The Frenzy Of Rentals' Colonialism

Another day, another survey. The Gadeso Foundation, which does a first-rate job in regularly surveying opinion on all sorts of topic, has been asking about holiday rentals. The fact that there is a survey highlights the importance of the subject to Mallorca and the Balearics. It has been remarked that it is one which attracts excessive attention, not least from the media, but the attention is necessary; this is a subject of fundamental importance.

Tourism, ever since the start of the sixties' boom, has raised a question about the way that people live in Mallorca. It is a question now seemingly being asked like never before, and there is a supplementary and just as important question - where do people live?

There are, it seems to me, some shockingly self-interested, patronising and ill-considered views regarding holiday rentals. They are held by those who can see no harm from unfettered development and availability. Holiday rentals are a part of the future, they give the hoteliers a run for their money, they generate greater revenues for certain business sectors. Agreed, albeit that they are the past as well as the future; holiday rentals in one form or another have always existed in the tourism environment.

But what is being experienced is a new form of touristic colonialism. If the development of resorts was principally a hotelier (and tour operator and bank) colonialism, both home-bred and foreign, then the current frenzy for rentals is a different wave, with the colonialists still a mixture of local and foreign. The owner of one or two properties is not really the issue; it is the speculative business and property acquirer which is. Nevertheless, and regardless of who the owner is, the frenzy is such that a wholesale distortion of the property market is being facilitated, leading to that supplementary question.

Colonialism implies some form of self-appointed interest, giving rise to a patronising view, similar to that which existed back in the sixties, that Mallorca should just be grateful for all these properties being available to tourists. That's one view. There is another which has it that workers can commute. So what if they have to, for example, live in Inca and travel to Alcudia each day? So what? Why the hell should they have to? The fact that people have to commute fair distances in places other than Mallorca is no argument. We're talking here not there. Moreover, we are also talking workers who aren't paid handsomely and who need to fork out more of their meagre salaries in order to travel on top of rents that are creeping up away from the resorts, a further consequence of the frenzy.

There was a time, and not so long ago, when I was in favour of pretty liberal regulations and when I sided with the view that the hoteliers shouldn't have things all their own way. This favouring still exists because it is only fair that an owner should at least have the option of how he or she chooses to rent out and also because there can be little question as to a benefit for the complementary sector, much though the likes of Exceltur (members of which include leading Mallorcan hoteliers) come up with reports suggesting that it is hotel guests who spend more on restaurants, etc.

What has changed my opinion is the frenzy, with Airbnb and others whipping it up and hiding behind the disingenuous argument that they are simply intermediaries. What? We're trading in holiday rentals? Not us, guv. What started out as a great idea now sucks.

The Gadeso survey reveals that just 29% of those surveyed are in favour of holiday rentals. There is a difference between Palma and the resorts. The greater opposition is in the city, which echoes a Gadeso finding about so-called saturation: it is felt more acutely in Palma than in the resorts. When it comes to type of property, irrespective of Palma or elsewhere, only 23% support apartment rentals.

The greatest drawback, according to the survey (59%), is access to housing for residents and workers. Half of the respondents consider that rentals are creating speculation and "gentrification", a word which has crept into the tourism lexicon in recent years. On the other hand, 47% believe that holiday rentals provide an important role in many families' finances. Which is true, but then ordinary families tend not to have whole portfolios of properties.

But it is ordinary families who might end up the victims of the frenzy. So much depends on how the government's regulations are finally worked up, on how zoning is determined, on how rigorously the tourism ministry and tax authorities then enforce regulations. And tax, now there's a thing. Gadeso found that 73% believed that obligation to pay tax should be the principal requirement for holiday rentals. Only 73%?

Complex Problems: Rentals' Legislation

Is it possible that politicians genuinely don't know what they're talking about and don't know what they're doing? One does suspect that this may be the case, although one is also inclined to cut them some slack. Hopefully, they do know, and after all we voted for them (depending on who we are and whether we are enfranchised or not).

A view that was expressed recently apropos holiday rentals' legislation in the Balearics drew into question whether the regional government knows what it's doing. Specifically, the suggestion was that, because this legislation and related law on housing which is to be introduced presents such a complex problem, politicians disguise their inabilities to grapple with it adequately by indulging in bluster. In other words, they say a great deal in order to mask their inadequacies. Which may be unkind. Finding even adequate solutions to certain problems may be beyond anyone.

This particular legislation is far from straightforward, and one begins to appreciate why the Partido Popular were so averse to regulating in a more liberal fashion. Because of the complexity, they chose to ignore it, or rather bury it in the grave of prohibition. Why create an additional problem?

