The Cove That Isn't: Cala San Vicente

Roughly halfway along the road between Pollensa and Puerto Pollensa (very roughly, because it's nearer to Pollensa) is the turn-off for Cala San Vicente (aka Cala Sant Vicenç). It's an intriguing place, not least because its name suggests that there should be a cove named San Vicente when there is not. It's essentially four coves, none of them with any hint of a Saint Vince. So what's with the name? It comes from the name of the estate - the "possessión" - which was listed among all the various estates to be divided up among the supporters of Jaume I following his thirteenth century conquest of Mallorca.

It is suggested that the name goes back a great deal further, so it may or may not have something to do with Vincent the Martyr, who came to an appalling end at the hands of Diocletian, as did most other Christians who had the misfortune to have encountered the one-time Roman Emperor. Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be a particularly good explanation as to how the name came about, although it is known that the cult of Vincent was present (at least on the mainland and especially in Valencia) during the centuries of the Muslims.

The name aside, and coming to the present, Cala San Vicente is intriguing for the way in which as a resort, and only a tiny one, it was allowed to embrace such striking differences of touristic existence. It was for this reason that I once wrote about it as being a place that didn't really add up. More or less shoulder to shoulder was early Mallorcan all-inclusive invasion (the Don Pedro) and a genteel style of tourism with vague echoes of the Raj.

This had been impressed upon me, and we're talking some years ago now, when I'd wandered into the reception of the Moraleja. An English gentleman of advanced years, a copy of "The Telegraph" in his hands, was sitting in a straight-backed, pink-patterned chair. "It's paradise," he suggested. "Like your own home. Your own villa." I nodded. Not having my own villa I was uncertain of my reply, but I took his word for it and bade him farewell, leaving him to the silence save for the birdsong and the breeze rustling the bracts of the bougainvillaea and the sheets of an English broadsheet.

The collision in touristic styles seemed something to celebrate rather than denigrate, if only because of the weird juxtaposition, something that was further accentuated when they started putting up residential new builds, the creations of the architectural apostles of the post-Modernist Lego box style replete with grey and neutral non-colours and a conspicuous insistence on aluminium. This is not unpleasing architecture, but it does rather depend on context. Cala San Vicente had seem unprepared for it.

Denigration, such as it was, once came from Matt Rudd in "The Sunday Times". Confessing to be a "holiday snob", Rudd had been singularly unimpressed, having been pointed in the direction of CSV by a "gnarly finger" in an unnamed other resort. While it is true, or at least someone told me so, that flabby men wearing only their underpants could wander on to the streets from the Don Pedro (this was, I would say again, some years ago), to castigate the whole of the Cala seemed mightily unfair. What had last days of Empire in the Moraleja said? Paradise?

What else is there to intrigue? The caves of course. The Alzinaret caves and necropolis of Bronze Age prehistory. And there's the horse of course. The horse promontory, the Cavall Bernat cliffs, stretching away from Cala Molins. Want to know something about these that you might not know? The name seems obvious enough - Bernat's horse - yet it is said to be a corruption of an earlier appellation: "carall armat". In Spanish this would be "carajo armado". Look it up because sensitivity suggests I should not elucidate, but put it this way, it has to do with phallic form.

Call it what you wish, the promontory has been an inspiration for many, not least the painters of the early twentieth century who were to capture the Tramuntana and its coastline and who were to be the progenitors of an art culture in the Cala. Those painters offer a separate and intriguing story. In 1916 the writer Pedro Ferrer Gibert coined the term the "Pollensa school" for what was a "Mecca for artists". Ferrer wrote about the painters in Cala San Vicente. They stayed in what was then an improvised pension - Can Niu.

They're holding their fiestas in Cala San Vicente this weekend. They don't make a lot of fuss about the fiestas. Keep them rather quiet you might almost say. Which seems to befit the Cala. Except that at midnight they'll be setting off fireworks, arousing Bernat's horse with cascades like the colours of vermilion cast on its ancient rock face that intrigued the painters of a century ago.

Photos Of Pollensa: Guillem Bestard

There is a black-and-white photo of Cala San Vicente rock and cliff formations that dates back to 1930. The photo was part of a series that the national tourism directorate commissioned between 1928 and 1936 and which is called the "Catálogo Monumental de España". The catalogue comprises 3,861 photographs of different places in Spain, all of them related to tourism. It, in turn, forms part of the national tourism patronage series - a colossal archive of posters, brochures, leaflets and photos. It has over 80,000 photos in all.

