The Day Of The Museum

Today is International Museum Day. It was established in 1977 by the International Council of Museums, and its president says that "museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, co-operation and peace among peoples", which as a statement of principle sounds rather like the one which used to be offered to explain the virtues of tourism. It's a principle which does still apply, though you would be forgiven for thinking that it no longer does. As resorts, if we are to believe the most doom-laden predictions, will some time in the near future become their own museum pieces, there will be even less cultural exchange and enrichment by those enjoying no more than the hotel branded culture of an all-inclusive. Though even resorts, abandoned by the masses and turned into museum pieces, would still have life. As the vice-president of the Council of Mallorca said in launching Mallorca's contribution to International Museum Day, "museums are living institutions". 

There are a lot of museums in Mallorca, some of them good or excellent, others less good. The good and excellent adhere to the concept of being a living institution, while others betray the occasional failing of museums, which is to attempt to drain all life from themselves. But this is the lot of museums the world over. Some are vibrant, others are moribund. In Mallorca, there is the odd example of museum which shows little sign of life (one thinks, unfortunately, of Inca's rather less than successful footwear museum), but let's not dwell on the negatives when there is much that is positive.

In fact, Inca's museum has been given some life since the appointment of a new director last September, and it is one of a number of museums which is engaged in the exchange of pieces as part of today's celebrations. Others include the Pollensa Museum and the fine Manacor History Museum. The big museum guns are also participating in International Museum Day, such as the Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation, Can Prunera in Sóller and the Es Baluard Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. And another, the History Museum at Bellver Castle, has truly embraced the modern era by making available a mobile app through which can be heard explanations of items in the museum.

Technology has been a boon to museums. It has breathed new life into many by providing interactivity, through which it can be confirmed that they are indeed living. It has also been a necessity. Wandering around some vast hall with no one breaking into more than a whisper, staring at bits of old rock, is, let's be honest, a bit passé. But it doesn't have to all be technological bells and whistles. The old and the new can combine, so long as what's on display is good, and Es Baluard is pretty damn good. It has, on the one hand, the extraordinary "Sound Resonances" of Hayden Chisholm and, on the other, artistic links to the not so distant past courtesy of artists involved with the early twentieth century Mallorcan movement, such as Santiago Rusiñol and Tito Cittadini. There are also a couple of painted works by Aligi Sassu, who was normally associated with sculptures (he did the weird "horse" on the roundabout in Alcúdia). One is "The Church of Alcúdia".

The good news is that most of Mallorca's museums aren't austere, dull places. They also make a valuable contribution to tourism. To give an indication of numbers, it was estimated that there were 735,000 museum visitors in 2009, which represented a rise of almost 5% over the previous year. This figure will almost certainly have risen more since then. Es Baluard, for example, experienced an increase of over 5% last year. And the museums can benefit in more ways than just through the numbers coming through the door. The Miró Foundation, for instance, raises around 100,000 euros a year through sales of merchandising and other products at its shop.

But these are the big museums. The numbers are, naturally enough, very much lower for smaller ones. The Yannick and Ben Jakober Foundation in Alcúdia registered 5,394 visitors in 2009, but then it isn't in the centre of Palma and it isn't an operation which is only interested in making money.

The commercial aspect isn't, though, the focus of International Museum Day. It is a celebration of museums' contribution to the island's culture. There are thirty taking part. The weather's good, but then so are the museums.

