In A Wrong Place: Architecture

Alcúdia has some old ruins, and not just the Roman ones.

The long-abandoned Es Foguero nightclub has been home to vagrants and was the last resting-place of one: "El Gallego", who was murdered there last summer. Even longer-abandoned is the original power station, the two chimneys of which stand less than proud on the landscape of the bay of Alcúdia.

The site of GESA's former power station is meant to become a museum of science and technology. The cost has been put at 21 million euros.

In October 2007, a Pamplona-based architects practice, Alonso Hernández y Asociados, beat off competition from the likes of the Millennium Dome designer, Lord Rogers, in winning the pitch for the conversion of the site. The architects promised a concept called "el claro en el bosque" - the clearing in the forest.

What has since happened is that some clearance work has been undertaken, not directly related to the museum. The science and technology clearing in the forest may now never be built.

A year after the award to the Pamplona firm, there was a presentation of what the museum might be. It was made in Alcúdia's auditorium. A presentation is as much as there has ever been. Even then it was being admitted that the finance for the project was not in place, and it still isn't.

Economic crisis has caused a rethink of many public developments. If it causes there to be more thought applied to both the necessity and the architecture of some of these developments, then it will have been worth enduring.

There is some really rotten architecture in Mallorca, most of it contemporary. It is not rotten per se, but it is rotten because it has no sense of place. We might not ever know what the clearing in the forest will finally be like, but the inspiration was said to have come from the Tate Modern, the converted Bankside Power Station on London's South Bank. Would this be appropriate for a tourist location on a bay of some not little outstanding beauty?

The auditorium was an apt building in which to hold the presentation of the museum. The puff maintains that the auditorium is of contemporary design. It may well be, but contemporary doesn't mean remarkable, and this the auditorium most certainly isn't. Moreover, it reflects in no way the historic walls of the town which stand opposite, while it has never operated at anything like capacity.

Similarly, the Can Ramis building in Alcúdia's market square suffers from being under-utilised and from being a totally alien structure. Like much new residential architecture and an absurd building that has risen right on Pollensa's Plaça Major and next to the church, it is symptomatic of how architects have seen the future - it is block-shaped and cuboidal.

Contemporary design does not have to be a mélange of competing styles. Anyone familiar with Bath's SouthGate Centre will know that it is possible to merge the new with the old almost seamlessly, while still creating a highly modern feel, so much so that you have the impression of walking through a computer simulation.

Questionable both in design and in purpose. This has been the problem with some local building development. In the same way, so have other projects. Industrial estates, for example. Pollensa's is far from full. In Alcúdia, the layout was finished a couple of years ago. It stands empty and now blocked to access. The official reason why it is empty has to do with a failure to arrive at agreement over electricity supply, which is ironic, given that it is next to the current power station.

The fact is that some developments are simply unnecessary. Pollensa wants its own auditorium, but why build one when Alcúdia has one with spare capacity? It all comes down to me-too need and suspicions that there might be other factors at play.

The empty industrial estate is next to the Es Foguero ruin, one that became so largely because it was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The project for the old power station has suffered because the time was wrong. Were the museum to be built, it would still, because its design would retain the landscape-offensive chimneys, be in the wrong place. And in the wrong place is where other buildings now are, or they are just plain wrong because they are not needed.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Bus Passes: Alcúdia's mayoral candidates

A motley crew. The tall guy, the bloke who looks like a refugee from 70s rock perms, three homely ladies and some geezer who we thought wasn't going to be there. A motley crew for the motley cobbling-together of justification for existence that is Alcúdia's Can Ramis building.

They came, they spoke, they concurred (sometimes). The mayoral candidates of Alcúdia. Several species of small and not so small furry and fiery political animals gathered together in the cave of an exhibition room and grooving for the press pictures. At least, at last, here was some point to Can Ramis. It was a burning topic for the citizenry of Alcúdia.

The tall guy, the mayor Jeff Goldblum, also known as Miguel Llompart, said that everything about the building of Can Ramis had been "correcto". The one among the ranks who had something of the politician "look" about her, if only in a less-terrifying Ann Widdecombe style, was the furry terrier, pawing at the alleged irregularities of the building. But we knew all about Coloma and the Partido Popular's objections. They were nothing new.

The tall guy, though, let on that Can Ramis had not been intended as a bus station. This was new, as was the admission that the misapprehension the entire town had been under had been a fault of town hall communication. So this explained everything, unlike the plan which had a bus station and the model with the little Dinky buses. Or had I imagined it all? Not that it really matters. It was a waste of money whatever the intention had or hadn't been.