The Cala San Vicente photo is notable as much for its quality as it is for the name of the photographer. No photographic record of Cala San Vicente, of Pollensa, of Mallorca would be complete without works by Guillem Bestard. Find an old photo of Pollensa, Alcúdia, Sa Pobla, and the chances are that Bestard's name will be on it. He didn't confine himself to Pollensa and the surrounding area - he photographed the whole of the island - but he specialised in Pollensa, and his name is intrinsically linked to the town, and in more ways than you might imagine.

Guillem, or Guillermo if you prefer, got the photography bug when a German painter turned up in Pollensa in 1898. He was seventeen years old at the time. The Bestard family home was also an inn, and this painter was one of its guests. He introduced Guillem to the camera, and an astonishing legacy was about to be created.

His success as a photographer was not confined to taking photos of landscapes, of fishing villages and towns - ones with which many of you may well be familiar. He also did photographic portraits. The Infanta Isabel was one of his subjects in 1913. Two years before, he had photographed Antoni Maura, the Mallorcan who was prime minister of Spain on several occasions. Barely ten years after having picked up a camera, he received the gold medal for artistic photography at the international exhibition in Paris of 1910. Two years later, he received another international award in Paris and a couple more besides - in Brussels and Barcelona. He also photographed ordinary people. The Bestard archive is an indispensable record of Mallorca at the turn of the twentieth century and was, through successors, to become a record of the island until 2006.

Important though Bestard was, his photographic work was largely overlooked when it came to the promotion of Mallorca in the early years of the last century. Indeed, photography was generally not used; paintings were instead. But paintings, or rather painters - and it is here that the Bestard story begins to broaden - were to prove to be as much a part of the making of Bestard as his photographs.

In the 6 September, 1913 edition of the Mallorcan "La Almudaina" newspaper, there was an article entitled "Illustrious painters, today's guests in Mallorca". The article was subtitled "The Mecca for artists". The writer of the article was Pedro Ferrer Gibert. Three years later, it was he who was to coin the term "the Pollensa school", something which didn't physically exist but which was founded as an artistic movement around the time that the article appeared. (1914 is usually taken as the starting-point.)

Ferrer had taken himself off to Cala San Vicente, to the improvised Can Niu pension that was home to several of these "guests". He was accompanied by two painters - Antoni Gelabert and José Singala - and by a photographer, Guillem Bestard. There is a photo of these painters, fifteen of them in all. They are all smartly dressed. Had they put on their best bib 'n' tucker for Bestard's photo in the newspaper? Quite possibly. Though it isn't certain that this was a photo taken at that time, one presumes that it was.

Bestard was thus drawn into this artistic movement, one of which one can say, with no exaggeration, that it was fundamental in informing the world about Mallorca and in revealing to the world the magnificence of the island: the "island of calm", as one of these painters, Santiago Rusiñol, dubbed it.

His fame and reputation spread. Though photography might not have been used by the Mallorca Tourist Board at that time, his work still reached a wide audience. It was published in the Madrid daily "El Sol" but more significantly in "National Geographic", which proves that Bestard's role in the early years of promoting Mallorca's tourism, generally ignored, was of considerable importance.

In Pollensa, he became a pillar of local society. He co-founded the cultural Club Pollença in 1913 and became a director of the Colonya co-operative bank. He was, therefore, a close associate of Guillem Cifre de Colonya, someone with whom he shared liberal ideas. These ideas led him to leave Mallorca during the Civil War. He was later to return, but he lived primarily in London, where he died in 1969.

The HOTguide for Alcúdia and Pollensa 2014

Already posted on The Hotguide blog (http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/), for double coverage, a note here as well that the summer 2014 HOTguide for the north of Mallorca is available as a PDF for free download. The online version is compressed, so the quality is not the same as with the original, but is still, hopefully, good. Go to: http://www.scribd.com/doc/225093704/The-HOTguide-Alcudia-and-Pollensa-2014

MALLORCA TODAY - Regional government to appeal Cala Carbó compensation

The Balearic Government will lodge an appeal against the decision of the Balearic High Court to order payment of 22.5 million euros compensation to landowners in Cala Carbó (Cala San Vicente), resulting from a 2008 reclassification of land that prevented development.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - Cala Carbó owners will get lower compensation than demanded

The Balearics High Court has set a figure of 22.5 million euros as compensation to owners in Cala Carbó (Cala San Vicente) who were unable to develop land once a law of 2008 was introduced. 29 million had been demanded.

The High Court has thrown out a claim for compensation of 107 million euros by the company Ullal Parc Natural Apartaments S.L. which had been laid because the company believed that under land plans in Pollensa the development in Cala Carbó would switch to the area of Ullal in Puerto Pollensa.

See more: ARA Balears

MALLORCA TODAY - Cala Molins apartments are legal

A judge has declared that building permits issued by Pollensa town hall for apartments by Cala Molins in Cala San Vicente were legal. A challenge to the permits and the building has existed ever since - one which argued that the licences had been issued too quickly and without all procedures having been adhered to. The judge's decision brings the challenge to a close.

