Summer Days Of The Living Dead

Muro town is typically one of the hottest places in Mallorca. It in fact holds the record for having registered the highest ever temperature on the island - plus 44 degrees in July 1994.

Just look at that number. A thermometer value of over 44 degrees is a temperature at which human existence is threatened. Mercifully, the temperatures in Mallorca only rarely exceed 40 degrees, but were they to for any length of time, then the casualty wards and the undertakers would struggle. Yet, for all that such excessive temperatures are not the norm, excessive values are regularly reported. When a reading is taken in the sun, then these are hardly surprising.

Over the weeks of this summer's heatwave, Muro's neighbour, Sa Pobla, has recorded the highest temperature, one of over 40C on 27 July. The interior towns are hotter than the coastal resorts for fairly obvious reasons, but at times the degree to which the interior degrees are greater is striking; it can be anything up to four or five degrees.

A brief report in "Ultima Hora" yesterday confirmed that Muro and Sa Pobla are Mallorca's hottest spots (or are during the current heatwave). What do the people of these towns do when the thermometer has gone over the 100 Fahrenheit mark and is edging towards the 40 mark in new money? Very little is the answer. And what is done is done before it gets too hot to do anything.

For those of us who live and work in Mallorca, arranging days according to how hot it is going to be is a familiar story, assuming you are in a position to be able to arrange your day in such a way. The best time to do work that requires concentration is the early morning, but this brings with it attendant problems. Getting up early requires going to bed early, but no one does.

Siesta is supposed to compensate for this burning of both ends, but it only does so if you are able to have a siesta or indeed that you are able to fall asleep during the day. I, for one, cannot. Or not for any longer than a couple of minutes.

Sleep deprivation is what causes what you get come August. Workers, bar owners, many tourists enter a state of the living dead. They don't suffer from heat exhaustion as such, just the exhaustion brought about by lack of sleep, some of which is self-inflicted. At the height of summer, at the height of the temperatures, 24-hour party people come out to play, and even those who don't want to join the party become a part of it; nights and nights with far too little sleep.

It is the heat, though, which is the main cause of the debilitation and enervation, and for those in the interior the heat is that much more debilitating. Think for a moment and wonder if climate change were to produce what it is said it will, how hot it might be.

In an interior town such as Muro the afternoon heat is colossal. The shallow wetlands of Albufera, far from supplying a cooling effect, have the opposite effect. One study of wetlands discovered that daytime temperatures within and by wetlands can be higher by two to three degrees. This may well help to explain why Muro and Sa Pobla are typically Mallorca's hottest places.

Years ago, I found myself in Muro at around two o'clock on one particularly savage afternoon. It may be the mind playing tricks, but I'm sure that the square in front of the church wasn't paved then. Maybe I imagined it not to have been or maybe I had been affected by the heat. But I remember it as though it were a scene from a spaghetti western. Unusually for a square, it doesn't have bars or cafes surrounding it. There was not a soul to be seen. The place was dead, totally dead. And baking hot and dusty. I expected a Morricone soundtrack to play and Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef to suddenly appear menacingly at one corner of the square. Or Rik Mayall and Peter Richardson to materialise from behind the church and ask "tell me, amigo, what's the meanest, nastiest hotel for two mean, ugly, gunslinging bastards like us to stay in?".

It was how one imagined Spain to be, and it didn't disappoint. It was hellish, merciless and unrelenting heat. It was heat that was unprecedented, when temperatures really were heading into the mid-40s. It was July 1994. A summer day of the living dead like no other.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

One Day, There Really Won't Be Autumn

Autumn is a strange season in Mallorca. Officially it exists but also doesn't exist. Meteorologically it is a reality, but for tourism it isn't. The tourism summer endures until the end of October, and then winter starts. There is nothing in between and nothing in between winter and summer. Mallorca, a land with no autumn and no spring.

Autumn can't be ignored though. Its evidence is all around and in particular in the way that its weather wraps around you. Its heat is discomforting and disorientating, a vaporous clamminess like a giant pink-paraffin heater. It rises from the dampness of the heavy dews, clings to the early-morning mists hanging over the wetlands and is suspended and static unless winds chase it away. This oily radiator warmth mixes with the watery atmosphere and gives birth to seasonal nuisances - the mosquitoes and the flies; always the flies, the scourge of autumn, only seconds away from invading your legs, hands, ears or nose, the moment you settle down on a terrace.

The heat is still sufficient for the beach, yet this is where the disorientation lies, along with a guilt factor. Should one really be going to the beach now that it is October? Isn't the beach something for July and August? How does one cope with autumn's heat as it doesn't feel quite right to cope with it in the same way as in summer?

The tourists don't struggle with this quandary. They carry on with bare flesh intent regardless, beach bound and unaware of a Mallorcan tradition that once the temperature dips below thirty it is time to get the cardy out of the wardrobe (where it will have been going musty over summer and so needs several washes and applications of apple-fragrance conditioner to restore it to wearing order). Otherwise, the most noticeable change in tourist behaviour and demeanour is the proliferation of ageing knobbly knees and backpacks, along with the incessant sound of Nordic Walking poles clunking against tarmac.

The October should-you-go-to-the-beach, shouldn't-you-go-to-the-beach dilemma is going to be resolved over the next few years. Well, it may take more than a few, but some time in the future the Mallorcan summer will encroach into winter. Hotels will not need to close at the end of October, flights will continue long into November, bars will stay open and no one will know how to cope with employment contracts that never normally extend beyond 31 October (if the employee is lucky).

Climate change is going to change the Mallorcan late season, so much so that the number of days that it will be possible, without any sense of disorientation or guilt, for one to be able to enjoy the beach and the sun in autumn will have doubled from around 30 at present to at least 60. I hadn't been aware that an official number of days that one can enjoy sun and beach in autumn had ever been calculated, but thanks to the meteorology department at the Universitat de les Illes Balears, I now do. And it is this department which says the autumn sun and beach days are set to increase by 100%. There won't be an autumn at all, it would seem.

If this is the case, the sooner a doubling occurs the better. If the Mallorcan summer also does a backwards encroachment into a Mallorcan winter, i.e. into March and April, as well as its forwards one at the end of the season, then there will be eight or nine months of season. Brilliant.

Unfortunately, we can't just immediately forget about having to arrange winter in Mallorca programmes and having to complain about lack of flights and lack of hotels being open. The meteorology people say it will be 2094 before 30 days become 60 days.

So, for the time being, we are left with what we have. Hotels starting to close, restaurants starting to close, newspaper and whitewash being gathered to cover windows and terrace glass doors, seasonal employees waving their goodbyes and bidding tearful farewells, the summer's workforce putting their documents together and trooping off to the dole office in the probably forlorn pursuit of some benefit, the piling up of wood, the worry that benign autumn weather will suddenly go pear-shaped and rip roofs off, and the dilemmas - beach or not, duvet or not, long trousers or not.

Autumn is a strange season and a strange time, but one of its least strange aspects is the consequence of the weather, bedding, and clothing dilemmas and of being too slow in responding to chillier evenings and mornings. Colds. And thanks very much, autumn, my sore throat is now coming along nicely.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.