The Lawlessness Of Cala Ratjada

Three springs ago, Capdepera town hall took pleasure in informing its citizens and any others who might have cared that the beach police unit was back on the beat. It had sprung into operation, as the official season demands, on 1 May. The town hall was able to also provide information about how well the unit had performed the previous year, which was when it was established. No fewer than 804 "denuncias" for non-compliance with bylaws had been issued.

Town halls love this sort of thing. Calvia is an even better example. Take, for instance, its report last year about the number of pineapples that had been impounded en route to Paguera and Magalluf beaches. Designed to impress, it ends up sounding limp if not slightly ridiculous.

The following summer, in July 2015, the town hall was giving information about its police night patrol, which was responding to citizen complaints regarding noise, street drinking and what have you. Before this season started, i.e. early April, it was reported that both the beach and night units could disappear. Police representatives were refusing to negotiate with the mayor. There was open warfare as the police felt badly let down. Their salaries, it was said, were the worst in Mallorca. Three officers from the night unit had decided to leave. The whole of the beach patrol looked as if it was on its way out as well.

Although one can (often with justification) mock the statistics that town halls enjoy lavishing on their citizenships, the police union said that the two units had generated successful results. Yet here they were, on the point of collapse because of low morale. Projecting ahead to the staging of the highly popular mediaeval market in May, union representatives were suggesting that only minimum services could be provided. Officers were refusing to perform "extraordinary services". The situation with their conditions - hours as well as pay - was "unsustainable".

Towards the end of April came news that certain weekend shifts had no police at all. This problem was expected to be repeated because of the lack of officers and the row over conditions. The prospect was looming of there being times in the main tourism season with no police patrols. The entire force of 37 was inadequate for a population that can increase to some 50,000, most of them in Cala Ratjada.

Last week, councillors from the opposition Partido Popular walked out of the council meeting. Protesting against the "authoritarianism" of PSOE (the mayor, Rafel Fernández, is from PSOE), they said that the administration was in chaos, one aspect of this being the failure to come to agreements with the police. The mayor pointed out that there had been a meeting the previous day at which there were some agreements, but not on pay. Increasing salaries would "not conform to legality" insofar as public employee pay is restricted under the terms of the so-called Montoro Law, named after the national finance minister.

At the weekend, there were various reports about the apparent total breakdown of control on the beaches of Cala Agulla and Son Moll. They had become "Comanche territory", invaded by hundreds of young people getting drunk, swimming nude, playing high-powered sound equipment and roasting chickens. These young people are Germans.

Responses to these reports didn't blame the police. They blamed the mayor and the town hall and the tourists. And for Cala Ratjada, this was hardly the first time that there was news of drunken German tourists. It's been going on for years, especially because of the spring break-type holidays. Cala Ratjada, so opinion goes, is the Magalluf of north-east Mallorca. That opinion is not wrong.

There are different issues here. One is policing. There are concerns elsewhere in Mallorca about the lack of police to deal with the greatly increased numbers of tourists. We all know about Magalluf and Playa de Palma, which are the resorts the politicians and much of the media are only ever interested in, but there are issues in places that don't normally attract attention. Playa de Muro is one, but it doesn't have the problems that Cala Ratjada has.

These are not the fault of the police or the town hall. The blame lies squarely with tour operators who organise spring-break holidays and with the hotels who accept the guests. The total disregard for coexistence and for the capabilities of local services, especially police, is scandalous.

So what's to be done? In all likelihood, nothing. What there is of the beach unit in Cala Ratjada - there were apparently two cops about at the weekend - cannot cope. The Guardia could be sent in but the Guardia have other matters to attend to. Compliance with local bylaws is first and foremost a local police issue and not a Guardia one. But as the police aren't there ... .

The Survival Of Mallorca's Mediaevalism

Mediaevalism survives in Mallorca. It is buried deep in the soul of the people. It stands on and shapes the landscape. It is the past that characterises the present.

It started with the fall of the Roman Empire. It is taken as having definitively ended - in Spain at any rate - with the fall of the final bastion of Islam: the surrender of Granada in the same year, 1492, that Columbus undertook his first voyage of discovery.

Mediaevalism spanned a thousand years. Over those centuries, Mallorca experienced conquest by Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs and Catalans. Of the Vandals, we know very little, other than the fact that they tended to live up to their name. Byzantine evidence is greater, such as with remains at Son Peretó in Manacor and the fortifications of Alaró, the Castell del Rei in Pollensa and Castell de Santueri in Felanitx. But even this is limited. The Arabs and the Catalans truly defined what we know of Mallorca's mediaevalism.

It is Catalan mediaevalism, above all, which marks the link with the past to the present. Mallorca's pretensions to contributing to a European intellectual heritage emerged soon after the conquest of Jaume I. Ramon Llull embodied this. It was he who was also instrumental in determining a mediaeval landscape that survives, as with Miramar in the Tramuntana, a mountain range that was otherwise shaped by mediaeval cultures. Unesco has recognised how those cultures influenced the mountains with their human intervention - the dry stone structures most of all.

