It was a few years ago now. Residents in Playa de Muro were denouncing the over-occupation of part of the beach by sunlounger and parasol sets. There were more than there should have been, and the residents invoked the rights of the citizens in respect of the use of the free public domain that is all Spanish beaches.
The residents' action came at a time when Playa de Muro (and Can Picafort) were the scene of the occasional sunlounger war. Mornings would dawn and damage to sunloungers could be seen. They were being slashed overnight. Repairing them cost a pretty centimo or two. Nothing was ever proven, though the suspicion was that these acts of vandalism were due to differences between competing concessionaires for operating the summer sunloungers.
These concessions were and are pretty good business. A tendency to over-occupy made the business that much more profitable. It was suggested that bidders would in fact make allowance for fines they could anticipate for putting out too many sunloungers. Even with the fines and the charges demanded by the town hall for the concession, six months (or however long) of sunloungers turned in and continue to turn in handsome profits, so long as they've not been eaten into by the cost of repair.
Another part of Playa de Muro's beach (not the one the residents were worried about) is virtually impassable because of the sunloungers. There is a corridor behind them; otherwise it's a walk with the sea lapping over your feet. It's not like this in other parts because the beach is either deeper or there are no sunloungers: in front of the nature park dunes or those stretches which have only residential accommodation and no hotels.
When David Abril of Més announced the other day that his party is seeking to remove sunloungers (and chiringuito bars) from all beaches, my thoughts turned to the situations in Playa de Muro. Over the years they have encapsulated arguments regarding the free space of the beach public domain, the business to be had from beach "exploitation", and beach overcrowding because of the sheer scale of sunlounger occupation.
I don't entirely disagree with what Abril was saying. There is something less than satisfactory about the business exploitation (privatisation, if you want to call it that) of what is meant to be free space. There is also something almost unseemly about the way in which sunloungers on certain stretches of beach can be packed so tightly together and in such number.
Not, however, that I can agree on some sort of blanket ban, while the agreement with Abril only goes so far. It might be greater if one didn't detect that behind the proposal is a further whiff of Més zeal for let's call it (to be kind) touristic reorganisation rather than anti-tourism. And that, moreover, this is a zeal dressed up as environmentalism and even nationalism (of a Mallorcan variety, that is).
Abril will know that in the general scheme of things sunloungers are used by tourists rather than by residents and that there have been those arguments about over-occupation made by residents. He is potentially therefore touching another raw nerve of sentiment and promoting a citizens' yelp against tourism (and saturation).
On the environmental front, we have had the situation at Es Trenc this summer with the demolition of the chiringuitos. This was in fact because of a court decision that applied rules in the national coasts law. It wasn't driven by local eco-politicians but they most certainly latched onto it. To now put up the temporary chiringuitos (if they do indeed appear next summer) will mean overcoming complications as tangled as being able to license an apartment as a holiday rental. Moreover, the chiringuitos' enforcement was a reinforcement of the triumph one of Abril's Més colleagues, environment minister Vidal, had secured with regard to the Es Trenc Nature Park. Més had achieved what had been demanded for years at a beach which is more symbolic of Mallorca's virginal coastline than any other.
Fundamentally, though, underpinning Abril's proposal is Mallorcan nationalist fervour. This nationalism is a Més philosophy, and Abril advocates it more strongly than most. Within the context of the ongoing debate (such as it is) on tourism saturation etc., he has now given greater prominence to the beaches and made an allusion, as have others with like minds, to a time past when there were no "installations" on beaches and when the sands were all romantically rustic and dunes hadn't been flattened and built on.
The justification for his demand is nationalist in that it calls for Balearic powers of control of the beaches. The central government via the Costas Authority has the supreme responsibility for the Spanish nation's beaches, and this is what Abril is seeking to alter. Beaches and sunloungers now enter the nationalism argument, and of this there is a great deal more to be said. Més envisage "our own state" by 2030.
Showing posts with label Chiringuitos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chiringuitos. Show all posts
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Environment vs. Ambience: Beach chiringuitos
Legend informs us that the first beach-bar or chiringuito in Mallorca appeared on the beach at S'Illot in 1951. It was in the days when beach and non-beach were indistinguishable and when the means of running it would have been primitive to say the least. Despite it having been on the east coast and well off what was mostly beaten track in any event in those days, it proved to be popular and wasn't apparently just solely a place for cooling refreshment. For all that it would have been rudimentary, it was a beach-bar to which people would travel and where they would meet. It had ambience, the product of what seems like a natural collision - bar and beach.
