MALLORCA TODAY - Pollensa mayor rejects illegal building work claim

Pollensa's mayor Tomeu Cifre has rejected a complaint filed by opposition parties that work being carried out on a house which he owns in the Calle Colom in Pollensa violates licensing requirements and restrictions on building work in the summer. (Calle Colom is the one that leads from the Plaça Mayor past the Colonya bank.)

See more: Ultima Hora

It Was The Month Of June

Pollensa town hall is consulting over the possibility of allowing building work to take place in tourist areas up to the middle of June and during October. Normally, work would be suspended at the end of April and then restarted in November. The reason for doing so is obvious: tourists don't want to listen to the sound of builders shouting "oi, luv, phwor" (or the local equivalent thereof) or to have to put up with the sight of builder's arse. Well, tourists may have to lump it for some of the season in Puerto Pollensa. Much as it is unwanted by tourists, there is sense in allowing some extension of building work. The six-month hiatus that exists at present not only delays projects, it is also a nonsense in terms of the credit that is issued for most building work to occur. There would still be a break of three and a half months under what would be a temporary measure owing to the current economic circumstances, but it would certainly be of help to the construction companies and it would also help to alleviate unemployment. The question would be which works would be allowed to continue. If this measure is agreed to, however, it is going to cause an almighty great rumpus where less-than-happy tourists are concerned. But it all comes back to how one reconciles tourism and everyday life of towns such as Pollensa. With difficulty is the answer.

I would like to know, though, why was at least one apartment block in the centre of Puerto Pollensa being worked on in August last year? I mentioned it at the time, and I'm still none the wiser. Oh, and words in the previous paragraph - "Pollensa town hall", "consulting". These have not always occurred in the same sentence, but now they do.

The typical six-month season looks as though it is losing one of those six months - in Can Picafort at any rate. I happened to be there yesterday, and in the warm sun and under cloudless skies, one could feel that not only was spring here but everything was rosy: Germans a-plenty, it seemed to me, taking the airs, annexing Son Bauló and marching on Café Paris. Well, not so rosy of course, and I was told that there is talk of hotels only opening for five months. As always one needs to be careful. These stories get bandied about and take on a life of their own. Does "hotels" actually mean one hotel, or indeed any?


Coming back to that junket whereby all those mayors, government representatives and various hangers-on pitched up in Brussels to plead for some more dosh and for a reconsideration of the directive on fireworks, how much do you reckon it all cost? Well, now we know.

"The Diario" gives the figure as 184,543 euros, made up of airline charter and other journeys, accommodation, an exhibition and a display of fire-running. A government official reckons that given the various meetings it was cost-effective There were some 17 meetings in all. What about I don't know. But the question remains - why did all these people have to go to Brussels? You do not need 40 mayors, for example. You don't really need 40 mayors in Mallorca, let alone 40 of the buggers swanning around the Belgian capital. I find it hard to believe that it was cost-effective. And I still find it hard to understand why this trip has not attracted widespread criticism - especially in these currently cash-strapped times.


One of those occasional personal moments, though not completely as there will be those of you who also know Juan from Restaurant Boy in Playa de Muro and Coloma. Well there is a new addition to the Boy world - a boy. Juan's father is called Juan, and Juan's son is ... what do you think? Congratulations to all the Juans.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Sweet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3XGjnQgsJA). Today's title - a line from something about being passed from the left-hand side: who?

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

Index for February 2009
Alcúdia hotels - 1 February 2009
Bars - 2 February 2009, 26 February 2009
Beaches - 4 February 2009
Building work - 28 February 2009
Butane gas - 17 February 2009
Cave of Sant Marti - 27 February 2009
Cultural tourism - 22 February 2009
Cycling - 8 February 2009, 10 February 2009
Driving - 12 February 2009
Dunes - 27 February 2009
Ensaimada - 16 February 2009
Estaciones Náuticas - 14 February 2009, 19 February 2009
Expatriates - 16 February 2009
Export - 11 February 2009
Fire runs - 7 February 2009, 9 February 2009, 20 February 2009, 21 February 2009
Funding for the Balearics - 20 February 2009, 21 February 2009
Golf - 3 February 2009
Holiday lets - 3 February 2009
Hospitals - 5 February 2009
JK's Bar - 26 February 2009
Jolly Roger - 16 February 2009
Justice minister - 24 February 2009
Language - 2 February 2009
Market surveys - 22 February 2009
Mayors - 20 February 2009
Military bases - 25 February 2009
Moorings, Playa de Muro - 23 February 2009
Names - 2 February 2009, 6 February 2009
Nordic walking - 15 February 2009, 17 February 2009
Puerto Pollensa building work - 28 February 2009
Puerto Pollensa popularity - 18 February 2009
Puerto Pollensa's boat workshops - 20 February 2009
Puerto Pollensa's swimming pool - 9 February 2009
Real Mallorca - 27 February 2009
Restaurants - 5 February 2009
Roundabouts - 4 February 2009, 10 February 2009, 12 February 2009, 23 February 2009
Sa Pobla-to-Alcúdia railway - 13 February 2009, 14 February 2009
Thomson - 18 February 2009
Top Gear - 5 February 2009, 7 February 2009, 12 February 2009, 21 February 2009
Tour of Mallorca - 8 February 2009
Tour operators - 18 February 2009
Vandalism - 27 February 2009
Water sports centre, Alcúdia as a - 14 February 2009, 19 February 2009
Websites - 22 February 2009
Wing mirrors - 10 February 2009
Winter tourism - 1 February 2009, 25 February 2009, 26 February 2009

