The Nickname Which Became A Resort

They put up a plaque in Can Picafort the other day. It was to Llorenç Fuster Quintana. Llorenç died in 1899. There was another Fuster who passed away sixteen years before: Jeroni. Both had the nickname "Picafort". I'm guessing that Llorenç must have inherited it.

The story of Jeroni is central to the story of Can Picafort. He did, after all, give it the name. While he had the nickname, his shack was seemingly known as Picafort. Something to do with the strength of mosquito bites, supposedly. And quite believably. In the nineteenth century those bites could kill. There is in fact a completely different explanation - cholera - and also more to the story of why Jeroni went to live on the uninhabited coast of Santa Margalida some time in the mid-nineteenth century (probably the 1860s).

It's normally said that he was of humble stock and couldn't afford to live in the town. Well, he was from humble stock, but it would appear that he was given a job. He was the coast watchman. He was there to look out for clandestine activity. Smuggling, in other words. And Santa Margalida was to become famous for the biggest smuggler of them all - Joan March, he of Banca March fame.

Llorenç must have been a relative because the plaque is more or less exactly where the shack once stood. Jeroni had four children and is said to have been aged 105 when he died: a remarkable age for those times. He would indeed have been of fairly advanced age when he took that watchman's job.

There were actually two shack-type houses. The other was the residence of Llorenç Dalmau. His nickname was "Barret" (hat). He lent his nickname to the Clot d'en Barret, which is in the same area. It's also near to the Mar y Paz Hotel (Apartments).

Before Can Picafort there were two estates - Son Baulo and Santa Eulalia (aka Eularia). Son Baulo, it is often overlooked, was really what came first. It was partially developed as a garden city in the 1930s. In Can Picafort there was very little development. Nowadays, Son Baulo tends to be treated as part of Can Picafort, which it is in administrative terms, but part of it went into the development of Can Picafort in the 1960s. Can Picafort was really the estate of Santa Eulalia, and some might even today refer to the beach as Playa Santa Eulalia.

The Mar y Paz sits in the area of the resort where a notional boundary lies between Can Picafort and Son Baulo. It has a notable role to play on 15 August every year. It is from the Mar y Paz where they dive in to swim after the ducks. It's a symbolic choice, given the legacy of Jeroni Fuster and Llorenç Dalmau and also because it was the Son Baulo end which gave Can Picafort the ducks' swim.

The swim, also known as the release, dates back to the 1930s. It is normally said that the ducks (real ones, which they no longer are) came from the Son Baulo torrent and were gifts of a landowner to workers who had to swim for them. Well, a different version is that they also came from a Santa Eulalia landowner. Moreover, it wasn't poor workers who were necessarily swimming for them. It was young people in general.

This discrepancy is just one way in which the tradition of the duck swim has failed to ever truly be established in totally accurate fact. There isn't even any mention of it in what is otherwise an extensive history of Santa Margalida that the town hall produced some years ago. There's no question that there was a duck swim, but there is nothing definitive either as to exactly when it started or its continuity. Did it take place every year?

This matters to an extent because of the ambitions that remain for reviving the swim with real ducks. The law is most unlikely to be changed from being able to prove one hundred years of uninterrupted use of animals in a fiesta event, but if the threshold were to be lowered - which is what some would like in Santa Margalida - there would still be a problem of verification. Very little has ever actually been documented about the swim.

But it was around in the early 1960s; that's for sure. At the start of that decade, there were 173 residents in the whole of Can Picafort (including Son Baulo). There were, however, over 300 dwellings - chalets, villas, cottages. This was somewhere which grew because of summer holiday homes, most of them owned by Mallorcans, though there was also some foreign ownership: I know a German family whose chalet dates from that time. And there were other Germans.

The duck swim was therefore the highlight of the holidays in August. It is why it still is a highlight, because of all the families who have continued to summer in Can Picafort. The ducks are now plastic, but the tradition remains in the resort that takes its name from a nickname.

* The image is of the famous poster for the 2008 fiestas. The boy wearing the Power Rangers' mask was an acknowledgement of those who had released real ducks the year before, which was the first year that ducks were prohibited. They had worn Power Rangers' masks.

Discovering Prehistoric Mallorca

There is no precise time placed on the first permanent settlements on Mallorca. The Talaiotic culture which arose from around the end of the second millennium BC is, wrongly, sometimes taken as marking the origins of permanent inhabitation, but understanding how permanent the population was prior to this is open to debate. Mallorca was certainly an island where there was short-term occupation from the time when the Mesolithic period (in the western Mediterranean) was crossing over into the Neolithic, otherwise known as the New Stone Age, or, if you prefer, at a time roughly a thousand years before the start of the Copper Age. This would place the first inhabitation of the island at around the sixth millennium BC.

There are different theories about the Talaiotic culture and its emergence, but there is little doubt that there was a settled population which was to develop the Talaiotic culture, the evidence of which is to be found all over Mallorca, as with the talaiot stone structures of, for example, Ses Païsses in Artà. When this pre-Talaiotic settlement began is the mystery, as the archaeological evidence of earlier settlement is - so to speak - thin on the ground.

