Pollensa town hall is to spend 277,500 euros on a collection of photos. This isn't any old collection. It is one that will be bought so that it remains the property of the people of Pollensa. It is the Bestard archive, one of the most famous and most important of all photographic collections in Mallorca.
The town hall will make four separate and equal payments over four years. In return, it will receive part of the collection every three months. The photos will be catalogued and stored in Can Llobera, the family home of the Pollensa poet Miquel Costa i Llobera. Eventually, there will be a room at the Pollensa Museum which will be used for a permanent exhibition. There would need to be a fair amount of space, if they were to in fact display the whole collection at one time. The exact number of photos isn't known for sure, but it is believed to be as many 400,000: they were taken over a period of one hundred years by three different generations.
The decision to purchase the collection was made at last week's council meeting. At that meeting it was also agreed to start the procedure by which Guillem Bestard will be named an illustrious son of Pollensa. It was Guillem who started it all off. The year was 1898.
The Bestard family ran an inn. A German painter came to Pollensa in 1898 and stayed at the inn. Guillem was seventeen; the painter introduced him to the camera. The rest was history that endured until 2006, and it is a history that has acquired a worth of more than a quarter of a million euros. While one might sometimes question town hall spending, there surely cannot be any criticism of this investment: one of the most remarkable archives that reveals Mallorca from the start of the last century.
The name Bestard can often be found on old photos of Mallorca. The majority of the photos that Guillem took in the early years were landscapes and scenes of fishing villages, such as his own - Puerto Pollensa. But he had a broader scope. He photographed Antoni Maura in 1910. Maura was the first and only Mallorcan to have been the prime minister of Spain.
His fame spread beyond Mallorca. His work was used for the Madrid daily newspaper El Sol. It was also featured in National Geographic. He received the gold medal for artistic photography at the international exhibition in Paris of 1910; other awards were to follow.
The early work in the Bestard archive is one of only a handful of collections to have survived. Another is that of Josep Truyol. While renowned as a photographer, Truyol had another claim to fame: he was one of the pioneers of film in Mallorca, if not the pioneer.
The claim to having been Mallorca's first photographer is somewhat disputed. One name who stands out in this regard was a Frenchman - Jules Virenque Chastain. He came to Mallorca in 1855. Three years later, he married Francesca Simó. The couple opened a photographic studio in Palma. Virenque was to become friendly with the Austrian Archduke Louis Salvador. His photos were to form the basis of illustrations in the Archduke's master work, Die Balearen. There is one very famous photo of the Archduke and family. The precise year is unclear, but Virenque died in 1876; the Archduke had arrived in Mallorca nine years earlier.
The Welsh photographer Charles Clifford, whose career as a photographer was developed in Spain, took photos of Queen Isabel II when she visited Mallorca in 1860. The official album of that visit is in the safekeeping of Palma town hall.
Then there was also one Francisco Muntaner Llampayes. He was from a family of engravers based in Palma and he collaborated with an industrialist and intellectual, Bartolomé Sureda, and Pere d'Alcàntara Penya, who nowadays has fame as the writer of the Sa Colcada poem that it is recited every New Year's Eve to mark the conquest of Jaume I in 1229.
Anyway, it would seem that Muntaner began using collotype (invented by the Frenchman Alphonse Louis Poitevin in 1856) for works by Sureda and Alcàntara Penya, which appeared in the first travel guide to the Balearic Islands. Muntaner wasn't really a photographer; he sought ways to improve other processes. But in some circles he is described as Mallorca's first photographer. Whether he was or he wasn't, he helped pave the way for those who were to follow, such as Guillem Bestard.
Showing posts with label Pollensa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pollensa. Show all posts
Monday, February 26, 2018
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
The Story Of Mallorca's Squares
The origin of the town or village square is pretty obvious. It was the nucleus of the village. Its function was the same in most societies, but in the case of Mallorca and Spain, the square tended to be where political and religious power was at its most evident. Town halls could be on the square, so could the parish church.
This is by no means the case in all Mallorca's "pueblos", but there are examples of this conjunction of secular and religious authority surrounding the focal centre. Muro is one. Its imposing Sant Joan Baptista Church stares across at the Ajuntament, and the Ajuntament stares back. Yet oddly perhaps, the square over which both stare is not like most squares. It isn't also surrounded by bars, cafés and restaurants.
Sa Pobla is another example and it is more representative of the Mallorcan square in that it does have the bars. At one end of the rectangular square is the town hall; at the other end, the church. This is, moreover, a Plaça Major, the main or biggest square. In Muro, they named the square after a count, the Comte d'Empúries (Ponç I, if memory serves correct).
