Everything Is Upside Down

"Todo patas arriba". Everything's upside down. Or everything's in a mess. It is a legend that is splattered across the front cover of a magazine and over two photos of building work which is taking place on the streets of a resort in summer. This is a very interesting magazine. So interesting is it, that I am devoting much of this article to translating parts of articles from it. Let's start with the editorial leader.

"Never again. The situation, which is unfortunately shown on our cover, should not be repeated: the main streets, the most touristic, with work being done in July and August! Unbelievable. Unheard of. Our visitors cannot hide their amazement. How can this type of work be done during these months? Ah, Spain is different, my friends; you know that. We don't believe that this would happen in any other tourist country, least of all in Europe.

"We know the town hall's explanation. In winter, building companies are too busy to deal with our needs. You have to catch them when you can... But that's not our problem. It is one for the representatives we elected for four years, to make our lives better and to not mess up and cause significant damage to businesses."

On another page, there is an article with a headline which says that 1,300 million (pesetas) are to be spent on changing an image.

"(The deputy mayor) has explained to us that the town hall wishes to beautify the resort. 'We are aware of the need for an urgent change of image. We want to literally upholster the resort in green. Pavements with trees, benches, new lighting in an area where the "hooligan" currently sits. (One avenue) will be transformed into a true boulevard with fountains, benches, trees and plants.' "

The article's author is sceptical. All this is to be done within three years. "We'll see," he concludes questioningly. There will be municipal elections well before the three years are up.

There is also an interview with the local police officer who is responsible for the organisation of police resources. It is under the headline "Restructuring of the municipal police". The restructuring has come about, says the officer, in order to take account of specific needs in the municipality. There are four main priorities. These are the "venta ambulante" (looky-lookies), "tiqueteros" (PRs), night-time noise and public order at night as well as security on the beaches. The police on the beaches will be plainclothes cops. They will mingle with the holidaymakers and their mission will be to prevent the venta ambulante and any type of (unlicensed) service on the beach. The police hope that their presence will act in deterring these illegal activities. "Rather than a repressive action, it will be a preventative action."

Elsewhere, there is a short letter to the magazine which reads: "Friends and neighbours, as the new spokesperson for the neighbourhood association, I hope for the collaboration of all residents, working together as an association of friends in this time of crisis in order to cure all the ills in the area, to beautify and enrich it and enhance our local heritage".

Moving on from the contents of this magazine, it might be noted that on 8 May this year there was an item from a website in which the PSOE opposition criticised the start of building works in resorts during the tourist season. The opposition said that there was indignation among businesses and neighbours and concluded that the lack of planning by the Partido Popular was inconceivable when such work should be done in winter.

It might also be noted that a plan for resort beautification has now been drawn up and will include a true boulevard as part of a change of image. It might further be noted that beach security is such that there now has to be illumination of the beach, while it might also be noted that a newspaper recently ran a report into a territorial battle between tiqueteros. Total war, said the report.

By way of explanation of these notes, the PSOE opposition was criticising building work that had started in Magalluf, the true boulevard (finally) is included in the Meliá plan to make Magalluf up-market, the illuminated beach is that of Magalluf, the PRs' battle is around BCM Square.

Nothing really changes, does it. Nothing has really changed, has it. Even the odd name is the same. The name of the letter-writer from the neighbourhood association is José Tirado. I am guessing he is the same Pepe Tirado of the Acotur tourist businesses association. It is a guess as I can't be one hundred per cent certain. There again, it was all a very long time ago. The magazine I have quoted from was "Entre Tots". Its date? July-August 1989.

MALLORCA TODAY - Worries over Sóller's beach

Delays to work on the Paseo Marítimo (promenade) in Puerto Sóller are leading to concerns that a regeneration of the Través beach in the resort will not be finished in time for the coming tourism season. Work on the sea front in Puerto Sóller has been dogged by problems, such as those which arose last year over the re-routing of the tram.

On The Road Again: Road and building works

It will come as a surprise to you, I realise, but there are some things I don't know about. And there are some things that are so terminally dull that I have absolutely zero desire to find out about them. In the normal course of journalistic events, I might be prepared to research, but when it comes to the science of surfacing roads, I'm sorry but I'm going to have to disappoint you.

This said, I do seem to recall that when there was some disgruntlement with road surfacing occurring in Palma that wasn't taking place in winter, the argument went that the work needed to be done when the weather was warm, or indeed stinking hot. Is there some scientific sense to this argument? Quite possibly there is, and as I haven't a clue what I'm talking about when it comes to road surfacing I'm not about to say it's rubbish, except to wonder why some road surfacing is therefore done when it isn't stinking hot.