The complexity is such that it isn't clear if the problem has truly been defined. When the PP were so steadfastly refusing to free up the rentals' market, they didn't have the issue that has since arisen. This may not be a housing crisis as such, but there is an accommodation crisis, and it's only likely to get worse. Consequently, any legislation on holiday rentals has to take account of legislative change for housing. Biel Barceló's tourism-driven bill cannot neglect Marc Pons' society-driven act, and vice versa. The two go hand in hand. Or they should do.

This accommodation crisis has compounded what was already complicated. The problem isn't therefore static. Barceló (and Pons) are taking aim at moving targets, with websites like Airbnb seemingly shifting the goal posts on a constant basis. They both also have to take account of legislation that isn't in their hands, i.e. the national law on urban leasing, while there is a fundamental issue - a constitutional one almost - of human rights. Under this, an owner should be permitted to do as he or she sees fit with properties.

The solution, whether you liberalise the market or not, is to resort to the power of the fine. The controversies in Barcelona are predominantly to do with illegally rented holiday properties, yet that city, as with the rest of Catalonia, has what on the face of it seems reasonable enough legislation that permits the open commercialisation of holiday rentals. By now imposing massive fines on websites, Barcelona might hope that the problem will go away, when of course it will not. And the same will apply in Mallorca and the Balearics. Got a problem? Then fine the hell out of it rather than seek alternatives.

Barceló, with hindsight, might have preferred to stick with the PP's prohibitive stance. At least that way he could simply order the issuing of fines without having to concern himself with all the massive complexity that comes with being permissive - where are these legal holiday rentals to be, what are the powers of veto (communities, town hall, island councils), are there to be time limits (x number of weeks/months that accommodation can be rented for tourist purposes), and so on and so forth.

On top of this, Barceló has a problem that the PP did not have - his so-called partners in government. He has to satisfy the requirements of one party (PSOE), which isn't overly minded to establishing tourist number limits, with another (Podemos), which most certainly is. And Podemos sit very firmly on the Pons side of the accommodation debate - society's needs and not the needs of tourists and definitely not the needs of owners with several properties for holiday rent.

Yet another consideration is growing societal antagonism, and it is the way in which Barceló has handled this which allows some to accuse him of indeed trading in bluster. The whole "sustainable tourism" campaign he has undertaken is, say the likes of the Terraferida agitators, a load of eyewash, a major PR stunt with absolutely nothing to back it up.

Inherent to this sustainability is the tackling of seasonality, a problem that has always existed and one that has always been subject to politicians' bluster. They have all made announcements as to how they will deal with it, yet knowing that it is something over which they have minimal control. The current lengthening of the season owes very little to political initiative; it has to do with the fluctuations of demand and with the efforts of the private sector in expanding products such as cycling.

Do they know what they're doing with rentals' legislation? Actually, I believe they do, but convincing everyone of the fact is another matter.

The Masses Turn To Mallorca's Interior

One of my favourite Sa Pobla stories is to do with events 62 years ago, when the town hall managed to lose a beach. Commanded by Madrid to sort out municipal boundaries, Sa Pobla engaged in some horse-trading with Muro. The result was that it swapped that part of Albufera which went to the sea (and the beach) in exchange for extending its interior boundary eastwards. It thought it had a deal. It did only insofar as more agricultural possibilities were obtained. Muro, perhaps by luck or possibly by foresight, obtained what is now the main part of Playa de Muro. The ultimate result was to be that Muro's economy, courtesy of its upmarket resort, diversified massively into tourism. Sa Pobla's economy didn't.

The missed opportunity condemned Sa Pobla to rely more or less solely on its agriculture, which has undoubtedly brought it wealth - thanks mainly to potatoes and rice - but which could have been significantly greater. Perhaps in recognition of its historical error in having failed to climb aboard the tourism train, the town - once democracy was established - retrenched. It came to be the island's centre of cultural revivalism. As an example, last Saturday afternoon the town was resonating with the blasts of hundreds of bagpipes: decades of piping revivalism were being celebrated.

A year ago, the town hall held a first series of seminars to consider its tourism future. Or even present. Without a tourism past, notwithstanding the fact that its January Sant Antoni fiestas have officially been in the national touristic interest for fifty years, the citizens who turned up were operating from pretty much a blank canvass. What they started to paint onto this canvass was accommodation, which in Sa Pobla's case means mostly only private properties.

During the second series of seminars, held last week, it was reported that the number of tourist places had virtually doubled in the space of twelve months. The increase was totally due to holiday rentals - all legitimate and all charging the tourist tax. Significant though this rise is, it needs to be placed in context. Compared with another neighbour - Alcudia - the number of places is 3.5% of what Alcudia has in hotel places, with no account taken of holiday rentals, legitimate or not.

