MALLORCA TODAY - Ex-mayor of Capdepera barred for eight years

As part of the sentencing related to the case of the Son Moll hotel in Cala Ratjada, which collapsed in December 2008 during building works, killing four workers, the mayor of Capdepera at the time, Bartomeu Alzina, has been barred from public office and employment for eight years and ordered to pay costs. The mayor was judged to have been guilty of abusing his position in not complying with licensing requirements for the building works. Others charged in the case have received custodial sentences to a maximum of two years.

This Is Where We All Fall Out

So the fallout from the fall - that of the workers at the Can Ramis redevelopment in Alcúdia. Must have been an added bonus for those attending the market - all that excitement, though admittedly not what might have been anticipated, least of all by those who have been injured. Anyway, the theories as to why the second storey of the structure collapsed include insufficient or weak support and excessive vibrations. The constructors say that the support was ok, but it would seem that concrete was being applied to the second level while the lower one was only of wooden beams. Of those working on the building, including the injured, the view is that there appeared not to be any problems. Whatever the situation, the mayor of Alcúdia, Miquel Ferrer, put his finger on it: "es evidente que alguna cosa no ha ido bien". It's this sort of insight that gets you into positions of authority in local politics. I suspect most of you can work this out for yourselves, but just in case you can't - "it's clear that something has not gone right" (or "was not right").

Of course something has not been right with the Can Ramis redevelopment for quite some while, like since it first started. Jinxed is perhaps a diplomatic way of putting it (and the word was used in a report in "The Diario"). That'll be jinxed as in bankruptcy, budgetary miscalculation and certification irregularities. This time last year, the building site had no structure on it and was not being worked on, and yet the surrounding area, the square, had been newly laid, taking up the budgeted amount with it; the town hall had, therefore, to find another million or so euros to hand to another firm to complete the whole project after the original one had gone bust - having spent the original budget. The whole thing was set in motion back in August 2006 and the time for the project to be completed was set at eleven months and three weeks, which sounds suspiciously close to being one year. But it wasn't completed either within eleven months and three weeks or one year.

There was some talk, quite recently, that the whole thing would be finished by July or August this year, so three years after the award of the project was made. Anyone who has seen the work in progress as it is, or was until it collapsed, would have doubted that this would be the case. Presumably it is even less likely now, and so we will have to wait a while longer to enjoy another tourist office, another café and somewhere to sit when waiting for a bus. However, there was some work going on yesterday, underneath the hole that has appeared in the second level. The sadness is that this whole project, the knocking down of the old Can Ramis houses and the creation of something new, was meant to be a prestigious development for Alcúdia but it has been a mess from more or less the word go.


FAT ALBERT ROTUNDA - THE ROUNDABOUT ART STUFF
The thing was that I was driving towards the roundabout coming from Can Picafort at about half four in the afternoon. What's that floodlight, I thought. As I got closer, I realised that the bright light was no floodlight, just the sun reflecting off of the Robert Smith, some say birds nest, some say God knows what. Maybe that's the idea. That the sun reflects. Artistically, the changing angle of the sun through the day and through the seasons, as bounced off the streamers of the what the hell is it would be a kind of performance of nature in art. The only problem is ... that reflection ... at certain angles ... as in right in your eyes, when you're driving. Twisted streamers of metal - the sun jumps off of them, vibrant, white, dazzling - deadly.

May I just thank John for drawing my attention to César Manrique and Lanzarote roundabout art. For those who don't know, just Google him and see for yourselves and the degree to which he, through his art and his thinking, influenced the tourism landscape (both physical and mental) of Lanzarote. Quite striking, it must be said. More so than Mallorca's, which is striking only in the sense of the reflection of the sun blinding you and your going up the arse of the driver ahead - not literally of course, but metaphorically and metallically.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Herbie Hancock. Today's title - this was not a previous title but I have youtubed it before. No apologies for repetition; this is so damned good, and they were so damned good live. Clue as before: Hergé. Oh and of course Matthew Parris caused a bit of a kerfuffle when he suggested that Tintin was gay.