Blinded Me With Science

It has indeed been museum month on the blog. To bring August to a close, there is more. This time it concerns the projected science and technology museum that is due to rise from if not the ashes then the ashen soil of what was the old power station by the port in Alcúdia. This is the science and technology museum about which there was all manner of hullabaloo some two years ago: went out to tender, the likes of Lord Rogers pitched for the gig as architect, a firm in Barcelona got it, the museum was going to be a great advance for tourism in the north, all the usual spin. When the actual project was presented and heralded as a "great icon in the north of the island" (reported on 23 October 2008, (Car) Parklife), it was observed that the funding was not actually in place. By coincidence, on 23 October I pointed out that 23 million euros were needed. They still are. And these still missing millions are but part of the problem. Various interested parties, not least Gesa, which still owns the installations, and the ports authority, have raised objections to aspects of the project. They have arisen only some ten months after the project was presented; only ten months. It may have taken this time but perhaps they needed it in order to realise that there are aspects of the project that no-one had recognised, such as what to do with deposits of gas that Gesa, quite rightly, would not like to be seen "given off". There is also the not small matter of an electrical substation on the site which would need to be re-sited.

The good news is that all parties are wanting to work to find an agreement and solution. The less good news is quite why some of this was not taken into account in the first place. Putting the project back on the drawing-board will probably mean more money for the architects to re-draw it and of course more time; more money for the architects from what pot exactly? There is no obvious time frame for the project to start or indeed to finish; you wouldn't expect there to be so given that there is no money for it, which there isn't. The bigger question, therefore, surrounds whether it will ever start, owing to that funding requirement. While the museum may indeed become "iconic", assuming there is ever something physical that could be seen as an icon, quite what would make it so is also not clear. And one returns, inevitably, to the key question. What is the point of it? It may indeed yet be something rather grand and splendid that will attract extra tourists, but the key surely lies in that word "extra".

Major tourist attractions on Mallorca are mostly to be found in the south. It is to the south that many excursions, from the north, go. Would there be excursions in reverse, i.e. from south to north? It is this sort of question that needs to be asked of the project, and an answer offered, and one can only begin to arrive at such an answer if one knows exactly what is intended. Museums are all well and good, but it would have to be something special to shake tourists from their southern sloth (and from that in other parts of the island as well as locally) to make the Alcúdia project truly worthwhile and truly iconic. Perhaps it will be. But the portents are not necessarily favourable, and nor is the fact that some fairly basic oversights appear to have been made.

When this project was first announced in May 2007 (23 May in fact; always 23), I made the rather obviously flippant reference to the Millennium Dome, given Lord Rogers' appearance on the list of those up for it. But the experience of that building may not be wholly without parallel. One feels that the "iconic" aspect of this new museum would lie in its appearance, i.e. its architectural magnificence - maybe. One would feel rather more comfortable if the project was more bottom-up, as in what it will be and what it will include. The building itself seems to take precedence. That is not unimportant. Most certainly it is not, nor would be its visual harmony on the bay of Alcúdia nor its potentially emblematic statement. But as important, if not more so, is what they would actually do with it.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Whispers, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySaHZZhSwXE. Today's title - who was this and which scientist appeared on the record?

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Index for August 2009
All-inclusives - 28 August 2009, 29 August 2009
August, lazy in - 8 August 2009, 24 August 2009
Beata 2009 - 30 August 2009
Bellevue hotel, Alcúdia - 16 August 2009, 28 August 2009, 29 August 2009
Calle Bot, Puerto Pollensa - 15 August 2009
Can Picafort live ducks - 17 August 2009
Car-hire shortage - 17 August 2009, 20 August 2009
Catalan radical groups - 3 August 2009
Cooperativa Agricola Murense, Muro - 18 August 2009
Disco excursion, Can Picafort - 12 August 2009
Ethnology museum, Muro - 14 August 2009
Excursions, reduction in bookings - 4 August 2009
Fiestas - 30 August 2009
Fires - 26 August 2009
Glosada - 30 August 2009
Golf tourism - 13 August 2009
History in Muro, farming - 18 August 2009
Hotels closing in September? - 21 August 2009
Inca footwear museum - 7 August 2009, 9 August 2009
Internet review sites - 16 August 2009, 28 August 2009
Jellyfish and weever fish - 19 August 2009
Kroxan café, Puerto Alcúdia - 13 August 2009
La Gola park, Puerto Pollensa - 9 August 2009
La Residencia, Deía - 11 August 2009
La Villa restaurant - 6 August 2009
Mallorca expensive? - 5 August 2009, 17 August 2009, 19 August 2009, 20 August 2009, 21 August 2009, 22 August 2009
Palma bombs - 9 August 2009, 11 August 2009, 12 August 2009
Palmanova bombing - 1 August 2009, 2 August 2009, 3 August 2009, 4 August 2009, 5 August 2009, 6 August 2009
Pickpocketing - 13 August 2009
Pollentia museum, Alcúdia - 9 August 2009
Prices - 5 August 2009, 17 August 2009, 19 August 2009, 20 August 2009, 21 August 2009, 22 August 2009, 30 August 2009
Puerto Pollensa marina security - 10 August 2009
Rafael Nadal tourism promotion - 15 August 2009
Real Mallorca under new ownership - 10 August 2009
Road humps, Puerto Pollensa - 7 August 2009
Sa Pobla-Alcúdia railway - 27 August 2009
Science and technology museum, Alcúdia - 31 August 2009
Temperatures and weather - 26 August 2009
Tourist complaints - 21 August 2009
Tourist satisfaction and expectations - 16 August 2009
Violence, tourist - 25 August 2009
Windsurfing - 9 August 2009