Strategically, Sa Pobla is opting for alternative tourism. This inevitably means culture, heritage and gastronomy. Alternative it may be, if not exactly innovative. The alternative tourism seeker can thus be housed in a house (or similar) and enjoy this alternativism. Alternatively, this tourism seeker may well appreciate that the beach isn't so far away, and that the beach (or beaches) in question are considered to be among Mallorca's finest. One of these is Es Comú, part of the beach that had been Muro's before Sa Pobla obliged by handing over the rest and now one subjected to - so we are told - "massification".

Selva is a town further inland. Almost three years ago now, it did something similar to Sa Pobla: invited the locals to talk tourism. At the time, it could muster around 600 places. It will be more now because of an increase to the ninety or so holiday homes it was said to have. The town hall's tourism plan, interestingly enough, made a virtue of the fact that beaches in Alcudia and Pollensa weren't a million miles away. Promoting alternative tourism was going to get it only so far.

Also three years ago, Vilafranca's town hall was keen to find ways of attracting more tourists. There was a problem because it was being bypassed. A further one, the town hall accepted, was that in general terms it was way behind the tourism eight ball. Yet last month, the environmentalists GOB were backing Vilafranca's demands for the regional government to restore "sanity" to tourism. From having been nowhere touristically, the town hall had discovered that tourists were occupying holiday homes in the municipality. It was suffering "massification".

The three cases - Sa Pobla, Selva, Vilafranca - highlight ways in which all Mallorca's municipalities were obliged by the last Partido Popular government to come up with tourism plans. They also show how attitudes to tourism differ. Selva saw itself as being a centre for all types - sun-and-beach included; Sa Pobla would prefer its tourists don't head off to the beach.

Something else which is highlighted is the reform under the 2012 tourism law which made it easier to make rural properties available as holiday homes. While Sa Pobla has embraced this, Vilafranca wants obstacles to be raised.

What is happening is that properties in the island's interior, both rural and urban, are increasingly being devoted to tourism. It's a story which mirrors the experiences on the coasts and so contributes to a distortion in the accommodation market. Sa Pobla has doubled the number of places in a year. Will it double them again next year?

Is Airbnb The Real Scourge?

Increasingly, one wonders who or what is the principal target of those who express their ire over so-called saturation. For some, the most extreme wing, it is all tourism. For others, it is the hoteliers. Or holiday rentals. Or cruise ships.

The latter is an irrelevant category. Irrelevant anywhere in Mallorca that isn't Palma. Forget the cruise passengers. They make for useful propaganda, but they are not central to the debate.

What about hoteliers, then? Well, if one believes that a barely increased number of hotel places this century represents saturation, then hoteliers are at fault. They aren't of course. They haven't been adding to the "crisis" except by knocking out higher occupancy levels. Even these are marginal in adding to human pressure. When one can talk of high summer 90 or 91 per cent one year, then 94 or 95 another, there is clearly an increase, but it doesn't amount to overcrowding. Forget the hoteliers as well.

Which leaves us with holiday rentals. President Armengol suggested recently that it is too simplistic to charge them with being the cause. Simplistic perhaps. But probably accurate.

Some of those who have been railing recently about limits or reduction border on being cranks with no coherent programme for economic alternatives, save for one inspired by impractical anti-capitalist quasi-anarchy. Others are anything but cranks. They are extremely sensible. And amidst their sense, they identify a real issue - that of housing.

This has been a theme that the saturation argument has raised before this summer, but it is one that needs to be far more seriously and urgently addressed. Holiday rentals are depriving people of long-term accommodation, and where they can find it, it is becoming less affordable. One can only see this situation becoming more critical.

The left are in a quandary over holiday lets. An argument is that making a return on a property is a right that should not be denied, if this return is a means of providing an adequate income. A further ingredient is that there are elements of the left who take great issue with the hoteliers, especially the larger ones. They are all for hoteliers' noses being put out of joint; private accommodation is one way of achieving this.

In terms of the market in general, the left, instinctively prone to market intervention and interference, are finding this interference to be not as easy as it might once have been. Institutional and legal bases, be they in Mallorca, Spain or many other places, make interference complicated. But what interference might there be? Denying someone the right to rent out a property runs counter to leftist thinking. At the same time, however, it can deny a worker the right to long-term accommodation, while by its very existence it contributes to additional tourism mass. It's not simplistic.

