the sun when it comes to holidaying in Mallorca. Booze is significantly cheaper than back home. It is much more easily obtainable. Assiduous checking of ages is not quite the same as back home.

There is a German tour operator called PartyUrlaub Reisen. It says that Mallorca is more than just binge-drinking and parties. There are crystal-clear waters and picturesque landscapes, but it doesn't dwell on these alternatives. There are gorgeous bodies in skimpy bikinis, bars, clubs and discos to turn night into day. The word "party" in the name should say it all, and this is what is being sold to a German spring break market heading predominantly to Arenal.

Then there is Finalia, the Spanish company which offers later spring breaks. Resort Bellevue Club, Alcudia. 250,000 square metres of paradise beaches, nine pools ... open-air concerts for more than 2000 people etc. etc. This is the "Mallorca sin profes" package, something which, the company's website suggests, has collaborating organisations that include the regional governments of the Balearics and Catalonia. Do these governments know exactly what happens on these vacations? People in Alcudia can tell them. A few weeks of living hell.

To come back to the Swedish students, the organisers of their spring breaks, a company whose address is given as Punta Ballena, offer "four weeks of madness" in May. And where is this madness likely to take place? Well, let's look at the hotels. There is a selection. One of them is the BH Mallorca, the four-star makeover of what was Mallorca Rocks on behalf of the clubowners, Cursach.

No one can blame students wishing to come on holiday and enjoying themselves in a fashion that any of us who were once students ourselves will recognise and appreciate. No one can really blame hotels or tour operators in arranging such holidays. It’s business after all, and if business is quieter at times of the summer season then it has to be sought wherever it exists.

But it is this, the almost desperate need for hotel occupancy and for quieter-month business, which betrays the public relations exercises which would have us convinced that resorts like Magalluf, Arenal, Alcudia and Cala Ratjada are on an upward curve of quality tourist.

Students should not be categorised as “non-quality”, but as a tourist niche they do not fit the profile of the tourist of ever greater quality. And when they are raising merry hell in resorts, elements with the island’s tourism industry might question their own publicity of responsible tourism.


Index for March 2015

Ageism in tourism - 18 March 2015
Alcudia industrial estate - 28 March 2015
Andalusia election - 23 March 2015
Balearics Day - 1 March 2015
Beach exploitation - 11 March 2015
Berlin ITB fair - 6 March 2015
Biosphere and responsible tourism - 13 March 2015
Catalan rumba - 30 March 2015
Daevid Allen - 16 March 2015
Democratic regeneration - 3 March 2015
Eco-tax: Més - 9 March 2015
Goats in Mallorca - 29 March 2015
Irish and Mallorca - 14 March 2015
Love Island, Ses Salines - 17 March 2015
Loyalty and Mallorca branding - 10 March 2015
Palacio de Congresos - 12 March 2015,  21 March 2015
Palma - best place in the world? - 27 March 2015
Performance pay and online reviews - 24 March 2015
Picadors of Mallorca - 15 March 2015
President Bauzá: desperate for a pact with PSOE - 7 March 2015
Representation of the people - 26 March 2015
Saving campaigns: conservation/preservation - 2 March 2015
Sóller prawn fair - 8 March 2015
Son Ferriol - 22 March 2015
Spring breaks - 31 March 2015
Statistics obsession in tourism - 5 March 2015
Sustainable tourism - 19 March 2015
Tourism education - 25 March 2015
Tourism law - 20 March 2015
Working day - 4 March 2015

The Industrial Estate With No Industry

14 August 2006:
"The new industrial estate in Alcúdia. There is a lot of preparatory clearance work going on, the actual construction due to start in October. The environmental issue, especially important given its proximity to the Albufera nature park, has led - or rather will lead - to this “polígono” being granted an environmental certification, the first of its kind in Europe. Specifically, 25% of its total area will be “green”, a significantly higher proportion than other estates on the island. Rainwater will also be collected in subterranean deposits and used for around 50% of the estate’s water consumption, while materials used in the actual construction will be recycled. Bet it still doesn’t satisfy the environmental lobby."