The Way We Were

And yet more museum news. Museums have suddenly become the flavour of the month. Maybe it's the silly season. And it all rather depends upon your view of museums as to whether you believe the 1.5 million euros that the culture ministry is setting aside to upgrade the ethnology museum in Muro is silly or sensible. I'll go with the latter, if that's alright by you. The only problem is knowing who actually ever goes to the museum. Tourists? Hmm, not in great numbers one would imagine.

What is the ethnology museum? It is, as the director says in "The Diario", a museum devoted to pre-tourist Mallorca, one that shows the life of people of the island in their domestic and working environments. Essentially, it is a memorial to a rural way of life that may not have totally died out but which has been forgotten by many Mallorcans and foreigners alike. The director says that, after the museum opened in 1964, everyone would have known what a plough was, for instance. But not now. The displays at the museum are to include rooms that show how things were for the pre-tourist Mallorcan. It is a splendid and laudable project, to be supported with audio-visual that one hopes will be correctly multi-lingual. Museums that deal with real lives are more vital, literally, than those which merely display pieces of ancient artefact with a sterility and lack of engagement of the visitor. They should consider special shows with music, dance and activities representative of different epochs before tourism.

This celebration of life as it once was has become a feature of local fiestas. Both Pollensa (during Patrona) and Binissalem have staged reconstructions or musical events indicative of a bygone era. It may not be every tourist's cup of tea, but it is a favoured brew for many who have formed an intimate attachment with the island and for whom the history, the real history, goes beyond the fleshpotism of sun and beach. Critical I may have been of attempts at developing an alternative tourism, but not of this, so long as it is done well and so long as people go. And that's the real problem.

Muro town has been the beneficiary of separate upgrade financing - two million euros worth of it (as reported on 10 June: Money For Nothing?). The tourism minister presided over the celebration of the completion of the redevelopment project, stating that it was an example of creating tourism de-seasonalisation in this interior town. But who ever goes to Muro? I've said it before, but it bears repetition: there is no bus route between the town and Playa de Muro. Thousands of tourists not exactly on the town's doorstep but on what would be a fifteen minute bus ride. The tourism office in Playa de Muro has material about the town, but how do you get to it?


Diosdado Carbonell is a Cuban street musician. He plays on the Calvari steps in Pollensa. When he dies, he would like to be buried in Pollensa. That is the headline of a short piece about Dio in "The Diario". Go here: http://www.diariodemallorca.es/part-forana/2009/08/13/muero-quiero-entierren-pollenca/493416.html

QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Police, "Roxanne", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3kG-7I_Y6k. Today's title - probably had this before, but it'll do for me.