There are of course degrees of rental. The single property owner is quite different to the one with multiple properties, but where is the line drawn? Can it be drawn? The distinction seems to be coming less and less relevant as the left take on the seemingly unstoppable momentum behind tourist accommodation rental. In Barcelona, the mayor Ada Colau, who shot to prominence as an activist who founded the movement against evictions, has proposed caps on prices for long-term rentals (citing Paris and Berlin as examples of where this is done). She has also been closing down apartments used for tourists and issuing warnings to Airbnb and others: they can expect fines of upwards of 600,000 euros if they don't stop promoting illegal accommodation.

But owners, and not just those with several properties, have fired back by insisting on their rights to rent out. In so doing, they are expressing the rights of a totally free market, something with which Colau and others towards the far left have great difficulty. These owners point to a form of liberation offered by Airbnb and others - the democratisation of property, the very essence of the so-called collaborative economy of which Airbnb is at the forefront, and the very essence also of what some on the left advocate. The contradictions are profound.

It would be stretching things to say that Airbnb and the philosophy of the collaborative, shared economy is the root cause of saturation, overcrowding and distortions in the housing market. There has, after all, always been this rental market, but it is valid to say that Airbnb has expanded the market vastly, so much so that it is now becoming disproportionate. Its advance is such that the number of Airbnb travellers to Spain between June and August rose by more than 70% - Mallorca and Barcelona were among the favoured destinations.

This collaborative economy advocates property democratisation. It favours the individual's rights. But at what cost to other sectors of society? Is Airbnb the real scourge? If you're a free marketer, you'd prefer not to think so. However ... .

Ill Manors - The Majorca Re-mix

Let's all go on a summer holiday
The telly makes us less than ignorant
So we know it's true
That means off-face pissed and violent
She's got business for more than a hug
On second thoughts you don't wanna get mugged
Oh shit, too drunk that was simply dumb
Whose idea was that balcony
He's lost his life, haven't we all
Be a diver, act the fool
What's holidays all in all
Inclusive gaff, sex rituals
Not all year round, not at all
Fewer months before the Fall
Get away with thieving in town halls
Four figure bungs the minimum rule
We're all liars, piss takers
Every single one expat's not what they say
Keep on believing what you read in the papers
Airhead, air-heeled "girls", sloshed blokes all day
Think you know how life on a paradise island is
From everything you've ever read about it or heard
Well it's all true, but not truth that's nicest
There's no need to set foot on the strip
Truth is here, Stacey lets it rip
The cheats and lies, we've lost our grip
Feed the fear that's what we've found
Crisis reigns, we all fall down

Oi! I said oi!
What you thinking of, you stupid Raj-oy!
We're poor round here, run home and lock our doors
But there's no homes no more, we're getting robbed for
Real (yeah) makes my manors ill
My manners ill
For real
Yeah you know we've taken ill, crisis ill!

You'll get found in a beach concrete jungle
New hotels keep ripping up our nature
Whichever road leads to a blinged-up Russian
Hoods in hoods rob blind and fracture
We've got an eco-friendly government
Waste imports help pay Endesa
Built an entire congress centre
Around where we live for sale for rent flats
Take away our money and keep raising tax
Island's health care, yes please many thanks
Petrol tax for health so less in the tanks
Nice knowing there's the FO when we get attacked
Don't give us all that
We're all losing our temper
When'll they close down the consulate centre?
Killing time in what used to be winter
Tourism's confined from May to September
Schools don't work, which language rules, let's get out
People hurting, I predict a riot
Year in year out
No one knows if things'll turn about
What does the King say? Stuff about the youth
Kids on the street no they'll never work, only looking for cheap
Street drinking at botellón proof
All go looting
No not Luton
Stacey, it's closer, cover your eyes
But if you see, you might realise
It'll make you wish you'd stayed outside
Here's what you get for corruption, all the lies
Do what Rajoy does ... smoke a cigar

Oi! I said oi!
What you thinking of, you stupid Raj-oy!
We're poor round here, run home and lock our doors
But there's no homes no more, we're getting robbed for
Real (yeah) makes my manors ill
My manners ill
For real
Yeah you know we've taken ill, crisis ill!

We've had it with corrupt politicians
The bloody rich kids always prosper
'Cos of papa's millions in broken Majorca
Everyone else broke in Majorca
What needs fixing is society
And that means all the impropriety
It's not Stacey's television
It's all the crooks who should be in prison

Oi! I said oi!
What you thinking of, you stupid Raj-oy!
We're poor round here, run home and lock our doors
But there's no homes no more, we're getting robbed for
Real (yeah) makes my manors ill
My manners ill
For real
Yeah you know we've taken ill, crisis ill!


* With full acknowledgement to Ben Drew (Plan B).



