Culture v. Hotels: What Matters To Tourists?

Sun, you may not be surprised to know, is the most important thing for a holiday in Mallorca. This is, in order to dispel any possible confusion, sun in the sky as opposed to The Sun. The latter, if it is of any importance at all, may fall into a category "none of these", which was one of seven options offered to online users of The Bulletin in a recent poll.

The sun, the yellow thing, only made it by a whisker - 23.65% ahead of prices on 22.18%. But sun, of which we have had a fair amount of the hot variety just recently, will always rank high up the list for a predominantly northern European user base, which is what the website has. Without sun, whatever some tourism promoters might believe to the contrary, Mallorca wouldn't have one of its main USPs, albeit that I'm not sure how there can be more than one unique selling point.

Sun, for the purposes of the poll, was divorced from its normal partner - beaches. They ranked almost ten percentage points lower. Perhaps the natural alliance of sun and beach isn't quite as strong as it has always been. If so, the regional tourism ministry will feel satisfied. The more it attempts to diversify tourism away from the warmer months, the more that beaches, except for walking on or looking at, become less central to the tourism mix.

The ministry might also be pleased to discover what came third, namely culture. It scooped 16.9% of the poll and was separated from what can be considered a facet of culture - food and drink, which came in with 11.85%. And it is culture that I found to be one of the two most interesting results. The other was hotels. These came last, with 4.42%.

The point has to be made, as ever, that this was hardly scientific. But the sample size, into the thousands, would have been substantially greater than surveys tend to be. No, there was no margin of error or probability element, but nevertheless the results were somewhat intriguing.

Let's take hotels first. When one considers all the constant reminders of how much has been and is being invested into hotel stock in order to upgrade it (and push its prices up), an importance factor of less than 4.5% doesn't sound terribly encouraging for hoteliers wishing to make huge returns on their investments. Not of course that they will be worrying, because they clearly are making returns, what with levels of profit having risen significantly over the past two to three years.

But can one interpret this lowly importance to the existence of rival accommodation? I think you'll know to what I refer, and I also think that there will be many of you in agreement. Rental accommodation, of whatever sort, can offer a better experience. A further poll might seek to determine this. What does the general holidaymaking (or potential holidaymaking) market prefer? Hotel or not hotel?

The comparatively high importance given to culture differs greatly to a survey that I've dug out from 2010. That one, and I don't know who conducted it as I merely cited the results in an article, found that slightly under two per cent of all tourists who came to Mallorca classified themselves as having been cultural tourists. One has to say that there is a difference between how someone self-classifies him or herself and placing an importance on culture. Even so, there does seem to have been a big shift in the cultural direction, and just to reinforce the point, another survey of 2010 placed Mallorca and the Balearics second bottom among Spain's regions when it came to cultural interest for tourists.

The thing with culture is that it can be difficult to define. It can be the culture of the environment and landscape, the culture of music and the arts, the culture of buildings and physical heritage, the culture of history, or the culture of fiestas. It would probably be a worthwhile exercise to ask people to define culture, but as a collective concept, the importance given to it is, I would suggest, rather encouraging. Mallorca has, for so long, battled to create alternative tourist "products". Perhaps it is finally succeeding.

The poll did exclude an option which may well be more important than all others. Had security and safety been included, one fancies that this would have beaten the rest by some distance. And prices, having run the sun so close, may say something about safety. One interprets the rating for prices as being a desire for value for money and for not being excessive. Which maybe brings us back to hotels and their prices. Safety is paramount, but it can mean only so much price.

At least the sun is free, as indeed is much culture.

Demons And The Soul Of Mallorca

Dimonis d'Alaró; Infernets de Maria de la Salut; Dimonis de l'Esquitxafoc de Campos; Dimonis de Son Ganxó de Costitx; Dimonis Bocsifocs d'Esporles; Manafoc de Manacor; Dimonis d'Albopàs de Sa Pobla; Trafoc de Palma; Dimonis a Lloure de Felanitx; Dimonis Ka de Bou Pollença; Dimonis es Cau des Boc Negre de Palma; Enfocats de Palma; Dimonis de Fang de Marratxí; Diables de Sant Joan; Kinfumfà Dimonis de Palma; Dimonis Realment Cremats de Palma; Dimonis Factoria de So de Santa Maria; Sa Fil·loxera de l'Infern de Binissalem; Dimonis de sa Cova des Fossar de Sineu; Dimonis Escarrufaverros de Campanet; Es Drac de Na Coca; Endimoniats de Palma; Espiadimonis de Felanitx; Dimonis Sa Pedrera de Muro; Dimonis Hiachat de Santa Margalida.

Even if you don't know the language, this list conveys something terrifying. This isn't only because of "dimonis" (demons). There is an onomatopoeic quality of mystery and terror inherent to the names. They are all members of the Federació de Dimonis, Diables i Bèsties de Foc de les Illes Balears. This federation was formed in February 2008. Seven "gangs" were the initial signatories. Two of the seven - Esclatabutzes de Sóller and Arrels de la Vall de Mancor - aren't in the above list. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's an oversight. Or maybe there's some demonic politics at play. Whatever the reason, it's by the by.

The final two on the list - Dimonis Sa Pedrera de Muro and Dimonis Hiachat de Santa Margalida - are uniting for a night of terror in Muro tonight. Rival towns, rival gangs of demons, they will take over the bullring for a fire-running spectacular. Demons no longer simply terrorise in the streets, they put on shows. They are an entertainment of dark forces which cuts deep into the soul of Mallorca.

These gangs are mostly all relatively recent creations. Hiachat, for instance, are fifteen years old; Sa Pedrera a mere eleven. But the number of gangs, and there are others, speaks volumes about the ubiquity of cultural demonology. It also says a great deal about the entertainment value of the fire-running demons. Not all demons run with fire - there are different types of demon - but the "correfoc" is what has elevated them to the heights. And the correfoc, as now is, was essentially an import from Catalonia some forty years ago.

There are two grand occasions for fire in Mallorca. One is in January for the fiestas of Sant Antoni, the origin of most things demonic. The other is in midsummer, which coincides with the fiestas of Sant Joan (John the Baptist). They are linked by the solstice. Although Sant Antoni is in mid-January, its roots lie with the winter solstice and the use of fire to symbolise the rebirth of the sun. In midsummer, the primal force is the force of the sun itself. The spectacular in Muro is "Solstici d'Estiu", i.e. the Summer Solstice.

Although the correfoc is a modern invention, the association of demons and fire is ancient. In Mallorca, it was bred after the Catalan occupation of the thirteenth century, and specifically in the January fiestas in Sa Pobla. The early demons did run in that they ran over fire. The leaping over the fire of hell is now a facet of the midsummer fire celebration. It represents, as it always did, fertility, both in sexual terms and of the soil. There has arguably always been more of the former than the latter, its symbolism captured in the "canya fel·la", the phallic cane.

It is said that the demons and their fire rituals are distant echoes of a very much older tradition, that of the shaman, whose fires would bring survival to tribes because of good harvests. Whatever the precise origins, there is no doubting the degree to which demon culture is embedded in Mallorca.

One researcher, Miquel Sbert, says of the figure of the demon. "It is part of our intangible heritage. I don't think you have to say anything more. If you ignore or destroy this heritage, we destroy ourselves." He adds that the "devotion" of the demon, especially among children, is "a guarantee of its continuity, a connection to strengthen and promote the practice of other traditional customs".

The demon, therefore, embodies local culture in a very much broader sense. An appraisal of demon photography by José Juan Luna suggests that the Mallorcan people have a "thorough, iconic and deep knowledge" of the dark side. Unlike other societies which seek to hide these darker forces, the Mallorcans openly acknowledge them. In so doing, they have a "psychological health, which is not only calm (and summed up by the "Island of Calm" description of Mallorca by the painter and poet Santiago Rusiñol) but also gives wisdom and depth of vision."

* Video of the Dimonis Sa Pedrera, Sant Antoni in 2015.

A Smaller Arse: Cultural Musings

Well, I thought you might like to be kept up to date with developments on the book. Things moved ahead apace yesterday, so much so that when the umpires announced close of play after some twelve hours of dogged translating, interpreting and querying, we (or rather I) had reached another of our good chums, the Pollensa priest Miquel Costa i Llobera and his old pine of Formentor.

What on the one hand is a fairly gruelling assignment is, on the other, somewhat enlightening, and that includes the fixing of the Enlightenment in the scheme of things. The book is no more than a surface-scratching romp across the centuries but it does place developments in context. The Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the rights of man acquire powerful roles that one can perhaps forget until they are placed within the context of dominating characteristics, such as religious superstition and the power of the noble class.

In terms of Mediterranean culture (and the place of Mallorca in its world), that upheaval in thought, reason, liberalism and a certain liberation, the principal gain - where the book is concerned - is the degree to which the culture became the object of curiosity from further afield. Hence, and naturally enough, a fair amount of attention is paid to yet another familiar figure, the Archduke Louis Salvador of Austria. Importantly, it is the relationship formed with the sea and the extent to which the sea embodies (if a sea can do such a thing) a spirit and a culture formed by the melding of societies over hundreds and indeed thousands of years. Which is all good philosophical stuff, one has to guess.

