Where Resort Time Stood Still

Wednesday is the feast day for Sant Pere, Saint Peter, patron of fishermen. The fiestas are, therefore, happening in different parts of the island, not all of them - oddly enough - by the coast. But one coastal place which has more right than any other to claim the fiestas as its own is Colonia Sant Pere.

Once upon a time, there was nothing where Colonia Sant Pere now stands other than dunes, pines and scrub. It came into being in 1880, one of a series of new "colonies" for land development. This was not speculative building or anything of such nature, but purely agricultural, though there was the obvious further attraction of fishing. Some of the colonies failed to survive. One that didn't was Gatamoix, the settlement that the British engineers established for the drying and cultivation of Albufera. Notable among those which did survive are Colonia Sant Jordi and Porto Cristo as well of course as Colonia Sant Pere.

The church that was built was dedicated to Sant Pere, an indication that fishing was to become a part of the economy of this tiny settlement. Nowadays, it's not a great deal bigger, in terms of population, than it was originally: there are some 500 plus regular inhabitants. But it is notable in different ways. Edging towards the north-eastern tip of Mallorca, Colonia forms part of an area that may well be where human settlement on the island was first established.

The evidence for this lies principally with two sites: one is the dolmen burial site in Son Baulo (Can Picafort) and the other is a similar dolmen in S'Aigua Dolça, east of Colonia Sant Pere, that only became truly known about around twenty years ago. It hasn't satisfactorily or definitively been established that these are evidence of first settlements, but both pre-date what is taken to be the Talayotic period, of which there are plenty of examples all over Mallorca and Menorca; Ses Païsses in Arta is one of the best known. An assumption that has been made is that these most ancient settlements were by people who had crossed from Menorca. It may well be correct, as Menorca has signs of even earlier habitation from the third millennium BC.

Colonia Sant Pere, therefore, sits along a stretch of coast on the bay of Alcudia that is rich with prehistory. To its west is the necropolis of Son Real, a burial site that is of more recent vintage (all things being relative) than the dolmen sites: more recent by around a thousand years. It is also a coastal area with very little development.

Arta, of which Colonia is a part, is peculiar in that it stands out among all the coastal municipalities that run from Alcudia around the north-eastern tip and along the east coast because of its lack of resort development. A reason for this is surely its mountainous terrain; Arta has more in common with municipalities of the Tramuntana than with its neighbours when it comes to beach tourism. While it has its coves, there are really only three obvious beaches: Colonia's is one and the smallest, Cala Torta is another and the third and largest is Sa Canova, which lies between Colonia and Son Serra de Marina.

This neighbouring development, part of Santa Margalida rather than Arta, has its own peculiarity: plenty of residential properties but no hotels. It is a place which, together with Colonia, conspires to make this part of Mallorca an area where time seems to have stood still. Not completely of course, but it is an area that is a world away from Can Picafort and Cala Ratjada to either side. There is a sense also of the less than conventional, and not just because of the naturist beaches of Sa Canova and Cala Torta, Colonia's naturist hotel (the only one on the island) and the ambitions that Colonia has for being a dog-friendly tourist destination. As befits the mysterious nature of the prehistory, Son Serra was once the location for a "didgeridoo encounter". It took place six years ago in a wooded area near to the Talayotic site of Cova de sa Nineta. All pretty alternative stuff.

And alternative adequately describes this part of Mallorca. It is redolent of an era before giant resorts. Even now, it's stretching things to describe Colonia as a resort, although it is the only one that Arta can claim to have. Quiet it may be, but on Wednesday there will be the bangs of fireworks for Sant Pere. Not quite enough, though, to waken the dead of all that prehistory.

* Photo of Sa Canova from Wikimedia.

The Death Sentence Of San Pedro

If you happen to be a tourist wanting to have a camping holiday in Mallorca, it is quite possible that when consulting Google you will find links to camping in Colonia Sant Pere, the small resort in Arta on the bay of Alcudia. There will be only two things misleading about information that these links may provide. Firstly, it isn't camping. Secondly, it has been closed for years.