The chiringuito, as in the traditional sort with thatch and a shape vaguely reminiscent of a boat, can be distinguished from other beach-bars, such as the wooden-roofed balneario, which is a misleading term in that the word means spa but which has acquired official status for its beach locations. Resorts are mapped according to balnearios: Playa de Palma, for instance. These balnearios have become part of the beach urban environment. A chiringuito implies a construction of a more rustic beach nature, to which can be assigned certain characteristics: laid-back, relaxed, cool.
This is the implication, though it isn't always the reality, while the word chiringuito may or may not mean that traditional image. And into this realm of uncertainty has ridden the controversy of Son Serra de Marina, where the town hall (Santa Margalida) has been thinking about plonking a chiringuito and other beach paraphernalia, such as sunbeds. It is not known what the chiringuito structure might be (or might have been), while its positioning would not necessarily have been rustic in that its location was in front of or very close to the final urban development in this resort.
One can talk about this plan in the past tense, as the regional government would appear to have scuppered it. The protesters, several thousand of them, who formed a human chain against the plan can breathe a sigh of relief. The rustic nature of Son Serra is to be conserved.
The cause célèbre that has been the Son Serra plan might seem to have been what has provoked the environment ministry into tightening up on chiringuitos and what have you on rustic beaches. In fact, the ministry's natural spaces and biodiversity department have been on the case in any event. Son Serra is a clear case in point, but it isn't the only one.
The objection that the ministry has to the project is that one hundred sunbeds plus bar and other facilities would "appreciably affect" an area of "community interest". The objection isn't so much that there would be the risk of environmental harm through pollution (though there might be some small risk), it is more the damage to the visual environment: unspoiled should mean and remain unspoiled.
Santa Margalida have given out different justifications for the plan. One was (bizarrely enough) to obtain a Blue Flag. Another was that the revenue from the concessions would pay for the maintenance of the beach. These may well have been reasonable grounds, but the chiringuito was surely unnecessary. Indeed, it would have represented a kick in the teeth to the one or two bars (not on the beach of course) which have, over several years, contributed to a laid-back atmosphere which so many thousands were prepared to defend.
But while this particular bar was questionable, can the same be said for chiringuitos on other beaches of a rustic style? A full invasion of beaches by sunbeds and other facilities is one thing, but a chiringuito on its own? Yes, there are many tourists (and residents) who crave unspoiled beaches. Likewise, there are those who quite enjoy there being a bar. It can be positive in that it adds to the ambience rather than subtracts. It can also be positive in preventing a need to haul any amount of containers and plastic which might end up being discarded and so pose more of an environmental risk than a chiringuito, so long as the latter is subject to strict control.
What will now happen is that the ministry is going to say yea or nay to new applications and existing ones. Son Serra, representative of the former, is almost certainly out of the question. But what of, just as an example, Es Trenc's famed S'Embat?
My guess would be that a great majority of tourists and residents will approve of the government's aims (and I would be included in that majority), but being too dogmatic and too universal in treating each beach as the same would mean missing a point about how many have enjoyed beach life for so long. Chiringuitos have their role and it is one of ambience created decades ago.
The chiringuito, as in the traditional sort with thatch and a shape vaguely reminiscent of a boat, can be distinguished from other beach-bars, such as the wooden-roofed balneario, which is a misleading term in that the word means spa but which has acquired official status for its beach locations. Resorts are mapped according to balnearios: Playa de Palma, for instance. These balnearios have become part of the beach urban environment. A chiringuito implies a construction of a more rustic beach nature, to which can be assigned certain characteristics: laid-back, relaxed, cool.
This is the implication, though it isn't always the reality, while the word chiringuito may or may not mean that traditional image. And into this realm of uncertainty has ridden the controversy of Son Serra de Marina, where the town hall (Santa Margalida) has been thinking about plonking a chiringuito and other beach paraphernalia, such as sunbeds. It is not known what the chiringuito structure might be (or might have been), while its positioning would not necessarily have been rustic in that its location was in front of or very close to the final urban development in this resort.
One can talk about this plan in the past tense, as the regional government would appear to have scuppered it. The protesters, several thousand of them, who formed a human chain against the plan can breathe a sigh of relief. The rustic nature of Son Serra is to be conserved.
The cause célèbre that has been the Son Serra plan might seem to have been what has provoked the environment ministry into tightening up on chiringuitos and what have you on rustic beaches. In fact, the ministry's natural spaces and biodiversity department have been on the case in any event. Son Serra is a clear case in point, but it isn't the only one.
The objection that the ministry has to the project is that one hundred sunbeds plus bar and other facilities would "appreciably affect" an area of "community interest". The objection isn't so much that there would be the risk of environmental harm through pollution (though there might be some small risk), it is more the damage to the visual environment: unspoiled should mean and remain unspoiled.
