Aragon's Solution For Tourist Apartments

Aragon is a strange region of Spain. Historically, it vies with Castile in terms of importance. It was the fifteenth-century marriage between Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile which brought about a union that created something approximating to a Spanish state, though it was to be over two hundred years before a truly centralised Spain was formed, and one that was formed at Aragon's expense.

This was a land that once upon a time had its own kingdom and more importantly crown. It was the Crown of Aragon under which Catalan-speaking regions - Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearics - were joined. It was a crown that was dismantled as a consequence of the War of the Spanish Succession and of the formation of a centralised and Castellano-speaking Spain.

Mallorca has a strong association with Aragon. It was Jaume I of Aragon who liberated Mallorca and the Balearics from their Islamic occupiers and Jaume who introduced Catalan to the islands. Yet despite its history, Aragon lacks things that Catalonia and the Balearics have. Politically and socially, there is not a strong Catalanism. Indeed there is only the one official language - Castellano - though there is a growing awareness of the Aragonese dialect. Economically, there is not a reliance on tourism. Aragon isn't terribly well known and it doesn't have a coastline.

Aragon is the fourth largest region of Spain but its population isn't vastly greater than that of the Balearics. It is a region dominated in its north and south by mountains. In its centre there is a semi-desert area. It was here that the Gran Scala, a tourism complex of hotels, casinos, theme parks and golf courses, was due to have been built. It won't be. In truth, it was probably never viable.

Gran Scala would, though, have placed Aragon on a tourism map in a way that it otherwise isn't. In its absence, the regional government set about initiating a plan for tourism earlier this year, one with the goal of forging a distinct identity and brand and with the intention of putting in place regulations for accommodation. Hotels, many of them in ski resorts, are one main aspect of this. The other is tourist apartments, otherwise known as holiday lets.

From a tourism point of view, Aragon is in no way comparable to Mallorca and the Balearics, but it shares one thing in common - a requirement to regulate the use of private accommodation for tourist use.

The legal reform by national government by which responsibility for regulation was farmed out to the regions was peculiar in one particular way. Nationally, residential tourism is considered to be a strength (it says so in the government's tourism plan). But Madrid was in an awkward position. It could not pass a law applicable nationwide because it knew full well that the strength it spoke of under the national plan drawn up a year before would have been compromised had it simply complied with the demands of the strongest hotel lobby groups, most obviously the one in the Balearics.

Instead, it placed regulatory onus on the regions, no doubt aware that some regions would institute legislation which did indeed compromise this "strength". The Balearics had already done so. Other regions, without similar laws to the Balearics, are now catching up, and one of them is Aragon.

The mere mention of "regulation" may be taken as implying a tightening-up and a restriction. But it doesn't have to. Tightening-up has occurred, as in Catalonia, in respect of standards, but regulation has meant permission not prohibition. Aragon's own law that regulates tourist apartments was passed on 22 October. It is a comprehensive piece of legislation but it is not overly proscriptive. Indeed, what it does is to establish four categories of apartment with specific requirements that have to be registered with the regional tourism ministry. And importantly, the Aragon law outlines minimum services that these apartments must have. This is important because, by comparison with the Balearics, as soon as services are offered here a private tourist apartment becomes in effect illegal.

It has been noted in a report by La Caixa bank that the level of tourist stays in unregulated apartments in Aragon is almost three times as great as those in regulated accommodation. The importance of these tourist apartments is therefore undeniable. And the Aragon government has recognised this importance.

Aragon is very different to Mallorca and so it has adopted regulation very different to Mallorca's. But it is regulation which goes to reinforce the incoherence and confusion that national government has brought about. Residential tourism is a strength but only if a particular region agrees that it is.

Vandalism: Mallorca is neither Spanish nor Catalan

The history of Mallorca and its association with Catalonia has led us to today's obsession with which language should prevail and to vague notions of Mallorca as part of an independent Catalan Lands. Will Besga in "The Bulletin" (16 September) set out a case for debunking the notion of Catalonian nationalism. I'd like to go further and consider this nationalism within a Mallorcan context.