What is perhaps the most striking aspect of all this is that, as a translator, one becomes more embedded within the perspective of the author than might be the case by being a later reader of this minor saga. Being taken along for the ride in a continuous fashion, one does start to see things a touch differently. This is only natural. The world view is a Mallorcan and a Mediterranean one, not a northern European (British one) onto which a culture has been grafted. This assumption of an alternative culture and world view goes only so far, it seems to me.

With this in mind, one event is revealed as having greater force than a northern European can imagine. There is a continuity from the very start of the book of the almost landlocked nature of the sea. Almost but not wholly. That's because of the Strait of Gibraltar. The event is 1704 and the British occupation. This lends itself to a whole article, so I'll leave it as a taster. There's another chapter and then a timeline of more than 9,000 words to be cracking on with. 

Culture, Anger And Tourist Tax: Top Stories From 2016

Google very kindly make available statistics of the number of individual page views that each blog post receives. These are direct views in that they are to the specific URL of the post rather than having been read by regular followers of the blog. They are an indication of popularity, although I wouldn't say they were the best; my personal opinion of the diversity of subjects that appear on the blog would give a different result.

This caveat aside, the story that proved to be the most popular was that of 17 September, Promoting Culture: Where's The Strategy? This was about an agreement between the tourism and culture ministries - a "protocol", as they liked to call it - to promote cultural tourism. This required an investment of 600,000 euros to internationalise the islands' culture via a "tourism strategy". I was scathing of the whole thing, not least because an aspect of this strategy is supposedly to push filming on the islands. The relevant ministers, Biel Barceló and Ruth Mateu, admitted that there aren't the necessary tax incentives to do this, as there are in other parts of Spain. So they were going ahead with a "strategy" without having the wherewithal to implement it. Moreover, the "protocol" only lasts until the end of 2017. Could anyone make any sense of it, I asked. PR nonsense was my conclusion, and we haven't heard anything about it since September.

Number two was from 21 July - A Camel To Design A Camel: Tourist Tax. The introduction read: "How many government departments, local authorities, business associations, unions and others does it take to change the cash collected from the tourist tax into meaningful projects?" One camel was therefore the Commission for the Promotion of Sustainable Tourism, the body which decides how revenue is to be spent. The other was the tax itself with its ill-defined multi-purposes. As things were to turn out, the government used the drought as the justification (not unreasonably) to place emphasis on water projects. We are still waiting, though, to hear what these (and other) projects actually are. When there's a commission with such camel-like ingredients, should this come as any surprise?

In third place was the article about Balearic hotel interests in Cuba - Keep Taking Us To Havana, 1 December - while just behind in fourth spot was the post of 2 May, When Anger Takes Over: Mallorca And Cycling. This was prompted by the general chaos caused by the Mallorca 312 cycle event, which isn't a race as such but a trial. As I noted, it was a trial that "tested the over 4,000 cyclists and tested the patience of many people on the island". The event brought to a head the simmering (and not so simmering) conflict created by cycling. The value and benefit of cycling to Mallorca seems irreconcilable with attitudes of residents. Whether these attitudes are shared by a majority, one doesn't know. Perhaps they should undertake a survey rather than rely on social-media hysteria.

Chaos of a different sort came in at number five - More On Vueling And The Chaotic Spanish Air Industry, 16 July. At six was a subject that crept ever higher up the agenda in 2016. The Pariah Status Of Airbnb from 11 November noted that Airbnb didn't exhibit at London's World Travel Market, despite it being "arguably the most important business in the travel market right at the moment". This was the context for a discussion of the need for the regional government "to take tough and effective action against Airbnb and other such sites". Just how tough will be revealed when the holiday rentals' legislation is approved. Whether it will be effective is a totally different matter.

There was further anger on 23 April. Getting Angry In Puerto Pollensa (number seven) said that "emotions have been allowed to run high; rather too high". They were to do with the pedestrianisation fiasco and the Gelats Valls ice-cream kiosk. There was of course to be even more anger because of the separate fiasco of the sun loungers.

At eight was a tribute to a web-based business which doesn't attract the concerns surrounding Airbnb. Hotelbeds: The Best Of Mallorca from 14 July looked at this successful business, sold by Tui for a fortune, which is headquartered on Palma's Paseo Marítimo. There was a coincidence with this article. Although not the same type of business, Hotelbeds does have some similarity with Low Cost Holidays, which went belly up a few days later.

In ninth spot was The Mess Of Regulating Holiday Rentals, 21 May. "The regional government is getting itself into a right old pickle over holiday rentals' regulation" was the introduction to an article on the difficulties regarding legislation. The pickle has become increasingly pickled, what with the idea to zone Mallorca and the intention to allocate places for holiday rentals that don't coincide with areas of high residential need. The government's problems are such that it ignored the fact, as stated in the May article, that the sustainable tourism tax law mandated it to have regulation in place within six months of that law having been approved: it should have been at the end of September therefore.

And in tenth place was The Environmental Crisis Coming Our Way of 17 May. This quoted a spokesperson from the environmentalists GOB who said that this will be "a crazy year, the infrastructure will not cope". Was it all environmentalist hot air? The prognosis was for: "airport stretched beyond its limit; Palma crowded out by ships and passengers; roads chockful of hire cars; ever more thousands of apartments being rented out; the hotels full; limits needing to be placed on the numbers on unspoiled beaches; supermarket supplies questionable; water supplies threatened; outdated sewage-treatment plants incapable of taking the pressure. Too many planes, too many ships, too many cars, too many people." 2017 will be no different.

There was in fact an eleventh post. It had the second highest number of page views but it wasn't a story, just a very short and simple post. It was the one to say that, after a few days of downtime when the Blogger system changed and I couldn't post, I was back. Heartening, I guess.

Promoting Culture: Where's The Strategy?

Having dismissed the suggestion by Podemos that no money should be spent on tourism promotion, the regional government has come up with a new line of funding. It is going to promote cultural tourism. One presumes that even Podemos can't disagree with this. Or can it? Hordes of tourists will now be overwhelming obscure museums on the island, adding further to the myth of tourist saturation.

What a curious business this is. It is one which demands that the press is invited to witness an official signing ceremony. A "protocol" has been established between two ministries - tourism and culture - and from this there is an agreement. Signed, sealed, delivered by Biel Barceló and Ruth Mateu. It was as if they were signing a peace treaty.

PR nonsense. Why can't representatives from two ministries just sit round a table without making a ballyhoo about spending up to 600 grand on "internationalising" the culture of the islands via a "tourism strategy"? It's nice to know that there is a strategy. At least in theory. Why also does this protocol only run until the end of next year? What's the thinking with that? It must be strategic.

Barceló says that the only season that the government wishes to promote is the winter season: a misleading concept as it refers to more than winter. Such a statement is presumably designed to alleviate the fears of Podemos and the summer saturation propagandists (of whom, of course, Barceló is one). But there is nothing new behind this statement. Winter tourism has been the chief beneficiary of government promotional spend ever since Carlos Delgado and the Partido Popular took the knife to this spend. The austerity policies of José Ramón Bauzá decreed that promotional investment should be cut dramatically, and it was. Delgado and his then sidekick, Jaime Martínez, were going to be focusing on the winter.

The budget for promotion is miserly. What investment there is (around three to four million) goes towards travel fairs, forums and blogger and fam trips. It isn't as if summer is totally neglected, however. Much of the business done at the major travel fairs is for the summer. The government is party to only so much of this. Otherwise they are occasions for business to talk to business, though at present there is very little actual need for summer discussions.

Tour operators from the UK, Germany and Scandinavia are hoovering up hotels and hotel places with such rapidity that their Spanish counterparts are being left with scraps to fight over. If and when it is announced that domestic tourism to Mallorca next year is in decline, this won't be for lack of demand. It will be due to supply. However, the domestic market might not decline. Why not? Because it is finding alternatives. Which market is one of the most significant in driving demand for holiday rentals? The Spanish. Here's one reason for so-called saturation. And which market finds it easiest to come with its cars and clog up the roads? The Spanish.

Promotion for the summer isn't necessary at the moment. This isn't to say that there shouldn't be any. Even at times of summer tourism bonanza, it is important to keep the name out there and in the "front of mind" of the tourist punter. This doesn't require vast sums. Some well-conceived social media initiatives can achieve this. What do we get from the tourism ministry in this regard? Nothing.

The Balearic Tourism Agency (ATB), responsible for promotion, is a peculiar institution. In its former guise - Ibatur - it was at the heart of the corruption scandals that engulfed the Unió Mallorquina. Renamed, it has since then given an impression of ineffectualness. The only director to have ever made strong public statements about the need for and power of social networks was Mar Guerrero. She resigned because the job wasn't as had been said on the tin. Funding was cut off. This was almost six years ago.

So now we come to this latest initiative, to which the ATB is a party. And what will this "strategy" for cultural tourism entail? One aspect is getting more producers to come and film on the islands. Fine, but strategy demands that there is a structure, for which there has to be the right financial mix. Both Barceló and Mateu admit that there aren't the tax incentives for filming as there are in other parts of Spain. So they are coming up with a "strategy" without knowing if they have the wherewithal to implement it, while only having an agreement for fifteen months. Can anyone explain the sense of this?

They've Mapped The Imagination

A few years ago I wrote an article about maps, Mallorca's maps. It was about a function of maps that went beyond the obvious. It said: "Maps should map the imagination. A map of Mallorca should be a map of Mallorca's imagination". It was an article that visited a theme I have touched on periodically: the power of stories, those that have been written and spoken and those which are untold.