As is well known, there is no such thing as an official tourist camping site in Mallorca. Camping San Pedro, for which you will indeed find references which suggest it is still in operation, always had a misleading name. There was no camping under canvas. Instead, there were a number of small bungalows - 88 (28.5 square metres in size) - on a complex of 23,000 square metres with a swimming-pool, a restaurant, a snack bar and a couple of tennis courts. To give an idea as to what 23,000 square metres represent, think of three football pitches next to each other and you won't be far off.

The complex has been closed since 2003 and in 2006 the Council of Mallorca opened proceedings on the grounds that it constituted an infraction of urban planning and that the bungalows were illegal and could not be legalised. These proceedings sought the demolition of the bungalows. An appeal was filed by the owners, UPA S.A., which in July 2012 was dismissed by what is effectively the cabinet at the Council of Mallorca.

Since then and also of course for several years prior, the complex has descended into a state of abandonment and degradation. It now offers a pretty sorry sight in a gentle little resort that really could have done without the controversy, but the end of the complex is still seemingly nowhere in sight. The demolition order has been dragged through the courts and continues to be dragged through them.

The background to all this is, suffice to say, incredibly complicated. Here, as is often the case in Mallorca, is an example of a collision of different and changing administrations and different legal interpretations. One of the odder aspects of the interest of the courts in the affair was that in 2011 the Balearic High Court slashed a penalty on the owners that had originally been set at 900,000 euros to just over 17,000. The owners were to then place their own compensation claim against the regional government (and so not the Council of Mallorca) of more than three million euros for damages suffered over many years.

The decision of the High Court was clearly favourable where the owners were concerned, but it didn't remove the demolition demand initiated by the Council (and so not the government), while it was being said that the tourism ministry, i.e. the government, had on three occasions - in 1994, 1999 and 2004 - determined that the bungalows were authorised or authorisable. How absurdly complex and contradictory opinion can be. There was the ministry apparently saying authorised or authorisable and the Council of Mallorca saying illegal or not legalisable.

It is mind-boggling attempting to get the bottom of the affair but essentially it seems to centre on the fact that the bungalows were deemed to be permanent structures when they are in fact prefabs which, it is argued, are dismountable and removable. Moreover, the bungalows weren't originally prefabs with concrete. They were wood, but it was the tourism ministry which instructed the change to prefabs. So, if the ministry had said this, then what was the problem? Well, then there was an issue as to how easily movable they might be, and so the arguments went on and on.

But over and above the legal argument and the apparent discrepancies between the government and the Council, there was the political angle. It is claimed that the whole business was directed by one party - the United Left-Greens in Arta, which had denounced the prefab work at the end of the last century. Move forward some years to 2013 and there was a slightly different political element agitating for demolition - the Iniciativa Verds (Greens) in Arta and the co-ordinator of the Iniciativa Verds in Mallorca, i.e. David Abril, now eco-warrior-in-chief with Més.

Supporters of the complex maintain that a great injustice has been done and that there had been a petition signed by more than 1,500 local businesspeople, residents and holidaymakers demanding that the San Pedro be allowed to continue. But that support may well have ebbed, given the ongoing deterioration of the complex.

There's demolition and there's demolition. Sometimes it's necessary because of flagrant abuses or obsolescence, but it can also seem punitive. In effect, a death sentence was placed on San Pedro. But what harm was it ever really doing? A relaxing holiday village with small bungalows and nothing obtrusive. What seems like political vandalism condemned it.

Discovering Prehistoric Mallorca

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Index for May 2015

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

I've Not Booked O-Boner: Nude Mallorca

The largest tour operator in Europe that specialises in naturist holidays is a German company called Oböna. Please note the umlaut over the second "o". Those of you who are familiar with the German umlaut will know that it extends the sound of a vowel. Oböna is, therefore, pronounced O-berner. However, the umlaut is often ignored, perhaps deliberately. The pronunciation then becomes O-boner.