Satisfying the environmental lobby has, as things have turned out, been the least of the worries. Alcúdia has its own Palacio de Congresos, a will-it, won't-it construction, and has had for even longer than the Palacio has been partially built, paralysed and restarted. But at least the Palacio has been under construction. Alcúdia has an industrial estate with no industry. That's because no industry has as such ever been built.

Ca na Lloreta, which is its name, has always been controversial. Its 220,000 square metres were created on what were formerly woods and farm land, authorisation from the Council of Mallorca having been given in 2004. The environmental concerns were two-fold: the loss of that land and those woods and Albufera. It was with these in mind that the developers, Construcciones Bartolomé Llompart, were so careful to make the project as eco-friendly as possible. In truth, though it might have been considered environmentally damaging, it was unlikely to ever have been as harmful as what is right next to it - the Es Murterar power station - and in terms of aesthetics, when there is the enormous chimney to one side and the long-abandoned ruin of the old Es Foguero night club to the other, what harm would some industrial buildings do?

When I noted in August 2006 that construction was about to start, this was only construction on the industrial estate's layout. The roads were made, street lights were put up and once they had been, everything came to a halt. For eight years the estate has been empty, a criss-cross of roads leading to nothing. Activity since then has mostly been confined to scoundrels nicking copper cable and a road block being erected at the entrance to deter further theft.

In the summer of 2008, Alcúdia Town Hall gave serious consideration to start granting licences for the building of industrial units. This was despite the fact that there were question marks over Ca na Lloreta. Firstly, the town hall hadn't officially "received" the development, meaning that it didn't formally have responsibility for services. The delay in it taking on this responsibility had to do with the fact that there was no agreement as to the electricity supply. Secondly, there were doubts as to just how much interest there was. The then mayor, Miguel Ferrer, admitted that demand was not high, but he thought that up to twelve units might be built during a first phase. This uncertainty was a little curious, as it was also being said that a number of businesses had already acquired plots on the estate, valued at some 600,000 euros. And they were keen to get on with construction in order to get some quick return on their investment.

But the construction and the assumption of responsibility of services continued to be delayed, and that was because of the problems surrounding the electricity supply.

There were different versions of this story. One had to do with the national industry ministry not having given necessary authorisation to Endesa to undertake work to guarantee the electricity supply required to power the industrial estate. Another was that Llompart needed to build a substation with power greater than would be normal and that negotiations were ongoing with Endesa. Both of these versions may have been accurate, but what really caused the delay was a stand-off between Endesa and Red Electrica. It is, after all, Red Electrica which installs infrastructure; Endesa is the distributor.

Three years on from all this, in June 2011, it was announced that the two companies had reached an agreement regarding the building of the substation. It was two more years, almost to the day in June 2013, that we learned that Red Electrica had committed to spending 33 million euros on two new substations and high-voltage infrastructure. One of these was the Sant Marti substation in the industrial estate.

It would be wrong to suggest that all the fuss in Puerto Alcúdia regarding the laying of high-voltage cables is solely the result of the need to build the substation in order to power the industrial estate to a level that Llompart required, but that requirement has been a factor. It is clear that it has been, because the cable work has now allowed the town hall to finally go ahead and grant those licences for building to commence and for it to assume responsibility for the provision of services.

So any time in the near future, we can anticipate that the first units will begin to appear. And the question that was being asked in 2008 will crop up again. Just how much interest really is there? And what sort of interest will it be? If Ca na Lloreta is like other industrial estates, there will be entertainment centres and showrooms for this and that. As for industry, who can tell?

Alcúdia Versus Pollensa: The day of destruction

Alcúdia is taking Pollensa on today. And they'll be doing so at the Club Pollença. A rivalry there has long been between the two towns, but what is that brings them head to head today? Well, it's nothing physical. It's nothing controversial. Not in current-day terms at any rate. "Alcúdia versus Pollensa" is the title of a session that forms part of the annual series of history courses that Pollensa organises during the winter months, and the clash between the two towns has to do with a specific set of studies devoted to "El día de la destrossa" (the day of destruction).

Of dates in Pollensa's history, none offers greater pride than 30 May 1550. We know that the simulation of the Moors and Christians battle takes place on 2 August each year during the Patrona fiestas, but the actual battle of 1550 had been staged some weeks before. 30 May 1550 is central to the historical and cultural narrative of Pollensa, but it is linked, through family ties and the town's psyche, to events that occurred 28 years previously. 29 October 1522 is known as the day of destruction. It was a day that witnessed scenes of unparalleled barbarity, it was a day that ripped the heart out of Pollensa, killed many of its inhabitants and rendered it meek, impotent and deprived of resistance. 29 October 1522 was the day of quite appalling massacre.