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Surf's Up

Things you can't take to the beach - or shouldn't, must not: pets (goldfish presumably not, but mainly dogs); camping gear, cooking devices; boats, kites for surfing, jet-skis, super tankers, nuclear submarines - oh, and windsurf boards and sails. Or to clarify. Dogs are not irregular visitors to the beach, but no-one seems to much do anything about them; jet-skis, kitesurfs can be taken so long as they are in the "sports zones" or beaches set aside, such as - for kitesurfing - La Marina in Alcúdia and Es Comú in Playa de Muro. And also windsurfs.

On the beach in Playa de Muro three windsurfers were making their way back to shore. A lifeguard was on patrol. The whistle went and there ensued much gesticulation, discussion and talking into his two-way by the lifeguard. Plod arrived. Plod on water. Plod on a jet-ski, carefully brought into shore without the engine in full blast. More discussion.

Windsurfing, unlike jet-skis and kitesurfing is not particularly dangerous in terms of potential harm to other sea users. So long as there are not many of them and the windsurfer knows what he or she is doing. As soon as there are a load of them and those who don't know what they're doing, then there is the potential for harm. Hence, you cannot windsurf wherever takes your fancy. Them's the rules. Except for those who believe that the rules are there for others. It is not a uniquely Spanish thing, but there is a definite trait that says rules are for others - this manifests itself in various ways, one of which is bringing the windsurf board, the jet-ski or the kite to the beaches where they shouldn't be. Probably along with the dog as well.

The kitesurfing that occurs at La Marina has become something of a sightseeing spot. When the wind is blowing, as it often does there, the skies are full of colour and of Charlie Browners performing mobes. It is a spectacle. But unfortunately it is also quite dangerous. Not because of the kitesurfing per se, but because of the rubber-neckers, the Charlie Browners (kitesurfers) themselves and those drivers who just suddenly stop. The road here is a blackspot, which is why there are always floral tributes. The kitesurfers wander and run across the road to their cars; tourists pull up with little warning or poodle along too slowly. There's going to be an incident there.


Museum piece
More on museums. The Inca footwear museum controversy continues. The opposition Partido Popular at the town hall has denounced the extra costs of 800,000 euros for the museum. It says that it has been known for five years that extra funding would be needed and that the whole project has been a "botched job". Meanwhile, the projected new Pollentia museum in Alcúdia is to be funded courtesy of money from the central government. The sub-director for state museums, and there is such an individual, has promised the consortium (the town hall and agencies of the Mallorca Council and regional government) that the money will be forthcoming under budgets for 2011. So, work is unlikely to start till then. The level of funding has not been disclosed but is believed to be in the region of three million euros.

And still on local project funding. Threequarters of a million euros have been forked out to create the park by La Gola in Puerto Pollensa. This has been a colossal waste of money. It should have been reserved only to keep the water clean and free of the stagnation it has been prone to; the rest, pointless. Doubly pointless as the park is not being maintained properly. It is full of dog shit and litter and benches have graffiti. One has the impression that officialdom has washed its hands of the whole thing; there hasn't even been an official opening.


Palma bombs
Two bombs in bar-restaurants in Palma. No injuries. A third has gone off in the Plaza Mayor. There was a call purporting to come from ETA. The chief prosecutor for the Balearics believes that this indicates the likelihood of there being an ETA group on the island.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Shakira, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL0xp6XIp0Y. Today's title - one of the greatest songs ever.

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Walking In My Shoes

They've got the hump in Puerto Pollensa: several humps, sleeping policemen, zebra bumps. Along the coast road, raised crossings, Newcastle United stripes on mounds, traffic calmers. No more pedestrianisation, but instead more ways of slowing the cars. Things that go bump in the night and in the day. So many humps - concrete, plastic, plastic falling to pieces, exposing bolts that rip open tyres, concrete humps that deflate, rock the suspension. At least the coast road humps are gentler, assuming they are not taken at high speed; they are smooth-curved, not the kerb variety of raised crossings in front of the parking in Puerto Alcúdia. These are car-friendly and pedestrian-friendly. No vehicle should travel at high velocity along that coast road, certainly not at this time of year. People emerge, emerge from the invisibility caused by parked cars, step out, cross when least expected. The crossings in Playa de Muro are a menace, the crossers shielded by hedge, palm or car. They should also be raised on a gentle slope.