Behind the facts of Mallorca's history - the battles, the feuds, the buildings, the plagues - there are the stories. It is these which give history greater meaning. They are variously social commentary and observation or fantasy, but even the fantasy is rooted in certain realities, those of oral tradition, the passing of the fantastic tale from generation to generation, itself a product of myth, superstition, the land or sea.

Mapping imagination is all this. Stories told and stories untold. The fantastic or the factual, and those which combine both. And within Mallorca there is a denseness of stories, the consequence of its smallness, of its remoteness and insularity, of its fears and anxieties and of its essential folkloric tradition - when you are cut off and separated as Mallorca was, the stories acquire a uniqueness and difference.

The literary and story-telling tradition is centuries old. Its first true manifestation dates from the later thirteenth century. Ramon Llull's "Blanquerna" was a semi-autobiograhical novel of fact and fiction, the hero - Blanquerna - leaving the family home to devote himself to God, to aspire to become pope, to become a hermit in order to dedicate himself completely to God.

Llull was one of those who was name-checked at the launch of Walking on Words last weekend. This initiative combines walking routes (which might equally be cycling or driving routes) with the literary heritage of Mallorca in its different guises - the observational documentary, the novel, the poetic, the folkloric and the fantasy. Across the island there are main centres: Ca N'Alluny, Robert Graves' house in Deya; Casa Llorenç Villalonga in Binissalem; Can Llobera in Pollensa; the Institució Alcover in Manacor, among others.

Between them, these four centres capture these different elements of the island's literary tradition. Graves, the poet, the novelist, weaving an alien's perspective into a Mallorcan framework; Villalonga, the author of the modern tradition with his at times scathing insights into the presence of the early tourists (well before the boom); Miquel Costa i Llobera, fundamental to the new school of Mallorcan poetry and literature; Antoni Maria Alcover, the keeper of the oral tradition, the promoter of the fantastic and the folkloric - Mallorca's "rondalles", the island's fairy and other folk tales.

But of these, there is an intermingling of elements. Costa i Llobera's "El Pi de Formentor", perhaps the best known of all Mallorca's poems, was one of the purest expressions of the Mallorcan imagination, borrowing from a folk tradition inspired by the landscape. Graves drew on this landscape, one that had enchanted and captivated him. For Villalonga, there was the shifting nature of society and how it determined the landscape, and he was one who was as willing to highlight local pretensions - those of Mallorca's nobility - as he was those of the incomers.

These are, though, but a select few of the writers that the walks embrace. There are all the others, the familiar and less familiar: the Archduke Louis Salvador, Agatha Christie, Jorge Luis Borges, Joan Alcover, Rafel Ginard. And there is also Jules Verne, whose place in Mallorca's literary and touristic past is often overlooked. When a nascent tourism industry was founded in the early twentieth century, it was to France that Mallorca looked as much as it ever did to Britain. This was to be tourism akin to the French Riviera, a winter tourism of mild weather before the Americans, French and Germans invented the suntan and so the whole notion of the summer vacation. And with winter in mind, there is also George Sand and her variously complimentary and condemnatory observations of Valldemossa and Mallorca.

I am intrigued by Walking on Words. Intrigued but also pleased. At the launch presentation, they handed out a map. A map of Mallorca with the routes and the authors. A map of Mallorca's imagination. I salute them.

For more information, go to the website: www.walkingonwords.com.

The New Grand Tour: Mallorca's culture

Mallorca has some remarkable old buildings, some of which are barely discernible as buildings any longer. From the enormous imposition of Gothic churches dominating village centres to the majesty of mansions or monasteries in urban, rural and mountain locations and to the mysteriousness of the constructions of antiquity, within the smallness of Mallorca there is a vastness of architectural and archaeological heritage. It is patrimony of which the island is proud and yet which it has struggled to inform the wider world of. Culture and so cultural tourism feature high on priority lists of the regional government, the island's council, the town halls and the hoteliers federation, now committing itself to collaborative promotion of this grand collection, but somehow it is a collection, with the stories to be told, that can seem lost amidst the diverse and rich history of Mediterranean culture.

Though there is on Mallorca a collision of that culture, it is one, even with its ancient relics, that is of lesser antiquity. It is the lot perhaps of Mallorca and the Balearics that they are and were in the western Mediterranean. Most of what really mattered in Mediterranean culture occurred elsewhere and much earlier. The grand civilisations of prehistory were not western ones, and when the civilisations of more modern times arose, there were not, despite the claim of Ramon Llull in the thirteenth century, great Mallorcan seats of learning, just as there were not the architectural manifestations of imperial power or mercantile domination.

The first nineteenth century Mallorcan tourists of popular legend - Chopin and Sand and then the Archduke Louis Salvador and his friends - have assumed the importance they have because they were unusual. For a member of the nobility, Mallorca was a curious choice for the Archduke. Europe's noble class had chosen to ignore Mallorca (and indeed most of Spain) when indulging its youthful development on the Grand Tour. Where the Mediterranean was concerned, Rome and Venice were stopping-off points, destinations of the one-time great civilisations, of the arts, of culture as it was being defined. Palma wasn't even on the map. An island such as Mallorca was thought not to have anything to offer the culture-seeking bourgeoisie and aristocracy.

Culture, in a Mallorcan sense, was thus never given great prominence. There was no history, so to speak, to Mallorca's history. When tourism truly burst out, it was on to a whole new and artificial civilisation: that of the coastal resort. Yet in the first half of the last century, the focus of attention for tourism had been the island's heritage - natural and manmade. The routes for excursions in the years before the Civil War were to Valldemossa, Deya and Soller, or they were to the Caves of Drach, where a concert would feature as well. For eleven pesetas (thirteen on Saturdays), the Mallorca Tourist Board arranged these trips which left Palma at 9.15am every day of the week.

But while they went to sites like Miramar and Son Marroig, they didn't take in the real antiquity of the island, and that was because most of it hadn't been discovered or hadn't been excavated to a sufficient extent that there was something to see. The work on the Roman city in Alcúdia only started in the 1930s, for example.

There was greater antiquity being overlooked, and it is the one that has the mystery not just because of the strangeness of the remains but also because of precise timing. Mallorca's Talayotic period, from around the end of the second millennium BC, is a subject chewed over and debated by the archaeologists. These sites are now of immense interest and activity. Sa Galera, the small island off Can Pastilla, may date from as early as 1440BC. The dolmen burial sites of Son Baulo and near Colonia Sant Pere are thought to be older: pre-Talayotic. Another settlement - Ses Païsses in Arta - is a constant source of investigation. When was it actually created?

This cultural heritage, both prehistoric and modern, is being given greater accessibility and not just because of guided tours. Something has been borrowed from the days before the war when there were concerts at the Caves of Drach. Throughout this summer, there have been concerts in the gardens of grand buildings in Palma - La Misericordia, the former Convent of Santa Margalida (now the military history centre). There have been concerts at the fort in Cala Egos, at the Gràcia sanctuary in Llucmajor, and there are also concerts at Ses Païsses. There is one this evening by the pianist David Gómez.

Culture has, in a sense, finally arrived and it is doing so through a collision of diverse aspects of culture - music, art, architecture and archaeology. It's taken a long time, but Mallorca is now finding itself part of a contemporary grand tour, and people are discovering that the island does, after all, have a great deal to offer.

The Battle Of The Bulls' Heads

It would be stretching things to suggest that Mallorca has a bit of an Elgin Marbles-style thing going on, but emotions do run high when it comes to ancient artifacts unearthed on the island and taken off to Madrid where they are on permanent display, a long way from their land of provenance.

The "caps de bou" (bulls' heads) of Costitx are a prime example of this state plundering of archaeological treasures. Well, plundering is an exaggeration, though some might consider the sale of the heads to have been so. They have been in the possession of the National Archaeological Museum of Spain since 1895, when a German archaeologist sold them to the state museum for 3,500 pesetas, an amount which seems extraordinarily low even for those times.

In order to understand why that sale figure can appear as meagre as it now does, one has to know the story of the bulls' heads. It is one that goes back to perhaps as long ago in antiquity as the fifth century BC, though its starting-point may be earlier - the second century BC: a definitive date has never been established. Whenever it was, the heads are from the Talaiotic period of Mallorca's history, a time which has as its most obvious manifestations the stones of Talaiotic settlements, one of which is the sanctuary of Son Corró in the village of Costitx. It was here that the three heads were discovered in 1894.

They are referred to as small, medium and large because of their varying sizes, and when they were found, they were in a remarkably good state of preservation. The quality of the "find", therefore, was one reason why they were valuable. Another - and perhaps the most important - was that they are the finest example of icons that worshipped the cult of the bull, which was one of the principal religious practices of the Talaiotic people. More than this, they are made of bronze, and so are evidence of the exchange the Talaiotic people must have had with other cultures: there was no and is no tin on Mallorca, and a bronze alloy would have needed it.

At the time that the sale was being effected, the Llullian Archaeological Society in Mallorca (named after Ramon Llull) attempted to buy the heads by raising money through public subscription. This was to end in failure, though, as sufficient funds could not be raised to match the price that the museum was going to pay, and so the heads went to Madrid, where they still are.