Santa Margalida have given out different justifications for the plan. One was (bizarrely enough) to obtain a Blue Flag. Another was that the revenue from the concessions would pay for the maintenance of the beach. These may well have been reasonable grounds, but the chiringuito was surely unnecessary. Indeed, it would have represented a kick in the teeth to the one or two bars (not on the beach of course) which have, over several years, contributed to a laid-back atmosphere which so many thousands were prepared to defend.
But while this particular bar was questionable, can the same be said for chiringuitos on other beaches of a rustic style? A full invasion of beaches by sunbeds and other facilities is one thing, but a chiringuito on its own? Yes, there are many tourists (and residents) who crave unspoiled beaches. Likewise, there are those who quite enjoy there being a bar. It can be positive in that it adds to the ambience rather than subtracts. It can also be positive in preventing a need to haul any amount of containers and plastic which might end up being discarded and so pose more of an environmental risk than a chiringuito, so long as the latter is subject to strict control.
What will now happen is that the ministry is going to say yea or nay to new applications and existing ones. Son Serra, representative of the former, is almost certainly out of the question. But what of, just as an example, Es Trenc's famed S'Embat?
My guess would be that a great majority of tourists and residents will approve of the government's aims (and I would be included in that majority), but being too dogmatic and too universal in treating each beach as the same would mean missing a point about how many have enjoyed beach life for so long. Chiringuitos have their role and it is one of ambience created decades ago.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
As Beaches Were: The chiringuito
So it was, for instance, with the tents that were put up on the French beach in Puerto Alcúdia. The beach came to be known by this name, though it was actually a Belgian who was responsible. He was Gerard Blitz, and the tents were those of Club Méditerranée. How Blitz came to choose Alcúdia for the original Club Med, how he was able to get permission to put the tents up, I have no idea, though it is not for want of trying to find out: Club Med themselves don't really seem to know. But tents there were in 1950. The story of Club Med in Alcúdia is blurry to say the least. It would seem that it only lasted two summers, and in 1951, rather than tents, there were more solid structures. They were referred to as "stone", but they had roofs of the style that was to become associated with Club Med - a thatch. And reed for a thatch is abundant in the Albufera wetlands, of which there was a great deal more in 1951 than there is now.
It wasn't officialdom that did for Club Med in those early years, it was the clergy. They weren't bothered about what was being put on the beach, but they were bothered about the lack of clothing of those who were inhabiting the beach accommodation. It was to be some years before Club Med were to get a permanent base in Porto Petro.
It is the thatch, though, which is central to today's story. As also is putting things on beaches. In the days when no one took much notice, a temporary structure could appear: right on the sand. The beach bar was born, and it had its own name - the chiringuito.
As with the uncertain history of Club Med, so the chiringuito's history in Mallorca is one of competing versions. It is claimed that the first one appeared on the eastern coast in S'Illot at a time, around 1953, when there was virtually nothing else there. But whenever or wherever it was, the chiringuito was to become established, as was its image - the one with the thatch for a roof. In the collective consciousness and memory of the beach holiday, the thatch - be it for a sunshade or a chiringuito - is as symbolic as the sand, the sea and the palm tree.
The first ever chiringuito in Spain, so legend has it, was in Sitges, and it appeared as long ago as 1913. There were to be later ones, such as in Torremolinos. These were apparently upside-down fishing boats with presumably some thatch affair, and from these improvised structures, the wives of fishermen would sell fish dishes and beers to tourists of the 1940s. There may be something in this story, as chiringuitos did tend to have a shape that was reminiscent of a boat.
The word itself comes from the Caribbean. A "chiringo" was a measure of coffee that was served to workers on the sugar plantations of Cuba, and so the bars where the coffee was to be had was named a chiringuito. There is a less specific theory that "chiringo" was a generally used colloquial word in Cuba and Puerto Rico to refer to something short or small and that it was applied to various drinks, not only a small coffee but also a shot of rum. But for the use of chiringuito, as in meaning a beach bar, one has to go back to Sitges. The bar that had emerged in 1913 wasn't called a chiringuito. Rather, it was known as "El kiosket" and remarkably it survived numerous batterings by the sea (and reconstructions) until 1949 when it was renamed "El chiringuito". So popular was this bar that - and bear in mind the times - it would attract journalists and intellectuals who would come for a coffee and to chew the fat (such as they could in those days).
Nowadays in Mallorca, there are all sorts of chiringuitos, not all of them by any means by the sea. Of those which are, if they are actually on a beach then all sorts of hoops will have been gone through to allow them: these are days quite unlike those of the 1950s. And there is one chiringuito in particular which stands out from all others. It is partly because of where it is: right by the remarkable beach of Es Trenc. It is also because it has a reputation for being what you would like a beach bar to be: a place of music but with a laid-back aura and something of the hippy. It is S'Embat. And tomorrow at 4pm, it re-opens for its tenth anniversary season.