 


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Another Day In Paradise: Homelessness

He had a pretty impressive suntan. His feet, open to the elements thanks to the flip-flops, were a mahogany colour. He wasn't doing anything. Just sitting there on a wall by the Eroski supermarket in Can Picafort. His company was a plastic bag. Inside which was a bottle. I knew who he was. Or at least he fit the description. He's the German who lives in an abandoned house. To be more accurate, a house that the family which owns it cannot agree as to what to do with it. Somehow, he had come to be living there. When a member of the family had been to the house, she had been shocked to find it inhabited. Along with all the junk that had come to be stored in it was this German, together with no electricity and no water.

He wasn't doing any harm, so he stayed on. Maybe it was an advantage. Someone to watch over the place. To stop youths getting in. Having a "botellón", taking drugs. It didn't really matter how he had come to be in the house. He couldn't exactly go back. Back to Germany, that is. His passport had long expired. He was a non-person. Time was when he used to work over in Alcúdia. But now he had no bike, and when the weather was bad that was a nightmare to use anyway. He might occasionally get some work around and about. Otherwise, he would wash in a bar in the morning. And in the evening he would be at another bar to take the odd coffee and a leak before bedtime. And at other times he would sit on a wall.

Outside a different Eroski, one in Alcúdia, a gaggle of the outer edges of society gathers to pass the time of day, to shout, to bring the dogs, to raise the plastic bags. Strictly speaking, it is an offence to drink alcohol on the streets. Sometimes they are a nuisance, but there's not trouble like that elsewhere: at the derelict, former nightspot palace of Es Fogueró, the imposingly mysterious ruin by the industrial estate in Alcúdia that gives a similar impression as to having been abandoned, despite its being new.

In Es Fogueró there was a body back in the summer. "El Gallego" was dead. He'd been killed, so the Guardia were to reveal. A brother and sister, also "residents" of the ruin, face a homicide charge. In the building where Julio Iglesias had once performed, the dance had stopped for the Galician. When you end the beguine.

It was a perishing late afternoon in January. Outside yet another Eroski. He was crouching in the walkway to the supermarket. You can forget just how cold it can get during a Mallorcan winter. A coin or a few. What does it take? How utterly merciless I had been. It would have taken very little. Little to shrug off a foul mood and a memory of the "aggressive begging" of London. Because his hadn't been.

While there isn't much overt evidence as to homelessness in places such as Alcúdia, it exists all the same. It is the lie to the nonsensically unthinking rote-speak of "this paradise island". Paradise found and paradise lost.

No one much talks about or wants to know about poverty and homelessness in Mallorca. It's not what the brochures would have you think about. The exact scale of homelessness is hard to put a finger on, in Mallorca and across Spain. Some town halls are now conducting censuses. What is reckoned is that a half of the homeless are foreigners. But not all are recent immigrants. The German has been in Can Picafort for years.

In addition to much low-paid employment in Mallorca, there is now the issue of reductions in assistance from the state. Compounding this are the increased costs of energy - electricity and butane both on the rise again. How many live in fuel poverty in Mallorca? A Mediterranean climate might make you believe such a thing couldn't exist. It does. In housing wholly inadequate in terms of insulation, draught exclusion and damp-coursing. Where the housing exists of course. Because not everyone's that lucky. So they end up on the streets and, in the case of Palma, have a council that wants to impound their consolatory alcohol.

Much of the help extended to the homeless comes through the offices of the Cruz Roja (Red Cross). In 2009 the level of help it gave in the Balearics rose by 38%. Back in 2007, the number of individuals either socially excluded or at risk of being so that it assisted was 697. The actual homeless figure it dealt with then amounted to 547 people. With the withdrawal of much state-based "ayuda", the 2009 percentage rise is unlikely to fall.

The numbers may not sound as though there is a crisis. But these scratch the surface of poverty and of those at the breadline. To whom you have to add the homeless. The soup kitchens of Mallorca have already announced a marked rise in "business" this autumn.

There is an unedifying aspect to Mallorca. It is one of real-estate division. In winter you can walk past the second homes, the villa rentals and hotels of Playa de Muro. You can repeat the exercise elsewhere. Empty. They aren't of course about to be opened up to the homeless. This isn't the point. What is, is the insult of so much land in non-productive use for so long a period. Through the winters.

At least in an abandoned house in Can Picafort, the German has a roof over his head.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Everyday People

The population of the Balearics rose by some three per cent last year. In total, the population stood – as of 1 January this year – at 1,030,650, much of the increase being down to immigration, with the Germans and the British leading the way in terms of the numbers of foreigners resident on the islands. The increase translates as a net gain of some 80 people per day.

How sustainable would such an annual increase be? It is a matter that taxes the politicians, not least the Unió Mallorquina (the Mallorcan national party) which believes that there is only so much of Mallorca to go round, even if this perfectly legitimate stance may be influenced by a touch of xenophobia (though they would doubtless deny that).