It is reckoned that the earliest construction on Mallorca is the dolmen burial chamber of Son Bauló in Can Picafort. It was unearthed in 1961 and then given a proper examination in 1964. The remains of five individuals were found along with items of stone, flint and pottery as well as a hammer. The dolmen isn't Talaiotic. It comes from a time before. Researchers say it was constructed around 1700BC, so in the earlier part of the second millennium BC, a few centuries before the Talaiotic culture is calculated to have genuinely started.

The dolmen remained the most important find in terms of antiquity until another dolmen was found in 1995. One says found, but the remarkable thing about this other dolmen was that it was known about but had not been publicised. The story goes, and it is a true one, that in 1995 there was concern for the future preservation of the Son Bauló dolmen. This was because the Can Picafort industrial estate was being built right next to it. The press latched onto this and, lo and behold, someone stepped forward to say that he knew of the existence of another dolmen. This someone was a geologist named Lluís Moragues. He contacted a journalist who had been writing about the Son Bauló dolmen. They met, they went to the site and bingo, there it was - just like the structure in Son Bauló. Its location was in woods close to the Cala des Camps east of Colonia Sant Pere, i.e. in Artà. The place is known as S'Aigo Dolça (meaning fresh water).

Moragues had known about the dolmen because an archaeologist had sought permission to undertake excavation work at the site. Photographs of this site had been sent to the regional government along with an explanation that a potentially important archaeological discovery might be made. It wasn't certain that this would involve finding a dolmen, but the permission to dig was ignored: officialdom was not interested. So Moragues took a further look anyway, and he held the secret of the S'Aigo Dolça dolmen until he shared it in 1995.

It seems extraordinary that the government's culture ministry should have displayed such indifference to what turned out to be a discovery comparable to Son Baulo and so evidence of the first concrete (not that concrete was involved) sign of early Majorcan civilisation. With such a big thing now being made of the island's cultural heritage and its significance for tourism, it seems doubly extraordinary.

A point about the two dolmen, which are separated by a distance of roughly ten kilometres, is their location on the north-eastern coast. In Menorca there are various examples of dolmen, which raises a question. Had the first genuine settlers on Mallorca crossed from Menorca? Maybe, though as arguably the best example of a dolmen is in Formentera, then perhaps not. The truth is that no one knows when the first permanent settlers arrived. But the fact that the two dolmen are close by and are so also near to the large and unique necropolis of Son Real in Can Picafort (which came later, as it is Talaiotic) might suggest that this north-eastern part of Mallorca was the main centre of population for several centuries.

But, as I say, there is evidence of the Talaiotic culture all over Mallorca, and officialdom is now much more aware of the importance of this prehistory than it might once have been. This weekend, as an example, they've been staging an "Ancient Mediterranean Festival" in Can Pastilla on the opposite side of Mallorca to Can Picafort and Artà. On the small island of Sa Galera off the Caló de Son Caios the site of a Talaiotic settlement has been excavated. Discoveries there suggest it might date from as early as 1440BC. It was subsequently redeveloped by the Phoenicians and the Romans, but if its prehistory can indeed be traced to 1440BC, then it would be one of the earliest examples of Talaiotic culture or of the transition to this culture.

* Photo of Sa Galera is taken from the programme for the Ancient Mediterranean Festival.


Index for May 2015

Balearics election - 24 May 2015, 28 May 2015, 30 May 2015
Balearics public services underfunding - 7 May 2015
Bauzá vs. Rodríguez - 9 May 2015
Bonet de Sant Pere: Duke of Swing - 17 May 2015
British election - 6 May 2015
Bullfighting - 12 May 2015
Capdepera mediaeval past - 10 May 2015
Chiringuitos - 23 May 2015
Costitx bulls' heads - 5 May 2015
Day without music - 19 May 2015
Education in Mallorca and foreign pupils - 14 May 2015
Elections Mallorca - 16 May 2015
ITV (Spanish MOT) test - 27 May 2015
Magalluf, Playa de Palma and promises of improvements - 18 May 2015
Minority governments: Andalusia and Balearics - 11 May 2015
Municipalities and elections - 20 May 2015
Music festivals in Mallorca - 25 May 2015
Nixe yacht - 2 May 2015
Playa de Palma police - 13 May 2015
Politics of Mallorca's tourism - 8 May 2015
Prehistoric Mallorca - 31 May 2015
Seasonality - 22 May 2015
Sineu fair - 3 May 2015
Too many interests in Mallorca's resorts - 4 May 2015
Tourist tax - 1 May 2015, 15 May 2015
Tramuntana mountains - 29 May 2015
Voting and foreign residents - 21 May 2015

The Great Spearfishermen Of Mallorca

It is said that there are two sports which are native to Mallorca, not in the sense that they were invented here but because conditions are such that they have long been able to flourish. One of these sports is cycling, which benefits from there being such varied landscapes and topographical features in a comparatively small area. The other sport does not take advantage of the land. It is a sport of the sea, and it is the competitive world of spearfishing.

For three days from Thursday next week, Can Picafort will host the thirty-third national spearfishing championships for the various autonomous communities (or regions, if you prefer) of Spain, and the event will also be a tribute to one of Mallorca's greatest "submarine" fishermen - Juan Ballester.