All this leads me, or would do, had I been able to get along the roads leading to them, to Alcanada and Barcarès in Alcúdia. I was able to get into the bustling heartland of Alcanada the other day, but only by taking a detour through the narrow and twisty lanes that pass for roads that aren't the main road, which was being resurfaced. Fortunately, Alcanada is that far off the beaten track that it has only one hotel and a couple of apartments complexes, which means only the occasional coach. Unfortunately, I encountered it. On the narrow and twisty lanes.

Despite recalling the it-must-be-hot-to-resurface-roads propaganda, it did occur to me to wonder why they were doing this just as the summer really hots up and more tourists arrive. I wondered the same thing when I found the road to Barcarès blocked by the huge leviathans that are road-resurfacing machines. Unlike Alcanada, there isn't really an alternative route, so I gave up. It can wait for another day, or year.

Much work in tourist areas is verboten during the tourist season, except, it would appear, road works. Building work is meant to cease. But it doesn't always cease. Special dispensation can be granted to extend it to mid-June. This was, for example, the town hall's fallback position in Puerto Pollensa when for a time it looked as though work on the church square and roads off might indeed stretch well into the season.

Now beyond mid-June, the poor people of Portocolom have discovered that building works, with the attendant noise and mess, are continuing. Despite being verboten, the town hall has seen fit to stop only one of some ten separate works.

Along the coast from Portocolom, in Porto Cristo they are about to prove that whereas putting things up in summer might be outlawed pulling them down isn't. The Balearics Supreme Court has decreed, in its infinite wisdom and once and for all, that the Riuet bridge must be demolished. As in, well, any time now. The "indignados" of Porto Cristo, many of its population, have had a day out to Palma in order to protest outside the court building. Demolition is a bridge too far. The bridge over the river why (now).

Demolishing the bridge now is about as absurd as having closed it for the summer. It was after all built in the first place in order to counter the traffic chaos in Porto Cristo, so now they've decided to add to it even further. One suspects that members of the Supreme Court have weekend holiday homes elsewhere, such as in Andratx or Soller, i.e. about as far from Porto Cristo as you can get in Mallorca.

Though knocking the bridge down now is plainly daft, I do have some sympathy for building things up in summer, so long of course as it's nowhere near my backyard. Suspending work for six months at a stretch seems like an incredibly inefficient thing to do, to say nothing of the complications it can cause in terms of employment and financing.

But the suspension of works encapsulates, as do road works in summer, the dilemma of tourist areas in Mallorca - that of attempting to reconcile tourism with the normal course of infrastructure development and construction. Tourists, quite naturally, have no wish to listen to drilling or to watch a bridge falling down, but much of this work is done because of tourism. It is the endless quandary; that of balancing the needs of the temporary visitor with the requirements of working towns. It is the latter that the tourist is perhaps too often unaware of; that where they stay are towns, just like the ones they live in.


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All Summer Long

The Balearic Government's environment minister has reversed the previous decision that permitted, for this season only, building works during part of the tourist season, namely up till the middle of June and throughout October. This reconsideration comes after concerns expressed by hoteliers and by tour operators, and indeed a hint as to legal action. These concerns centred, unsurprisingly, on the likelihood of tourists going elsewhere; there will have presumably been tourists who have already been affected, and the chances are that some might even have pursued the tour operators for some compensation if they had a disturbed stay.

The normal situation is that all building works in tourism areas are suspended during the official season - 1 May till end October - but this year, in recognition of difficulties faced by the construction industry, it had been agreed to relax this suspension. It was a relaxation that was always likely to cause a problem, and I would guess that the works in the heart of Puerto Pollensa and slap bang next to Hotel Daina might have been one of those that had been brought to the minister's attention. The reports on this from "The Diario" actually refer to work "durante el verano", which could be construed as meaning the whole summer. I'm not sure that this was ever envisaged, but perhaps it was, and so therefore not just into June and in October. Whatever the period of "relaxation", the unrest that it has caused could have been predicted, which does make one wonder why the decision was taken in the first place. The now new problem may be what builders do with workers they had employed.


Back to the roads. All the new crossing-points and the new roundabout along the carretera in Playa de Muro make driving very stop-start, and you can not only sense but also witness the impatience rising among drivers, especially as the heat of the afternoon takes its toll; another crossing, another load of tourists with lilos and baby buggies to allow across. It's hardly the tourists' fault. Except. So I stopped and waited while this lady made up her mind to cross or not, and when she did, she did so very slowly because she was in the middle of texting. There you have it, let me just hold this traffic up a bit while I compose "c u later". If it's an offence for drivers to text while driving, maybe the same should apply to pedestrians when crossing a road. Indeed, I was thinking, while going along the now not-pedestrianised coast road in Puerto Pollensa, that perhaps they got that all wrong, and maybe they should have made it a non-pedestrianised zone. No pedestrians. None of them. Verboten. That'd learn 'em. Go do your texting somewhere else.