A report earlier this year suggested a drop in the level of foreign property purchasing. Though this perhaps conflicts with the actual population growth, Mallorca remains an attractive target, and new markets keep emerging, as with the Russians. It is the overseas purchaser who, in part, helps to keep property prices high, and it is the overseas purchaser who is important at a time when the credit squeeze has hit in Spain.

Yet there is a point at which even Mallorca’s improved infrastructure will begin to creak. I mentioned a while ago that Mallorca is roughly equivalent in size to Essex, but its population is less than two-thirds of the county, nearly a half of it in Palma. Plenty of space you might think, except Mallorca has mountains that do not readily lend themselves to vast urbanisations. Over 40% of Spain’s whole population lives by the coast; in Mallorca it is more like 70%, probably higher. Despite the environmental worry (and the threat to coastal areas is a similar issue in Essex, perhaps more so because of the Thames flood plain), there is no sign of a reverse in residential-construction policy that would inhabit the interior to a far greater extent. Indeed, one of the current political footballs is the extent to which rural areas might be built on or not (to which I have referred before).

Much as I might find displeasure in the new architecture of a small urban area such as Puerto Pollensa (or at least the context of that architecture), there is of course sense in exploiting this area rather than the “green belt”. But there again, a town like Puerto Pollensa can only itself take so much. Yet, like the UK and therefore no doubt Essex, there is a not insignificant amount of housing stock that is under-utilised. How many of those new apartments in the “Pollentia” development, I wonder, will be lived in all year? Take a walk around my area in Playa de Muro, and perhaps as much as a third of the dwellings are unoccupied at this time of the year.

The population growth is a sign of the attractiveness of Mallorca (and the Balearics) as a place of residence; the growth is thus a potential negative of the island’s success. Housing is by no means the only issue related to population growth, but if it really is such an issue (and there must be still some doubt as to that), then all new house or apartment purchases should be unequivocally – and legally – either first homes or residential lets: no second, third or however many homes, and no holiday lets. Fine in theory. Wouldn’t work in practice.


QUIZ
Yesterday – Donovan. Today’s title – which American outfit?

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I’ll Light The Fire, You Place The Flowers

The weather so benign there were people in swimwear on the beach today hardly sounds like the introduction to a piece on winter heating, but it is appropriate. An absurdity of Mallorcan winters is that it is often warmer outside than inside. The reason for this is simple, and it is a reason that makes somewhat absurd some of the environmental and housing debate that I have referred to recently.

Much of Mallorca’s housing stock is inadequate for winter. Only relatively recently has there been a move towards anything like proper insulation and damp-coursing. The norm is neither. The old stone buildings, attractive and romantic that they may be, are usually freezing cold in winter. More modern buildings are similarly cold. The wooden-framed doors and windows in much housing are often sure makers of draughts.

Stone flooring, lack of carpets, large single-paned windows or terrace doors - these all make sense in summer, but in winter they are a nonsense. The solutions to the coldness of much of the housing are: expensive air-conditioning units, noxious and vapour-making butane heaters, ineffective electric radiators, wood-burning chimneys, oil-based central heating. Ah but a wood-burner is so cosy. Yes, if the space is enclosed and not subject to draught, but even then most of the heat escapes up the chimney anyway. Butane heaters - give off a fair amount of heat but also give off a significant amount of water, requiring an electricity-draining dehumidifier. The dampness of much property in winter also requires these dehumidifying monstrosities. Coal is shipped from South Africa to supply the power station for electricity that disappears through radiators and heaters that cannot compensate for the illogic of interior design, exterior thinness and draught holes.

None of the solutions is optimal unless housing design and materials are themselves optimal. That open-plan living-room with a marble stairway and an attractive large window heading towards the landing? Great in summer, a nightmare of lost energy in winter.

It occurs to me that perhaps some practical solutions need to be found - like insulation. Perhaps they are the unsexy side of the environmental and housing debate and, unless I have been missing something, they are not subjects widely addressed. I think it is about time they were.


HUGO AND THE KING
Imagine if you will a meeting of the Commonwealth heads of state. One of the less-savoury of these heads is mouthing off about something. The Queen, not amused, interrupts and tells the head to put one’s sock in it. Couldn’t happen, could it. The Queen maybe not, but King Juan-Carlos is not so reticent. To Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez at the Ibero-american gathering in Chile he said: “¿por qué no te callas?” (why don’t you shut up?). Brilliant. The King, I suspect, has said what many others would have liked to.


QUIZ
Yesterday - “Mercy Mercy Me”, Marvin Gaye. Today’s title? It’s the first line from a song about a house by a famous group.