Prurience, as in the wrongful pronunciation, is par for the course when it comes to naturism and naturist holidays. Naturism retains the power to titillate and to arouse titters, all words - titillate, arouse, titters - one uses advisedly in this context. Prurience, innuendo, oo-er missus. Naturism is the stuff of a Carry On film, and it very nearly was, before Sid James and Bernard Bresslaw realised that they had gone to the wrong Paradise campsite.

Mallorca now has, thanks to Oböna, its first naturist hotel. It is the Aparthotel Sa Punta de s'Estanyol in Colonia Sant Pere. Only a small hotel, it is located close to the beach of Sa Canova, one that lies between Colonia and Son Serra de Marina, and which for years has been an unofficial nudist beach.

The unofficial nature of Sa Canova's status might make the choice of hotel seem a little odd. According to the blurb, guests can, after all, stroll to the beach in kitless bliss. Yet being unofficial, you might wonder how they can. The point is that, though there are official nudist beaches in Mallorca - part of Es Trenc being the best known - there is seemingly little difference between what is official and what isn't. At least, this is the interpretation adopted by the Spanish Naturist Federation.

You might be surprised to learn that, according to the federation (and I quote from its website): "In Spain, nudism is another of your rights. At this time, there is freedom of nudism in any public area in Spain and no authorisation is required. Beaches, rivers, lakes, open fields, tracks, roads, streets, squares, parks, etc. are public areas in Spain. According to the current legislation, nudism cannot be limited nor sanctioned and even less so forbidden".

A few years ago, the combined might of Alcúdia and Muro town halls became aware of my having publicised on the internet that the rustic beach in Playa de Muro (known as Es Comú) was popular with naturists. Oh, don't say this, they insisted. Why not? It's a matter of record. One only had to wander along the beach to realise that it was.

There was a lack of keenness for attention to be drawn to the nature of naturism in Muro because of its potentially negative impact. I pointed out what the federation had to say, so suggesting that, in theory, nudism could be practised on any beach. When an attempt was made to check the information on its website, it couldn't be accessed. It had been blocked, presumably by someone administering Alcúdia town hall's web server.

This, in itself, told a story. Naturism might be a minority holidaymaker interest, but interest it nevertheless is. Maps showing nudist beaches on Mallorca have been around for ages, and they are ones that have been produced by a governmental body. Yet, here were two town halls, and two town hall tourism organisations who were rather of the view that the N-word shouldn't be named. Or even viewed on the internet. In Artà, the town which hosts both Sa Canova beach and the aparthotel, they are presumably less bashful.

I could, though, understand that there might be reluctance to draw attention to the legal interpretation adopted by the federation. Whether it is right or not, its implication that one could wander the streets kit off with total impunity sounds very risky, just as going tackle out on any beach might not be looked upon with complete favour. It might not lead to a collar being felt (not that there would be one to feel), but it might lead to one being thought a bit of a berk. Or a plonker, if you'll pardon a further innuendo. On one occasion, on a part of Playa de Muro's beach that isn't naturist, some chap was smugly lying there sunning his crown jewels. As he was the only one who was, he was either extremely stupid or an exhibitionist.

As there are beaches, such as Sa Canova, where it is common knowledge that they are naturist, why isn't there some admission that they are? If there is anxiety over offence being caused, then the simple expedient of a sign would notify the unwary, so long as it's not the sign of an o-boner. 


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Prefab Sprout: Colonia Sant Pere

I once had a brainstorm in a shop's music department. I had gone in with the intention of buying a Primal Scream CD. When I got home, I realised that I had one by Prefab Sprout. I could only attribute the error to some form of temporary alphabetic dyslexia. Or more likely, the CDs had been next to each other in the rack and I hadn't been paying attention.

Character similarity apart, Primal Scream and Prefab Sprout bore no similarity, especially as Paddy McAloon had by now embarked upon his reinvention as a singing cowboy; in total contrast, therefore, to Bobby Gillespie. You might find it odd that the decidedly odd little coastal town of Colonia Sant Pere should bring this recollection to mind, but trust me, there is some sense as to why it should.