The context was the uprising of the "Germania", the brotherhood. It had broken out in February 1521 and was the response of the peasant and artisan class in Mallorca (the impetus did actually come from a different revolt in Valencia) against grand land owners who, through abusive taxes, blatant exploitation and grinding poverty, had trodden the common people of Mallorca so far down that no other response was possible than that of direct and violent conflict, and it was a conflict which broadened in scope - the revolt was against the Spanish monarch (Carlos I) as well. 

The people of Pollensa would have been aware of what was coming. The revolt in Mallorca was finally met with the might of royal forces. A squadron appeared off the northern coast in mid-October. The viceroy in Mallorca ordered a campaign of blood and fire to stamp out the uprising in different parts of the island. Pollensa was attacked. Women and children took refuge in the church. It was set ablaze: two hundred died. Men who had taken to defend their families and their town were slaughtered, hung and quartered. The streets were littered with bodies. Buildings were ablaze. Those who survived were cowed into meekness. They would not revolt again and they faced retribution: the price of having to pay the royal treasury for their town to be rebuilt. 

How did Alcúdia come to be the opponent in all this? Well, it was Alcúdia where the royal troops landed, and Alcúdia was where supporters of the crown and of the nobility in the "part forana" of Mallorca had been holed up. They had sought refuge behind the town's walls and they had got it. Ten months before the Pollensa massacre, a siege of Alcúdia by the "Germanies" (also known as "agermanats") was ended. The battle of Alcúdia took place on Boxing Day, 1521, and it proved decisive. The Germanies were defeated and so Alcúdia could be prepared as the operations centre to end the revolt across the island.

There were of course other battles. A fierce one took place in Sa Pobla in November 1522, for example. The Germanies were being defeated everywhere, and the uprising was finally and definitively crushed in March 1523. As a mark of the gruesome nature of the conflict, one of the revolt's leaders, Joan Colom, was hung, drawn and quartered. His quarters were placed on pillars in Palma, while his head was mounted on the city's Puerta Pintada. It stayed there until 1820, a reminder to all of the consequences of rising up against the nobility and the crown.

But what of those links between Pollensa's day of destruction and the battle against the Moors in 1550? One link was that this battle marked the recovery of the town's pride that had been shattered in 1522. Another was a very notable family link. Someone who survived the massacre was a young Joan Mas. His father was slaughtered in 1522, but twenty-eight years later, it was Joan who led the people of Pollensa in repelling the Moorish invaders and who is, of course, represented each year in the famous battle simulation.

It took a generation for Pollensa to regain its esteem. The rivalry with Alcúdia has never since been of the style it was in those days of the sixteenth century while nowadays, it is simply a case of who claims bragging rights for tourism infrastructure and other contemporary matters. The day of destruction and its awfulness does live on in the memory, but it is said that there are many people in Pollensa who are unfamiliar with it. They know all about the Moors and the Christians and the glorious victory; far less about the inglorious 29 October 1522. That's why, therefore, there are history courses and why today the memory will certainly be relived.

The Alcúdia Anti-All Inclusive Party

A new party in Alcúdia unveiled its programme of priorities at the Casa de Cultura earlier this week. One says new, but Ciudadanos Islas Baleares has basically added the Islas Baleares to the citizens it was in 2011 when its abbreviation was C's. It is now C'sib. A lot of people will know Francisco Baeza, its candidate for mayor; he was also the candidate in 2011. He is well-known in the bar world in around The Mile, having once run the Don Pedro in the Siestas, which is where I got to know him. 

In the summer of 2011, I got involved with a BBC investigation of all-inclusives in Majorca. The programme looked specifically at the situation on the bay of Alcudia. Among some other assistance being sought, the presenter, Rajan Datar, wanted to interview a bar owner who was affected by all-inclusives. Immediately, I thought of Paco. The Don Pedro may be in the Siestas but it is of course right next to Bellevue as well. What Rajan got from Paco was some pretty emotional footage. Essentially, it was to do with how the rapid increase of all-inclusive at Bellevue, which didn't offer any until 2006, had devastated the business. Within the space of five years, all-inclusive had gone from nothing to approximately 80% of the complex's business.