See more: Ultima Hora

Mad Dogs And Pollensa Town Hall

Has Pollensa town hall taken leave of its senses? Its decision to designate two beaches in the town - Llenaire in Puerto Pollensa and Cala Carbó in Cala San Vicente - as beaches where pets (i.e. dogs) can be taken is idiotic. The scheme is due to take effect from next season, but the outcry against the decision has already started and is likely to grow louder.

Something needs to be made clear, because the subject of dogs can raise emotions and irrational reactions. Placing restrictions on dogs on beaches in the summer season - banning them, in other words - is not an example of being anti-dog. It is an example of common sense. Plenty of dog owners, dog lovers, appreciate why there are such bans. It has nothing to do with disliking dogs. It has everything to do with avoiding the possibility, however low this might be, of disease being transmitted or of there being an incident involving a dog.

When the possibility was first raised of a pilot scheme in Pollensa to allow dogs on beaches, it seemed ridiculous because the beach that was being spoken of was a strip of rustic beach to which no one goes. It was, nevertheless, a pilot scheme that was proposed because it was felt that the ban on dogs was too restrictive.

Rather than a pilot scheme, the town hall appears intent on going full steam ahead and promoting the beaches with the aid of local hotels. Cala Carbó is a small beach, Llenaire isn't; it was the beach that David Cameron chose during the summer. Though Llenaire is an urbanisation away from the centre of Puerto Pollensa, the name Llenaire beach is used interchangeably with the name Tamarells beach to refer to the resort's main beach.

Why has the town hall come to this decision? It says it is in response to an increased demand and to the fact that many visitors are pet owners and that they wish to go to a resort where they can take their pets (the decision does refer to pets, though it is hard to see which animals other than dogs it would really apply to). Previously, the town hall had also spoken about tourism of a certain "quality" which would be attracted to Puerto Pollensa were it to promote itself as pet-friendly.

I think the town hall is talking total garbage. Where exactly is the evidence for its claim that there is an increased demand by tourists to take their pets to beaches? And perhaps more importantly, where would these tourists be coming from? It is possible for, say, tourists from the UK to take pets on flights, but it is a hassle of a procedure and a potentially expensive one for a short vacation. Tourists who might wish to bring pets would be ones travelling by road or on ferries, and these tourists may well already be bringing their pets.

In a report of the town hall's decision, a reference has been made to a tour operator which specialises in tourist destinations for pets with which the town hall has been in contact since earlier this year. This is curious. The website of this "tour operator" makes no mention of tours. It is, or appears to be, a one-person, dog-loving website that offers advice on dogs in Mallorca and which has been advocating that dogs be allowed to be taken onto beaches. Approaches to this end have been made to a few town halls, Pollensa being one of them.

I am not disputing for one moment this website's right to advocate the taking of dogs onto beaches, its right to lobby for greater permissiveness where dogs are concerned or the sincerity behind the advocacy, but what I am questioning is the basis upon which the town hall has arrived at its decision. The implication of the report (which may of course not be entirely accurate) is that it has been the contact with this "tour operator", of which it is further said that it will start promoting Pollensa as a destination for pet owners. 

Something else which is curious is that there seems to have been no obvious opposition to the decision among town hall councillors. Are they all oblivious to the potential risks, among which would be one of tourists without dogs deciding they will go somewhere else?

Why were dogs ever banned from beaches in the first place? Not because people didn't like dogs but because of certain and legitimate worries, such as toxocariasis. Nothing has changed in this regard, so why adopt a measure that raises unnecessarily the possibility of risk and which is of highly questionable benefit?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Solution sought to Cala San Vicente's water supply

Ongoing problems with the supply of drinking water to Cala San Vicente could be solved by extending the town's water network at a cost of 80,000 euros. Pollensa town hall is awaiting the findings of a study into the proposal.

See more: Ultima Hora

Dave's Day Out

So, there I was engrossed in conversation outside Puerto Pollensa's Cultural bar with a wealthy businessman who was explaining to me that neither austerity nor growth is a solution to the economic mess in Western Europe or indeed elsewhere. He has a solution. It is in fact a very good one, which is why I'm not going to tell you. Not just yet anyway. I have to think about the book rights. One doesn't just solve economic crisis over a coffee and water in Puerto Pollensa and give the whole game away without ensuring that one extracts some benefit.

In the course of this conversation, I received a phone call (let's just say it came from a Mallorca-based English newspaper), telling me that the British Prime Minister was apparently staying in a hotel somewhere between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa (and as there are only two of them, you can probably figure out which one).