As with the cyclists that Mallorca started to produce from the early years of the last century, some of whom, like Guillermo Timoner, went on to acquire fame and titles beyond Mallorca, so the island's spearfishermen came to be part of the international elite in a sport which, by comparison with cycling, gets barely any attention. Defined by the CMAS (the World Confederation of Underwater Activities) as the "hunting and capture of fish underwater without the aid of artificial breathing devices, using gear that depends on the physical strength of the competitor", spearfishing as a sport first surfaced (so to speak) in the western Mediterranean in the 1920s. There were attempts to have it included in the Olympic Games but these attempts failed, thus limiting awareness of the sport. It is obscure, but that doesn't mean to say it hasn't flourished or been popular, and Mallorca is one place where it certainly hasn't been and isn't obscure.

Juan Ballester was one of two really great names that Mallorca has produced. The other is José Amengual. Ballester was the older by ten years. He was born in Muro in 1934 and his affinity with the town was such that, after studying to become a doctor on the mainland, he returned to Muro to establish himself as one of the island's leading consultants for internal medicine and to form a bond of which he said that Mallorca was divided into two parts - Muro and the "part forana", i.e. the rest of the island outside Palma.

Despite this closeness to his home town, it was neighbouring Can Picafort where he was to develop the bug for underwater fishing. In the summer of 1952, two well-known specialists of the sport came to what was still then an undeveloped resort. He was invited along and managed to capture more fish than his specialist companions. Though he became licensed in that year, it was to be some time before he really broke through in the sport, a combination of further studies and military service meaning that it wasn't until the early '60s that he developed a reputation strong enough to be in line to take part in the team world championships in Brazil in 1963. As it happened, he was overlooked for selection, but four years later he was captain of the Spanish team which competed at the European championships off the island of Cabrera. His career was such that, by then in his sixties, he was captaining the Spanish team which won two world championships - 1994 in Peru and 1996 in Gijón on the coast of the region of Asturias.

In 1985, Mallorca hosted the world championship, and it was held in Playa de Muro. One of the people who helped to organise the event was Juan Ballester. But it wasn't to be Ballester who took the plaudits that year. It was his friend, José Amengual, who, though a native of Palma, knew the seas off Muro and Can Picafort as well as Ballester. Amengual won the world title, thirteen points ahead of an Italian representative, Milos Iurinchich. This was in fact the third world title that Amengual had secured, the previous two having been in 1973 and 1981. Ballester never won an individual world title, but he took great pleasure from having helped to mentor the sportsman who was to. Amengual is thus the greatest underwater fisherman that Mallorca has produced.

And so, there will be the tribute in Can Picafort this week to Ballester. It might perhaps be more fitting were it to be in Playa de Muro, but the championships aren't being held there. Not to worry, though, Playa de Muro and Can Picafort are in coastal, beach and sea terms joined together, and for Can Picafort the championships represent a furtherance of its new aspirations to be a centre of water sports tourism and mark how far this once tiny place has come. The sea has been the making of Can Picafort. The sea is where Ballester and Amengual developed their skills, but it was sea which, for so long, was ignored. While there is the posthumous tribute to Ballester, there will be those who will also give a thought to someone who died last month: Jaume Mandilego, whose name was and is synonymous with Can Picafort. He was born in 1915 in what then could boast hardly any dwellings but an awful lot of pine trees. Of Mandilego it is said that he was the first child to swim in Can Picafort. 

* For the information about Amengual and Ballester, I acknowledge biographies included in "Mallorquines Irrepetibles" by the doyen of Mallorcan sports journalists, Miquel Vidal.

Justin Bieber And Can Picafort

Steady. Don't get excited. Not that you probably were getting excited. A year or two ago maybe, but not now. Justin Bieber, teen moppet turned bad boy, just doesn't raise the excitement in the way he did. But then who knows, maybe he'll prove to be the male Britney Spears, re-emerging on the other side after a time in the darkness. It was never like this in David Cassidy's day.

In case you were wondering, Bieber isn't in Can Picafort and has never been in Can Picafort. But his image is. I was looking at it the other day. It was staring back at me from a display near the entrance to a perfumery. I know the owner well. Is Bieber selling? Not this summer, she replied. Last summer yes, but not now. It's all about the image, I supposed. Becoming a bad boy doesn't do much for the Bieber perfume range. She agreed, though there is always the other factor. The less-than-X factor for a place like Can Picafort. Tourist spend has evaporated into the hot air over a summertime resort that has become All-Inclusive Central.

I enjoy my towards-the-end-of-the-season chats with the perfumery owner. Enjoy because she's a lovely lady, but enjoy is not really the right word. It's enjoyment through her honesty, and the honesty of her impressions of Can Picafort is not terribly positive. It is an honesty that has been characterised by a declining positivity as the years have passed, but she keeps retaining her optimism and her business sense. Among perfumeries which, let's face it, can all seem like much of a muchness, she puts herself out there, advertising, keeping going. Hers is the only perfumery I know of in the area that makes such an effort.

With Bieber in decline, what have been the big-sellers this season, I wonder. There haven't been any. Not in the sense of there having been what she calls a "boom" range. The solid, classic brands sell well enough, Dior, Chanel, Paco Rabanne, Dolce & Gabbana. The last real boom was the Paco Rabanne One Million range. It sold on the back of excellent advertising. She reckons there wasn't a household on Mallorca that didn't have a One Million of some sort. Strange in a way. We both agree that the packaging is not the most tasteful you'll ever see.