There were six of them in all. One of them hadn't been expected. He had not been in the rogue's gallery of head shots prior to the event, at any rate. Had he gate-crashed perhaps? No, he was the chap from the Esquerra Unida. And what's the purpose of their existence exactly, other than to be left and united? Still don't know, though the united left is the only party which will defend workers, or something like that.

It wasn't trains and boats and planes so much as trains and buses. Ah yes, the train. The one not standing either somewhere near to Alcúdia's auditorium or the Es Foguero ruin. Here, the main three parties, mayor Goldblum's Convergència, Ann Widdecombe's PP and the PSOE of the alarming Brian May lookalike, stood shoulder to shoulder. Not that Coloma could physically stand shoulder to shoulder with the tall guy; only metaphorically.

All three agreed that the government had been wrong regarding the siting of the railway and that the views of Alcúdia had to be respected. One Alcúdia, one train. Not that there is one train and is unlikely to now be one, besides which Brian May, sometimes also referred to as Pere Malondra, reckoned it wasn't necessary anyway. There are other systems of public transport which can connect Alcúdia to Sa Pobla. Such as? Helicopters perhaps? Silly me. It'll be a bus of course.

The lady from the Esquerra Republicana, whatever they are, made an unusually useful point. Still about buses, but it was useful nonetheless. Why wasn't there a bus stop by the newly-terminaled commercial port? Well yes, why isn't there? Probably because there aren't any buses which go there, but possibly also because the port with its shiny new terminal has achieved the remarkable. It has actually managed to create less traffic than before.

There was one matter on which the aspiring and perspiring candidates could all sort of come together. Tourism. A longer season was needed. As was an agreement on tourism quality, one suggested by Brian May rather than his proposing something as dramatic as we will Mallorca rock you. Alcúdia offers not just sun and beach but also culture and gastronomy, parroted the Mallorcan socialists lady. How revolutionary. Who would have ever thought of such a thing? I must run the idea past the waddling masses of Bellevue some time. The chap who we didn't think was going to be there wanted 30% of hotel places open in winter. Though how they might be filled is quite a different matter and therefore one that was not addressed.

The mayoral candidates lit up Can Ramis with their enlightenment. When the official campaign starts, there should be a banner strung high above the street by the town hall. "Vote Llompart, a mayor you can look up to." Because everyone does, or has to. Alcúdia's one unique political selling-point. It has the tallest mayor in Mallorca. In the absence of candidates offering any great thoughts, other than about bus stops where buses don't run, this is about as good a reason as there is for voting for any of them.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Darkly Floods Of May

Of the hard-luck stories, the result of the Darkly Floods Of May, more hard luck could not surely have been experienced than at the Drunken Duck. Good weather for them. Ducks, that is. Actually I'm not sure that floods are that great for ducks, especially if they are drunken or happen to be a bar. Russ, having been installed for the season, opens, has a good evening, and then ... then apparently finds himself up to his waist in water, various white goods of a commercial style similarly inundated. Things, one trusts, can only get better. And where and when did we once hear something along those lines? More below.

Elsewhere, rather grander edifices also suffered. Not, by the way, that the Drunken Duck isn't grand, but it does pail - sic - into less than grandeur alongside (were it in fact alongside, which it isn't) the Can Ramis building. Yep, the Alcúdia world of Lego was also affected by the Great Rains. Not even a budget of in excess of one million euros could prevent ingress, though one might have hoped the million plus might have made it a bit more water-tight. The inundation was not on the scale of the hilariously disastrous Great Palma Metro Flood soon after it opened, but inundation it still was - through the door and through the ceiling ... into the tourist office. There are now some rather attractive watermarks on the floor.

One of the more common English from Spanish expressions/words that is used locally is "perfect", as from "perfecto", a regular enough interjection in Spanish speech. In the case of the Darkly Floods Of May, perfect it most certainly wasn't, or indeed "perfick". And less than perfect is the situation with regard to potato farming. The floods have not helped what has been a difficult time for the potato growers of Sa Pobla who have been protesting against lack of government help. One imagines that they might be protesting some more; the export market, in particular, could be hit hard.


And so to the election. It will be small consolation to Nick Clegg that in Mallorca he had a large amount of support. Not necessarily from an exiled votership, but from the locals, as in Mallorcans. The "Diario" ran a poll, asking who readers would vote for were they able to vote.

I, being the acting returning officer for Alcúdia, Pollensa and all points Mallorca, hereby give notice that the total percentages for David Cameron are 21%, Gordon Brown 25% and Nick Clegg 54%, and that Nick Clegg has been duly elected as Prime Minister in exile in Mallorca.



Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Early Doors: Shut on the first day of the season

Yesterday was the first day of the season - I think I might have mentioned this in the previous entry. First day of the season and the first day when tourists flock in. Or so one might hope. But even if they do or don't suddenly descend on the resorts en masse, the instruments of tourism should, you might also hope, be fully functional.