It must have all been a cunning plan to put the press off the scent of where Dave really was. But knowing better and knowing also that an offer (from the same newspaper) to treat me to a Club sandwich at this particular Club hotel whilst I was lurking in the undergrowth intent on spying the Prime Minister in his speedos and putting away a litre or so of sangria was likely to run up against a bureaucratic problem in accounts for the payment of such a lavish expense, I expressed to the wealthy businessman that I found it highly implausible that Dave would be at the hotel. Dave doesn't do regular tourist hotels, much though, big society, man of the people, the new Boris and all that, he might wish to.

"I can tell you that he's not staying at the Club (add as applicable)," said said wealthy businessman, thus confirming my doubts. There was then a pause (dramatic effect). "He's staying in a villa." "Go on," I thought. "In Cala San Vicente." Which was as far as it went. He knew where, he knew I would like him to tell me, and I knew he wouldn't.

Anyway, armed with this knowledge I then phoned the same newspaper back, somewhat relieved that I didn't have to head off to the hotel and wander around the pool area staring at women who might or might not be the Prime Minister's wife and then being thrown out by security.

Prior to this, however, I had tried my best to home in on which villa when my businessman compatriot suggested that a couple of hours with Cameron explaining the solution to the economic crisis could prove most worthwhile. Well, why don't we go off now and tell him? I was prepared to be blindfolded so that I wouldn't know precisely the whereabouts of the Dave and Sam villa. Nothing doing,  though. The meeting with Dave would have to be another day.

Meanwhile, and having thought that this apparent scoop as to Dave's general location would result in press helicopters hovering over Cala San Vicente to try and determine which villa, it would seem that Dave's people were willing to permit photos of Dave to be released. So, it wasn't a scoop at all; not that it really was, as I didn't know which villa. There was therefore a photo of Dave in Pollensa's Plaça Major, yet at the same time it wasn't being confirmed that he was staying in the area, which by now everyone knew was the case. The Prime Minister is, therefore, staying in a villa in Cala San Vicente (or its general environs). Except of course, he isn't. And this is official. Or isn't, as the case may be.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - A flag flies in Cala San Vicente

Amusing notice here about a Spanish flag having been put up on Cala Molins beach in Cala San Vicente. Firstly, it isn't the blue flag that it might have been and secondly, as with the raising of the Spanish flag at Son Real, it has raised the hackles of the Catalan left.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

MALLORCA TODAY - Volunteers will clean Pollensa beaches

Pollensa town hall has struck an arrangement with Gadma, the local friends of the environment group, to keep clean inlets and the storm stream (torrent) at three beaches, Cala Bóquer and Calas Carbó and Barques in Cala San Vicente.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - La Gola and Pollensa beaches sorted

Two of Pollensa's most pressing tourism issues have been resolved. The information centre in the La Gola park has been re-opened with an attendant provided by the Espais de Natura Balear (environment ministry), while the town hall will look after cleaning in the park.

The management of beaches in Puerto Pollensa and Cala San Vicente will be under local residents' associations. This used to be the case in Puerto Pollensa, but wasn't last year, something which helped to contribute to the problems of beach management, and will be the case for the first time in Cala San Vicente. A contract is also being drawn up to provide lifeguards. Final submissions for this contract were not until 7 May, a week after the official season had started.

MALLORCA TODAY - Cala Barques is cleaned up

Not taking any credit for it, but having written in the "Majorca Daily Bulletin" yesterday about the state of Cala Barques in Cala San Vicente, the beach is to be cleaned up this week, it having taken on the appearance of a rubbish tip.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

Pedestrianisation plan and the Don Pedro

As flagged up on 25 July, Pollensa town hall yesterday approved the plan for a development in the Ullal area of Puerto Pollensa which would also involve the developers undertaking the pedestrianisation of the resort's "front line". The town hall has also approved the demolition of the Don Pedro hotel in Cala San Vicente.

Kicking Off Again? Pedestrianisation in Puerto Pollensa

Two years after the scheme to pedestrianise the "front line" of Puerto Pollensa between Llenaire and the centre of the Moll was abandoned, it is about to make a comeback. The impetus for its return is an agreement to develop land in the Ullal area of the town (around and near to the Pollensa Park hotel). As reported in "The Diario", the town hall will give this plan the go ahead this coming week. The developers will be able to build residential accommodation on some 100,000 square metres of land, in return for which they will also undertake the pedestrianisation scheme. According to the mayor, all parties which were informed of the plan last week, which seem to include the revolutionaries (as referred to yesterday), are in agreement. Given what happened last time the pedestrianisation scheme reared its head though, it's hard to imagine that there will be unanimity this time round. Apart from anything else, it will mean that all traffic gets diverted along the bypass, which was built as part of the same plan as that for the pedestrianisation, envisaged as far back as the late sixties. Other revolutionaries, notably those of Gotmar who protested loud and long a couple of years ago, will surely not be taking the latest news lying down.