One can of course seek to assign other reasons as to why a bar might fail, but let's be generous and accept that the assault from all-inclusive was the biggest. And this assault, in its human terms, was something that shocked even an experienced and greatly travelled journalist like Rajan. When I took him for a tour of Bellevue one evening, ending up at the Show Garden, he was pretty much gobsmacked. There was this vast amount of humanity, much of it waiting in never-ending queues for beer in plastic glasses at the all-inclusive bars. The one that wasn't for all-inclusive, the one we used, was pleasant: quick service (there were no other customers), a proper glass and, doubtless, a superior grade of beer.

That's some of the past which is needed in order to inform us of the present. Paco had run for mayor on the C's ticket three months before the BBC turned up. He didn't, in all truth, do terribly well, but the party was hardly known about at the time of the election. It also faced, as did any other party, the force that was with Coloma Terrasa and the Partido Popular in May 2011. No, he didn't poll particularly well, but he had encouragement, as he still does, from a number of other bar owners in the area. And a key reason why is one of the priorities that is in the 2015 C'sib programme. You've guessed it - all-inclusives.

The problem, though, for any party in a municipality is what it can actually do. A town hall does not have competence for regulation of hotel accommodation; the regional government does. The most that could be done is to express opposition to all-inclusives in given resorts, offer some proposals for making the situation fairer and hope that the government listens. Which, right now, it almost certainly wouldn't.

But there is a breeze blowing which suggests a wind of change might yet gust in. It is a purely political breeze, one that has sprung up in Greece and might become the north-easterly "gregal" that habitually freshens the beaches of the bay of Alcudia on a summer's afternoon and bring with it more than just some cooling for sunbathers. It all seems remote and unlikely that anything comparable to Syriza's policies on all-inclusives would be adopted either in Mallorca or in Spain, but you never know.

There was also the business of the tourism decree issued before Christmas which referred to "analyses of each tourist area" in respect of the "incidence" of all-inclusive. What the purpose of these analyses is no one really knows, and whether they would be accurate might be questionable. In Alcúdia, it is now easier to identify hotels which definitely do not offer all-inclusive rather than all the ones which do in some form or another. In addition to the obvious hotels, like Lagomonte and Club Mac, there are all those which offer the AI option, and it is one found increasingly at the up-market hotels. The three Viva hotels all do (the Vanity Golf doesn't). The Iberostar has the option, the Club Pollentia Resort has the option, so does the Estrella-Coral de Mar Resort, and one could go on. If the incidence of actual AI occupancy was less than a minimum 75% of all hotel places in Alcúdia, I would be amazed.

Even armed with accurate information as to incidence, what then? The tourism ministry has spoken about tighter quality regulations, but they haven't been introduced. The ministry delayed them because it wanted to do its analyses. Nevertheless, the information would presumably be available to a new government and perhaps even to the public. Whether it's believable is a different matter, though. But, that slight breeze wafting over from Greece might signal something and so, for Paco and C'sib, the time to capture the moment may have arrived.

What's On Around Alcúdia and Pollensa - Sant Antoni Fiestas

Are they the best fiestas of the whole year? Some would say they are. They are in midwinter, they are not for tourists (there aren't many at this time of the year), they are very much an expression of centuries-old Mallorcan tradition, which goes back to the fourteenth century and the origins of the fiestas in Sa Pobla, the town which stages the most extravagant and maddest of the nights of fire, witches and demons (Sant Antoni Eve, 16 January).

Sa Pobla's celebrations are the really crazy ones, but they are crazy elsewhere too - Alcúdia, Muro, Pollensa, Puerto Pollensa. And in Pollensa (and Puerto Pollensa), on the day of Sant Antoni itself, there is the rather mad climbing of the pine tree, an event unique to the town and one with no clearly defined origin.