The Catalans brought with them new fortifications, grander affairs than the ancient ones such as the Castell del Rei. Typically, they expanded what was already there. In Capdepera, the original castle dates from the early fourth century. While the Arabs extended it, the Catalans were to increase its size very much more significantly.

The Romans had named it Caput petrae, the head of stone. From this Latin origin came Cap de la Pera. The first documented reference to Cap de la Pera was in the "Llibre dels fets" which chronicled the reign of Jaume I. The proximity of this north-eastern part of Mallorca to Menorca was the reason why it was chosen for an act of formal surrender: by the Arabs of Menorca.

The name Capdepera was officially recognised when the village was granted its "royal" status by Jaume II in 1300, a status that was given to many Mallorcan villages at that time. It was a "vila". It was Jaume II who was the great fortification builder. Along the coast from Capdepera, he ordered the building of the walls of Alcudia. Pope Innocent IV issued a papal bull in 1248 by which the parish of Sant Jaume de Guinyent was established. It was later to be known as Sant Jaume d'Alcudia, retaining the name that the Arabs had introduced. Alcudia's walls were to protect the village but they were also the grand fortification for the north of Mallorca. Capdepera's castle was to defend the north-east and, like Alcudia's walls, to also defend the people.

Exposed on the north-eastern tip, the villagers - for their safety and in order to defend the castle - were moved inside its walls. There were some sixty dwellings in all. The castle was one of the principal examples of the building of later mediaeval fortification.

Nowadays, Capdepera recognises its mediaeval roots more than mostly anywhere else in Mallorca. Since 2000 there has been the annual Mediaeval Market. Whereas there are any number of mediaeval themes to fairs, Capdepera goes the whole hog. Over a weekend in May, it seeks to re-create the atmosphere of some 700 years ago. It is probably as well that it doesn't do this with true authenticity - given that sanitary conditions were not like they are today - but in spirit it can be said that the market is to the fore in demonstrating quite how much mediaevalism survives in Mallorca.

A Castle And The Legend Of Fog

The mediaeval period of European civilisation lasted for over a thousand years. Its beginning is clearer than its conclusion. The fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century was a political occurrence that left its mark on much of the continent and so began the Early Middle Ages. This was the start of mediaevalism. The end, however, did rather depend upon local events, which in Spain is generally considered to have been 1492, the year of Columbus's first voyage and discovery and the fall of Arabic-occupied Granada, the last act of the many-centuries-long re-conquest of Spain.

It is a period divided into three eras - the Early Middle Ages until the start of the second millennium, the High Middle Ages till around the beginning of the fourteenth century and the final Late Middle Ages. For Mallorca, very little is known about the first era. The arrival of the Vandals, instrumental in the fall of the Roman Empire, in the mid-fifth century is known, as is the subsequent appearance of the eastern Byzantine Empire in the following century. But all that is really understood of the Byzantines is that they came to Mallorca. From the middle of the sixth century until the occupation by the Arabs from the early tenth century, little or nothing is known. To all intents and purposes, four hundred years of Mallorca's history doesn't exist.

In fact, this missing history is rather longer and subject to debate. Were the Vandals as destructive as has been thought, for example? The principal evidence for their invasion comes from Alcudia's Pollentia Roman settlement. It was abandoned by the local people when the Vandals came to town. Or so it is commonly maintained. However, there is now contradictory evidence that it wasn't completely abandoned, just as there is also evidence - from excavations at the site - of possible Byzantine influence earlier than has normally been understood. But whatever really happened in those years of the Early Middle Ages is likely to remain a mystery: Majorca's mediaeval period was one of Arabs and of Catalans, their starting dates very clear - 902 and 1229.

Among the legacies that the Arabs left behind in Mallorca was regional organisation. These administrative districts included Bullansa (Alcudia, Pollensa and some of Escorca) and Yartan (in Arabic, garden), part of which was Capdepera: Cap de la Pera, the cape of stone, which was documented in the "Llibre dels fets" that chronicled the reign of Jaume I, the conqueror of Mallorca. This "book of deeds" refers to Cap de la Pera in the context of the surrender of Arabs in Menorca, which was formally given in what is now Capdepera. The name was retained, and in 1300 this village was granted official "royal" status by Jaume's successor, Jaume II, who also set about the redevelopment of the castle.

This fortification, which was to become the largest on Mallorca, straddled the Roman and Mediaeval periods. The original castle was built in the early fourth century. The Arabs were to extend it, while the Catalans undertook its massive expansion. Given Capdepera's exposed location, villagers, for their own safety and for the defence of the village, were moved inside the castle's walls. There were some sixty dwellings in all. The castle is one of the principal examples of building that occurred in the High Middle Ages.

This is a castle which can boast the stuff of legend. At a time when Mallorca and Soller are celebrating the Moorish invasion of 1561 (tomorrow's "Es Firó" in Soller), it should be noted that Capdepera very nearly had its own invasion. Or so the legend has it. The "Miracle of the Fog" doesn't have a specified date in history, but it is one tied in with the piratical Moorish incursions, such as that of Soller. Whenever it was, from the walls of the castle, invading ships could be seen. The number seemed incalculable. The village was going to be attacked and the slaughter was likely to be appalling. But, there was hope, and it came in the form of the Virgen de la Esperanza, the Virgin of Hope, if you like. The image was taken from the tower of Sa Boira, there were prayers and, remarkably enough, a great fog descended, which so disconcerted and terrified the invaders that they turned back. Capdepera was spared.