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Black Coffee

Relax. It’s a day off. At least it is here. Pour yourself a coffee. It’s the second anniversary of this blog. Two today! Talking well with only the occasional tantrum.

The past twelve months have seen plenty of weather, plenty more road accidents, plenty more debate about the tourism market. These are blog staples. The past twelve months have also witnessed a growing climate-change and environmental concern, an outcry over the redesigned main road through Puerto Alcúdia, corruption, and strange stories of beach umbrella and sunbed subterfuge, of supermarket alcohol being priced in pounds, of masked men in Can Picafort and Crocs shoes in hospitals. The past twelve months have brought trivia in the form of the quiz, essay pieces (The Mile, street names, public toilets) and a growing interaction. To all those of you who take the time to communicate, a big thank you; it is most gratifying, whether you offer bouquets or brickbats, agree or disagree, get the questions right or wrong!


Moving on, or should that be moving up? How was the Balearic Government to tackle the problem of making available the “thousands of dwellings” that I spoke about on 26 October? Where land is a finite resource, the sky is infinite. Building up is the answer. The government is proposing to developers that, in return for building more apartments - upwards - they can sell them - downwards. More flats, lower prices. A brilliant intervention in the free market, or ...?

Meantime, the environmental group GOB is worrying that the government might not stick to its intention not to build on rural land. In fact GOB is doing a lot of worrying at the moment. The group has hit on the idea of an international internet campaign to pressurise the government into not granting licences for the development of the Son Bosc finca in Muro as a golf course. The principal worry - the site is Europe’s most important for a particular orchid, orchis robusta (from what I can make out it is the only one). So that’s the environmental threat I wondered about. Now we know.

Just what is GOB? The name crops up time and time again. Like many of the best organised pressure groups, GOB is relentless in its publicity and activity - gobby one might almost say. The initials stand for Grup Balear d’Ornitologia i Defensa de la Naturalesa - Balearic group for ornithology and the defence of nature. If you are interested, the website is www.gobmallorca.com.


QUIZ
Yesterday - Black Widow. Today’s title - it’s a song title; what association does it have with today? (Check yesterday for a clue.)

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Index for October 2007

Accident blackspots - 7 October 2007, 25 October 2007
Albufera - 10 October 2007, 26 October 2007
Alcúdia v. Pollensa - 16 October 2007
Alcúdia commercial port - 22 October 2007
Alcúdia Fair - 3 October 2007, 6 October 2007
Alcúdia’s old power station - 27 October 2007
Animals - 1 October 2007, 3 October 2007, 10 October 2007, 22 October 2007
Antich, Francesc - 26 October 2007
Architecture - 27 October 2007
Autonomy, Mallorcan - 29 October 2007
Balcony accidents - 9 October 2007, 24 October 2007, 25 October 2007
Balearic Government - 26 October 2007
Barcarés - 10 October 2007, 11 October 2007
Bars - 15 October 2007, 29 October 2007
Bats - 10 October 2007
Beatification - 28 October 2007, 29 October 2007
Bellavista (optician) - 17 October 2007
Can Picafort - 9 October 2007
Catholic Church - 28 October 2007
Charities - 3 October 2007
Christopher Columbus - 11 October 2007, 12 October 2007
Climate change - 21 October 2007, 24 October 2007
Coastal properties - 30 October 2007
Cooper, Sara - 24 October 2007, 25 October 2007
Día de la Hispanidad - 12 October 2007
Environment - 26 October 2007
Excursions - 8 October 2007
Expatriates - 18 October 2007
Franco, General - 28 October 2007
Golf - 26 October 2007
Gore, Al - 24 October 2007
Hallowe’en - 31 October 2007
Ham - 14 October 2007
Holes - 2 October 2007
Holidays - 12 October 2007
Housing - 26 October 2007
Island tour - 8 October 2007
Jamón serrano - 14 October 2007
Kissinger, Henry - 24 October 2007
La Victoria - 10 October 2007, 11 October 2007
Local government - 30 October 2007
Local politics - 4 October 2007
Market saturation - 29 October 2007
Media - 18 October 2007, 25 October 2007
Morer Vermell - 10 October 2007, 11 October 2007
National anthems - 4 October 2007
Newspapers - 18 October 2007, 25 October 2007
No Frills Excursions - 8 October 2007
Over-development - 26 October 2007
Pins i Mates Restaurant - 2 October 2007
Politics - 4 October 2007
Pollensa town hall - 30 October 2007
Pollentia - 27 October 2007
Prices - 29 October 2007
Property prices - 29 October 2007
Protected species - 1 October 2007, 3 October 2007
Quality - 29 October 2007
Quality of life - 26 October 2007
Rajoy, Mariano - 24 October 2007
Restaurants - 2 October 2007, 22 October 2007, 29 October 2007
Road accidents - 7 October 2007, 25 October 2007
Roman remains- 27 October 2007
Royal family - 4 October 2007, 13 October 2007
Rugby World Cup Final - 20 October 2007
Season’s end - 23 October 2007
Son Bosc - 26 October 2007
Spanish Civil War - 28 October 2007, 29 October 2007
Spanish Government - 30 October 2007
Spanishness - 12 October 2007, 13 October 2007
Sunglasses - 17 October 2007
Taxes - 30 October 2007
Tennant, Jacqueline - 19 October 2007
Tornado - 5 October 2007, 6 October 2007, 18 October 2007, 19 October 2007, 21 October 2007
Tourism statistics - 24 October 2007
Tourism strategy - 26 October 2007
Tourist offices - 9 October 2007
Victoria’s Animal Refuge - 3 October 2007, 22 October 2007
Weather - 1 October 2007, 5 October 2007, 6 October 2007, 17 October 2007, 18 October 2007, 19 October 2007, 21 October 2007, 28 October 2007, 30 October 2007