But this is a perfumery (two in fact) on the main drag in Can Picafort, the one that runs behind the narrow promenade frontline, where mostly tourists would be customers, wouldn't they be? Yes and no. Without the trade from the locals, it would be hard to survive, I'm guessing, as it would be for the other shops. And shops is about all you see. I hadn't appreciated until she told me that there are now virtually no cafes along the road, the victims of all-inclusive. Paris disappeared a year or so back; it's now a fashion shop. It was once almost synonymous with Can Picafort.

Yet, the replacement by shops hasn't changed the dynamic. Time was, a few years ago, when the perfumery would have been packed around eight in the evening during the summer. Not now.

Perfume is of course a discretionary purchase for the tourist. But then it always was. And more or less anything else that a tourist buys is discretionary, including a beer in a bar or a meal in a restaurant. Tourists have to eat and drink, but they have other options - the supermarkets or more likely the all-inclusive. You tend not to hear as much about how the shift in the tourism market has affected the retail sector as you do about its impact on bars and restaurants or attractions, the ones who shout louder and make their voices heard more. Sure, you hear from the large retailers, like the supermarket multiples, but little from the small businesses. They suffer in a more silent way.

The double-whammy of reduced spend and the rise of the all-inclusive is so familiar a theme that it seems to almost no longer warrant mentioning. But mention has to continue if only to ask where we are heading: where a resort like Can Picafort is heading. My perfumery owner, ever looking for reasons to be optimistic, tells me that one of the better-known all-inclusives in town is separating off part of the hotel and creating a hotel within a hotel. It won't be all-inclusive. It will be for a better type of tourist, a euphemism for one who spends money. Perhaps others will follow, but even if they do, will they only nibble away at the edges of a frayed resort that faces such future uncertainty? Can Picafort needs a boom. It needs a Bieber, but one that doesn't go bad.

The Imported Tradition Of The Oktoberfest

Much as I seek through this particular column to focus on Mallorcan culture, traditions and what have you, it has to be acknowledged that the cultural calendar is not exclusively Mallorcan. There are traditions which can't accurately be referred to as traditions because of their recency, but they are traditions through import, those which owe nothing to Mallorcan culture. And one such is the Oktoberfest. From the middle of September to the middle of October, the island is awash with beer, and this is beer of almost exclusively Germanic origin, promoted to tourist and resident alike through the inevitably clichéd images of large steins of lager, a mädchen in her dirndl and an orgy of Oktoberfest typography, some of which is more likely to be Old English. But let's not worry too much about font accuracy and correctness. It is the last thing that the punter is interested in. He (or indeed she) only has eyes for an enormous glass of foaming liquid.

Today in Can Picafort they'll be downing the last of the Paulaner at the first Oktoberfest to have been held in this resort of kleines Deutschland. It has been, I think I'm right in saying, one of a series of movable beerfest taken to the more remote parts of the island, i.e. those which aren't Playa de Palma or Calvia. Cala Millor had it, and now Can Picafort has had it. But it has been an Oktoberfest which is small beer when set against the über-fest of Arenal's Megapark and indeed Palma and Santa Ponsa's beery love-ins.

The Oktoberfest in its Mallorcan guise is more than simply an event to which the travelling German, missing out on the real thing in Munich, can attend and drown his sorries at not being in Munich. It is a means of prolonging the season and adding dynamism to tourism and promoting a particular resort. This at least is what Joan Monjo, the delegate for Can Picafort at Santa Margalida council, had to say about his beerfest. And it may well be all of these things, assuming it doesn't move somewhere else next year.

This imported cultural tradition does seem to go down quite well with the natives. When the Santa Ponsa fest used to be held in the not so kleines Deutschland of Peguera, it was reckoned that at least 60% of the drinkers were Spanish. But Peguera had represented something of a cultural shock. There was a priceless piece in the local press which explained with something approximating alarm that beer is not served in quantities less than half a litre. The Spaniard, reared on the thimble of the caña, was exposed to the massive attack of the German "mass", and he drank deep and repeatedly, liberated from the junior measure.

This autumnal beer bombardment does have to be seen in a wider context of the Mallorcan beer tradition, such as it is, and, to be honest, it isn't much of a tradition, save for the fact that a great deal of beer is consumed. There hasn't been a brewery of any great size on the island for over fifteen years. The old Damm brewery, which had originally been the Rosa Blanca many, many years before, closed in 1998. But in more recent times, there has been the rise of the microbrewery and the artisan beer. So celebrated has the artisan beer become that, starting on Friday next week, the Alcudia fair will be giving such beer a great deal of prominence. The fair will open at 6.30pm on Friday evening, and there will be a dedicated sub-fair for artisan beers. Moreover, as the fair progresses, there will be a sort of workshop to demonstrate how to make artisan beers, which all sounds a bit like the long-held British obsession with homebrewing and the potential for terribly messy accidents when there is a minor explosion. And as if this wasn't enough, there will also be visits to the Beer Lovers microbrewery, conveniently located next to the town hall.

The microbrewery has encroached into territory dominated by European corporates like Heineken. It certainly did so during Beer Palma, a Maifest of beer devotion back in May with nary a dirndl in sight. This was more of an indigenous beer occasion to which the corporates were invited guests. But the local beers are unlikely to be making their presence felt in the Oktoberfests. Uprooted from Munich the fest has been but woe betide, for the German stickler, that the beer fails to pass the Reinheitsgebot purity test. Weizen, helles and dunkel. The lederhosen will be there in spirit if not the actual wearing. "Ein Prosit, ein Prosit, der Gemütlichkeit." And try translating that it into Mallorquín or Catalan or Castellano.