This is a legend (celebrated each year on 18 December) which dates from a post-mediaeval era, but it is one linked inextricably to the mediaeval castle, where, from Friday this week, Capdepera will be holding its annual mediaeval market, an event marked by dark forces and all the trappings of the town's mediaeval past.

Tales Of The Llevant: Cala Ratjada

In 1956, members of the council in Santa Margalida took a journey eastwards. The purpose of the journey was to offer the award of "illustrious son" of the town in exchange for money to assist in the building of a new town hall. The illustrious son in question rarely bothered with his home town by then. He is said to have declined the offer anyway, citing financial problems, which seemed a little unlikely. He was, after all, resident in a sizable pile on the north-eastern coast of Mallorca. He was and had been for years intimately associated with virtually everything that moved or didn't move in Mallorca. He was hardly strapped for cash. He was Joan March, founder of the Banca March, Franco's banker, all-round rogue-come-philanthropist. The sizable pile was and still is in Cala Ratjada.

There is an old photo from 1905. It shows Cala Ratjada as it then was. Some fishermen's cottages are set back just from the sea, there are two fishing boats in the small port area, the coast itself is rocky and there is a rudimentary walkway/promenade with a low wall. In the background is a building which rises from behind a wooded area. It is that sizable pile. Or at least it was the first stage of its construction. Dates vary as to its completion but certainly by 1916 it was finished and acquired its full grandeur. It was the Palacio de Joan March. The photo was taken on the day of March's wedding to Leonor Servera Melis, who was a native of Capdepera, i.e. the municipality of which Cala Ratjada is a part.

In the photo there is another building, more modest than the palace but definitely much grander than the fishermen's cottages. It was to come to belong to Antoni Maura, the only Mallorcan to have ever been prime minister of Spain. By 1905, Cala Ratjada, for reasons that have no obvious explanation, had become the summer haunt of the island's rich and powerful. They built fine houses or, in the case of Joan March, an entire palace.

It is well chronicled that the then tiny fishing port became the summer destination of choice for Mallorca's elite, but it is not well chronicled as to why. Was it simply because Cala Ratjada is about the furthest point in Mallorca away from Palma? Possibly so. Possibly it was just because it offered a quiet location for relaxation and a diversion from business and political concerns. Or possibly there was another reason. Cala Ratjada became an unofficial seat of power, the elite able to meet in summertime, drawn by the already immensely influential Joan March, who in 1905 was still years away from founding the bank or being involved with the Trasmediterranea shipping company or indeed with the early electricity industry that was to eventually evolve into GESA.

Capdepera town hall was doubtless delighted to welcome this elite. March was accepted with open arms. There is no official record of there ever having been a town hall agreement, but in 1916, the palace completed, the road that runs by it was named after him. It led from an avenue named after his wife. In 1953, Capdepera, unlike Santa Margalida, didn't want anything in exchange. They named March adoptive son of the town.

In the history of Mallorca's tourism, Cala Ratjada doesn't really feature until it underwent a transformation in the 1960s. In one respect this is curious. It was, after all, a place that had been earmarked for summer vacationing by the island's rich. But perhaps this was why there was no obvious development in the inter-war years, other than a hotel, as there was in some other parts of Mallorca. The rich wanted to keep the place to themselves.

Though Cala Ratjada is described in clichéd terms as having been a picturesque tiny fishing village at the turn of the twentieth century, it wasn't as much of a backwater as might be thought. Its port was important, more so than Alcúdia's not so far away around the Cap Farrutx and so in the bay of Alcúdia. Its importance lay with the transporting of two key products - the "llata" wicker works that were made from palmitos and for which Capdepera became famous in the late nineteenth century and the "mares" stones for building purposes.

Last week that old tradition of the llata and the new one of tourism came together. On the beach of Cala Agulla, there was a day of palmito collection, as there has been for several years now, and of its working into wicker products - the "obra de pauma" - a tribute to a facet of the local economy which sustained Cala Ratjada before the arrival of tourism. In his palace, Joan March no doubt used to once draw on his cigar while sitting in his wicker chair.

The Railway That Never Was: Cala Ratjada

One hundred years ago, on 23 July, 1914, one Rafel Blanes Tolosa presented a plan for a railway line between Manacor and Artà. Over a year later, on 8 September, 1915, "La Gaceta de Madrid", a newspaper which was to eventually become (along with other major cities' "gacetas") the "Boletín Oficial del Estado", announced the bidding for the line. On 12 November that year, the result of the bidding process became known. The concession was awarded to the company S.A. Ferrocarriles de Mallorca. Blanes Tolosa was a director.

Roughly half of the finance came from the Banco de Crédito Balear in the form of a two million pesetas loan (Blanes Tolosa was also a director of the bank.). Work on the line took until 1921. There was, however, one part of the line that was missing and so one municipality that wasn't included in the project. It should have been, but it wasn't. The line was meant to have gone on to Cala Ratjada in Capdepera. It didn't and it never did.