Here are programmes in English for Sa Pobla and Pollensa; others will be added when they become available, but Sa Pobla's fiestas are already underway and on Saturday night (10 January) the town has a demons' fire-run, as also does Pollensa.

http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/2015/01/sa-pobla-sant-antoni-2015.html

http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/2015/01/pollensa-sant-antoni-2015.html

http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/2015/01/muro-sant-antoni-2015.html

http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/2015/01/alcudia-sant-antoni-sant-sebastia-2015.html

Nights Of Culture: Annual awards

They're having a night of culture in Alcúdia tomorrow. Cut along to the town's auditorium for 9pm, hand over 18 euros, and a cultural extravaganza will be yours to enjoy. And if you are inclined to go along, do be sure to take your Catalan cultural hat with you. This is the Obra Cultural Balear's Night of Culture, one at which the "Premis 31 de desembre" are to be handed out.

It is the time of year for awards to be made, for the great and good to be honoured, for speeches to be made, for photos to be taken. Awards here, awards there, even if, in the case of the OCB's 31 December prizes, they would appear to be being given 19 days too early. There again, on the night of 31 December there are other things to occupy the citizenry of Mallorca; not only New Year's Eve and munching on a dozen grapes but also the memory of 1229. Jaume I the Conqueror upset the New Year's celebrations all those years ago by putting the Muslim occupants to flight or to the sword.

The OCB prizes do have the merit of being named after the last day of the year. Awards should, generally speaking, reflect a year, as in the year gone by. Not all of them do. The Council of Mallorca, for example, has its awards in September. They are the Jaume II prizes, named after Jaume I's lad, and as such they reflect the seemingly eternal difference of opinion as to Mallorcan culture in its historical origins sense. On 12 September 1276, Jaume II was crowned King of Mallorca, a coronation which was also the occasion for issuing what was in effect a bill of rights for the Mallorcan people. Defenders of the true Mallorcan cultural faith, e.g. the OCB, want nothing to do with 12 September. Culture started on 31 December 1229, not 47 years later.

This cultural difference is, it might be said, reflected in the choice of award-winners. The winner of Spain's "Masterchef" 2014, Mallorca's Vicky Pulgarín, received a Jaume II in September. So also did the what's on youth publication, "Youthing". Which is not to say that earnest Mallorcan culture was not also honoured, but the Jaume IIs are a tad frivolous by comparison with a formality of Catalan virtuousness that typifies the 31 December awards. The names of these awards explain much: the Gabriel Alomar prize after the politician and poet who was associated with the Catalan modernist movement; Emili Darder, from the Republican mayor of Palma who was executed by the Nationalists in 1937; Josep Maria Llompart, who was a Catalan poet and essayist and a one-time president of the OCB. Among those who will be receiving an award will be Xïtxeros amb Empenta, a youth association that was founded in Manacor in 2008 and which has as its principal objectives linguistic and cultural recuperation as well as environmental conservation.

The OCB has been dishing out its awards since 1987, and it is interesting to note one or two previous award winners, such as the broadcaster IB3 in 2009. Given all the fuss over linguistic interference by the current government at IB3, one would doubt that it would now be up for an award. Last year, the Gabriel Alomar prize went to the Assemblea de Docents, the teachers' association right to the fore of the anti-trilingual teaching furore, and now a union in its own right. Politics and culture are never too far apart; indeed you could argue that they are one and the same.

Though 27 years old, the OCB awards are not the island's oldest. These are said to be the prizes from the Cope Mallorca radio broadcaster. The 35th edition took place at the end of last month. The Bishop of Mallorca was among the glittering array of attendees. One winner was Pollensa's Olympic canoeist, Sete Benavides; another was Juan José Hidalgo, president of Air Europa and Globalia. The Onda Cero radio station has taken over 30 years to follow Cope's lead, but at its fourth annual awards ceremony, a couple of weeks before Cope's, Rafa Nadal was one of those who was honoured. President Bauzá and Palma's mayor Mateo Isern were both at the Onda event, no doubt giving each other a wide berth, but one would imagine that neither will be in attendance in Alcúdia for the OCB bash.

Bauzá will definitely be at Son Amar on 20 December, as the Partido Popular's own awards - the Larus - will be up for grabs. Will Isern receive one? Doubtful. Will he even go? Whoever does win an award, Bauzá will hope that he doesn't receive the same thinly veiled broadside he got from the PP's ex-president, Gabriel Cañellas, last year, something of which, given allusions to culture regained, even the OCB might have approved.