Duck's Off: Defining Traditions

There is a legal oddity in Spain which prescribes how old a tradition must be in order that it can qualify for being a tradition - if this doesn't sound somewhat Irish (or Spanish). It is not a legal mechanism which defines all traditions but it is one that applies to traditions which involve animals. In a nutshell, older than one hundred years equals tradition, younger than one hundred equals non-tradition. To say that the law is somewhat arbitrary is a bit of an understatement. Nevertheless, it is a law which forms part of wider legislation - that of animal protection. It is one which rarely needs to be invoked, but in Mallorca it has been, and Can Picafort has been the main battleground for questioning the law. It's all to do with ducks.

Some time back in the 1930s, or so the story goes, underpaid local workers (of which there couldn't have been that many) were offered a little treat. A landowner made available a number of ducks, for the eating thereof. There was a catch. The workers would have to swim for their supper. The ducks were released in the sea, in dived the downtrodden peasantry and, amidst what was doubtless a great deal of quacking and general flapping around, the ducks were captured and were subsequently served up on a plate - à l'orange or sans orange. Such was the success of the watery duck chase that a tradition was born. Except of course, it wasn't. For the purposes of the law when it was drawn up, it was not more than one hundred years old. To borrow from Basil Fawlty, the law declared: "duck's off". 

It was only relatively recently that the 100-year rule came into effect and put an end to the use of live ducks for the annual dive, swim and catch at the Can Picafort summer fiestas. Santa Margalida town hall was none too impressed with the law. Only when it was threatened with legal action did it reluctantly agree to substituting the real ducks with unreal ducks. The manufacturers of rubber and plastic ducks were in ducky heaven.

While the town hall bowed to the force of law, not every citizen of the town did likewise. Into Can Picafort folklore was etched the image of the Power Rangers' mask. Real ducks were released by miscreant traditionalists wearing non-traditional masks who thumbed their noses at the legality of the 100-year rule.

The masks were on show in 2007, the first year in which real ducks were banned. They were to be seen again, along with more ducks, over the next three years. The flouting of the law required the town hall, still reluctantly complying with it, to order the local police to stop the miscreants and the Guardia to send a submarine diving unit. No one was ever actually caught. In 2010, the defenders of the duck tradition released a video. It featured a "pope" and some ducks. The pope was shown beckoning the ducks towards him. It was to be the last year that a real duck put in an appearance at the 15 August event.

Despite some Can Picafort old-timers and some not so old-timers having said that the swim is not how it used to be and that they refuse to take part and go in pursuit of a rubber duck, the event's popularity seems to have grown. One suspects that it is partly because some visitors live in hope that the Power Rangers will return. Or perhaps it is because there are only rubber ducks (and a load of melons as well). The papal defenders of the real ducks are not the only ones whose opinions and preferences count. There are the defenders of the rubber duck as well, those who disagree with the use of live animals.

The animal-protection lobby has said that ducks would have felt stress and anxiety when they were being chased by the swimmers. They may well have done, but when one is talking animal protection and rights, the stress of the ducks is surely nothing compared to that which a bull suffers. But that's a different argument and a different tradition, one that is definitely more than one hundred years old. It is, nevertheless, one with a political overtone, the ruling Partido Popular being supportive of the bullfight. It had been hoped in Can Picafort that the party's lack of animal-rights correctness might have seen a change of heart where the ducks were concerned. Regional governments can amend the 100-year rule, if it so suits. The Balearic Government hasn't been tempted to. The ducks, the real ones, are safely swimming and quacking in Albufera and other ducky habitats in the local area. They are no longer taken on board small boats and released into the sea in front of the Mar y Paz hotel on 15 August. It is a day for rubber ducks only. But. What would happen if a duck were to inadvertently fly over Can Picafort and land in the sea at around 12 midday? Would the duck be charged with breaking the law?

What's On Around Alcúdia And Pollensa - Can Picafort fiestas

The longest of the local resorts' summer fiestas, the clue to their length lies with the name - Mare de Déu d'Agost - i.e. August, the holiday month for the locals. All kicks off on 2 August, highlights including three gangs of demons performing a fire-run on the night of 3 August, the Auba (dawn) night party on 8 August, the ecological products market on the following day, the Canpicafornia flower power party on 14 August and then, on 15 August, the day of Mare de Déu d'Agost, the dive and swim to catch the rubber ducks released from boats off the Mar y Paz hotel and at midnight the very best and most spectacular fireworks display of any of the fiestas. Even then, there are two more days of fiestas left.

Programme in English at: http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/2014/07/can-picafort-mare-de-deu-dagost.html

The Man Who Invented Tourism

In Can Picafort is a road which, like others, goes in a straight line in linking the thoroughfare of the Carretera Artà and the Paseo Colon and which adds to the criss-cross grid layout of this part of the resort. Along this road are some pine trees which hang over the road itself and partially obscure a hotel. It is the Farrutx, named after the cape at the eastern end of the bay of Alcúdia, the tip of one of three giant claws - Pinar and Formentor being the others - between which are one enormous bite and one lesser bite of coastal crescents eaten by the voracious appetite of the sea. These bites are the bights (German, "Bucht") of Alcúdia and Pollensa, the bays of Alcúdia and Pollensa.