Connecting the railway to the port would have been important, or so you might have thought. Yet, it is a curiosity of Mallorca's railway building that connections with the coast have been all but non-existent.

There was once a line from Palma's port to the Plaça d'Espanya. It closed in 1965. There was a project for a line from Palma to the port in Andratx. It was to have gone to Calvia (village) and then on to Andratx and would have involved the building of two tunnels. The extension to Alcúdia, still spoken about, was scrapped when the Civil War intervened, but the rail line there was considered very much earlier. So much so in fact that there was a ceremony in 1912 for the laying of the first stones of what was meant to have become a station in Pollensa on its route to Alcúdia from Inca. There would have been branch lines to both Puerto Pollensa and Puerto Alcúdia. Quite a few years later, there was another scheme, one which would have seen a railway connect with the seaplanes base in Puerto Pollensa. Elsewhere on the island, there was a project to take a line to Porto Cristo. None of them of course were realised.

Port Sóller is the only place that nowadays has a coastal connection, and even that isn't of course a train as such. Apart from the old station in Palma's port and one also in Arenal on the old line that went to Llucmajor and on to Santanyí, the island's coastline has been totally untouched by rail transport.

There are a number of theories as to why railways didn't extend to the coasts. One is that coastal land was relatively worthless and unpopulated. But when there were ports, and quite successful ones like Cala Ratjada's, this explanation doesn't really add up. A second one has to do with the traditional fear of the coast because of the threat of piracy. By the twentieth century, however, although there might have been the odd pirate knocking around, illegal activity was of a different nature, i.e. smuggling. Again, the explanation isn't strong. A third is financial and logistical, but when promoters often also had associations with banks, the money wasn't necessarily a problem, while the experience of the Sóller train, which required the engineering achievement of the tunnel, demonstrated that obstacles could be overcome.

There is a fourth theory, and it is specific to Cala Ratjada. It has to do with rivalries between Artà and Capdepera and between wealthy landowners. Blanes Tolosa was a wealthy man. He owned a large chunk of Artà. But though he had some aristocratic blood, he wasn't of the higher order of Mallorcan nobility. Capdepera, on other hand, was largely owned by this higher order, and it was one that wanted nothing to do with anything that smacked of the new entrepreneurial bourgeoisie and some lower-order upstart from the next town.

Maybe this was the reason why the railway line never reached Cala Ratjada. Whatever the reason, the line was never built and though it was considered many years later during the time that the Manacor-Artà line existed (the line closed in 1977), nothing came of it. When the railway line was due to have been reopened under the scheme envisaged by the Antich regional government of 2007-2011, Cala Ratjada was again spoken of. But the line of course hasn't been reopened, and it won't be. An appalling waste of money went into a project which had to be abandoned because there wasn't any more money, so the eastern part of Mallorca was denied a new railway and the possibility that it might go as far as Cala Ratjada. It was another familiar story, some will argue. It is the eastern part of Mallorca which is always neglected.

* Photo of train at Artà station from www.baleareslive.com

Promoting Mallorca's Old Towns

The town of Capdepera occupies the north-eastern tip of Mallorca. For most tourists, it is a town whose name will mean relatively little. Capdepera's tourists go to Cala Ratjada, the Germanised resort whose reputation has taken a slight battering over the past two to three years on account of youthful German behaviour; but Magalluf or indeed Arenal it isn't. In addition to Cala Ratjada, the town's smaller Canyamel tourism area will become more known than it is, thanks to the luxury Hyatt holiday village complex that is currently being built there, and this new luxury complex, and the guests it will attract, form just one reason why the town of Capdepera is to undergo improvements in order to attempt to attract more tourists to it. For a town with an astonishing amount of history, and striking history at that, Capdepera doesn't do well in the tourism stakes; visitors go to the resorts and there they tend to stay.

It's a familiar tale. Capdepera is not alone in being a municipality with seaside resorts whose original, old town tends to get overlooked. Two nearby municipalities, Muro and Santa Margalida, are similarly neglected. But the feelings about tourists in the resorts and their avoidance of the old towns was once summed up by the owner of a grand old pile that doubles as a restaurant between Can Picafort and Santa Margalida who said that tourists just never ventured out of the resort. This was an exaggeration but it was perfectly understandable.

There are old towns which do very much better in attracting tourists. Pollensa is most certainly one of them and this to some extent reflects the fact that despite the distance between, Pollensa town and its port have tended to be promoted as more of a unified entity. Alcúdia is another, but Alcúdia's old town is unusual insofar as it isn't separated by distance from its tourism centres. It is not too arduous to walk to Alcúdia town. But it is arduous if you want to walk from, say, Playa de Muro to Muro town. The distance is one thing, the absence of pavements alongside what can be a dodgy road anyway is another; you would need your head examining were you to want to undertake such a walk.

The old towns, while all different, tend to have similar features; churches, squares and what have you. Not all of the towns have a blooming great castle. Capdepera does. Yet, for all that it can boast this edifice whose walls were completed at the end of the fourteenth century, the town still manages not to get the volume of tourists it would like or which it deserves.