Colonia Sant Pere is one of the last stops on the bay of Alcúdia. Being one of the last stops, no one takes a great deal of notice of it, which probably helps to explain its oddness. The great sweep of the bay has at either end rocky coastline and mountainous elevation. In between are the miles of virtually unbroken sandy beach that Puerto Alcúdia, Playa de Muro and Can Picafort boast.

This sandy beach starts to break down as you head east past Can Picafort. There are still stretches of beach, including an artificial one in Colonia, but rocks become more evident as do small coves dotted along the bay as it reaches its end at Cap Farrutx. Colonia is Mallorca resort land that time forgot, rather like its neighbours Son Serra de Marina and the disturbingly named Betlem which, even if its name wasn't derived from Bedlam, sounds as though it should have been.

If the resorts of the bay of Alcúdia were rock groups, then Puerto Alcúdia would be Primal Scream and "Get Your Rocks Off". Colonia, on the other hand, would be Prefab Sprout, either in its sweetly gentle "Steve McQueen" phase or once McAloon had decided he was Jesse James with the Steve McQueen later-life full set. It is Wild West resort land without the wild, a one-horse town just like Son Serra except when Son Serra's beach is full of horses from Rancho Grande, the owner of which I once described, in good Bon Jovi terms, as a cowboy on a steel horse (he rides a quad as well as a horse, you see).

Colonia Sant Pere didn't exist until the late nineteenth century. It was a colony created specifically so that people could move from the island's interior at a time when there was a need for new parts of the island to be settled and cultivated. It went into decline and between 1940 and 1970 its population fell by a quarter. Tourism revived Colonia but only up to a point. Off the main highway between Alcúdia and Artà by several kilometres of narrow road, it has never been somewhere capable of supporting anything more than a small tourism industry. Nevertheless, in the late 1990s came the expansion of its marina together with another development - tourist bungalows.

The first few bungalows were made of wood but then a whole load more - prefabs - sprouted up, creating a tourist enclave like a superior Jaywick Sands. They could only have emerged in somewhere such as Colonia, stuck away on the bay, right off the beaten track and largely unnoticed by anyone. Except of course that the prefabs didn't go unnoticed. By 2006 the legal system had swung into operation, and six years later a demolition notice hangs over the prefabs that have been unused for years.

The owners have the right to appeal against the Council of Mallorca demolition order, though as the prefabs have apparently been illegal all along, it is hard to see what grounds there are for appeal.

It's a shame. Colonia is a part of weird Mallorca, which is why I like it. It is somewhere, as with Son Serra, that I struggle, as do others, to make sense of. But its oddness is what makes it, and its sense lies with the fact that it isn't a Puerto Alcúdia, full of primal scream and dominating hotels. Colonia is a small, quiet place in which a bloke with a long beard can pluck on an acoustic guitar and sing cowboy songs. It doesn't really have hotels, it doesn't have anything much at all, apart from a strange enchantment, and if this also means some unusual little prefabs, then why not. It is a place that exists outside of Mallorca's hotelism and is evidence as to why this hotelism is not the be all and end all. 


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Colonia Sant Pere bungalows to be knocked down

The prefab tourist bungalows in Colonia Sant Pere, closed for some years, have been condemned to demolition, subject to appeal. The bungalows, put up at the end of the last century, were judged in 2006 to be illegal.

See more: Ultima Hora

I Keep Quiet About It

Get on the main coast road from Puerto Alcúdia, and where does it take you? The clue lies in the name of the road - Carretera Artà. The road runs parallel to the coast line, to the side of the bay of Alcúdia. It takes you into Playa de Muro, Can Picafort and then out into largely forest-bound territory to the coast side as you pass by Son Serra until you end up in Artà. Or maybe you don't end up. Instead, you carry on to Cala Ratjada or down the east coast to the likes of Cala Millor. That the road bears the name of Artà should suggest some importance, a major centre perhaps, but for most it is just a town on the way to somewhere else.