Will's article dismissed, quite rightly, the belief that there was ever any such thing as a Catalonian kingdom in the early Middle Ages. What there was, was a Count of Barcelona (Ramon Berenguer and successors) and this "crown" (it was granted principality status) was brought through marriage into the orbit of the kingdom which did exist, that of Aragon. It was Jaume of Aragon who gave Mallorca its Catalan history through virtue of his conquest of 1229.

One has to go back much further than this, however, to appreciate fully what Jaume's conquest represented. Mallorca had, prior to this conquest, little connection with mainland Iberia. When Mallorca was occupied by Islamic forces in the tenth century, it had been ruled not by a mainland authority but from Sardinia as part of the Byzantine Empire which otherwise had its hands on only limited territory in southern Iberia. But further back than this, the removal of the Romans in the fifth century had been marked by a division in invading forces. On the mainland, it was the Visigoths who took over parts of southern France, most of modern Spain (including Catalonia) and Portugal. In Mallorca it was the Vandals. They were two distinct tribes, but the distinction is important as it means that, except loosely in Roman times, there hadn't been an historical link between Mallorca and Iberia before Jaume appeared.

The story of 1229 and all that has something of the myth to it. Often styled as a "re-conquest", it wasn't. It was a conquest as there was nothing to actually re-conquer other than to eliminate the Arab occupation. The re-conquest to regain the Visigothic kingdom had been going on for five centuries. Jaume's invasion was  partly in response to this ongoing re-conquest, by then largely driven by the dominant kingdom of Castile, and to his own ambitions to expand the kingdom of Aragon to include Mallorca.

Aragon itself had become home to the Franks of Charlemagne who had moved southwards in the ninth century in helping to drive back the Arabs. As such, therefore, a separate people within Iberia had been created in Aragon and surrounding areas, a cross between Frank and Visigoth.

The Kingdom of Aragon became the Crown of Aragon and embraced not just Aragon but also Mallorca, Valencia and Catalonia. Though part of this Aragonese federation, Catalonia had its own legal and administrative systems even after the union through marriage of the Count of Barcelona in the first half of the twelfth century. One reason why was that in Catalonia they spoke a different language to the people of Aragon.

The Crown of Aragon survived the marriage between Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile in the fifteenth century which ostensibly created a unified Spain. But there was no dismantling of legal and administrative systems. This only occurred in the eighteenth century when Philip V abolished the Crown of Aragon, did away with Catalan institutions and prohibited the official use of the Catalan language.

While the Catalonia of today has ambitions for independence and nationalism that are based on somewhat questionable foundations, what of Mallorca? Sympathy for Catalan, Catalonian nationalism or indeed independence for the Catalan Lands stems entirely from the invader Jaume who introduced the Catalan language despite being king of a land whose people spoke a variant of Catalan; just like the Mallorcans do themselves. This linguistic confusion is similar to that of the confusion caused by the manifestation of Catalan sympathy which hangs outside some public buildings - the senyera. This was originally the flag of the kings of Aragon; Catalonia borrowed it. 

Mallorca's historical association is with Aragon and not Catalonia, and even then it is partly through confused linguistics and certainly not through common tribal origins. What cannot be disputed, though, is the absence of an historical "Spanish" connection. Mallorca was not a part of the post-Roman Visigothic kingdom. It only came into a "Spanish" orbit because of an Aragonese king. But it might not have been had events turned out differently.

Over a hundred years before Jaume, an attempt was made to drive the Arabs out. The invasion force was led by Pisa in Italy, but it comprised Catalans from Catalonia, the first time such people and such a land had been identified in historical sources. If it had succeeded, Mallorca might now be Italian, or perhaps its Catalonian association might be that much more legitimate.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.