The plan is a potential minefield. Though the building development will be in the vicinity of wetlands deemed of ecological interest, the green light for it has come from the Council of Mallorca which has reclassifed the land as a so-called area of territorial reconversion (ART), which is the same provision that has been applied to areas in Bonaire and Puerto Alcúdia, prompting developments in both instances, the second of which includes what is widely presumed to be and largely already built, but mystifyingly unconfirmed, a Lidl supermarket. Despite the Council's acquiescence, one can yet anticipate objections from the environmental lobby.

What seems curious about this plan is that it doesn't directly address the tourism problem that was highlighted yesterday. If it is indeed the case that Puerto Pollensa needs more hotel stock, might the development not be better served by sticking up a new hotel or two? This said, the chances are that a number of the new houses will end up as holiday lets. For a resort with a high dependence on residential tourism, this might seem fair enough, though it runs counter to the attitude at government level towards the letting business and would provide far fewer additional tourists than a hotel would.

Meanwhile, the same ART is being invoked to finally put the Don Pedro in Cala San Vicente out of its misery. It's been a long death, but it would now seem that the demolition is going to occur; just a question as to when. This has been said for years, but now it seems as though it will happen. Much as the demolition might now appear inevitable, nothing ever runs smoothly, least of all in Pollensa; and so it may still also be with Pedestrianisation 2010.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Closest Thing To Heaven: No more - Cala San Vicente

On 11 June last year (It Doesn't Add Up), I wrote a piece about Cala San Vicente. It started with a quote from someone who was staying at La Moraleja, the charming, high-class hotel as you come into the Cala. "It's paradise." "Well, there's nowhere quite like it." "Is there?"

Amidst all the pining for the close to the pinewalk Sis Pins in Puerto Pollensa before it reopened, it was easy to overlook the fact that there was another, grander hotel that was closed. Easy to overlook because it's in the Cala, as indeed it sometimes seems easy to overlook the Cala, full stop. La Moraleja. Paradise it may be. Nowhere else like it, very possibly. But it's not there, as in it's not open. The gates are firmly closed and locked. It's very sad. And it makes three, the number of hotels now not open in the Cala. The Mayol has been shut for ... for how long; can't remember. The Simar is into its second year of closure. And now the Moraleja.

It seems almost an annual thing for me to have to bemoan the fate that has befallen Cala San Vicente. It is such an awful shame. One restaurant owner said yesterday that there is "mucha cree-sis" in CSV. The truth is that there was mucha cree-sis before the cree-sis took hold. The place has been going down the pan for years. But why? Ok, apart from the fact that there's nothing much to do there, other than relax, lie on Molins cove beach, snorkel, have a drink or a meal, it is still, just about, a little piece of heaven. And it's not that no one's interested. Curiously, when I was in the Alcúdia tourist office the other day, not one but two sets of people went to the desk to ask for information as to how to get there. From Alcúdia. People want to go there, and so they should. But the bus schedule isn't great. You really need a car or take a taxi. The Cala is end-of-the-line Pollensa tourism, backwaters Pollensa.

Several years ago, a colossal error was made. It was when the Don Pedro went all-inclusive. It could be argued that a place out of the way, like the Cala, is more suited to all-inclusive than bustling resorts with everything immediately to hand. But it wasn't suited, because it changed the nature of the small resort and also began to undermine the businesses there. Elitist this may sound, but the appeal of the Cala was its very sleepiness and its quaint, quasi-colonial exclusivity, one that La Moraleja has, or had, in abundance. Its appeal was also to be found in the semi-mystical reverence in which the place is held by Mallorcans, the consequence of a reputation, part-Bohemian, part-intellectual as an oasis for artists and free thinkers.

It still has an air of exclusivity, granted, for example. by the eponymous Cala San Vicente hotel, and the refinement of the Molins hotel. But the fault, the fault-line if you like, in Cala San Vicente is that it wasn't somehow ring-fenced and preserved in its own time warp of days of the Raj in back-of-beyond Pollensa. And that it wasn't spared the development that has taken away some of its character.

The building of the apartments by Molins cove was the last straw for some and became the subject of a rallying cry from the environmentalists. The apartments, I think, look ok, so long as you approve of the trend towards somewhat anonymous and formulaic neutral-coloured blockettes of apartments. No, in themselves they are far from offensive; just that they really aren't in the right place.