Museums. I have been less than complimentary about them in the past. They are too often of the past with no sense of the contemporary in their style or their interactivity. There is meant to be a new museum in Inca. One devoted to footwear. Well there is a new museum - nearly. It has been projected for years, but it may be a while yet. The town hall doesn't have the money to open and maintain it; the building itself is not that far from completion. The town hall wants the tourism ministry to cough up. Its argument is that the museum is not just one for Inca but for the whole island. It also says, however, that help from the museum would be a part of the development of a strategic plan for tourism in Inca. The two points don't quite match up, but be that as it may. A question is how much of an impact a museum of footwear would have for tourism. It may be an important aspect of the Inca and Mallorcan economies - and there are few companies more important than Camper in terms of international business - but would it really have tourists coming in great numbers? Probably depends what goes in it. The mayor of Inca wants a museum "that works" and not just a "grand exhibition" (as quoted in translation from "The Diario"). Quite what that means I'm not sure. One might have hoped that they would have sorted that out by now as the opening is meant to be in November. Not without that money from the ministry it won't be.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Enrique Iglesias; his grandfather was kidnapped by ETA: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3hb78_enrique-iglesias-amigo-vulnerable_music. Today's title - who?

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Art For Art's Sake

Jeremy Paxman believes that the British spend too much time watching television and that television they watch in great droves, like "Britain's Got Talent", represents time that would be better spent going to the likes of art galleries. There was a discussion of this on Stephen Nolan's Five Live show, with Rod Liddle basically agreeing with Paxman, while readily admitting he was being elitist.

This is not a discussion for this blog, but it acts as a neat point of entry to Alcúdia town hall's current list of events - painting exhibition, pottery exhibition and a theatrical production in Catalan. These should have tourists turning up in their droves. Ah but, you say, these are just for local people. In the main yes, but not exclusively. Either way, they still fall firmly into the category - worthy but dull. Well can one imagine the excitement generated around the pools of Bellevue at the news that a German artist has got a few pictures hanging in the library in the old town. Don't all rush at once.

It was pleasing to hear views on the Nolan programme that museums and their like should be places of interactivity and of entertainment, a point I have made myself in respect of the planned new Pollentia museum. For the couch-potato, TV-watching, double-Susan Boyle-sized Philistine Brits, read the sun lounger-potato, double-Susan Boyle-sized Philistine Brit tourists, also TV watching, be it "Talent" or the Cup Final at the nearest bar, when they could be looking blankly at some ceramics or attending a play in an indecipherable language.

This is not to say that the town hall shouldn't put on these events, but it is to say that if they seriously believe tourists are going to take much notice, then they should think again. Recently, it was announced that the summer Via Fora programme (the dramatised street productions) would be held inside the walls of the old town and not just outside them - as has been the case. Boy, that's a major innovation. Sadly, much as the Via Fora historical representations are quite good, they also fail to inspire the tourist to vacate his bar stool. Why not do one in English and stage it in the Bellevue show garden? The history of Alcúdia with loads of flashing lights, blokes with swords, hologram religious icons weeping; that sort of malarkey. A sort of Pirates with only the odd pirate and loads of Romans and Moors. Far too unauthentic probably, and Heaven forbid it shouldn't be in Catalan, but you know something, I reckon they'd be packed out. Actually, forget it, Alcúdia town hall. Don't bother reading this. I'm on the phone to a theatrical impresario. Or maybe Paxman's got a few bob knocking around he'd care to invest.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Scott Joplin, "A Real Slow Drag". Today's title - despite the normal story advanced, apparently their name came (sic) from a dream that Jonathan King had. But what had he been dreaming about to lead to that name?