Oh, and the great frozen haddock mystery. A cool bag, well wrapped and put in the suitcase. Just hope it doesn't un-freeze. The great smell of fish all holiday if not all summer long.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Elton John: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTJCnidpgfM. Today's title - well it won't be all summer long; this has been a title before but previously it was that lousy Kid Rock thing. From 1964, the far better song.

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The Big Chair

As threatened, a photo of the deckchair. It does have the look of much of the current vogue in restaurant and terrace furniture, the dark brown lacquered mock wicker style but squared and without the high backs. There again, restaurants tend not to have many deckchairs. The steel works of the sculpture do, though, make a decent enough stab at re-creating this contemporary furniture design, which does make me wonder if it hasn't actually been commissioned by a furniture manufacturer. Perhaps a sponsorship sign will be hung from it. After taking the photo, I was hailed from his shop by Nacho - the tabacs opposite the Burger King at Las Gav. He and his mother just referred to the deckchair as a "silla", i.e. chair, and I thought, ah, now they might know something about the birds nest roundabout (the photo of 11 March, Fat Albert Rotunda). And do you know what? They did. So, would you like to know what that sculpture really is? I can reveal that it is ... eels. Yep, a load of eels. Those twisted strips of metals are those things that repulse so many, my friends, and that is official. No tornadoes, no candy floss, no birds nests. But eels. Eels such as you get in Albufera and such as might be in fisherman's basket. As he pulls it up, all those eels writhing and wriggling. Now I know, now it starts to make sense. Eels. In Sa Pobla, the eel goes into the local speciality, the "espingada", which is a treat (allegedly) at Sant Antoni, but it (the eel) is very much representative of Albufera, and so there you have it. I say that it is representative, but for whom? Locals may know, but does anyone else? I very much doubt it. But for those of you who thought the sculpture was just a mess of bits of metal picked up in a scrap yard and thrown together, how could you have? Philistines.


I failed to mention yesterday that a further way in which Pollensa town hall is seeking to eliminate tourism is with the change to the building rules. I have referred before to the temporary lifting of restrictions, allowing work this year to continue until mid June and during October. What I hadn't appreciated was that, apparently, the Casinet works will be going on right through the summer. That'll be nice, won't it.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Sitting In The Park", Georgie Fame (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3nNB8D_A1k). Today's title - there was an album called "songs from the big chair", and it was by ... ? Only just had them.

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It's Fun To Stay At

Put your hard hats on, chaps. And not just those of you who will be working on building sites into June and throughout October. Oh no, protect yourselves from the falling masonry of indignation in Puerto Pollensa; from the bricks and mortar of outrage; from the scaffolding of it's not what it used to be. Ah, the sweet sound of a Kango drill drifting across the prom-prom-prom-tiddley-om-pom-pom; the hammering of summer lawns; the summer breeze of brick dust and cement. Well, there you go, and just think yourself lucky that building work will stop in the middle of June and not resume until the first of October.

These are exciting times if you happen to be in Puerto Pollensa. Celebration of abnormal seasonal construction coincides with the re-opening of the great construction success that is/was the public swimming-pool. There was duly a "fiesta" to mark the occasion yesterday and which continues today. I wonder if there will be another one when it gets closed down - again. Rather curiously, given that we are at the start of March, there has been a poster doing the rounds which shows children happily engaged in water activities in what, unless I am very much mistaken, appears to be summertime - and in the open. Maybe they've decided to do away with the roof altogether.

And next weekend there will be something else to celebrate, though this will involve going to the old town. The hunters' fair descends on Pollensa for its ninth annual occurrence. Huntin', shootin' and fishin'. I can well imagine that there are, among the ranks of the Pollensa be-expated, those with an inclination to donning Barbours and flat caps, to looking like Prince Edward and to blowing small animals to smithereens. One trusts that they might not do so on the streets of Pollensa; indeed one might hope that they would give the whole gig a wide berth as the hunting class of Mallorca is not a class thing - it is very much more egalitarian.

The hunters' fair takes place in different towns each year. Last year's event was in Campos and it was in Alcúdia in, I think, 2005. According to reports, some 60,000 people turned up in Campos last year, so it is a little odd that they are forecasting only a third of that number to put in an appearance in Pollensa. Still, 20,000 is a fair number, and there will be restaurants offering hunting-based cuisine in the feeding of the 20,000 which will presumably do very well thank you. Not sure what this hunting-based food is as pretty much anything involving dead animals could, I suppose, be described as having been hunted. Perhaps you get to pick the shot out or something, so that you know it has been authentically blasted. Restaurants and other businesses that might gain from the weekend's festivities can thank the Council of Mallorca. A hundred and twenty grand is what it pays for this shindig.