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Fat Albert Rotunda

When the historians of bloggery come to assess the role of this blog in that bloggery world, they will point to certain themes that have been as faithful companions since the early days, crawling from the cradle of blogger.com to be unleashed onto a wholly unexpecting public. One such is and has been the roundabout. The roundabout as in - can you or I make any sense as to how one is meant to negotiate it by means of a four-wheeled vehicle? - or as in - can you or I make any sense of the stuff that grows from the centre of the roundabout? The roundabout furniture. The adornments of roundabouts. Ars rotonda. Rotonda profunda. The meaning of roundabouts. I have an idea for No Frills, and I shall be mentioning it to Seamus when I next leave him stranded at a meeting in the town hall - conducted in Catalan - and that is a tour of the island's roundabouts with accompanying DVD for the aficionado of the roundabout art, Die Kunst des Kreisverkehrs, to take home to his relevant country and amaze and indeed bore friends and family. I actually don't think it's as stupid an idea as it sounds. Mallorca seems to have given the world roundabout aesthetics, or maybe everywhere else offers similar artistic treasures, it's just that I don't get out much. The twisted metals and carved blocks of stone of traffic circulation management are facets of that Mallorcan culture of which we hear so much; they are a heritage to European art, Victoria & Albert museum pieces for a future Tate Modern roundabout design museum. Isn't the old power station in Alcúdia meant to be modelled on the Tate Modern and to be art as well as science? Roundabouts, and their creations, should form the centrepiece.

I once had an email from someone who was doing a school project who desperately needed to know who was responsible for the most hideous of local roundabout art - the Horse (some say chicken or prawn) - and for what Foxes' Jamie dubs "Linkin' Donuts", i.e. the Magic of the Magic roundabout - boing! I did actually know the answer, though I seem now to have mislaid the information, for which I apologise as you are probably all keen to know as well. The point was that the artistic merits of the local roundabout had found expression away from this island. To foreign lands has travelled news of the strange craft of the Mallorcan roundabout. And to all the most famous - the Horse, the rings, the cock of Pollensa, the Canadair of Puerto Pollensa, the basket of Inca - we must now add the "what the hell's that meant to be" in front of the Parc Natural hotel (depicted above). I call it - "Rotonda Flagellens" or "Glorieta Gloriole", the gloriole coming from the suggestion perhaps of the metal straps as kinds of halos. Or are they streamers? If the Magic sculpture is donuts, perhaps this one's a candy floss. Maybe it is an example of a local hairdresser's skill - birds-nested hair - a Robert Smith of the Albufera roundabout. That could be it - the Cure to the answer as to what it is - a birds nest. Don't be fooled, by the way, by the pole in the photo - that's a lamp-post and not part of the roundabout. In other words, it's a lousy photo. It could also be that the artwork is not finished, though I have a suspicion it is, in which case - what is it? Answers, as ever, to the address below. I quite like the Robert Smith Roundabout. It has a ring to it. But then most roundabouts are like rings, or have rings on them, like the linkin' donuts. I still feel though that, as roundabouts are built primarily as places for the traffic plod to hang about on, there should be a sculpture of a cop, arm raised with a "papeles" balloon coming from his mouth. Like a sort of Angel of the North. It would be the highlight of the Roundabout Tour, the day of doing the rounds of roundabouts, a circular excursion of art on the round traffic islands of the island. Well, I'd pay for it even if you wouldn't.

Note: the Spanish for roundabout can be "rotonda" or "glorieta".


THE CAN RAMIS ACCIDENT
The collapse of the second level of the building work at the Can Ramis redevelopment has left five workers injured, one seriously. The redevelopment, which will create a bus station, café and tourist office, has been plagued by delay and has now been hit by another problem. And this comes three months after the accident in Cala Ratjada when four workers were killed as the result of a hotel collapsing. More on this to come no doubt.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Lily Allen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-wGMlSuX_c). Today's title - should have looked for a connection with The Cure, given Robert Smith, but this was an album by which great jazz pianist?

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