But before you get lost in Artà, struggling to locate the sign for Cala Ratjada, which is conveniently partially hidden and a surprise when you do see it, you might have noticed that large church, the one that rises from and dominates the landscape to your left. You might have thought, well, that looks interesting, but then you would still have kept going.

And that's the problem. People just keep going. Artà. It sounds like it's arterial, and its eponymous main road from Alcúdia pumps you through its centre and out the other end. No-one really goes to Artà, despite its prominence on road signs and the naming of the main coast road in the north. There again, why would you? What does Artà have by way of attraction? It barely registers on the tourist map or in tourist brochures.

Maybe it's coincidental - what I was saying the other day about Campos and towns that have minimal or little by way of real tourism - but Artà is set to be on the receiving end of some seven million euros worth of spend, courtesy of the Spanish tourist promotion body Turespaña. You might ask why they are bothering. I might ask, as one who believes that Mallorca's tourism is wedded to the masses, why do they bother. But you and I would be wrong. Mallorca is full of curios, of old towns that seem barely worth the effort, and of small coastal enclaves that time - mass-tourism time that is - appears to have past by. Because that is the attraction of Artà and its coastal tourism that barely dares to speak its name.

Before you arrive at Artà, there is a road off that is not much more than a lane. It takes you to Colonia Sant Pere and Betlem. Don't expect either of them to be keeping you carousing until dawn. They are end-of-the-road, dead-end, nothing-much-happens Mallorca, peculiar small coastal settlements of no more than spectacular views across the bay and spectacular high rises of hills that dominate them. They are both a part of the coastal plain brooded over by the sudden elevations of the mountain range of Artà. And they want to spend seven million on these places? So they should. Or maybe they shouldn't, as it might disrupt the tranquility of those who have stumbled across Sant Pere and Betlem and would prefer to keep them secret. Or maybe they shouldn't announce the rich antiquity of this part of the island, evidenced by the prehistoric Ses Païsses just outside Artà.

Sometimes, maybe they should just spend the money on keeping places quiet.


A MAYOR UNDER SIEGE - THE STORY CONTINUES
Another week, another tough time for Pollensa's mayor. It's all a load of rubbish. And that is how the organisation for tourism businesses, Acotur, has portrayed the increases in rubbish collection and incineration charges. In some cases (as noted in "The Diario"), these are set to rise by some 300 per cent. These are, of course, tough times too for businesses, and such steep hikes in rubbish tax are the last things they need. Mayor Cerdà argues that the real cost of the tax has not been passed on over the past few years, which will come as small consolation to businesses hit by other rising charges in a downturn.

And pedestrianisation? The mayor has reiterated that he is willing to look at alternative plans for "mobility" in the port, and one such has emerged from a combination of Partido Popular and Unió Mallorquina (UM) members. This has arisen as a consequence of a meeting with the residents associations of both Gotmar and the port. The other day when I spoke to Garry Bonsall, he told me that he was due to be seeing members of the UM who had previously abstained on votes in respect of the pedestrianisation. It would seem that alternative ideas, such as limiting traffic access to, for example, the mornings, are now being tabled. It may also be the case that the road would be open in the off-season. Why shouldn't it be? At present there are enough drivers ignoring the "closure" as it is. What is revealing is that the mayor seems not only to be opposed by other political parties, he doesn't even have the wholehearted support of his own party. To top all this off, a letter from the port's residents association has now been made public. This was a letter sent to the administration in October that makes clear the number of complaints regarding the scheme and that contradicts the view of the town hall that there was not a "majority of unrest" among the port's residents.

If he hasn't already, I fancy that the mayor is due to get a fair amount of egg on his face.

(Since making this entry, I hear that the rubbish tax is to actually go down for tourist businesses. U-turn on rubbish, and now for the pedestrianisation ...)


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Graham Swift, "Waterland". Today's title - from a song by an English female singer who recorded an album with the title of a book by another contemporary British novelist, Ian McEwan.

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