The interior of the castle, in days of yore, became the main living space for the good folk of Capdepera, thanks to incentives offered by one-time king of Mallorca, Sancho I. Some centuries later, by which time piracy had become less of an everyday hazard, the good folk's descendants ventured out of the castle and so the town began to take shape. The point about this is that the castle, though it is in the old town, is to one side of it because of the way in which the town subsequently developed. For the tourist in a hurry to return to the beach or to a bier-und-wurst kneipe in Cala Ratjada, it is easy to "do the castle" and ignore the rest of the town.

Capdepera town hall has, therefore, adopted a plan to attract more tourists to the town. This plan consists of improved access for buses, a taxi rank by the Plaça Constitució, possible financial incentives for small shops to open and changes to local ordinance in order to permit the establishment of a petit hotel. Which all sounds fair enough but at the same time underwhelming. Making physical alterations is only part of the story, and Capdepera should look at Muro to understand why. This town, admittedly without a castle as an added attraction, underwent a significant beautification some five years. It would have been more beauteous had the money not run out, but that money which was spent - courtesy of the tourism ministry - stretched to a seven-figure sum and it was allocated primarily on improving pavements. Did it make any difference? Has it made any difference? For the people of Muro, it probably has, as they have some better pavements, but for tourists, it has made no difference at all. The reality of the anticipation that Muro might actually get more tourists can be seen by what isn't anywhere to be seen - a tourist information office.

While improvements are to be welcomed, the moral of the story for some of Mallorca's old towns which might covet greater tourism numbers lies with their promotion. Making things easier for buses or laying better pavements do not amount to promotion.

MALLORCA TODAY - Capdepera licenses the Canyamel hotel development

The luxury hotel development in Canyamel, one that involves an investment of 100 million euros via the hotel chain Hyatt, has been given the go ahead by Capdepera town hall which has issued the licence for work to commence on what is one of Mallorca's more controversial new developments.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - Ex-mayor of Capdepera barred for eight years

As part of the sentencing related to the case of the Son Moll hotel in Cala Ratjada, which collapsed in December 2008 during building works, killing four workers, the mayor of Capdepera at the time, Bartomeu Alzina, has been barred from public office and employment for eight years and ordered to pay costs. The mayor was judged to have been guilty of abusing his position in not complying with licensing requirements for the building works. Others charged in the case have received custodial sentences to a maximum of two years.

A Bigger Splash: Mallorca's gay tourism

Do you remember the days of Miss World when it was an annual telly feast, Michael Aspel attempting to tease out nuggets of wisdom from Miss Wants To Travel And Have World Peace of whichever country it was? For some reason, the BBC decided it no longer wanted 30 million viewers, and so Miss World went peripatetic, guided as if by a FIFA of global female pageantry, finding its way to different continents and, in the process, giving a major boost to tourism in the city of Sanya in China, which has hosted the contest five times this century.

Beauty contests and tourism. It had never occurred to me that Miss World might be a positive factor in increasing tourism, but then why not? If the Olympics, a World Cup or even Eurovision can be, then so can a beauty parade that is beamed across the globe. Maybe Mallorca should try and get in on the act and put the Palacio de Congresos in Palma (when it's finally built) to some meaningful purpose and stage "beauty with a purpose" (as the Miss World slogan has it).

They may not be Miss World, but there are beauty contests in Mallorca. Angela Flores is the current holder of the Miss Balearics title, and in May the second Mr Gay Mallorca will be held in Cala Rajada. David Vilches was last year's winner and he went forward to the grand final of Mr Gay España in Madrid where he lost out to Mr Gay Murcia.

Not content with hoovering up whatever football prizes may be on offer, Spain has a highly creditable reputation when it comes to the European gay crown, having scooped the Mr Gay Europe award in successive years (2008 and 2009). So, aspirants to the Mallorca title in May will know that greater riches await if they can get through the provincial and national qualifiers.

But what of the tourism angle? Capdepera town hall representatives and the organisers of Mr Gay Mallorca have been at the Fitur tourism trade fair in Madrid, promoting the event in the Cala Rajada resort and explaining that lesbian and gay tourism is one of "quality" and that it adds value to the town. Lesbian and gay people can no doubt feel reassured that they are considered to be "quality"; in other words, they've got a fair amount of spare cash to splash.

Would the event really create more by way of tourism and more by way of tourism from a gay niche market for Cala Rajada? Possibly it might, but Cala Rajada isn't Sanya in China and Mr Gay Mallorca isn't Miss World. Neither have quite the same exposure or recognition. The first contest last year did, after all, attract only eight contestants; it wasn't exactly a massive deal.

In terms of creating awareness of the resort, there is probably some benefit, but a one-off event at the end of May doesn't equate to Cala Rajada becoming or being a gay hotspot. I might be wrong, but I would have thought that gay tourists would prefer somewhere with more of a, how can one put it, gay infrastructure. Palma perhaps, or more obviously Ibiza.