1979 was the first time when a genuine effort was launched to try and have the heads returned to Mallorca. As with subsequent ones, in 1983 and 1986, it came to nothing. In 2008, it appeared as though there was some movement. The national Minister for Culture seemed disposed to agreeing to the return. Yet again, however, the attempt was ultimately fruitless. The Council of Mallorca, meanwhile, and in its role as promoter of Mallorca's culture, had suggested that the heads should be placed on display for six months at an exhibition to mark the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Costitx having been a separate municipality in 2005. Again, the attempt was not successful.

One of the strange aspects of these constant rejections was that there were distinctly political overtones. These weren't of right versus left because both the Partido Popular and PSOE were against the bulls being returned. The reasons why were not totally clear, other than that they appeared to be founded on some form of rejection of images with a clear Mallorcan "nationalist" flavour.

In March last year, the mayor of Costitx, Antoni Salas, who is a member of the regionalist-nationalist El Pi party, called for the heads to be brought to Mallorca this summer and be displayed at the Museum of Mallorca. He seemed to be getting somewhere, even with the PP-dominated regional government and Council of Mallorca, both of which had to be onside in pressing for this temporary arrangement. But nothing has happened since, until now, and Salas is once more asking for the heads to be brought to Costitx, where they have only once ever been on show - this was in 1995, to mark the anniversary of the sale.

The refusals that have emanated from Madrid are in fact consistent with an attitude on behalf of central government and the state museum to not hand back ancient treasures not just to Mallorca and the Balearics but to all the regions of Spain. In one sense this is understandable. The museum is, after all, the museum for Spain's history, but then the bulls' heads are representative of a distinctive culture that Mallorca and the Balearics do not share with the rest of Spain; they are part of the island's own culture. Should they be on display here? Of course they should be.

Photo of the bulls' heads from Sencelles town hall - www.ajsencelles.net

You Are Not Mallorcan

I am making an assumption that you are not Mallorcan. You may live in Mallorca, you may visit Mallorca, but no, you are not Mallorcan. But not being Mallorcan does not prevent you from having opinions about Mallorca. These are opinions which, predominantly though not necessarily exclusively, will be formed from your own perceptions, from your own backgrounds. Are they Mallorcan?

There is a Facebook social network site called "Mallorquins en perill d'extinció". Translation is not needed. Even a non-Mallorcan can figure out what it means. Its title is exaggerated. Mallorcans are not about to go the way of the dodo. But does peril exist? And if so, when did the threat of extinction start and why?

Twentieth-century history offers some evidence. Francoism contained a threat but it was principally one to undermine Catalanism rather than island cultures. Even in the early years after the Civil War, local languages were receiving official permission. For example, the glosador verse-makers were performing in theatres of the first half of the 1940s. Later, and as a further example, the fiesta of Sant Antoni in Sa Pobla was declared to be in the national touristic interest in 1966. The cult of Sant Antoni was one that had been imported by the Catalan forces of the thirteenth century.

The greater threat was that of tourism. Its social impact was enormous, and non-Mallorcans arrived in droves, not just tourists but workers and also purchasers of property. You are the descendants of the 1960s. Indigenous culture was banished from the resorts and replaced with a Spanish standard, but even then there was acceptance of this culture, as with the Sant Antoni declaration.

The threat was, therefore, never total, and in the 1970s the combination of the oil crisis, Franco's death and the emergence of democracy brought about a revision and a revival. Local cultural associations such as Sarau Alcudienc in Alcúdia, the environmentalist group GOB, the activists Terra i Llibertat and the 1977 occupation of the island of Dragonera; these were all products of this revival, as was local politics.

The renaissance was facilitated by the politicians, not hindered. Differences there were, but from both right and left there was an appreciation of local culture and heritage and a strengthening determination to protect it and the environment. Old towns were given heritage orders; natural parks, such as Albufera, were established. But all the while there was the never-ceasing expansion of tourism, the constant construction of more tourism infrastructure and housing, the immigration of workers and residents and its greater enablement thanks to the Maastricht Treaty.

These competing forces didn't, however, bring about noticeable tensions; there were benefits to be accrued from the developments of the 1990s that followed the recession of the early part of that decade and which continued for a time into the new millennium. Concomitant with this was an inevitable consequence of a further explosion in tourism accommodation and indeed tourism itself. The hoteliers, always powerful, acquired ever more power. Even so, an unwritten accord between the competing forces remained. But then something happened, and it wasn't just economic crisis.

Arguably, you can pinpoint the time as that moment in 2008 when the last regional government pushed the cultural pendulum so far towards Catalanism that it was the competing force of Spanishness (and Castellano) that was threatened with extinction. Cultural tension, up till then mostly contained, surfaced. In seeking a correction, the current government has swung the pendulum back in the opposite direction. Latent division within society was no more. Division is no longer hidden or below the surface. Its fight is with extinction.

This cultural dimension is not the only justification for a poster produced by "Mallorquins en perill d'extinció" which is entitled, ironically, "you are Mallorcan if". It is there, nonetheless. You are Mallorcan if you want "our language" eliminated, a reference, one has to presume, to Catalan. Continuing in this ironic vein, you are Mallorcan if you accept the slavery of the hoteliers, the lack of protection of green areas, Europe's waste on the island, the Palacio de Congresos, the cost of water, the cost of travel from the island.

It is clearly a political statement, but not all of it can be disputed. You are Mallorcan if you pay for the most expensive petrol in Spain. This is a fact. You are Mallorcan if you pay more than anyone to the state without something in return. This is also a fact, one to do with the nature of state financing. It is a statement aimed squarely at the Partido Popular nationally and regionally (though not totally, as PSOE is not let off the hook), but in combination it is a declaration of discontent that would have been hard to have imagined even some ten years ago.

You are not Mallorcan, but maybe you are. Only you can decide this.

The Year Of The Archduke

I don't normally buy a German newspaper, but I did on Tuesday. I was attracted by the front page, most of which was filled by a sepia photo of an aristocratic gentleman with a moustache. The headline read "Das Jahr des Erzherzogs" - the year of the Archduke. Inside there were three whole pages devoted to this Archduke, Louis Salvador, who died one hundred years ago. The three pages were deserved. There is no non-Mallorcan, with the exception of King Jaume I, who has contributed more to the island's culture than the Archduke.

2015 is officially the Archduke's year, the regional government having confirmed that it would be in 2013. The statement which the government issued in September of that year referred to its responsibility to promote and celebrate individuals of maximum relevance to the history and culture of the Balearics. There will, therefore, be a good deal spoken and written about the Archduke this year and there will be exhibitions, such as a major one that will open at Palma's Casal Solleric at the end of February.

Yet, for all that this will be the Archduke's year, what sort of an impact will it have? The answer to this may well be reflected in the fact that for some or perhaps many of you reading this, there needs to be an explanation as to who the Archduke was and as to why he is deemed to be important as he was. To cut a long story short, the Archduke Louis Salvador of Austria turned up in Mallorca in the 1860s, was charmed, bought land and properties, invited a load of intellectual friends to the island, became an honorary president of the Mallorca Tourist Board (Fomento del Turismo) and, above all, wrote the many volumes that comprise "Die Balearen", a narrative encyclopedia of the islands, the scope of which remains unmatched and unsurpassed.

The impact will be reserved mainly for the German-speaking market. The books were, after all, written in German. There are Spanish and Catalan versions but no English translation. Promotion will thus focus on German visitors, many of whom will already be very familiar with the Archduke. It is perhaps a generalisation to suggest that German tourists are more curious about Mallorca than their British counterparts, but there is some truth to it, and a good reason why is because of the Archduke and "Die Balearen". It is a work of enormous cultural significance for Mallorca but it is also of enormous significance in having helped to establish a bond between Germany and Mallorca that is far stronger than that between the UK and the island. Arguably, therefore, "Die Balearen" is more culturally relevant to Germans and German-speakers than it is to Mallorcans.

This is the year of the Archduke, but this will also be the first year of another historical figure whose importance is greater still. By a remarkable coincidence, Ramon Llull died 700 years ago, or at least his death is normally said to have occurred in June 1315 (there is some evidence to suggest that it was the following year). Because of this uncertainty the celebration of the anniversary of his death will straddle 2015 and 2016, while it won't officially begin until November. The coincidence of the anniversaries of the deaths of the Archduke and Llull is made stronger because of the connection between the two, principally the fact that the Archduke bought the Miramar monastery in Valldemossa which Llull had persuaded King Jaume II to assist him in founding in 1276.

Mallorca has produced its intellectuals but none can match Llull in terms of the breadth of his interests, studies and innovations and none can lay a claim to his having been the original populariser of Catalan on the island. Llull, therefore, dominates Mallorcan cultural history. He is pre-eminent among a select group whose influence on this history is absolute, and the Archduke is one of that group but the only one of modern times with the possible exception of Antoni Maria Alcover.

Cultural history forms part of what Mallorca desires by way of alternative tourism. But it is a culture which suffers by comparison with parts of Spain in appearing to be less than rich. This year, however, throws up the odd coincidence of the Archduke and Llull's anniversaries, and this coincidence does, moreover, create a link to the current day. From Llull, Miramar and so the Aragon crown and the kings of Mallorca through to the Archduke and his acquisition of Miramar and thence to tourism. The Archduke was not just an honorary president of the tourist board, he is often referred to as the founder of the island's tourism. So, 2015 offers a unique opportunity to promote culture through the joining together of the Archduke and Llull. It would have to be a promotion with sufficient force in order to break through the barrier of unawareness of visitors, but it could be done. Sadly, it won't be. It should be the year of Mallorcan cultural history: the Archduke and Llull side by side.