Can Picafort is a case example of two styles of resort urban planning in one. Though the whole of it is called Can Picafort, it is really two resorts in one. Can Picafort was created according to the grid system which stops abruptly around about where the marina is. The rest of the resort, Son Bauló, is the original resort, with origins dating from the 1930s. Its layout is totally different. Its circular style is evidence of a quasi-garden city design approach, the dominant planning philosophy of the 1920s and 1930s before 1960s' modernism brought with it the Milton Keynesian new town grid.

The name Can Picafort has existed since the end of the nineteenth century. It comes from what was little more than a shack that belonged to one Jeroni Fuster. It was called "Picafort", derived from words to refer to the strong itch from a mosquito bite. But there was little or nothing in Can Picafort until the 1960s. Photos show the early formation of the grid road system; sand tracks that led to the beach in the late 1950s. One of them, the main one, is now Via Suisa. At its beach end were once dunes. 

Son Bauló, as a tourist area, is thus much older. As Can Picafort as a whole developed in the 1960s, Son Bauló dominated, which was unsurprising as its basic infrastructure had been in place thirty years before, a product of the drive to create resorts between the world wars but one that had its roots some thirty or forty years further back in time.

Let's go back to that road with the pine trees and the Hotel Farrutx. Its name is Miquel dels Sants Oliver, a name that will mean little or nothing to guests at the hotel or to any tourist or indeed to many residents. In the small town of Campanet, they have started commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Oliver, who was born there in 1864. Later this year there will be further acts of celebration.

Oliver was a journalist. For a time he was also the editor of "La Almudaina", a newspaper that was founded in 1887 by his father. He was known for many things, but it was articles that he wrote in that newspaper in the early 1890s which made him a hugely important figure in the development of Mallorca's tourism. At the same time as Jeroni Fuster was lending the name of his shack to what was to become a major tourist resort, Oliver was setting out principles for a whole new industry - tourism.

It could be argued that Oliver invented Mallorca's tourism because what he, with remarkable vision foresaw in his articles, was tourism for the spring and summer seasons. It was to be some years before hot-weather tourism truly caught on, but Oliver's vision ran counter to the thinking of the time, that tourism was something for the mild winter. He wrote those articles against a background of economic crisis in the island's agricultural sector, the result in part of the phylloxera plague that struck grape vines. He saw the necessity for diversification, and tourism was that diversification. For it to be successful, though, there needed to be great improvements to infrastructure. His thinking directly led to the founding of the Majorca Tourist Board in 1905, though when we speak - in English - of a tourist board, we underestimate what this meant. Its Spanish name is more meaningful: Fomento del Turismo, the development of tourism, which was to be development in all facets, one of which, some years later, was the creation of resorts, such as Son Bauló.

Of course, what Oliver could not have foreseen was what came in the 1960s. He would probably have been horrified. Tourism visionary he was, but he was also sympathetic to rural traditions, such as those of his home town, and to the natural and unspoilt environment, like that of the bays in the north. Would he have liked his name to have been given to a road with a hotel called Farrutx in a resort built on dunes? Unlikely.

Forty Years' Wait: Can Picafort

Of the northern resorts, Can Picafort can sometimes be overlooked because of the attention paid to its wealthier neighbour along the bay in Alcúdia or to that of the resort in the next bay of Pollensa. In one sense, this lesser attention has been justified. The Can Picafort marina does not match the grandeur of the Alcúdiamar or the splendour of Puerto Pollensa's yacht club. But things are changing in Can Picafort, and one of the more obvious changes is the presence of the new Club Náutico.

The story of the club is one that dates back many years. It was in fact founded in 1949 when a group of summer vacationers established the "Club Nàutic de Can Picafort". In the 1970s, the founding members of the club came up with a project for the development of the marina, one that was meant to have come to fruition the following decade. What the members hadn't bargained on was that funding problems led them to lose control over the project, of the marina and so of the possible development of the clubhouse.

The financial problems arose in 1972, leading to years of degradation of the marina. In 1985, work having been paralysed for all that time, the club's board sought the financial help of the tourism sector in the resort. A company, Puerto Deportivo de Can Picafort S.A. was formed, but there then followed more than two decades of legal dispute and further financial problems. These were such that the club was brought to the point of bankruptcy. It had a contract with the company, which comprised tourist businesses and hoteliers locally, to perform work on the marina's development. The lack of work that was done finally led the club, which held the concession for the marina all this time, to go to court, claiming breach of contract. Having been the concession holder, however, it was the club which was liable for costs and for fees for the marina's use, and not the contractor. It was these liabilities which nearly caused the bankruptcy.

In 2008, a court in Inca considered the case and a year later issued a ruling in favour of the club and against the contractor. The court ruled that the contractor should pay the mooring fees that the club had been paying. There were appeals - to the provincial court in Palma and then to the Balearics High Court. It ratified the decision of the Inca court. At the start of 2011, the contractor was instructed to vacate the port area completely. It was only then that serious work to improve the marina and to build the yacht club could begin.