Part of the problem for Cala Rajada and for Mallorca as a whole is one of image. In general terms, Mallorca is looked upon as being essentially a "family" tourism destination. Not exclusively of course, but an alternative type of tourism, that attracted by the club scene, tends to be confined to Palma and to Magalluf. I'm not suggesting that all that gay tourists want are clubs, but clubs certainly are an attraction. And Ibiza has far more of a reputation in this respect than Mallorca and specifically Cala Rajada.

Going after the pink pound or euro is fair enough, but as with attempts to attract other new markets, there is the familiar problem of promotion being geared firmly towards the sun-and-beach family tourist. It is a further example of nibbling away at niche markets without the benefit of having created the appropriate impression in the minds of potential tourists or, in the case of gay tourism to a place such as Cala Rajada, of having the type of offer that might make it appealing for more than one evening in May.

Mr Gay Mallorca may put Cala Rajada momentarily on the gay map, it may make a very minor splash in terms of attracting the quality gay tourist with the cash to splash, but let's be honest, if it were a toss-up between Mr Gay Mallorca and Miss World, which would make the bigger tourism splash?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Coincidental Revolution: Magalluf

The sudden burst of good news coming out of the tourism sector seems a bit fishy. You wait for months, years even, for news of grand, new hotel projects and then three of them come along at once.

The convoy of hotel buses that has emerged in the media isn't an entirely new fleet. The five-star Port Sóller Hotel & Spa has been under construction for some time; the news surrounding it has to do with the announcement of its opening in March next year. The Hyatt International hotel-as-Mallorcan-village project in Capdepera was given an initial airing back in April 2009. The Meliá Hotels International scheme for Magalluf, already well flagged, has now suddenly expanded from three to seven hotels.

New or not so new, it is the timing of the various announcements that is important. There is surely no coincidence. Rather like a country occasionally requires a royal wedding or a war, the regional government has urgently needed the shiny new services to Sóller, Capdepera and Magalluf to simultaneously pull up at the bus stop for Burying Bad News, while the ABTA convention hitting town is presumably totally incidental to any of this.

Of the three schemes, the Magalluf one is the most important. Arab money sending Sóller and Capdepera into inter-five-stellar overdrive is not unimportant, but neither project represents a resort re-think. Meliá's does.

It helps if you happen to have a number of hotels in close proximity, which is the case with Meliá in Magalluf, because the scheme doesn't simply envisage hotel redevelopment; it will involve a remodelling of the resort. It is massively ambitious and massively important. If it comes off, and there's no reason to believe it won't, it, rather than the stuttering attempts in Playa de Palma, will be the first of the resort revolutions.

The planned changes to the tourism law are fundamental to what Meliá have in mind. The condohotel conversion will apply not only to the Royal Beach but also to the Sol Trinidad. The Sol Jamaica will be completely rebuilt as a hotel that will also be for residential use. In addition to what happens to the seven hotels, there will be a beach club, a new boulevard, a conference centre and facilities for cycling.

More than just redevelopment, the plan cannot be underestimated in terms of its vote of confidence in Mallorca. For one of Mallorca's major (international) hotel chains to be willing to pump an initial 100 million plus euros worth of investment into Magalluf proves that a mature holiday destination and resort can still be attractive.

And what it will mean for Magalluf? One would guess that its current tourism profile would not be unaffected. It would all rather depend. The Mallorca Beach and Antillas Barbados hotels, for example, will be joined together to create a gardened complex for a "client of greater quality". It doesn't sound as though Meliá have the Shagalluf image uppermost in their thoughts.

A further reason for the government to be happy to have the good news seep out is that it is only too aware of the naysayers who would wish a plague on its new tourism law house and on the houses of the hotel industry. The unions don't like the new law because condohotels will mean fewer jobs; the restaurants and club owners don't like it because it smacks of creating unfair competition, or so they claim.

The restaurant and club owners are, like the unions, staking out the battleground. They are suggesting that the new law will result in a price war and in the attraction of a tourism client of "low quality", without actually explaining why this would be the case. The club owners we know all about. It's not client quality they're worried about; it's the potential for other Mallorca Rocks to spring up, thanks to the law permitting concerts in hotels. They don't like the competition full stop.

But what they are really driving at is the fact that the government is putting its weight behind the hotels and only the hotels. They have a point, but then the government knows, as should the restaurant owners, that there is only one game in town when it comes to redevelopment. It isn't the government, and it certainly isn't the restaurants. The hotels are the only hope. If it means, as in Sóller and Capdepera, the attraction of foreign investment, then so much the better.

The good news might seem convenient, but as we have waited so long for any, the fact that it all comes along in one fortuitous news-massaging go should not make it any less welcome.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Luxury hotel complex for Capdepera

The Canyamel area of Capdepera, on the east coast of Mallorca, is to be the site of a luxury hotel complex, to be built entirely with Arab money, in the style of a Mallorcan village. The operator will be Hyatt International. The project, which has been on the cards for some time, envisages a complex of 142 rooms or apartments plus restaurants and other facilities and should be operating by 2014.

MALLORCA TODAY - Large fire in Capdepera

The first major forest fire of the year occurred yesterday in the Son Terrassa area in Capdepera on the north-eastern tip of the island. Some 50 hectares were affected by the fire that broke out around midday and was attended by three fire brigades as well as water-bombing helicopters and a Canadair plane.