Nights Of Culture: Annual awards

They're having a night of culture in Alcúdia tomorrow. Cut along to the town's auditorium for 9pm, hand over 18 euros, and a cultural extravaganza will be yours to enjoy. And if you are inclined to go along, do be sure to take your Catalan cultural hat with you. This is the Obra Cultural Balear's Night of Culture, one at which the "Premis 31 de desembre" are to be handed out.

It is the time of year for awards to be made, for the great and good to be honoured, for speeches to be made, for photos to be taken. Awards here, awards there, even if, in the case of the OCB's 31 December prizes, they would appear to be being given 19 days too early. There again, on the night of 31 December there are other things to occupy the citizenry of Mallorca; not only New Year's Eve and munching on a dozen grapes but also the memory of 1229. Jaume I the Conqueror upset the New Year's celebrations all those years ago by putting the Muslim occupants to flight or to the sword.

The OCB prizes do have the merit of being named after the last day of the year. Awards should, generally speaking, reflect a year, as in the year gone by. Not all of them do. The Council of Mallorca, for example, has its awards in September. They are the Jaume II prizes, named after Jaume I's lad, and as such they reflect the seemingly eternal difference of opinion as to Mallorcan culture in its historical origins sense. On 12 September 1276, Jaume II was crowned King of Mallorca, a coronation which was also the occasion for issuing what was in effect a bill of rights for the Mallorcan people. Defenders of the true Mallorcan cultural faith, e.g. the OCB, want nothing to do with 12 September. Culture started on 31 December 1229, not 47 years later.

This cultural difference is, it might be said, reflected in the choice of award-winners. The winner of Spain's "Masterchef" 2014, Mallorca's Vicky Pulgarín, received a Jaume II in September. So also did the what's on youth publication, "Youthing". Which is not to say that earnest Mallorcan culture was not also honoured, but the Jaume IIs are a tad frivolous by comparison with a formality of Catalan virtuousness that typifies the 31 December awards. The names of these awards explain much: the Gabriel Alomar prize after the politician and poet who was associated with the Catalan modernist movement; Emili Darder, from the Republican mayor of Palma who was executed by the Nationalists in 1937; Josep Maria Llompart, who was a Catalan poet and essayist and a one-time president of the OCB. Among those who will be receiving an award will be Xïtxeros amb Empenta, a youth association that was founded in Manacor in 2008 and which has as its principal objectives linguistic and cultural recuperation as well as environmental conservation.

The OCB has been dishing out its awards since 1987, and it is interesting to note one or two previous award winners, such as the broadcaster IB3 in 2009. Given all the fuss over linguistic interference by the current government at IB3, one would doubt that it would now be up for an award. Last year, the Gabriel Alomar prize went to the Assemblea de Docents, the teachers' association right to the fore of the anti-trilingual teaching furore, and now a union in its own right. Politics and culture are never too far apart; indeed you could argue that they are one and the same.

Though 27 years old, the OCB awards are not the island's oldest. These are said to be the prizes from the Cope Mallorca radio broadcaster. The 35th edition took place at the end of last month. The Bishop of Mallorca was among the glittering array of attendees. One winner was Pollensa's Olympic canoeist, Sete Benavides; another was Juan José Hidalgo, president of Air Europa and Globalia. The Onda Cero radio station has taken over 30 years to follow Cope's lead, but at its fourth annual awards ceremony, a couple of weeks before Cope's, Rafa Nadal was one of those who was honoured. President Bauzá and Palma's mayor Mateo Isern were both at the Onda event, no doubt giving each other a wide berth, but one would imagine that neither will be in attendance in Alcúdia for the OCB bash.

Bauzá will definitely be at Son Amar on 20 December, as the Partido Popular's own awards - the Larus - will be up for grabs. Will Isern receive one? Doubtful. Will he even go? Whoever does win an award, Bauzá will hope that he doesn't receive the same thinly veiled broadside he got from the PP's ex-president, Gabriel Cañellas, last year, something of which, given allusions to culture regained, even the OCB might have approved.

The Revival Of The Xeremía

Maybe it's the name. It can be confused with "poble". The village. The people. It doesn't mean that, and indeed there isn't a truly satisfactory translation. Sa Pobla: the colony, the settlement, the inhabitation, the populace. Perhaps the last of these is the most satisfactory, a derivation from the passive verb - to people - while there is the assertiveness of the Mallorquín definite article, "sa", a powerful linguistic symbol of distinction with Catalan that is rooted in ancient Latin. Maybe it is because of the name that Sa Pobla became the spiritual heartland of a cultural hybridism that followed the conquest of centuries ago and which nowadays might be termed Mallorcaness, a place on which was conferred the Catalan-Aragonese cult of Sant Antoni and which has thus become the location for the annual gathering of the tribes of Mallorca for the fearful night of witches, demons and fire.

In some ways it is an unlovely town. Anonymous ring-road and low-rise factory and showroom units are the external non-descript artifacts typical of many Majorcan towns. The interior is a confusion of equally anonymous roads and streets criss-crossing in a Romanesque grid formation. Yet within this town beat the hearts of Mallorcaness, of tradition and of revivalism.

As with so much of the island's tradition and culture, the intervention of war and political dogma and then the industrial revolution of tourism, allied to the migration to the coasts and to employment in the new industry, undermined the long history of the xeremía, the Mallorcan bagpipe. Among traditional instruments, it wasn't alone in falling into disuse and silence. Its fellow x-instrument, the ximbomba, underwent a similar decline. This, the xeremía, is a bellow from the past that fades way back into the antiquities of Mesopotamia and Egypt, of pre-Middle Ages France and of the conquering King of Aragon. Jaume I and his successors brought more than just language and the cult of Sant Antoni, they also brought a bagpipe, and it moulded its sack into the Mallorcan xeremía, the word itself having been handed down from the French, "charamie".

It was, perhaps inevitably, Sa Pobla which led the revival of the xeremía, and to the fore was the cultural association known as Albopas. Where does it get its name from? Think about it for a moment, or if not ... Sapobla backwards; going backwards in time in revivalist terms. The association covers much of the traditional life of Sa Pobla; demons and what have you are all Albopas. It was not so very long in the past - twenty or so years ago - that the number of bagpipe players, the "xeremiers", numbered only around fifty in all across Mallorca. The number is now over 500. And whereas xeremier troupes were not so long ago confined to a limited number of towns and villages, now every village has its xeremiers.

The Albopas association is this weekend celebrating the twentieth meeting of xeremiers in Sa Pobla, an occasion which has, since the mid-1990s, contributed greatly to the revival of the local bagpipe and its accompanying flute-whistle and drum. The meeting has also been central to broadening the appeal of the xeremía to a more youthful age group. Twenty or so years ago, those few recognised xeremiers were getting on, thus endangering the tradition's future even more.

The success of the revival, demonstrated by the formation of xeremier troupes across the island, has also been recognised internationally. Seven years ago, Albopas went to New York for the World Fair of Mediterranean Music. Demons, xeremiers, they all flew off, and the pipers played Central Park along with other troupes from Palma, Sencelles and Sineu.

At midday today there is a procession in which different elements of the Albopas association will take part. In addition to the pipers, there will be the "caparrot" big heads as well as the Sa Pobla "Grif", dragon and, somewhat strangely perhaps, eel (though this is not strange as far as Sa Pobla is concerned; eels, farmed in Albufera, form a key part of the local cuisine).

It is odd to realise that many Mallorcan folk traditions which are nowadays firmly established and all but taken for granted are the result of revivals which have their origins only some thirty or so years ago. And they are with us thanks largely to the efforts of local cultural associations like Albopas, which have ensured that rather than die out and allow centuries of culture to be discarded, they are alive and, in the case of the bagpipes, making one hell of a welcome racket.

Twenty-Five Years After: The Alcúdia Fair

On the fourth and fifth of November 1989, Alcudia held its first annual autumn fair. Or was it the first? The October 1989 edition of the "Badia d'Alcúdia" magazine said that "there will be those who remember when Alcúdia used to have a fair in times gone by". Unfortunately, no one who I have spoken to seems to be able to remember. Not now anyway. Let's just say that there was at some unknown time in the past a different fair, but whether it bore any great resemblance to the one that was inaugurated in 1989, who can tell.

The magazine spoke of the hope that the fair would continue over the following years, which of course it has, and explained that all the major houses of the island's industry - machinery, car sales and hospitality (all the major houses?) - had shown an interest in participating in the fair. It went on to say that it was hoped that the next fair would feature animals other than those in pens (like pigs one presumes) and that the fair would provide a good opportunity to promote tourism, though it added that it was taking place in the season called "baja", i.e. low.

Twenty-five years later, the fair still has its machinery - of the agricultural variety. It still has cars and, as part of a very much wider business element, it still has its hospitality industry. Animals not kept in pens there are, such as horses and dogs. And the more observant among you will realise that the fair now takes place a month earlier than it did in 1989. The start of October is still officially "the season", but it is "low". It's a question of definition but seasonal lowness seems to have crept forward over the years. The first week of November would now be "off", as in all but non-existent. 