The nostalgia of the Cala, for me, remains the vision looking down to Molins cove and to Bar Mallorca and to what was once a dustbowl behind it. When the resort still had a shambolic appearance, one of a grand old dame, shuffling around under a wide-brimmed straw hat, taking a gin on the verandah or a sangria and fish supper in one of the still unpretentious restaurants, it had its barmy exclusivity. It's gone I'm afraid, and it ain't coming back. But one might hope that the Moraleja will return. If anyone still cares.


QUIZ:
Yep, it's back: "Closest Thing To Heaven". Who?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Hills Are Alive: The beach alternative

Matt Rudd is a humorous geezer. Pity, therefore, the unfortunate resort in Mallorca that might take his acerbic fancy. Take Cala San Vicente. Poor old CSV; it can't seem to get anything right. If it's not Poles on the rampage, then it's Rudd slagging it off for having a "seaweedy" beach or one made of concrete. Or having an "enormous coach park, some high-rise apartments (and) a big hotel."

I confess to not being intimate with all the coves in the Cala. Molins is the one I know best; it's ok. Not great but ok. As for the rest. An enormous coach park? Is there? High-rise apartments? Apartments, yes, but high-rise? A big hotel? Well, I suppose the Don Pedro is fairly big, though it won't be if they ever finally get round to demolishing it. But one might also add Niu or La Moraleja, which are not big but are very clever in being utterly charming.

Rudd was writing in "The Sunday Times" at the weekend. The Mallorcan tourism worthies would be apoplectic if they read his piece, or could understand it. The beaches of Mallorca, and not just those of CSV, are not "half as fabulous as everyone says they are"; indeed they're not much cop, according to Rudd. Keep the "Med in the distance"; take to the hills and a villa in the interior is his advice. The worthies may wish alternatives to "sun and beach" holidays, but they don't want "The Sunday Times" telling holidaymakers to give the resorts a wide berth. At least, one assumes not.

The northerly route to CSV had been indicated by means of a "gnarly finger" pointed by a local in an unnamed resort. To the Mallorcans, well some, the Cala is treated with a certain reverence. Or put it this way, a restaurant owner in the Cala once told me that this was the case. A gnarly finger might well indeed be waggled with a recommendation to go north, young man, even if the owner of the digit had not been near the place for years, if he had been there at all. It is a Pollensa backwater that some love and some find hard to comprehend; I myself have vacillated between these two positions.

The criticism of the island's beaches started, however, with a questionable premise - that somehow the beaches have all been cleared of any offending concrete in their vicinity. Rudd says that this "this isn't entirely true". And it isn't, because it hasn't happened. I don't quite know where the idea comes from that it might have. Take a trip to Can Picafort, for example, and you have a perfectly unlovely line of buildings just a short walk from the water's edge. Even the cherished, by some, smaller beach in Puerto Pollensa, the one that peters out at the pinewalk, is backed not just by concrete but also by innumerable passers-by. It is far too small and far too claustrophobic for my liking.

Go to a resort and there are buildings close to the beaches. Inevitably there are. It's why they are resorts. In Puerto Alcúdia, a resort which has a beach once voted the best in the Med, some of the concrete is shielded by trees; little of it feels as if it is on top of you. But if one wants to escape the hotels and apartments, there are always close-by alternatives, such as the coves in Mal Pas. Mallorca is a mix of beaches, just as it is a mix of holidaymakers.

Rudd is a "holiday snob" and admits to being so, belittling the "flabby pink people" of the resorts (oh, my stupid fat white men of this blog years ago). Non-resort is his preference, and away from the coast, he says that the island has been transformed, that it is "gorgeous". But has it really been transformed? The interior is not fundamentally different now to what it has ever been. What is different, what has been transformed, is that there are properties for the type of holidaymaker who reads "The Sunday Times"; the type of holidaymaker who eschews Coronation Street and "pubs serving roast beef" in favour of some octopus on the poolside barbecue of a villa that is out of the reach of the holidaymaker hoi polloi.

Nevertheless, Rudd makes an argument for a type of holiday and indeed holiday accommodation which encapsulates a dichotomy that the tourism worthies cannot reconcile. They want nice middle-class families with spending power to enjoy the "other" island, and not just the sun and beach, but they also devote time and energy in seeking to deny to this tourist the accommodation he or she desires; not the hotels of the resorts, but the private villas or apartments. And they do this by being beholden to the hotel lobby and doing whatever they can to disrupt the holiday-let market. This is not what Rudd intended to write about or indeed has, but inadvertently he has done so. The tourism authorities should read and digest, but they probably wouldn't understand.

** For the full article, go to: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/destinations/spain/article7059836.ece

And here is Julie Andrews, alive on some hills far, far away ...