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Still Crazy After All These Years

There's going to be another "day" soon. On Monday to be exact. Know what it is? Go on, you must know. No. Oh well, not that surprising. It will in fact be the 31st international museum day. There. I'm sure you're glad about that. I confess that I had not, until today, known that there was such a day. That would be 30 previous years that had passed me, and probably you, by. I only know that this will be the 31st because Alcúdia town hall emailed me; the Pollentia museum and the Roman town will be participating.

What is this museum day precisely? It is organised by the International Council of Museums, and this year's theme is "museums and tourism". That, I suppose, is why the town hall and the Balearic Government's tourism ministry are giving it their backing. According to the ICOM website, museums - including, one supposes, the one in Alcúdia - will "be celebrating ethical, responsible, sustainable tourism, showing how heritage can bring tourists and local communities together in new, mutually beneficial relationships". A grand vision. And quite frankly, it sounds like tosh. In other pronouncements on the site are references to "sustainable cultural tourism". We've been to the sustainable tourism theme before, now we must add a second adjective - cultural. It all sounds very laudable, but what on earth does it mean? Doubtless the ICOM have a clear idea, as probably do some "museum professionals" to which the council also refers. But does the tourist in the street or traipsing around the museum care a jot whether it is sustainable? And would he know it if it were to be presented to him or her?

I sense in all this a distance, a distance between the grand ideas and philosophies of bodies such as the council and the public. How precisely should heritage "bring tourists and local communities together in new, mutually beneficial relationships"? Let me suggest that it is not by presenting that heritage in a sterile manner and it is not in a manner that does not benefit local economies. In simple terms, there has to be some monetary advantage; that sounds more like sustainability to me. This all relates, in the local context, to the creation of the new museum for Pollentia in Alcúdia. A mutually beneficial relationship would be one that attracted new tourists and a far greater number of existing tourists who might not otherwise be inclined to go to the museum. And that is done by making it exciting. Sustainable cultural tourism can only be sustained if there are people who are willing to actively engage in it, i.e. by visiting a museum. It will not be sustained and therefore sustainable if it is just dull, which is what many museums can be. And that dullness is merely reinforced by the rather pompous, albeit worthy, mission statements and the rest of the International Council of Museums. When they come to dreaming up the theme for the 32nd year of the International Museum Day, here's an idea they might wish to consider. Museums and Fun. Making museums sustainable by making them places where everyone can have a damn good time. It doesn't mean doing away with the heritage; precisely the opposite. It means promoting it in a way that appeals to a contemporary tourist.

Link to the site for the International Council of Museums - http://www.icom.museum/


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Paul Hardcastle, "Nineteen" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSGvqjVHik8). Today's title - well, crazy is probably overdoing it, but after 30 years ...? Anyway, who was this?

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Physical Attraction

Well over a year after the announcement of the new museum for Pollentia in Alcúdia (27 August 2007, "It's Build A House Where We Can Stay"), they're finally getting round to drawing up a draft plan. Well, not quite yet; don't let's get too excited, it'll be another three months or so. But they're working on it. These things take time, you know. They don't happen overnight. Like the power station conversion; that's only - what - getting on for two years since they set that all in motion. The fact that they haven't got the finance sorted out - or hadn't when they made a presentation a month or so back at the Auditorium - is a mere trifle. No, no, these things must take time, especially as so many need to have their say-so. In the case of the new Pollentia museum, the consortium overseeing it involves the town hall, central Mallorcan bods and also Madrid, and it is Madrid which is actually paying for the museum, so I suppose they have an interest to make sure it goes according to plan, unlike other local developments, such as Can Ramis.