Apart from the range of exhibitors, the 1989 fair didn't really offer a great deal more. It was only over the two days as opposed to the three (well, more like two and a half) that there are now, and the entertainment didn't kick off until four in the afternoon on the Saturday when there was a street procession with the local band of drums and cornets. That, apart from some kiddies' entertainment, was it for the Saturday. The Sunday wasn't that much more exciting, though they used then to fire off rockets at nine in the morning, which they now don't. There was another procession, the inevitable arrival of the local dignitaries (a not-to-be-missed occasion at any fair or fiesta) and some folk dance. And that was your lot.

The programme that the magazine listed was, however, peculiar in that when it mentioned the children's party and the processions it didn't make any reference to what are now very established "traditions". In 1988, Alcúdia's new giants - L'amo de Jaume Panxa-roja and Madò Aina - had arrived, thus reviving a tradition of giants in the town that had stretched back to the seventeenth century. Also in 1988, the cultural association Sarau Alcudienc, who performed the folk dance in 1989 and who were also involved with the giants' revival, had conceived the big heads S'Estol del Rei en Jaume (the King James show), a series of characters based on, among others, Jaume I the Conqueror and the mediaeval polymath Ramon Llull. These characters have always been the main attraction of the fair's children's party.

The giants would have been in at least one procession, so would have been the town's pipers, also not mentioned. Yet, there were no specific references to them or to the big heads. It is curious, but there again in 1989 neither the giants nor the big heads were "traditions" as such. Or maybe it was the case that "culture" wasn't made so much of as it now is. But this would also be curious as Sarau Alcudienc had by that time been in existence for over ten years and was to the fore in promoting Alcúdia and Mallorcan culture, as it still is.

Why was the programme silent on what are now icons of the local culture? Maybe it was just a simple case of there not having been space in the magazine to include them. Or maybe in 1989 it was the fair - the exhibitors - which were thought to matter more. They were and are extremely important - there couldn't have been a fair without them - while perhaps in 1989 the fair was not looked upon, as it is now, as an occasion when there is a blurring between the fair as a trade show and the fair as an extension of the fiesta.

* Photo of S'Estol del Rei en Jaume from www.saraualcudienc.cat

Fierce Confrontation: Cristòfol Soler

It's a letter dated 1 September this year. It was published for all to see as a jpg and in the process it has acquired some discolouring. It looks as though it should be much older, as though it has been oxidised over time, as though it might have been typed with a typewriter. But no, it was definitely 1 September. It says so at the foot of the letter under the name of its author, Cristòfol Soler i Cladera.

Soler was the president of the Balearics for a year from 1995 to 1996. He replaced Gabriel Cañellas, who had been forced to resign over his implication in the Soller Tunnel affair, and he himself found it necessary to resign not because of any involvement with alleged corruption but because his policies brought him into conflict with his party - the Partido Popular - both locally and nationally.

"Solerism" had been a faction with the Balearics' PP. "Canyellism", that of Gabriel Cañellas, had been the other. Both factions shared certain things in common, but Solerism was characterised by a more sensitive attitude towards language and environmental matters and by a greater openness towards dialogue with the opposition and society as a whole. Canyellism had been a philosophy of regionalism without any Balearics' nationalist pretensions. It had also been sensitive towards language, and it was the Cañellas government which, in 1986, introduced the law on language standardisation, by which the official status of both Castellano and Catalan was recognised.

An intriguing aspect of that law's introduction was contained in a report in "El Pais". The report explained the purpose of the law and also said that there were no statistics available to show the extent of knowledge, use and social penetration of different forms of Catalan. One has to consider that report in the context of the time. Though it was less than thirty years ago, it was also only eleven years after the death of Franco. By 1986, Catalan was, so the report implies, not that strong.

The law sought to change this. The Minister of Education and Culture, Francisco Gilet, said that it would make the use of Catalan normal and natural while it would also protect the various dialects. This law was, therefore, at the heart of Canyellism. What the Solerism faction sought was a greater emphasis still on Catalan, hence why Soler came into conflict with his party.

Soler's letter was addressed to Rafel Torres, president of the PP in Inca (where Soler lives) and also mayor of Inca. In it, he explains why he has decided to leave the PP. The reason is clear enough; the policies of the current PP regional administration. Soler refers to the "fierce confrontation with our culture and our language" and to a lack of respect for self-government.

The look of that letter suggests something old-fashioned. Soler, and Cañellas for that matter, are from the old school of the Balearics' PP. They differed in their approaches but they adhered to essentially the same philosophies - regionalism, autonomy, promotion of Catalan. These are precisely the philosophies which Soler says that the Bauzá administration has sought to undermine. But can one say that Bauzá is a moderniser? What is modern, in any event, when the timeframe has been as short as it has been - 40 years since Franco's death?

In an interview last weekend, Soler went into very much greater detail in explaining his reasons for quitting the PP. He traced the discontent that he has (and that many in the regional PP share) to Bauzá's election as leader. He had been presented as the regionalist alternative to Carlos Delgado's "españolismo". Soler didn't for one moment think that Bauzá would change in the way that he has. Either he was guided to change by Delgado, the true power behind the throne, or by Madrid. Bauzá's ideology, according to Soler, has become "españolista" not just in terms of language but also in his attitude towards regionalism - he has little faith in the notion of autonomous government.

Soler also took issue with the idea that TIL (trilingual teaching) formed part of the PP's manifesto in 2011 and was therefore something that the electorate had voted for. The PP had not promised TIL. It had promised parental free selection of language (between Catalan and Castellano). When this proved to be a total flop because the overwhelming majority of parents opted for Catalan, TIL was introduced as a means of undermining teaching in Catalan.

So, Soler has now left the PP, unable to any longer accept the direction in which the party has headed. It is not the departure of a bitter man, because he hasn't been in frontline politics for years. Might, though, the reasons why he departed as president in 1996 repeat themselves but in reverse? Soler was too Catalan. Bauzá is anything but.

The Tour Guide: An endangered species

Article 65 of the Balearics' 2012 tourism law refers to the activities of tour guides. "The profession of the tour guide is carried out by people who ... are paid to interpret and to provide information related to the historical and natural heritage, cultural assets and other touristic resources of the Balearic Islands to tourists and visitors in the two official languages of the Balearics as well as in any foreign language, for which the guide will have to be accredited." The law goes on to refer to the professional, legally required qualification of tour guides, the whole Article being a furtherance of the legally defined role of tour guides that had been enshrined in previous legislation and also being a mark of the high regard with which guides have been held over decades, stretching back to beyond the days when mass tourism began. Just one tour guide, from the early 1950s, was the man who founded what became Meliá Hotels International, Gabriel Escarrer Juliá.

The School of Tourism was founded in 1964. It was the body which originally regulated this profession, and note the word "profession". In that the tour guide has to gain specific qualifications, then the word is not misused. It is a word which also reinforces the standing of the tour guide. He or she has been for many years a respected member of the tourism community.

Has been, but now the tour guide is well and truly under threat. In June this year, notwithstanding Article 65 of the 2012 law, the Balearics High Court decreed that the European Union services directive - the so-called Bolkestein directive - had to apply to tour guides. This means, in effect, that pretty much anyone from any country within the European Union can be a guide and that there is very little control as to ability or quality. The Official College of Tour Guides in the Balearics - and professions in the Balearics are operated through their "colleges" - is appalled by the situation and by the fact that tour operators can contract someone who in all likelihood does not have sufficient knowledge of subject matter.

The Balearics is not the only region of Spain where there is concern about the future of the professional tour guide. The Community of Madrid, in 2009, introduced a legislative reform which showed "absolute disregard" for the professional work of guides. So said a spokesperson for Madrid's Professional Association of Tour Guides. The city has since been swamped with so-called guides, most if not all without qualification and some outside employment and social security regulations; they're doing it black, in other words.

Elsewhere, there is the "free" guide, the volunteer guide, often retired, but who similarly doesn't necessarily have any qualification for the task or the right level of knowledge. On the blog for professional tour guides, there was a post last year which criticised these "free" tours and which also criticised local authorities for providing them and so showing a lack of dignity to the tour guide profession and indeed to local culture.

This all said, the Balearics High Court was reacting in part to what had been denounced as something of a closed shop. There were too few possibilities to become a tour guide, while the legal stipulations going back over the years, such as an ability in the two official languages, tended to bar entry to the profession. And the High Court, rather like Madrid, didn't quite see the job of tour guide as being truly professional. It would not, for example, have permitted anyone to start practising as a doctor or as a lawyer. A profession means something specific. Qualifications alone - knowledge in the case of tour guides - are only part of the equation.

The tour guides face other threats. Audio guides, apps and technology might come to replace them, though it is unlikely that they will do any time soon. The demand for personal service and human interaction still greatly outweighs the convenience of some information provided by a smartphone. And this "some information" is just that. Some. It is very limited and, just as mostly all websites fail to do justice and cannot do justice to Mallorca's culture and history, there is nothing that compares with a guide who is truly knowledgeable and enthusiastic about his or her subject.

While there was some justification for the allegations of there having been a closed shop, the High Court's decision is concerning. Tour operators, and this is the charge which the College levels at them, have so little regard for the island's culture that they will take on guides without qualification and without adequate knowledge. Tour guides still have an important role to play. They are guardians of the island's culture and history. Sometimes you have the impression, though, that officialdom cares as little for this culture as tour operators seem to.

Mallorca's Tourism: The technocratic solution

In the first article in this series I looked at how Mallorca's tourism, had it not been for war, would have developed organically in line with a philosophy established in the early years of the twentieth century.