The Sound of Music - Julie Andrews
Cargado por Shotgun-Pete. - Explorar otros videos musicales.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Burning In My Heart

Who turned on the oven? It had been forecast that the worst heatwave of summer would be experienced this week; they hadn't said quite how bad. Temperatures of 44 degrees had been anticipated yesterday afternoon; that's around 111 in old money. Sa Pobla is the place that is taken as representative for the interior in the north, and Sa Pobla is where this record high was expected. It is fifteen years since a 43 was recorded there. As it turned out, the temperature was only 42 - only 42. The interior temperatures are higher than those around the coast, by a factor of some five or six degrees very often, but you don't have to go very far inland to get the full effects of that interior heat. In the old town of Alcúdia at midday yesterday, it was unbearable, but back down in the port it was cooler - all things being relative. The weather centre had issued a red alert for the interior, the north and the north-east.

The extreme highs are the result of air being sucked up from Africa. You can feel the heat of the wind or breeze - it grips you, encloses you. This African wind can sometimes just come out of seemingly nowhere and last for only a relatively short period, but when it does spring up it has the ferocity of old red nose giving the hairdryer treatment.

These are dangerous temperatures, ones to be respected. The advice to avoid dehydration is crucial; to not take on liquid is to run the risk of heatstroke or to suffer diarrhoea or worse. Ever had heatstroke - the full dose, that is? I have. I don't much recommend it. The question is, though, what liquid. Much as the thinking is to just take on water, this is not enough. The best drinks are the non-caffeine sports drinks. Eroski does a lemon one. Tastes ok and it has the salts, minerals and vitamins that are as important in preventing the worst affects of the heat. Yet, despite all the advice, you will still see those quaffing back great pints of beer during the day or tucking into a full English or a vast plate of meat and chips. None of this makes any sense. Ok, let's not get too sanctimonious, a freezing Saint Mick of an evening is hugely tempting, and rightly so, just so long as it's not the whole gallon.


What's Cracowing-off in the Cala
Are the Poles the new Brits? Last summer there was something of a street battle involving plod and some youthful Polish holidaymakers in Magaluf. There is now a report of trouble involving some younger Poles in - of all places - Cala San Vicente, but this is all-inclusive Cala, not the genteel old-colonialism of the Moraleja: the Don Pedro in other words. Perhaps it could have been predicted. Put British families together with the nouveau holidaymaking classes of young Poland and it was maybe bound to end in tears. But put them together Thomas Cook have done.

"Talk Of The North" got the story, and it should appear in greater detail in the next issue. From what Graeme tells me it has all been rather unpleasant, a group of Poles effectively terrorising the Brits and causing general mayhem. The boys in green were eventually called, after the Brits demanded that something be done. In addition to "TOTN", you can probably also expect that the forums will be given a bashing by very unhappy Brits, to say nothing of the complaints that will land in the in-tray of Thomas Cook.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Frank Sinatra, "New York, New York", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro7Uz4jEfmg. Today's title - why? It's a line from ...

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It Doesn't Add Up

"It's paradise." "Well, there's nowhere quite like it." "Is there?"

He was a gentleman in his seventies, a copy of "The Telegraph" in his hands. He was sitting in a straight-backed, pink-patterned chair in the reception. I looked around, and nodded. It had never really occurred to me that there was nowhere quite like it - the hotel, that is. "Like your own home. Your own villa." Not my home or my villa, but maybe his. I bade him good day and drove down to the front. Unusually, it was easy to park in front of Niu. Unusually, it was easy to park anywhere in the Cala.

There is a disconnect between the garden-ornamentalism and old-world elegance of La Moraleja, and the on-top-of-each-other contrast between the homely manners of Niu and the kid-splashing, kid-noisy Don Pedro just over the fence. If Niu has had a reception makeover to a one-time feel of antiquity, the Moraleja has a continuing colonial splendour.

Nothing seems to quite add up in the Cala. The new ubiquity of greys and neutrals that appears to have been taken as a template from some bible of contemporary architectural conformity has spawned the aluminium and non-colour of the Windsurf; steel chatters and clatters as they wash down the tables and the austere pipework of the chairs. And so also the silver, white and monotones of the Riusech edifice. Glance out at the Cala Barques - or is it Clara? - and there is the familiar turquoise and fade to green; then look back at this black and white image, this greyscale building, and wonder at the enormity of the absence of blues or yellows that might complement the visual environment.

At Marinas, an ageing couple are on the terrace with solitary beers; someone is at the bar. It's "muy flojo" and Tomas is nowhere to be seen. Then glance across at the empty pool area of the abandoned Simar. Maybe it was just imagination, but the pool seemed to have been given over to algae. Back on the street, a body-builder struts by with flippers and a wetsuit and calls out in Polish to someone by the doors to the Don Pedro.