Yellow Is The Colour

We build in Spain since 1958. This is still one of my favourite pieces of grammatical deconstruction. And what do we, or they, build in Spain? They build the Taylor Woodrow “Pollentia”, a curious title of Roman allusion separated from its actual site and town by some seven kilometres and from all historical context by its symmetrical quadratic apartment shapes formed from a colour that shifts with the sunlight and clouds from grey to silver to white. In isolation, it is not unattractive – that part of it close to completion that is. Placed in a futuristic or now contemporary Metropolis, it would be just one apartment block of steel and non-colorific neutrality. In Puerto Pollensa, it is a further clash of competing shouts of modernity that are being echoed around the town and most notably along one street – Metge Llopis. The street itself is becoming a cluttered selection of flat-living, a set of galleries for advanced-architecture showrooms determined to strip out the soul and demonstrate how most to deal with limited space and advance the balances of developers.

Take one street, and it is an advert for towns such as Puerto Pollensa as now conceived. This advert is, in part, a function of architectural updating, the shiny new beast of we build in Spain conflicting with the utilitarian drabness of apartment facades opposite. In part, it is a counterpoint to the realities of economic life separate from the cupidity of the construction industry: the emptiness of the old Golo Golo aka Valnou store, the conversion of the one-time Olivers Restaurant from what was Lee’s grandiosity and Mick’s improbability into some sort of centre for old people. And then further down the road, the locked-up Jack Frost British supermarket for rent for months, or is it years, the never-worked Kudos aka La Bara up for sale, and on a corner another expression of newness, yet more apartments without colour.

Underlying this is the inevitable organic change of any community – of failure and bright new optimism. Yet the optimistic lack of colour, shielding the new anonymity of residential life, is suffused with its very absence of vibrancy, both ocular and atmospheric. It is habitation-chic without the charm that one has come to associate with Puerto Pollensa. The white and silver fascism is the new grey, or maybe it is also grey, it just depends how the light falls. But wherever on the neutral end of the spectrum, absent are the yellows, oranges or terracottas that hold the warmth of sunlight and can be found elsewhere. New Pollentia, Puerto Pollensa New Town.


QUIZ
Yesterday – Unit Four Plus Two. Today’s title – who?

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

Rip It Up And Start Again

Something that is overlooked in the whole debate about winter tourism is the level of building that occurs in the off-season. For most of the summer season there is a moratorium on much building work in tourist areas, for which read much of the island. This building - be it of dwellings, offices, public places etc. - occurs mainly in the off-season months, i.e. through the winter. This is building to meet the demand of a growing economy. And then there is other construction and civil engineering that has to take place out of season to upgrade an infrastructure that is still lacking in some respects. Over recent years, the centres of Can Picafort, Puerto Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa have all been ripped up - in the case of Puerto Pollensa every year, it would seem. The work has been vital in improving the likes of drainage and sewage. More is needed if the money is ever forthcoming to facilitate it - like tackling the shambolic state of some of Puerto Pollensa’s roads.

Were there to be a far greater level of winter tourism, this work would either not go ahead or, more likely, co-exist alongside a tourist influx that would have to lump the fact of building work, something hardly conducive to a positive tourist experience.

Hotels also use the off-season for building. Whilst by no means all hotels are worked on over the winter, there is a good deal that does go on. One might legitimately argue why there needs to be so much work, and I confess it is something that baffles me, unless that is some hotels were not up to standard in the first place. There again, some hotels are quite old, and some must take a hell of a pummelling in summer - just one indication, I have remarked before on the piles of old and new mattresses that are a common sight outside hotels as part of their refurb. I have also remarked on how the likes of Iberostar seem to be engaged in a process of continuous improvement - the guts of the hotels being ripped out and renewed. Moreover, there is a drive to upgrade the general hotel stock. TUI Germany is wanting 4-star facilities as a norm. For TUI Germany, read also TUI UK, in other words Thomson and now also First Choice. TUI is also keen that hotels can boast eco-friendliness as part of its marketing, whatever that means, though presumably it would require at least some alteration work. Add to this, there is the fact that some hotels may well face the need to do some reconstruction under the coast-regeneration initiative; some terraces and pools would have to be demolished and re-sited.

One hears talk of how things used to be, of glory days when apparently the streets of Mallorca were thronged with winter tourists. Yes, there was a time when there more, a time before the competition of other destinations got in the way. Again it might be argued though that these greater numbers were catered for adequately enough. But perhaps that was a time when the tourist was a less discerning consumer, a time also when tour operators and indeed politicians were less discerning. For the time being, tectonics and tarmac dominate winter, and not the tourist.


QUIZ
Yesterday - The Beatles, “Back In The USSR”. Today’s title - song by a Scottish group.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)