Following on from the news that tourism in January was up by nearly 6% comes the perhaps even more surprising revelation that tourism spend for that month was up by almost 25 per cent. Unclear though it is as to how these figures are derived, a leap of this magnitude goes against all other current economic indicators. Polish and Hungarian pensioners can't be responsible, one would have to assume. It is largely all down to German tourists, despite Germany having to contend with similar economic woes to everyone else. Maybe there is something in that cash boom after all, even if it is island-wide as opposed to just Pollensa. Or maybe it is just one of those rather inexplicable blips. But if it were to be a blip that were to continue, I don't know that there would be many complaining. That said, this February, according to one restaurant owner in Puerto Alcúdia, was the worst he had known. However, one owner does not represent a whole resort.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Musical Youth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFtLONl4cNc). Today's title - well various I imagine if there is still building work going on, and what other relevance does this have today (in the first line for example)?

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Can The Can

For an island that is literally built on construction (in addition to tourism), there is not always a glowing record in respect of public works. The Palma metro fiasco is perhaps the most prominent, but Alcúdia has also experienced its own little local difficulty.

The Can Ramis redevelopment was meant to have been something of a signature transformation, a statement of local, municipal pride. There were glossy brochures of what was to come - a new bus terminal, a new office for tourist information, a café (always a café). Well, they all might still yet come. But at present, all there is to show for the demolition of the old Can Ramis houses by the market square is a rather nice new pedestrianised "plaza" area and a building site, a building site which, apart from the presence of a couple of guys from Telefonica this morning, was singularly conspicuous by its lack of activity. This is not suspension-of-works-because-of-the-tourist-season lack of activity, this is lack of activity through ... well, through what exactly?

There is a fine old rumpus going on as a consequence of the way-behind-time re-development. From what I can make out from the local Spanish press and from what I've been told, the town hall had parted with a goodly amount of the final budget for the works, albeit that the Council of Mallorca is stumping up much of the ante. The money had gone to the builders, Crespi, a local firm and a not insignificant employer. Except they may no longer be. I was told, with a degree of certainty, that the company had gone bust, but the press reports of what is coming out of the town hall seem to infer these are rumours. I would have thought the town hall might have been keen to establish if there were real grounds to these rumours, given that the bulk of the 1.5 million euros had already been paid.

Needless to say, the opposition political party, the Partido Popular, blames the coalition of nationalists and socialists in the town hall. And there does at least seem to be some acceptance that the original budget was wrong. Wherever the responsibility lies for the mess that is Can Ramis, the fact is that it can't just be left as a building site. The mayor, while reminding everyone that the new plaza allows for an improved flow of tourists to the market each Tuesday and Sunday, admits that the works have to be finished and cannot be a building site all season. Well, it's going to be a building site all this season, that's for sure. As can be seen from the photo, there is nothing there at all. On closer inspection, there are some foundations but that's about it.

Still, I guess it's like this anywhere. At least, they are not building an Olympic village or Olympic stadia or any things as daft as those. Now there's real public works balls-up in the making.


QUIZ
Yesterday was Steppenwolf who took their name from which author? And because I still quite like the title as questions as well, who did today's title?

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And We’ll Walk Down The Avenue Again

And back to what I was saying about building work that needs to be done during the winter. It is the turn of another part of Puerto Alcúdia this winter – the part along the main road coming from the port as far as the Palm Garden apartments, sometimes known as the Avenida Reina Sofia. The work being carried out is intended to “beautify” this strip, the inside road being paved over to make way for a tree-lined avenue. Well it’s something, though it will not remove the generally ordinary-looking units that exist there. Along this stretch, the beach side holds more charm – the Carabelas, the Viva hotel, a couple of shops, a bank and one restaurant (Don Vito). Opposite there is a mish-mash, the units below the admittedly pleasing pastel walls of the Alcúdia Garden being unremarkable at best, though the new pizzeria looks ok. But there again, they are typical of many a resort, even Puerto Pollensa has a row of less than attractive units on one part of its frontline. There is not much that can be done about these: functionality has dominated over aesthetics.

But the facelift reminds us that things can be done to raise the general level of attractiveness. Compare what is being undertaken in Puerto Alcúdia to the strip I have referred to in Playa de Muro, which also suffers from a number of empty units – something that is not a problem in Puerto Alcúdia. If the Mallorca council can stump up a million euros for the Alcúdia makeover, then perhaps Muro town hall could go with its begging-bowl and seek some similar facelift.

Making the Avenida Reina Sofia “prettier” should benefit everyone, though perhaps the ultimate benefit would be derived from pedestrianising the main road, something I assume is not happening (the bus stops for example will remain where they are) and is unlikely to happen.


QUIZ
Yesterday – Captain Beefheart (and The Magic Band). Today’s title – huge artist, northern Irish.

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