A Place Called Al

Pompeu Fabra was an industrial engineer. He was also, perhaps strangely for an engineer, a man of language. In 1932 a dictionary was published. It was the "General Dictionary of the Catalan Language" and was the culmination of other work, such as the 1918 "Catalan Grammar". Fabra was responsible for these publications. The 1932 dictionary was the official word (or words, many of them) on Catalan for over 60 years before the first dictionary from the Institute of Catalan Studies was published.

Fabra didn't have anything directly to do with Mallorca, but he was certainly in contact with various language scholars and writers on the island. As a consequence of producing his grammar and his dictionary, Fabra was an extremely important person. He still is. Yet his name, one fancies, is one that will mean little or nothing to the general visitor to the island. Even if that visitor is aware of his name having been used for a street or a square, it will still mean very little.

Alcanada is a small place. There is very little there. What passes for its centre is revealed to you as you gingerly manoeuvre your car past a house which juts out into an already narrow road and as you hope for dear life that there isn't a damn great bus or a gaggle of tourist pedestrians around the blind corner. Successfully having managed not to hit anyone or anything, you see to your right a low wooden fence behind which is a small parking area. For someone as celebrated as Fabra should be, this seems an unremarkable tribute. A car park has been named after him. Well, not exactly. The car park, strictly speaking, is the Plaça Pompeu Fabra. It is a square without any clear indication that it is a square. Indeed, it is a rather inconvenient triangular shape.

The square-triangle-car park forms the anything but bustling heartland of Alcanada. Pass through it and you come to La Terraza and its chiringuito, the restaurant perched over an invitingly clear kaleidoscope of greens swirling within blues. It's the end of the bay of Alcudia which offers a view of the bay that isn't interrupted with the sight of the twin towers of the old power station, the rather unlovely relic hidden a couple of kilometres or more away that acts as a contrarily welcoming host as you make your way from Puerto Alcudia into Alcanada.

To the other side of Pompeu Fabra is another restaurant, Es Faró, and the apartments that take the Alcanada (or Aucanada if you prefer) name. Another wooden fence runs to one side of the apartments. It marks the limits of a wooded, shaded area and of the road that carries on to the golf course, the one of Trent Jones design and Porsche family ownership and with its own restaurant. Add the all-inclusive Hotel President, a couple of small supermarkets, a small beach, and you have all you need to know about Alcanada.

Except of course, there is more. Well, there's the lighthouse for one thing - the faró - the lighthouse which sits on a small islet (or illot in Fabra's native) and to which, thanks to the shallowness of the bay, overnight guests once upon a time used to walk, carrying picnic and bedding paraphernalia above the calm sea. They weren't proper guests. They weren't really supposed to be there. But those were days when no one took much notice. They do now, and no, you can't go and have an overnight picnic.

Around the time that Pompeu Fabra was publishing his dictionary, an American in Mallorca was making a name for himself for a different reason. He was Arthur E. Middlehurst. Not a great deal is known about Arthur, other than that he was an urban planner and architect who specialised in a "Californian style". It would appear that he was part of a literary, cultural and somewhat Bohemian set that sprang up in Mallorca in the 1930s. He would have been well aware of the cultural movement that Fabra's dictionary represented. It isn't known with any certainty, but the square in Alcanada probably acquired its name in the 1930s in recognition of the dictionary, for it was in the early part of that decade that Arthur was set to oversee the development of a garden-city style resort, i.e. Alcanada.

Whatever it was that Arthur had in mind for Alcanada, it didn't really materialise and certainly not as a resort of any significance. The resort that did begin to take shape, courtesy of Pedro Mas y Reus and Jaime Enseñat, was down the coast past the port of Alcudia. Who knows? Perhaps history might have been different and Alcanada would have become more of a centre for tourism. It is a place that has a geography that might be considered not dissimilar to Illetes in the way that it climbs in different tiers. But it wasn't to be.