What happened instead was that there was no philosophy, other than a politico-economic philosophy of technocracy. At its most extreme, technocracy advocates a scientific response to a problem, usually with scant regard for democratic principles or general welfare needs. Spain's solution, and thus Mallorca's, was primarily a technocratic one, and the technocrats were those who inhabited Franco's think-tank.

Franco himself was unconvinced as to the merits of tourism, mainly because he feared a corruption of a highly conservative, Catholic and introverted society by foreigners, for whom he reserved a paranoid xenophobia. It took the Americans to, in effect, bribe him into thinking differently. But once he started to change his thinking, he needed those who would bring about this new tourism industry. And those were the technocrats of Opus Dei. Their scientific method was one which owed a great deal to Henry Ford: mass production and standardisation. Take the mass out of the car factory, put it in the resorts and what do you get? Mass tourism. Far from being organic, therefore, Mallorca's tourism development was subject to a sudden shock of artificiality that tore down the edifice of the original philosophy and erected instead innumerable edifices that ripped to shreds the garden city notion and the natural patrimony.

War - both the Civil War and the Second World War - reinforced Franco's paranoia. It led to the imposition of the truly disastrous economic model of autarky, a model symptomatic of the hyper-xenophobic. Had the post-war model been open rather than closed, it is arguable that war would have represented a pause in tourism development and not a breakdown, but autarky was a consequence of war and of its dogmatic victors. Thus, war was the determining factor in shaping what was to occur towards the end of the fifties, which was the technocratic solution of Fordist mass tourism as a response to the complete failure of war-inspired autarky.

It is all hypothesis, I appreciate, and there is a further factor which suggests that tourism development may well have occurred in the way that it did anyway. And that, perversely enough, was the very land that the founding fathers of Mallorca's tourism were keen to preserve as much as possible for its heritage value. Coastal land had typically been considered all but worthless. The need to exploit it was a further reason why the 1930s garden city resorts emerged, but it doesn't follow that this need for exploitation would inevitably have led to the total transformation of some of the island's coastline (parts of Calvia being cases in point). Coming back to Alcúdia and to its pre-war golf course and hotel, it might have been that the development there would have been more in line with a golfing resort, perhaps in a Portuguese style. Alcúdia would be a very different place now, had it been. The part tourist, part residential urbanisation was already conceived in the 1930s, don't forget. Organic development would have meant something quite different to the artificiality of the 1960s that rapidly sought to make up for the lost 30 or more years in the desperate pursuit of the pressing need for sudden economic improvement.

Perhaps above all, a continuous process of development would have meant that the Mallorcan people maintained control of their destiny. Sure, a whole load of Mallorcans cashed in thanks to mass tourism, but the cashing-in was made possible by an economic model dictated from Madrid, by foreign interests and by a total loss of the collective spirit that had sought to maintain the natural patrimony. The Mallorcans lost much of their own say, and so little did their culture come to matter, that by the time mass tourism arrived it had been cast adrift on the Mediterranean and been replaced by a kitsch Spanishness and the comfort blankets of imported foreign cultures for the new tourist innocents abroad, British and German for the most part.

The technocratic solution also took away what soul there would have been in Mallorca's tourism. Mass production for the factory floor paid little attention to the needs of the individual. Mass tourism was similar. It dealt with units of production: hotels of standard designs and tourists packaged into the hotels' standardised rooms. The human touch was absent from the technocratic solution, but fortunately the human touch couldn't be killed off, and it was maintained by what grew up alongside the hotels - the bars and restaurants of the resorts, the so-called complementary offer. It was they, more than other parts of this new tourism industry, which humanised mass tourism. It is all the more scandalous, therefore, that this very humanising element has been so disregarded by the current-day scramble to impose all-inclusives.

(The final part tomorrow.)

The Hybrid Expatriate

Seven years ago I came across an article in the newspaper "ADN" that was written by Montserrat Dominguez, a quite well-known journalist both in print and on the television. This was what she had to say: "ITV is showing a series called "Benidorm", which tells the adventures of a group of tourists. The action centres on an all-inclusive complex. The tourists neither have to leave (this complex) nor do they have to eat paella. Did I say paella? Excuse me, the Brits enjoy fish and chips, porridge, baked beans and other specialities of their cuisine; they don't try local dishes. Why would they risk this, given that their surroundings reproduce a scene in which they have pubs, music, tobacco and drinks. Why then do they come to Benidorm, to Mallorca, to the Costa Brava or to the Canaries? (They can go) without hearing a word of Castellano, Mallorquín or Catalan or, even worse, without discovering a slice of tortilla or a good pa amb oli."

In fact, Montserrat wasn't entirely accurate. To correct her, there was the episode in which Janice, bothering Mick while he was trying to read a copy of "The Sun", was criticising what had been available for lunch at the Solana. "I didn't think much to that. What was all that shite on the top? What was it called?" "Paella," replied Mick curtly. I know that the Garveys had paella, because I had seen the episode in question. But I hadn't seen it on the telly. I don't watch British telly. I don't have Sky. And because I don't watch British telly, I am therefore fully integrated and assimilated into local Mallorcan society.

Which is of course utter garbage. To go back to Montserrat's points of cultural reference, I have rarely had fish and chips in Mallorca, but I am partial to baked beans now and then, while porridge is good for you. Many is the Castellano, Mallorquín or Catalan word that I hear and even myself utter. And a good pa amb oli is a treat. There again, I'm not a tourist. Yet, Montserrat's description could, if you took out the all-inclusive setting, apply just as easily to the British expatriate. Or to one particular type. Possibly.

The fact that Montserrat was talking about a telly programme is pertinent to the debate caused by Sky satellites crashing to earth and leaving huge craters into which the expatriate community plunges as though into voids of cultural deprivation. I know there are no satellites falling to earth, but you could be forgiven for thinking that there were. Potential loss of the signal has heralded an expatriate tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Without the telly, "oh, woe is me, t'have seen what I have seen, see what I see" but can no longer.

I suspect that many expatriates and not, it is probably fair to say, only British adopt a pick 'n' mix policy to their lives in Mallorca. They will pick some of the indigenous and some of the old country. And in so doing, they will be content. Until, that is, someone pipes up and commands them to abandon Sky forthwith and to go native, just like that someone has. This someone is the most insufferable of all expatriates -the holier-than-thou, converse normally only in Mallorquín, and let everyone know the fact expat.

While Montserrat's description of the British tourist - itself of course a gross generalisation - could equally apply to the expatriate, it would be to a species of "expatriatus in extremis". Granted, it does seem odd to stumble across such a rare species who has long planted Mallorcan roots but who is still incapable of doing the lingo to any greater extent than "dos cervezas, por favor", but why should it matter?

The pressure to make someone have to try and justify the degree of his or her integration (whatever this word means, because I really don't know that a satisfactory definition exists) is preposterous. Watching British telly is evidence of nothing other than watching British telly, but for some it is evidence of the existence of bad expat or good expat. Rubbish. It would be an extreme measure for someone to decide to pack up and "go back home" because Sky falls, but the fact that Sky, telly and various other forms of communication became so easily available is, I think it fair to argue, a reason (only one reason) why some people chose to come to Mallorca to live.

The communications industry in its different varieties can indeed make it appear as though the expatriate has moulded a style of life which is little Britain in the sun, but that isn't the fault of the expatriate. He or she is symptomatic of a cultural hybridism that has been facilitated through freedom of movement and fibre optics. And if he or she wants to watch British telly, then so be it.

Happy Festival, War Is Over

"The festival aims to be an essential cultural crossroads of the Mallorcan summer, one that is open to the people, to the residents of Pollensa or to the numerous visitors, so that this is not a closed programme of cultural activities but one with the involvement of local people and visitors that bestows on Pollensa the cultural benefits of hosting a festival of this type."

This, and I accept it may not be the best of translations, is the text from the introduction of the press dossier for this year's Pollensa Festival. The "crossroads" is a literal translation, but it could have a double meaning. The festival is very much at a crossroads, potentially about to take a wrong turning and ending up in a blind alley of politicking, recrimination and indifference.

The announcement of this year's programme has hardly been given the fanfare that last year's was. Then, everyone was friends. The town hall was extraordinarily grateful to the director, Joan Valent, for all his valiant efforts in putting on a new multi-disciplinary festival despite the best efforts of the regional government's tourism ministry to undermine it by withdrawing its financial support. Last year, the mayor and his second-in-command, Malena Estrany, sat side by side, shoulder to shoulder with Valent and others. How things can change in a year.

So much of a fanfare has there been this year that, despite the programme having been issued to the press, Pollensa town hall hasn't (or hadn't by this morning) bothered to mention the festival on its Facebook page. Valent, on his Facebook page, merely gives a link to a newspaper article that explains the line-up.

Valent, who complained of being treated as though he were a thief when the town hall's report was issued which made suggestions of "anomalies" in the accounts for last year, has still managed to put an event together, regardless of all the politicking, in which he has become a part. Why, opposition groups want to know, was his confirmation of director for the next two years made without the post being put out to some form of tender? You wouldn't completely rule out Valent deciding to simply walk away from the festival rather than have to endure all this. Frankly, who could blame him?