Back To The Future: The new agriculture

There's a lot of land in Capdepera. An awful lot of land that they don't quite know what to do with. The old municipal rubbish dump had been earmarked for the faintly batty Christian theme park idea. Alcúdia may now be its location.

There's more land in Capdepera. Agricultural land that currently isn't doing anything. They're looking at re-cultivating it with the aims of selling produce to tourists and of creating employment in what is all but a lost agrarian tradition in the town.

The revitalisation of agriculture has become something of a theme bubbling under a wider discussion of the need for economic diversification. A back-to-the-future new agrarianism was spoken about in May this year when a gathering in Alaró, organised by the Camper footwear company, addressed the issue of diversification. It is one that plays well with an insular-nationalist Luddite tendency that would happily turn the clock back on tourism industrialisation.

But the worthies who met in Alaró were far from being cranks. Among their number was Jerry Mander of the International Forum on Globalization who, following something of a farmyard line of thinking, asserted that Mallorca was living a fantasy in believing that tourism would return to being the "hen laying golden eggs". Hens laying real eggs is more like it.

The feasibility of the plan for the land in Capdepera will consider what might be grown there and what might be viable in terms of products for sale to tourists. It is a plan that makes sense. Mander is not the only one who recognises the pointlessness of much more development of a strictly tourist nature - hotels, for example. Alternative uses of land that might be contemplated are similarly either pointless, such as ever more unnecessary golf courses or industrial estates, or would be most unlikely to be sanctioned on environmental grounds - proper theme parks, for instance. So what do you do with it that might be productive, other than perhaps build houses, which would require endless arguments regarding land re-classification?

While the plan appears to make sense insofar as it would be an appropriate use of land, where it may founder is on economic grounds. The problem with the new agrarianism of Mallorca is finding markets for what, in all likelihood, would not be much greater than cottage industries. The wine industry in Mallorca is something of an indicator of this. While there is reasonable volume created by the bigger and older bodegas, the newer ones are much smaller; they are of a boutique nature. Volume is low, prices are high, export possibilities are limited.

The cautiousness which seems to surround the Capdepera scheme is correct. It is correct because the demand for what might be grown - among tourists - is most unlikely to be huge. Herbs, olives (for oil), vines (for wine), dried fruits. None of it sounds like it will amount to anything substantial. Tourists might buy the odd bottle of wine or oil, but they do so already. The focus on tourists may be strategically flawed.

I have to thank the excellent skybluemallorca.com for the following information regarding Mallorcan olive oil. It says that a mere 2.7% of total sales of oil is local. The rest goes abroad, with Germany being a key market. It is export, not through a tourist's bottle or two, but through bulk that is far more important. And not just to mature European markets.

I know of a move to export wine and olive oil to Hong Kong. This involves at least one of the main bodegas on the island. Supplying to the Chinese market could only ever be limited because of the constraints on volume in Mallorca, but this bigger thinking in terms of market should surely be more of a model for what might be envisaged in Capdepera and indeed elsewhere in Mallorca. High-quality product, not necessarily cheap but more exclusive, and marketed as such, for newly aspirational consumer markets, such as the Chinese.

There is though a further issue and it is one related to productivity and the use of technology. Advances there most certainly have been, but one of Mallorca's more important crops, almonds, has suffered because the local industry has lost competitiveness. In the same way as the wine producers of the Napa Valley in California took on the French wine industry by adopting more advanced technology, so California's almond growers have attacked the indigenous almond industry.

What all this suggests is that, just as there should be a more coherent tourism strategy so there also should be one for agriculture. Back to the future it might be, but there is still much to be said in its favour. With investments in technology and marketing, there might even be a bright future. The fear is that Capdepera would fall into the black hole of simply being too local and too narrow in its focus. It is a lot of a land, but only relatively speaking. But it can be used to good purpose as there is an awful lot of market that can be served - and not just that of Mallorca and its tourists.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

God Only Knows: The Christian theme park

Capdepera. A town with a walled castle fortress, not one but two golf courses, and a resort, Cala Ratjada, that is its own little piece of Germany. It is a town, like all in Mallorca, with plenty of old-time religion, but also a town with an old-time rubbish dump, which may well form part of a 17-acre site housing some new-time religion - a Christian theme park.

A company that owns just this type of a park in Argentina wants to create something similar on Mallorca's north-eastern tip. Capdepera's town hall is looking at the plans. Envisaged among the biblical scenes that would be performed at the theme park would be "live" resurrections. Not that you could have dead resurrections; that's not how resurrections work. There would also be Last Suppers throughout the day, rather like all-day breakfasts but minus the bacon.

What else have they in mind? Live crucifixions maybe? Being greeted by beaming Gospel mascots cajoling visitors into having a nice day? "Hi there, I'm Matthew, praise the Lord. Here's your complimentary miracle party bag with five loaves and two fish." As freebies go, this doesn't sound like a bad deal, and it would be the stuff that plays well with lard-arsed, Lord-rejoicing Americans. Unsurprisingly, there are several Christian theme parks in the US.