For the visitor, and indeed for many residents, Alcudia means one thing when it comes to tourism. It is an erroneous perception based on the architecturally less than lovely Mile and on the category of tourist that the Mile attracts (itself something of a misguided generalisation). Alcudia is several places, not the one. And Alcanada is one of these several places; a place of summery somnolence far removed from the touristic pleasure park that radiates out from Bellevue. What is its appeal? Sebastian Sanchez, director of the apartments, sums it up easily and in one word. "Tranquilidad." Tranquility, quietness, translate it as you wish, it amounts to the same thing. The translation is not difficult, but every now and then the name of Alcanada can cause a problem. It isn't a small place that has been transported from Canada. It isn't a small place called Al. Al, Canada.

Summer's Falling

The Catalan verb "caure" means to fall. Today in Puerto Alcúdia the summer is falling. "Cau l'estiu". How appropriate. The fall is, after all, just some days away. The summer falling, the summer ending, "Cau l'estiu" is the last opportunity for the kiddies and their families to enjoy the summer fun. It is a last opportunity at the command of Alcúdia town hall. Make the most of the last days of summer with activities for all the family. Until Monday, that is, when the teachers are on strike and the kids can go back to the beaches.

But if summer is falling for those of school age, what of the rest of us? Mid-September, and what remains of the summer season will gradually slip away. The death by a thousand cuts to the summer has already entered its terminal phase. I went to buy one of those refreshing lemon lolly-like things in a jolly paper cone wrapper at the local happy tourist supermarketette. I couldn't. The lolly was a victim of the cuts. Cut to stocks. Everything must go or not be re-ordered. Summer's falling.

As summer waves its goodbyes and morphs into autumn, the cuts will become deeper. Different stocks will be ordered: the brown paper, the whitewash, the binliners of facades to be obscured, covered or protected. And when the end does come, there is the wait, the long wait for regeneration and for the springtime re-emergence of the resorts with their distinctive styles and personalities but with changing casts of actors that each summer season brings. The resorts are like time lords. They remain the same being but alter their appearance each year, if only slightly. They are time lords constantly wishing to travel back in time to a golden age, neglecting the future. The Mallorcan two-season life cycle of life and death, of summer and winter, obscures the necessity for real regeneration, not pieces of cosmetic surgery that are applied when the beaches are empty, the hotels are closed and the binliners are wrapped around outdoor lights and pulled tight with metres of tape.

As with each end of summer, we will be plunged into the wintertime pastime of the blame game and the remedy game. With awful predictability, it comes around year after year. It is a game with the same familiar pieces on the board, forever being moved around in a circular motion and going nowhere. The unpalatable truth might just be that there is nowhere to go.

Yet, there is always hope, and with genuine regeneration there might be hope that summer will stretch itself, fore and aft. It is perhaps too much to hope that the bay of Alcúdia (or the smaller bay of Pollensa) could become a 365 nautical zone - there is the weather and there are sea conditions to consider after all - or a 365 any zone, but regeneration might, if only through some miracle of osmosis, spill from summer into winter.

Regeneration is a familiar theme for Mallorca's politicians. The tourist resorts will be regenerated. With the exception of two, and we know which ones they are because we are told often enough, regeneration exists only in the minds of these politicians. Indeed, it is hard to envisage what it might entail. A tourism zone such as Alcúdia's is crying out for regeneration, but what could it be and who would ever fund it?

One has to conclude that this regeneration will remain largely cosmetic and largely piecemeal. There is a strategy for the bay of Alcúdia - yes, there really is - but it is one which mainly comprises the proposed cycling lane plus some more trees and lights. And consider where we are at with this cycling lane. A grand strategy it may be, but strategies are best developed if you know what the tactics and operations are in advance. Currently, there is no decision as to who funds it and, more importantly perhaps as the money will be found, is the fact that any planned starting date has been put on hold because a technical report is awaited which will set out what the building requirements might actually entail. Anyone who knows the main road along the coast will be aware, as an example, that there is a bridge which crosses the Albufera canal. It is barely wide enough for two lanes of traffic let alone a cycle lane. 

Surely these building requirements could have been foreseen, as the bridge by no means represents the only challenge. It all seems cart before horse, but perhaps this is indicative of all talk of regeneration. There is some vague strategic notion but precious little practical consideration.

So, summer's falling, as every summer falls and will doubtless continue to fall. It will fall into October at the end of which the few remaining hints of there having been a summer will finally admit defeat. Winter will begin, as winter always begins, with a holiday and with the day of the dead. How terribly apt.