Photo: From the S'Embat Facebook page.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Knocked Down, Then Get Up Again
Three decades of "demands" it may have taken, but the upgrading of the frontline walk towards Son Real from Son Bauló has finally been inaugurated - to the tune of some 500,000 euros. The minister for the environment, Miquel Grimalt, came, saw and cut the ribbon. All that remains is the rather more problematic issue of upgrading not just the walkway but the whole of the frontline in Can Picafort. Symbolic a gesture as the ribbon-cutting was, it was symbolic in another respect - that it was the environment minister who performed the act. Here was an example of something essentially tourist in its nature being enacted by the environment ministry; the two - tourism and environment (ministries, that is) rarely seem to speak from the same script let alone metaphorically join hands in holding the same scissors.
It is the environment ministry that has helped to cause the Magaluf kerfuffle in respect of an earlier bar-terrace curfew, something that does not endear the ministry to bar owners and also, one suspects, to quite a number of tourists. The environmental diktats are too often at variance with what keeps Mallorca afloat - its tourism and the majority perception of what holiday should entail, which includes sitting on terraces with music until at least midnight.
There was further symbolism in Grimalt's ceremony. The walkway lies in the general area of what is ruled by the feared "Costas". In an act of hitherto rarely witnessed common sense, the Costas, and by extension the environment ministry and therefore minister, have come to the conclusion that now is not the most opportune moment to be going around insisting on the demolition of chiringuitos (beach bars). Though the regional government's president seems to still support the enforcement of the law of the coasts (which includes the demolition of buildings apparently illegally constructed on what is deemed public beach area), the environment minister (from a different party, it should be noted) has agreed that now is not the time. Indeed, of the 107 chiringuitos that were under some sort of threat, only three now seem to have the bulldozers waiting to move in, one of them in Alcúdia. It is likely to go after the season finishes. Not all of the chiringuitos are even permanent; they get taken down at the end of the season and are put up again for the next one.
There have been some big guns coming to the defence of the chiringuitos, namely the head of the hotel federation and the president of the Fomento del Turismo (a promotional body). The hotels' boss has said that conflicts should not be created where they do not exist, and the law has tended to do just that. There is also an appreciation, now being advanced, that the chiringuitos hold an iconic place in the perception of tourists; iconic and extremely useful. But one knows what they mean by "iconic". The beach bar is as much a part of holiday as the beach itself. Far from limiting the activities of these bars, they should let them stay open into the wee smalls, put on beach barbecues, play music.
All this law is stripping out the romance of holiday. Thankfully, a bit of romance still resides in the unromantic hearts of stone at the environment ministry.
QUIZ
Today's title - and where does this come from?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
It is the environment ministry that has helped to cause the Magaluf kerfuffle in respect of an earlier bar-terrace curfew, something that does not endear the ministry to bar owners and also, one suspects, to quite a number of tourists. The environmental diktats are too often at variance with what keeps Mallorca afloat - its tourism and the majority perception of what holiday should entail, which includes sitting on terraces with music until at least midnight.
There was further symbolism in Grimalt's ceremony. The walkway lies in the general area of what is ruled by the feared "Costas". In an act of hitherto rarely witnessed common sense, the Costas, and by extension the environment ministry and therefore minister, have come to the conclusion that now is not the most opportune moment to be going around insisting on the demolition of chiringuitos (beach bars). Though the regional government's president seems to still support the enforcement of the law of the coasts (which includes the demolition of buildings apparently illegally constructed on what is deemed public beach area), the environment minister (from a different party, it should be noted) has agreed that now is not the time. Indeed, of the 107 chiringuitos that were under some sort of threat, only three now seem to have the bulldozers waiting to move in, one of them in Alcúdia. It is likely to go after the season finishes. Not all of the chiringuitos are even permanent; they get taken down at the end of the season and are put up again for the next one.
There have been some big guns coming to the defence of the chiringuitos, namely the head of the hotel federation and the president of the Fomento del Turismo (a promotional body). The hotels' boss has said that conflicts should not be created where they do not exist, and the law has tended to do just that. There is also an appreciation, now being advanced, that the chiringuitos hold an iconic place in the perception of tourists; iconic and extremely useful. But one knows what they mean by "iconic". The beach bar is as much a part of holiday as the beach itself. Far from limiting the activities of these bars, they should let them stay open into the wee smalls, put on beach barbecues, play music.
All this law is stripping out the romance of holiday. Thankfully, a bit of romance still resides in the unromantic hearts of stone at the environment ministry.
QUIZ
Today's title - and where does this come from?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