The doors to the eponymous Cala San Vicente are closed, as though they don't anticipate anyone. They are wooden barriers that fail to invite, but it's probably just to keep in the air-conditioning. A sexagenarian lady is wearing a white jump-suit and matching, sharp-cornered, white-framed glasses. She has the eager expression of one used to racing rally cars; she bears an attitude of female rakishness, a Dick or Davina Dastardly hugging the wheel tightly. Perhaps she has been male-monikered. "Dicky, old stick", you could imagine. But she is a lady. As with the Telegraph reader of the Moraleja - ex-City I'd be bound - here are ladies and gentlemen. Not a "luv" or a "mate" to be heard. Here is a certain civility among the decline and fall; a Nero-esque blindness to the invisible flames of the encroaching Vandalism. The piano music is perhaps too loud; it is trying too hard to scale its descant of cocking-a-snook refinement. The Moraleja wouldn't have that. Just silence save for the birdsong and the breeze rustling the bracts of the bougainvillaea and the sheets of an English broadsheet.

The Poli pizza place is still neglected, but Cafe Art has stumbled back into some resemblance of life across from the incongruous Irishness. And then tumble down to the lower level and the Oriola, the repository of ancientness, shows an equal incongruity; a young man and woman with a laptop on the terrace. There is a conspicuous absence of the usual; the musty smell inside is not there.

And you then wonder what happened to that law which revoked the previous law about the extension to building works. The controversial development by the Molins cove is being worked on still; only another four days now, you guess. But they were meant to have stopped, weren't they? The indeterminacy of politics. So it is also with a banner by the car park. Bedraggled, tossed by the winds, who is it for? PP? PSOE? Doesn't really matter, days past the elections. In front of the Molins hotel, unusually, it would have been easy to park. There is no-one in reception, not even a tubercular straw-hatter arriving for what would probably be his last visit. The Mayol is now looking a ruin, and you stop and stare out at that view to the horse promontory, then to the half-built apartments and up to the Pinos hostel with its old-time sign of a Western movie. Back and forth - the gentility of the Moraleja, the decibels of the Don Pedro, the dereliction of the Mayol, the whites and greys of expensive real estate. Cala San Vicente - nothing quite adds up.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Dire Straits: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACGUasFWVsI. Today's title - from something by a real blog favourite; Scottish, indie, think photography and dark.

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The Closest Thing To Crazy

A hotel in Cala San Vicente that is not going to be opening this season, that is to be closed this season - possibly. "The Diario" was reporting this yesterday and saying that the establishment concerned would neither confirm nor deny it; the paper would only use the word "posible", which is an s less than an English possible even if it is pronounced differently. I spoke to a tourist office and mentioned this report. Oh yes, it was being reported elsewhere on the internet. It was ... well which one do you think? It doesn't take a lot of imagination to fathom out which one, as it was stated that it was a 3-star hotel in the Cala, so it wasn't, for example, La Moraleja. What was also being reported was that this was to do with a major tour operator. I don't know if that is the case, but the hotel is not on that tour operator's site; well, not now it isn't anyway.

I shall wait to learn more before going into this, but it tells a story - possibly - and a far from unimportant one.

Somewhere else that is closing, has closed in fact: the Crazy Horse in Puerto Alcúdia. Seems like the end of an era. The bar had opened, the 1.50 Saint Mick was chalked up, but a couple of days ago I passed by, it was obviously shut, I mentioned it to someone, and was told that that was that. Finished. Gone. Ended. And the expectation is that some flats might occupy the space at some point. Not just at the moment, one suspects.

I said that I wouldn't do the bad news stuff, but sometimes you have to. Yesterday morning, with the rain and the cold - that became heavier and more pronounced as the day wore on - I was in the old town of Alcúdia and talking with a few people; it would have made you want to slash your wrists. "Cr-eee-sis" + "mucha lluvia" = "desastre". We're all doomed, Captain Mainwaring.

Get over it, get on with it. It will be better than you think. The weather is total crap, but not forever. That said, if it rains on Saturday, as it rained yesterday afternoon, I will be very unhappy, as I have a gig to do with photos and a vox-pop at the boat and sepia fairs in Puerto Alcúdia.

And here is the weather forecast; well, the weather report. How crap can this weather be? How wet and cold can it be for the start of April? We knew we would get it in the neck at some stage, but this is truly awful. I'm going back to bed for a few weeks. Wake me up in May, or June.


But hell, Easter's on its way. And who will make you happy bunnies at Easter? You know; of course you know. Little Britain's specials. See the WHAT'S ON BLOG - http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com - for details of the LB Easter goodies.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqiABp2sHIc, a speeded-up remix of The Thompson Twins. Today's title - what pretty well kicked it off for her.

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