Even then it wasn't all plain sailing, so to speak. Santa Margalida town hall opposed the building of the clubhouse, arguing that such a development was expressly forbidden under local planning regulations from way back in 1986. However, the Ports Authority gave permission, and its decisions countermand those of town halls.

Eventually, 41 years after the financial problems first arose, the Club Náutico building came into existence.

The tortuous and tangled story of the club acts as a prologue for what is taking place this weekend. Can Picafort now has its club and it wants to make itself better known as nautical sports destination, just in the same way as Puerto Alcúdia - especially Puerto Alcúdia - has over the past few years. Any disagreement that there was between the town hall and the club has been set to one side. They are both engaged in promoting this weekend's first Nautical Sports Fair and Gastronomy (calamari) Fair.

The fair is, therefore, a celebration of the hoped-for future of Can Picafort as a nautical sports resort and of that complicated past. Forty odd years is a long time to wait.

Programme in English: http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/2014/05/can-picafort-nautical-sports-and.html

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

The Dolmen Of Son Bauló

Generally speaking, Mallorca's urban planners have shown sufficient sensitivity towards the presence of the island's archaeological heritage that they have managed to keep it a discrete distance from their urbanising tendencies, albeit that significant amounts of this heritage have either succumbed to nature and have  disappeared and been buried or to the destruction of man in times when they knew no better and to further destruction by man in times when they should have known better. Much has been bulldozed out of existence or built on, never to be seen again.

A good example of this urban separation between ancient and modern is the Pollentia Roman town in Alcúdia. It sits on its own, molested by little more than a road that runs past one side and the proximity of a parking area of such primitiveness that it might have been developed in Roman times. There again, the planners would have had a pretty shrewd idea that the ruins were there even before excavations started. Not that this had stopped previous generations who saw to it that all the secrets of Pollentia will never be revealed.

Some of this heritage is a great deal older than Pollentia and is also a great deal more visible. Mercifully, it hasn't, for the most part, been subjected to the artificial insemination of development, and nor was it in those days when man really couldn't have given a tinker's cuss about some old rocks lying around. Nevertheless, in its contemporary environment this ancient heritage can find itself all but rubbing a rocky shoulder with urbanisation. Ancient does lie close to modern, an example being the Talayotic remains in S'Illot. The best one can say is that at least tourists get to appreciate the existence of this ancient heritage. They can't really avoid it.

But S'Illot is not without its sensitivity, and this is very much more than can be said for the total lack of respect that has been shown to the dolmen of Son Bauló. This ancient burial site is a close neighbour, a far too close neighbour, of Can Picafort's industrial estate. Santa Margalida town hall, which owns the dolmen land, has come up with the idea of affording it a tad greater respect and so granting it some privacy. They're going to put some hedges up as well as some information panels to explain what it is, which should be helpful for those coming and going at the nearby warehouses.

The town hall does of course see this initiative, which will set it back some one hundred grand, as being representative of sustainable tourism, a term which can be used to mean whatever you want it to mean, so long as it is touristically correct. One can but hope that the town hall is right, but the dolmen, not exactly vast, is unlikely to attract great numbers of sustainable tourists, deterred by the otherwise unsustainable existence of factory, workshop and warehouse. Still, hats off to Santa Margalida. Their heritage heart is in the right place. It's just unfortunate that the dolmen heritage happens to be in the heart of an industrial estate.

For all this, the dolmen is important. Assigning it a precise time in the past has proved not to be easy. There are wild fluctuations as to when it is believed that it was created and there is also debate as to whether it can be linked in more or less direct historical terms to the far better known and far more extensive necropolis burial site not so far away at the coastal edge of the Son Real finca. The reporting of the dolmen's provenance is such that it might have been created at any time from the fourth to the second millennium BC. Getting a precise handle on its origins would be useful in furthering understanding of early Mallorcan settlement. It is believed that there was no permanent inhabitation until the third millennium BC, but it is also accepted that there was transient occupation, that of temporary visitors who were probably attracted by the island's wood, before this; perhaps as far back as the sixth millennium BC.

Mallorca has an astonishing amount of prehistoric sites which lend themselves to a greater understanding of Mediterranean culture in the very distant past. Respecting, albeit belatedly, the Son Bauló dolmen is the least that can be done. But how sad is it that so much of the past has been made invisible to contemporary investigation and examination. The more recent past, that of the Romans of Alcúdia's Pollentia, has thus far been revealed through excavation to be less than ten per cent of its former existence.

The chances are that we will never know the true extent of Pollentia, but it is worth trying to find out, just as it is worth trying to find out about even more ancient Mallorcan civilisation. It may be on an industrial estate, but great respect to the dolmen.

* Photo from: http://balearsculturaltour.net

Muro: The New Model Town Hall

Muro is a town which generally goes about its business without making a great deal of fuss or drawing a huge amount of attention to itself. Gone are the days when the grand old men of Muro's politics would clash and when things would rarely appear to be sweetness and light. Both of them also had their well-publicised legal problems. Miguel Ramis, the founder of Grupotel and one-time mayor, was disqualified from public office over a land matter, while Jaume Perelló, another ex-mayor, was sentenced to a year in prison because of vote-rigging. There are of course still the occasional spats, but by and large the town hall avoids being named in dishonourable dispatches and conducts itself in an unfussy and efficient manner. So efficient is it, that it is only one of two town halls in Mallorca to have no debt.