And talking of consortia ... The new tourism promotion consortium in Muro - to which I referred on 2 December ("And There's A Message That I'm Sending Out") - has been active. Know what it's gone and done? It's produced a leaflet. Know what's included in this leaflet, one that's to be available at the Fitur tourism fair in Madrid next week? Included is the fact that the golf course on the Son Bosc finca near to Playa de Muro is one of the "main tourist attractions" in the northern area (quote taken in translation from "The Diario"). There is one slight drawback. There is no golf course. Well, not yet, there isn't. And there are still various hoops to pass through, to say nothing of militant enviros strapping themselves to rare orchids in defiance of bulldozers, which may yet prevent the course ever seeing the light of an early-morning tee-off. The piece in The Diario mentions the fact that the website of one of the main parties in the consortium - the hotel association - says that a golf course is being planned. I had pointed this out myself in the article of 2 December. But note that it is being planned. There is a fair difference, I would say, between planned and being one of the main tourist attractions.

I'm no expert but something tells me that, unless something actually physically exists, it is stretching a point to suggest that it is an attraction. The mayor of Muro doesn't seem to have too much difficulty with all this, given that the only thing holding the golf development back is a modification to the project - that to avoid the rare orchid where the eighth hole was originally meant to have gone. It may well be the case that everything else is more or less tickety-boo, but only the other day we had the minister for mobility giving the course the thumbs-down, albeit that he seemed to have placed himself firmly in the enviros' camp (16 January: "Land Of Confusion").

It's good, though, that the Muro consortium has got its arse in gear and is heading off to Madrid to do some promotion. There is nothing wrong with that at all. However, if someone books a holiday on the basis of a golf course, are they not going to be slightly disappointed? Or. I can imagine at the Fitur fair someone approaching a Muro representative, clutching the relevant promotional literature and asking about the golf course. "Ah yes," would come the reply. "It isn't actually built yet." "But it says here that it is one of the area's main tourist attractions." "Yes, well, it will be. But not just yet." "When is it likely to be?" "Erm, well, erm, can you wait there a minute, I just need to have a word with my colleague..." Actually it would be worth taking a flight to Madrid just so that one could go to the Muro stand and ask them about their golf course. Priceless.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Robert De Niro's Waiting", Bananarama (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N7fZ1UiacI). Today's title - it's included in what was an enormous reggae hit for an American-Jamaican who, so it is claimed, takes his name from a Scooby-Doo character.

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It’s Build A House Where We Can Stay

There’s a new museum on the way. The Alcúdia town hall has agreed that the central Culture Ministry (in a consortium with the town hall, the Balearic Government and the Mallorca Council) will take responsibility for the construction of a new Pollentia Museum (Pollentia being the Roman town). This will be sited opposite the school (close to Mercadona and next to Sa Romana restaurant) on the Calle Pollentia. The hope is that this will offer something more dynamic than the current small museum next to the Sant Jaume church. Well, we’ll see. To be brutally frank, the current museum is a tad unimpressive, so anything would be an improvement. With the mooted arts and sciences museum on the site of the old power station by the commercial port (23 May: Red Rain), the new building will give - in the words of Ultima Hora - “a great impulse to cultural tourism in the north of Mallorca”. Maybe. I’m yet to be convinced, though if the power station site really does have something exciting, that impulse could yet be realised.


PROPERTY MARKET
The hike in interest rates coming from the European Central Bank is having a negative effect in the sense that - obviously - mortgage repayments have risen substantially. Moreover, according to the head of the association of Balearic estate agents, the interest rises have caused a fall in demand by as much as 20%. While defaults are not necessarily going to happen, the Spanish central bank has nevertheless called on banks to try and prevent defaulting (which has, presumably, to mean a limit on credit). Putting this in context, there has been an annual 7% increase in the granting of loans/mortgages over the past three years. So, while the property market has been buoyant, the worry is that it has been predicated - as in other countries - on too-easy credit. Talking to local estate agents, it is clear that the market has, certainly at the lower and middle ends, all but ground to a halt.


QUIZ
Yesterday - Joni Mitchell. Today’s title is a line from ... ?

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