It's a Saturday in Alcúdia, the old town. I am passing what was the tourist office near to the town hall building. It has closed and will re-open some time as a health centre, or so I am told. There are notices informing visitors that there is a new office. This doesn't prevent one set of tourists and then another, a few moments later, trying to get into the silent office. I am in full being-helpful-to tourists mode. I may not actually hug them, but I am on hand to give them a hand. Lucky them. There is a new office, I explain, and give directions, even if they are also on the notices. Thank you, say some Germans. Thank you, say some French. And off they go. I'm the tourists' new best friend. I wish I hadn't bothered.

I remembered that I had to go to the horror that is the redeveloped Can Ramis building, the one that houses the new tourist office, and take some photos. So off I go, thinking that I'll have a word with the tourism folk while I'm there. Can Ramis may be a disaster in terms of architectural misplacement, but as I near it I think that the tourist office looks quite impressive. Big I's in blue making it clear what it is. Lots of glass showing its interior. This is a good idea. Not intimidating. However ... It's the first day of the season, and the office is shut. To be fair, it does say, on another notice, this one on the door of the new office, that it is closed on Saturdays, but surely, I also think, they could have made an exception on this, the first day of the season.

Having taken a couple of snaps of the rotten building, having been startled by an art exhibition in one of the display areas that looked like it was stuffed full of merchandising for sports companies, having gone upstairs to another exhibition that might just as easily have been housed in a potting shed - given the number of pots that were the exhibits - I head off towards the auditorium. I walk past the reception to the Roman ruins. A group of Swedish tourists are trying the gate. They shouldn't have bothered. There is, after all, a bloody great padlock on it. First day of the season, and Alcúdia's main tourist attraction is shut. To be fair, there is a notice saying that it is closed on holidays, and the first of May is one such, but I can't help but think that they might have made an exception on this, the first day of the season.

It has been remarked before now that at times an impression is given that Mallorca does what it can to put off tourists. This would be unfair to the Pollentia site and especially to the Alcúdia tourist office, but why close on this day, of all days? But them's will be the rules. Working hours, union regulations, the stiff arm of bureaucracy. Yet here, with this closed office and this closed attraction, you have everything that isn't quite right with attitudes towards tourism.


QUIZ -
Yesterday: Bruce Springsteen, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_JxD0l2uPo

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Living In A Box (Re-mix): Architecture in Alcúdia

The quadratic affront to the eye that is the Can Ramis building in Alcúdia old town (12 December: Toy Story - The Can Ramis Building) is an insult of non-contextual brutalism. But it is, after all, only a public building, one forged from functionalism. Nevertheless, it has no redeeming feature when placed against the neo-Gothic of historical buildings, those classified in terms of local "patrimonio" (heritage, to you and me). The straight lines, the vertical and horizontal, the wood, glass and steel form a passionless abscess-in-a-box of royal proportions - "Carlos Carbunculis".

There is, one has to presume, a whole school of what we might call the new architecture, or what might more accurately be described as Blockism. This Blockist tendency has infiltrated the residential domain, giving rise to and making rise up a cubist collectivist, close-to-communist conformity of form for housing. It might look in place in some post-modernist new town, but in Alcúdia? In Mallorca? A local fascination with and often brilliance with art and graphics has combined the old, the more recent (post-impressionism in art, for example) and the contemporary in fashioning painting, sculpture and design, but the architecture of "now" has turned its back on the vividness of colour and the diversity of cottage, villa and Moorish shapes in creating a Blockist, soulless landscape. Residential housing has been boxed in by the box of a group-thought architectural design authoritarianism, the fascism of the cuboidal, and most of it divested of primary or strong colours.

In Puerto Alcúdia, there is a new development by the Eroski supermarket and on the edge of the Lago Esperanza. It is indicative of this new conformism, one that has sprouted a pre-fabism, spawned by a computer-based template and using the rotate tool to move left, right, up or down. It has been finished off with what looks like a gradient effect from Photoshop. It is Adobe end-of-terrace. It is also redolent of sixties and seventies British town centres or council estates - the national mural of Brent, tiles of competing browns, greys and what may even be blues that looks ripe for some graffiti artist to complement. New, this "artistic" adjunct may look acceptable, though to whom one can't be quite sure, but give it a year or three or four and it will have acquired an appearance of obsolescence. As for the dwellings, the interiors, the workmanship, the fittings may well all be superior; there's no reason to suggest otherwise. But this is not the point.