And They’re Messing With My Heart

Francesc Antich, leader of the Balearic Government, was yesterday asking for more dosh for the Balearics and was also railing against over-development which places at risk quality of life and which is also incompatible with quality tourism. According to a report in Diario de Mallorca, what Sr. Antich wants to see is a new model of tourism which, whilst maintaining the beach and sun aspect, will embrace also cultural and sports tourism. He then goes to say that he intends to make an agreement with developers for “thousands of dwellings” accessible to the general public.

Now, one cannot help but feel that there is perhaps a bit of a contradiction here. Admittedly, he appears to wish to see an end to development that destroys too much territory, so one has to presume that these thousands of dwellings will somehow arise from currently developed areas - a bit like the urban versus green-belt argument perhaps.

The problem with this is that, as I noted a few days ago, there has been “orgiastic construction” in centres such as Puerto Pollensa. These are not so much ripping the heart out of the town as blocking its arteries. Does the crowding of ever more apartment blocks into confined areas really add to quality of life?

Antich describes the tourism industry with his own heart metaphor; it is what pumps the social and economic body. Quite right. A question is, would the cessation of further tourist expansion and therefore developments harm the desire for quality of life which, by implication, he sees as linked to property for the public?

A while ago, the Balearic Government announced its Plan Turismo 2020 with its aim of greater added value and a stated goal of “fewer tourists and higher income”. But would this be compatible with Antich’s heart-beat motif? Cut numbers of tourists - cut jobs, cut ancillary services, cut suppliers? I don’t know, maybe it wouldn’t, but I would take some convincing. Would such a model be able to underpin quality of life in its wider economic sense as in, for example, generating sufficient employment and income to support the affordability of thousands of dwellings?

Mallorca (and the Balearics) economy is based on tourism, more than any other sector. Construction may also be vital to the economy, but it is tourism that helps to spawn it, not the other way round. Despite the talk of innovation and development, to which Antich also referred again yesterday, there is not, and is unlikely to ever be, a Silicon Valley or some such equivalent. It is tourism which drives Mallorca and which drives quality of life. This does not have to mean unchecked development, but further development is almost certainly a consequence.

But then one runs into another issue. As so often on this blog, there is a coincidence. Also in the Diario is a report about the ongoing battle as to the construction (or not) of a golf course on the Son Bosc finca that abuts the Albufera nature park on its Muro wing. The environmental lobby group, GOB, and some local politicians are against this, but is it not this sort of development that Antich is alluding to when he talks about quality and sports tourism? Only a few weeks back, the proposal for a golf course and hotel at nearby Son Real was turned down, and the chances are that Son Bosc will never be developed, or it might even if takes several years. Let it not be ignored that, on the other side of Albufera, after some fifteen years of wrangling, they have started to develop an industrial estate. Though strong environmental standards are to be imposed on the industrial estate, is it really the case that a golf course is in some way more of an environmental threat?

Mallorca is a small island with an increasing population and an increasing demand for infrastructure, be it transport, housing or other. Tourism is a rapacious beast that grabs for itself whole chunks of this infrastructure and land. But it is the beast that beats the heart of Mallorca. The challenge is to increase this heart-rate or rather perhaps to relieve it of the tourism strain, and only increased economic diversification and competitiveness can help to achieve this. Whether it can be achieved is an entirely different matter.


QUIZ
Yesterday - Robert Louis Stevenson, “Treasure Island”. Today’s title - this is a line from a frantic record by?

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