A question, though, is why Mallorca? One answer is probably the volume of tourists, all those bible-bashing ones, regurgitating pizza and lager over the morning's hymn sheets of the day's come-dressed-as-a-disciple entertainment. But this would be unfair: you don't have to be a church-goer; the theme park might actually be fun, you never know. Another answer, oddly enough, is religion. Catholic, saints and all that jazz. Jesus loves you in a theme-park style might also help reverse a local decline in the influence of religion, regular church-going having slumped to under 20% of the population. As a non-believer, I can't find much to object with the scheme, so long as it's not proselytising, ram-it-down-your-throat, happy-clappy religion. Moreover, the bible has some cracking stories, whether you believe them or not: the scope for performances is immense.

Try starting a Christian theme park in the UK and the objections would be long, loud and ludicrous. We all know why. In Mallorca there is not quite the same sensitivity, thanks God. Nevertheless, some socio-religious doubts have been raised, for example, about the fiesta street theatre of the Moors and Christians. What sort of an alternative could be arranged, short of stopping it, who knows. Maybe they could let the Moors win once in a while.

The theme park, though, would be something different, more directly subversive of inherent faith: it might undermine certain long-established religious performances, such as the portrayal of the Last Supper during Pollensa's Easter celebrations. Having a rolling show of the feast of Christ and the Apostles tucking into a loaf of Bimbo and demolishing a carton of Don Simon at times of the year other than Easter does seem somewhat sacrilegious, and you'd have to pay for the privilege, which you don't have to when it comes to fiesta time.

Put the words theme and park together, and you can usually be sure that there would be objections, those of the environmental lobby which, for instance, successfully scuppered the plans for the anti-Christ theme parks in first Inca and then Calvia. A Christian theme park, which would presumably be environmentally neutral as well as righteous, could well place the enviros in a quandary. Object or not object. They'll be hoping that there are plans to flood Capdepera in order to bring on Noah or to create rivers with blood.

Mallorca could do with theme parks. All sorts of them. The Capdepera proposal is small beer, or small communion wine if you prefer, certainly by comparison with the devil's work of the casinos, multi-theme parks and God knows what else of the Gran Scala in the desert by Zaragoza on the mainland. Capdepera would be modest, but it shouldn't be the last, either Christian or profoundly unbelieving and profane. There need to be more, but they wouldn't be on the grand scale of Gran Scala. Shame. The bible doesn't specifically proscribe gambling, but it's clear enough on its underlying sin: "for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil". There again, what the hell does God know?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Walk Is Cheap

Capdepera is the municipality on the north-eastern tip of Mallorca. Its coastal resort is Cala Ratjada. It is mainly a German destination, the resort itself a peculiar stretch between two sea fronts, the main beach small and crowded, one to which one can see hordes of lilo carriers heading in summer, taking a long-ish walk from the centre of Cala Ratjada. The town has announced some "initiatives" designed to attract more tourism. And these are? Cycling, audio guides for the mediaeval castle and a Nordic walking track. These, together with promotional materials, will cost somewhat less than a hundred thousand euros.

Fine, you might think, but just look at that list again and at the budget. Cycling. Nordic walking. Me-too tourism facilities in other words. Take Nordic walking. Alcúdia has a route, Can Picafort has a route and now Capdepera is to have one. Nordic walking falls into the category of "alternative" tourism, an alternative aimed at extending the tourism offer and season.

Given the German dominance of Cala Ratjada, a Nordic walking offer makes some sense, but, as with the other resorts in the north, it is an addition to the tourism mix that will make only minimal impact. More than that, it is cheap. And it is this - the lack of cost - that is the most germane point in seeking more German tourists. For a relatively small spend, the town hall and the tourism ministry can announce that "something is being done", can be seen to be taking some action. It is, therefore, largely a PR exercise, not one aimed at more tourism but one aimed at trying to convince that effort is being put into extending the season.

Tourism minister Ferrer, in presenting these initiatives, spoke of the need to "create new attractions" to "re-invent" the island as a tourism destination and to "extract the value" that exists on the island in terms of its natural landscape and heritage. Well he would say that, as his predecessors and other tourism authority spokespeople will have done. It is spin, a formulaic pronouncement lifted from the brief manual that is phrases to use when talking about things other than sun and beach tourism.

The worry is not that there is to be a Nordic walking track, not that there is to be more cycling in Capdepera, not that there are to be audio guides to the castle which is promoted as having a "fascinating history", one bound up in battles against pirates. The worry is the spend and the me-too nature of the offers. If less than a hundred grand could be converted into half a million more tourists per year, then you would take your hat off to the brilliance of the thinking. But it won't. Nowhere, moreover, is any evidence offered as to how many new tourists might be created or how many existing tourists might be willing to not trade in Mallorca for another destination. It's not surprising, because the tourism authorities don't know. What they do know is that Nordic walking and the rest is something alternative on the cheap. This is one of the failures of Mallorca's so-called alternative tourism. There is not much by way of investment. Not much directed at grander schemes that might mean serious numbers of tourists. Not much, in fact nothing, by way of some out-of-the box thinking for creating genuine alternatives or even additions to the main summer tourism. One of the failures? No, the failure.

QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Kiss, "100,000 Years", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_a-NYivv6o.

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