The development has a certain industrial attractiveness. In a different context it might bring forth the plaudits of a local RIBA** equivalent (well, I say might), for example the context of whole new builds on land previously razed by nuclear or even conventional-warhead attack. No, architecturally, it has a utilitarian beauty, if that's not a contradiction, which it is. But the pursuit of the Blockist new architecture is changing not just the style of the housing stock in Alcúdia (and elsewhere), it is also altering the landscape, taking away that heritage of style and of colour. It is also, via its soullessness, eating away at a social and physical soul that had previously found building expression in the richness of shades of earth, sea, sun and beach. In the further pursuit of a perceived elevation of quality, it is symptomatic of the tourism conundrum - the move away, so we are told, from sea and beach to an abstract and still undefined "newness" of tourism. Architectural allegory.

Stark and lacking sympathy with the natural environment from which came a more traditional architecture and tourism, Blockism is the housing motif for the new age. But as with tourism, there is more than just a slight sense that architecture has lost its way and is striving for form from the seemingly formless, as with whatever the "new" tourism is supposed to be. Lost its way, and lost in AutoCAD and Photoshop.

** RIBA - Royal Institute of British Architects.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

This Is Where We All Fall Out

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

Fat Albert Rotunda

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

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

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


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


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

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

Station To Station

So, it would seem that some técnicos have been handed goodly sums of public wonga to come up with the bleeding obvious - namely where the railway extension from Sa Pobla should not be sited. Técnicos, it should be noted, can be anything from an "expert" (either one who is legitimately an expert or one who thinks he is) to the bloke who unblocks the drains or short-circuits your electricity system. Actually, the chap with the rods would have been as expert in this instance as those who would claim expertise. In fact, I would have been as expert, and I'm not a técnico in any shape or form.

For those of you who may have missed the earlier instalments of this civil-engineering saga, the railway is meant - at some point - to run for the final ten kilometres or so from Sa Pobla to Alcúdia which would bring the local railway not so much into the twenty-first century as into the nineteenth. The route for this has been a thing of controversy and environmental wrangling, the obvious one always having always been one that goes alongside the main road (in other words, the road from the motorway). The greater issue has been where it will end up. And it is this that the técnicos have pronounced upon: it will not be by the Es Foguero ruin next to Albufera and the industrial estate. This should be the cue for yet more wailing, not least from Alcúdia's mayor who is in favour of the Es Foguero option and has thrown his toy choo-choo out of the pram on more than one occasion, complaining that the government's mobility department has not consulted adequately. Muro town hall has also voiced its preference for Es Foguero, which may have something to do with the fact that a terminal would be right next to the Muro border.

But no, the técnicos are saying no to Es Foguero. The big question remains, however, where exactly will the terminal be, and for the first time that I can recall, other than on this blog, they are now talking about it going next to the Horse Roundabout. When this railway was first mooted, following President Antich's glorious socialist victory in 2007 that heralded his "age of the train", I said that putting it by the roundabout would seem the obvious place. Talk to many people here and they will say the same thing. One should be used to the fact that the obvious is often the last thing on a Mallorcan planner's list. Until now, and it is still a possibility, the preference has been for causing a considerable amount of upheaval to say nothing of a fair degree of expropriation and dissent by running the track across finca land and knocking other bits down so that Alcúdia railway station could be somewhere behind the auditorium. The Horse Roundabout option would be far more straightforward; it would also be more sensible as a terminal for the planned tram to Can Picafort. Moreover, it would have a demographic advantage in that there are more people living within a kilometre radius than there would be if the terminal were to go in the old town. That there maybe some wetland by the roundabout should not be beyond the know-how of some técnicos to sort out. They could always get the blokes with their plumbing rods to see to it.


Some shock news from the town hall in Alcúdia regarding the redevelopment of the Can Ramis building next to the market square. It is a shock because I am told it's likely to be finished by July or August - this year! Remarkable. And apparently, they're not going to close the existing tourist office in the old town but have two - the current one and the one that has always been planned for Can Ramis. So, four tourist offices in all in Alcúdia. Well done, them. And some of them might even be open. Reeling from the impact of this news, I had to go and steady myself by having a drink in a nearby café, and who should I stumble across but the ebullient Miguel, the owner of the Agata stone shops, who is normally, at this time of the year, trekking along the Amazon basin extracting rare gems and generally disrupting the fragile eco-system of Brazil. But this year isn't, or hasn't for as long as normal. Anyway, this is all by way of leading up to the fact that he is to open a third Agata, in addition to the original one in Alcúdia old town and the one in Puerto Pollensa that he started a couple of years ago. This third one is to be in Playa de Muro between the Oasis and Topo Gigio restaurants. Given that even the local tourist office has said that the shops there could do with some improvement, this is pretty decent news for Playa de Muro.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Bruce Springsteen, "Thunder Road" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KngiJUNdsu0). Today's title - well, no clues for this; pretty easy.

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

Can The Can

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

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

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

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

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


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

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