The dossier given to the press was notable for what it didn't say. The background to the whole sorry affair that has been the lead-up to this year's festival has assumed far greater significance than the festival itself. But, of course, the dossier makes no mention of it. The festival, which takes war as part of its theme in devoting its literature programme to war and having as one of its concerts Stravinsky's "Soldier's Tale", has a back story of warring, one glossed over in promoting the inclusiveness of the festival - one that is open to the people, so the blurb says.

In the end, suggestions as to some of those who might have been putting in an appearance have come to nothing. There is no Ian McEwan and no Paul Preston. Figures from the world of literature are internationally renowned, we are told, but few if any will strike a chord. The festival may be inclusive, but inclusive of what and for whom? The broadened appeal that the festival had undergone before the crisis and near disaster of last year and this has narrowed. It is multi-disciplinary but it still reeks of exclusiveness rather than inclusiveness.

But does this matter? Not really. Culture comes in different forms, and the most important thing is that culture is allowed to flourish and to present a face of a civilised society. Pollensa's festival has always done this, but unfortunately a face of civilised society has been distorted by the lack of civility which has been shown to its chief benefactor - Valent. Its flourish in the sense of both prosperity and of ornate musicality has been diminished and been made diminuendo by the padlocks on the coffers. Even a benefactor from last year, the Camper Foundation, has decamped, preferring to divert its benefaction to soup kitchens rather than to symphonies. Priorities are thus, one has to conclude, when civilised society cannot help the most needy and struggles to insist that it still exists and does so, apologetically, through the tremulousness of a vibrato.

At times of impoverishment, however, culture and civilised culture in particular is needed more than ever. The Pollensa Festival, for all that it can be criticised, is nevertheless part of a beauteous aesthetic without which there would be greater darkness. Let us just hope that, theme of war or no theme of war, its own local war can be called a halt to.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Living In A Box: TV and culture

Top of the Pops, Thunderbirds, The Prisoner, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Grange Hill, The Young Ones, Neighbours, The Simpsons, Men Behaving Badly, Teletubbies, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, Big Brother, The Office. I think that's all. Over time they have all been referred to, either directly or indirectly, in articles I have written. They are also all on a list of the most influential TV programmes of the past 50 years. According to "The Telegraph", that is.

I make no apologies for invoking the British popular culture of television. I may write mostly about Mallorca and Spain, but what would be the point of drawing on Spanish TV in order to try and create a point of reference or a touchstone? No one, or very few people, would get it. By contrast, and even if it is done obliquely, a collective Britannic cultural experience recognises Kylie as a default title for a young(ish) British female tourist. Time was when baby girls in Britain were mostly all christened Kylie. And if not, then they were Charlene, and Charlene was, after all, Kylie by another name. My Kylies are to be found wheeling their Rihanna progeny in buggies along Alcúdia's Mile.

Even if I wander into less obviously Spanish-Mallorcan territory or totally non-Spanish-Mallorcan territory, as I once long ago did when considering modes of speech, there is still this reservoir of culture to feed off and allude to. I was deeply impressed by Rory McGrath having coined the term the "moronic interrogative". What did it refer to? Neighbours. It was Neighbours that changed the way the British speak. 

It is perhaps for this reason that "The Telegraph" has included Neighbours on its list. Or perhaps it is because the series became such an indispensable and ingrained part of British culture. This is the point of cultural references. The use of Kylie shouldn't require an explanation as to its pre-Stock, Aitken and Waterman origin. Nor should the source of Eric Idle's Torremolinos sketch or the Inquisitional "Biggles, put her in the comfy chair" need to be spelt out. Nor should a demand such as "we want information" and a reply of "you won't get it" have to be located. These are references that reside in the enormous repository of a nation's cultural memory, one that has been programmed by the telly programme.

Doubtless one could find an alternative programme for each of the 50 years, but as a history of cultural development, it has much to commend it. There will be those who look at some of the programmes and think that it is an exercise in trivialisation or dumbing down. Maybe so, but then popular culture often is trivial; just think of X Factor (which doesn't make the list) or Pop Idol (which does).

If I had to choose two programmes that aren't among the fifty, then they might be the BBC's Holiday and ITV's Tiswas. Holiday opened up foreign travel in a way that no other part of the media had previously. Was it culturally important? I would say that it most definitely was. Grange Hill, the selection for 1978, in a sense ties in with Tiswas, which took off nationally around the same time. Grange Hill was a first in that it took children seriously and tackled serious subjects that affected children. Tiswas was most definitely not serious, but it represented a marked change in adult-child interaction. It was really a cult show for lads and ladettes (the first of its kind therefore), masquerading as a kids' programme, but kids loved its barriers-down irreverence as much as adults did. No show for children would previously have dared to have Chris Tarrant more than slightly hinting at the size of his hangover and lifting kids up by their ears, to have John Gorman (or was it Lenny Henry?) chastising a boy scout for being a "swot" or to have Sally James firmly putting her foot in it by asking Kevin Rowland the meaning of the name Dexys Midnight Runners.

More than anything, these programmes travel with you. However long you might have been away from the homeland of the culture, they are revered symbols of an abstract cultural iconography that is always there, one to be delved into in order to make sense of a pair of lads in Mallorca out on the razz and the pull (Gary and Tony), a total div who you are unfortunate enough to run into (David Brent), or that ageing hippy who raves about lentils in local Mallorcan cuisine (Neil).

And if you don't immediately know to which programmes these characters refer, well, what do you call culture then?

* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10002180/The-Telegraphs-most-influential-TV-shows-of-the-last-50-years.html

A classic Tiswas moment (the boy who needed to go to the toilet): 




Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Culture Nights, Culture Years: The OCB

It may not have been 31 December on Friday, but this didn't stop there being an awards ceremony in honour of 31 December. And why would there be an awards ceremony to honour this date? Because 31 December, unofficially, is Mallorca day (note the lower-case "d" as a result of it being unofficial).

As anyone with a smattering of Mallorcan history can tell you, 31 December was the day in 1229 when King Jaume I invaded (didn't re-conquer; invaded and then occupied). The Jaume invasion introduced Catalan to the island of course, and the rest has been history; one very complicated history ever since.

733 years after Jaume invaded, on 31 December 1962, an organisation was formed. Oddly perhaps, given the times they lived in then, this was the Obra Cultural Balear, arch-defenders in Mallorca of all things Catalan. It is the OCB which was dishing out the awards on Friday. It does so every year, but this, being its 50th anniversary, meant there was more to make a song and dance about (a dance that was probably in good, traditional Mallorcan "ball de bot" style).

In fact, the 50th anniversary has been given special meaning, as 2012 has been a very good year for the OCB. Because there has been so much anti-Catalan stuff flying around, it has been able to assume new purpose, kicking up a fuss left, right and centre (mainly left though), the devil of the Partido Popular attempting to play havoc with the demons of tradition and the language and culture of the island.

For its ceremony, the OCB chose Manacor. And why Manacor? Ostensibly, because 2012 is also the 150th anniversary of the birth of a famous son of the town, Antoni Maria Alcover, man of words and ideas, man of story-telling (mostly in Catalan). The choice of Manacor was fortuitous, however, as the town is the centre of opposition to the PP that has come from within the PP, or rather from those now no longer members of the PP, as they have been expelled. And they include Manacor's mayor, Antoni Pastor.

The ceremony, also known as the night of culture, was, as the OCB spelled out, an occasion that demonstrated a "clamour for the rights and linguistic identities of Mallorcans". On 6 January, the whole thing will be broadcast by Catalonia Television, thus extending fraternal Catalan cultural greetings across the water to the mainland and reinforcing, the OCB would believe, as it believes also in the rights of the mythical Catalan Lands, the fraternity of Catalan culture. The gala was offered to the Mallorcan channel IB3, but it seems that the offer was turned down. From what I understand, groups like the OCB and its environmental chums, GOB, are pretty much verboten by IB3 (all to do with impartial editorial direction, determined by a PP plant).

But what of this grand gala, this night of culture? Who got the awards? Well, if I were to reel them off, you wouldn't have a clue who I was referring to, and to be honest, I hadn't heard of most of them myself. One whose name is familiar, and is familiar to this blog, was Francesc Vicens. You might recall that he is the musicologist who has written, among other things, a book about pop music in Mallorca. The book's title is "Paradise of Love", and I wrote about this recently (http://alcudiapollensa.blogspot.com.es/2012/09/los-kinks-mallorca-and-sixties-pop.html).

As for the others, there were groups who defend Catalan in education, one of which helped to organise a day of protest recently, an actor called Antoni Gomila (from Manacor) who referred to the theatre as being the "backbone" for the expression and consolidation of Catalan language and culture, and a band from Valencia called Obrint Pas that mixes punk, ska and rock, all with a clear Catalan flavour.

So, there you are. What an evening of culture it must have been. And onlooking was Pastor, there with other former PP members of the town hall who await any further childish reprisals from the PP for having had the temerity to disagree with the party line. The auditorium in Manacor was packed. Whether one can read much into the attendance is hard to say, but the night of culture, it could be argued, demonstrates the serious divisions in Mallorcan society, ones created by the assault on Catalan. But how serious really are they? It suits the OCB to emphasise them, but then the OCB has its belief in the Catalan Lands and so therefore, and ultimately, some sort of independent Greater Catalonia. This is not something that has wide support in Mallorca. Indeed, it has very little popular support, and among politicians formerly of the "popular" party, I very much doubt that Pastor supports the idea either.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.