Other town halls in the area still have alarming levels of debt, despite some years of austerity. Alcúdia's and Santa Margalida's are roughly the same, edging towards four and a half million euros. Pollensa's is a bit under four million. Sa Pobla has a whacking great 10.35 million. So how is it that Muro manages to owe not a centimo? Basically, it is all down to good housekeeping. Mayor Martí Fornes has explained that running a town hall should be like running your home finances. You don't spend more than you can afford. It all sounds remarkably like Margaret Thatcher and remarkably sensible.

There was a debt, some two million euros, a few years ago, but it has been whittled down to nothing through prudence. It is not as though there aren't investments, just that they are closely controlled. The efficiency stretches to payments to suppliers. Muro takes, on average, a mere sixteen days to pay up.

Muro's financial position may all be a function of size (roughly a third the population of Alcúdia) and of a large number of mainly up-market hotels from which healthy revenues can be obtained, but however it is managing to keep the debt to zero, it can be held up as something of a model town hall for others to aspire to.

Meanwhile, the town hall is taking measures to improve security on beaches and to tackle the problem of the illegal massages which are offered on the beaches. Calvia town hall has taken a lead in respect of the latter by putting out to tender a number of massage tents on various beaches in the town. Muro is following suit, as is Santa Margalida (aka Can Picafort). It is a pragmatic response in face of a problem that is not easily solved. It might appear to be easy to solve, but as Santa Margalida's mayor, Antoni Reus, has pointed out, the local police can confiscate the oil and the towel but an hour or so later the massage girls are back again. It's a familiar story, akin to that of the "lookies". Issuing fines isn't much use, as they don't get paid.

Muro will have two massage tents this summer, while Santa Margalida will have four. Though it might be hoped that some of the trade that the illegal massage girls have until now exploited will prefer to have an authorised beach massage, will it mean the end of the illegality and the sheer nuisance factor? Somehow, you would doubt it.

On beach security, Muro will be installing safes with the sunbed and parasol units. Or rather, the concessionaires who supply the sunbeds will be installing them. Doubtless this will have meant higher tenders for the sunbed lots on the beaches. The concessions are good revenue-earners for both Muro and Santa Margalida town halls, but they have also had their share of controversy. One can but hope that the safes will not be the targets of any vandalism. Both Muro and Can Picafort have a bit of form when it comes to sunbeds being vandalised. Not, it would seem, by ne'er-do-well tourists or local lads with nothing better to do, but by rivals.

MALLORCA TODAY - Can Picafort marina works finally approved

It has taken more than 30 years but work on the yacht club and other facilities at Can Picafort's marina has been approved by the regional government. Members will pay the half a million euros plus for improvements that should have been undertaken by a company to which management was ceded but which were never performed.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - Geese to take part in Can Picafort Assumption Day celebrations

Santa Margalida town hall has only reluctantly agreed with the prohibition of the use of live ducks during the traditional event that occurs today in Can Picafort and which now uses plastic ducks instead. The town hall has arranged for a parade of geese prior to today's event as a mark of its desire to see the law changed that would reduce the qualifying period of a "tradition" to 75 years and so, in theory, allow the use of live ducks.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

MALLORCA TODAY - Police who mocked defecating tourist await interior ministry decision

The three policemen from the local force in Santa Margalida who mocked and insulted a drunk tourist who was defecating in the Paseo Colon in Can Picafort are awaiting a decision as to their futures by the interior ministry, a report into the matter having been forwarded to it by the town hall. The incident, which occurred last year, was captured on a mobile and the video has been circulating on the internet. One of the officers now works for another town hall, while the other two are still with Santa Margalida, but all three face suspension from duty with loss of pay for up to three years, their offences including a failure in duty of care.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

MALLORCA TODAY - Police face three-year suspension over Can Picafort video

Santa Margalida town hall is investigating a video in which a drunk tourist is seen defecating in the street in Can Picafort and then walking away with soiled shorts. The video was shot by local police, who, rather than coming to his assistance, mocked him. The officers face a three-year suspension from duty without pay.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

MALLORCA TODAY - Santa Margalida to impose fines for street mess

Santa Margalida town hall is to use an ordinance passed in 2004 regarding street and public space cleanliness to impose fines for littering, spitting and other forms of messing streets. The issue is especially acute in Can Picafort where, despite town hall cleaning operations, the volume of tourism makes keeping the streets clean a difficult task.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

MALLORCA TODAY - Can Picafort to get a five-star hotel

Following approval of a new local ordinance by Santa Margalida town hall, the way has been opened up for the building of the first five-star hotel in Can Picafort. It won't be built overnight, however, as the process could take up to three years before it becomes a reality.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - Dog initiatives in Santa Margalida

Santa Margalida town hall is getting tougher with owners who allow dogs to roam the streets unattended and so foul the streets without any subsequent removal of excrement. There are, however, to now be so-called "caniparks" for dogs, one of them having opened in Son Bauló, while the beach of Na Patana (a "rustic" beach away from Son Bauló) is to be made available for owners to take their dogs.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

MALLORCA TODAY - Jellyfish "invade" Can Picafort beaches

Early in the summer it is for a jellyfish invasion, but this is what has happened in Can Picafort, thousands of a certain species having been washed up on beaches in the resort, leading to the town hall to have to use bulldozers to remove them.

See more: Diario de Mallorca