The main square is therefore not always "Major". In some villages, it has largely ceased to have a name. Algaida, Bunyola, Sineu and Soller, here are places where it is commonly just "Sa Plaça". In the case of Soller, it is the Constitution Square. Alcudia has one of these as well. It was the original main square before being superseded by the area that combines a square - Carles V - with two promenades in making up the principal market zone. There are plenty of places which have a specific Plaça Mercat, but not Alcudia.
So ingrained into local society are the squares that they have inspired writings. In Alcudia, the author Alexandre Cuéllar penned Café de Plaça, a tribute to a Mallorcan type of café society of the late 1950s, one that would just watch the world go by and which was essentially a satire on idleness.
There are of course numerous squares in the villages or towns, some of which aren't really squares at all. They are just areas. Can Picafort, for example, has a Plaça Cervantes. It isn't a square but a broader part of the seafront prom. But such is the affinity with the concept of a square that names can be assigned even if they are inaccurate.
Some squares just seem to emerge, and they do so - or at least this is how it appears - in order to locate fiesta events. Puerto Alcudia has a Plaça Varadero. In reality, it is - like Can Picafort - part of the prom. It doesn't conform to the notion of a square, not least because one side of it is the sea and two more sides are just extensions of the prom.
The squares, the sheer number of them, conceal their own places in village history. Pollensa has a Plaça Major with a parish church but no evidence of local administration. Otherwise, it is a perfect example of the square, with an iconic bar (Ca'n Moixet) and various others. But it has only comparatively recently become the main square. The process started in the middle of the nineteenth century. They've even determined when - 1856. The square grew around the parish church, the first stone for which had been laid in 1714. The church, as it now is, took more than 150 years to complete, but its presence created what became the nucleus of the village and still is.
Before the Plaça Major, there was the Plaça Vella, which presumably had another name at some point (or maybe they hadn't bothered with a name). The old square dates from the fourteenth century. Streets that lead off it are the oldest in Pollensa, and so the old square was possibly the original nucleus. It has its own peculiar place in current-day culture because it is the square where they raise and climb the pine for Sant Antoni, assuming that it doesn't snap, like it did last week.
But Plaça Vella was probably not the first square. The Plaça Almoina, barely a square at all, given how small it is, is from the Middle Ages. It took its name from the Almoina "casa", a charity for the poor. The Valencian saint, Vicent Ferrer, preached in Pollensa in the fourteenth century, and there is an image of him on the Almoina house. The square is where streets such as Joan Mas converge, and it was named after the hero captain who led the local Christians to victory over the Moors. Plaça Almoina is the starting-point for the famous re-enactment.
Behind the squares, therefore, there is a great deal of the past. They aren't just simply places to sit, have a coffee or beer and watch the world go by. That square you're in today? What's its story?
This is by no means the case in all Mallorca's "pueblos", but there are examples of this conjunction of secular and religious authority surrounding the focal centre. Muro is one. Its imposing Sant Joan Baptista Church stares across at the Ajuntament, and the Ajuntament stares back. Yet oddly perhaps, the square over which both stare is not like most squares. It isn't also surrounded by bars, cafés and restaurants.
Sa Pobla is another example and it is more representative of the Mallorcan square in that it does have the bars. At one end of the rectangular square is the town hall; at the other end, the church. This is, moreover, a Plaça Major, the main or biggest square. In Muro, they named the square after a count, the Comte d'Empúries (Ponç I, if memory serves correct).
The main square is therefore not always "Major". In some villages, it has largely ceased to have a name. Algaida, Bunyola, Sineu and Soller, here are places where it is commonly just "Sa Plaça". In the case of Soller, it is the Constitution Square. Alcudia has one of these as well. It was the original main square before being superseded by the area that combines a square - Carles V - with two promenades in making up the principal market zone. There are plenty of places which have a specific Plaça Mercat, but not Alcudia.
So ingrained into local society are the squares that they have inspired writings. In Alcudia, the author Alexandre Cuéllar penned Café de Plaça, a tribute to a Mallorcan type of café society of the late 1950s, one that would just watch the world go by and which was essentially a satire on idleness.
There are of course numerous squares in the villages or towns, some of which aren't really squares at all. They are just areas. Can Picafort, for example, has a Plaça Cervantes. It isn't a square but a broader part of the seafront prom. But such is the affinity with the concept of a square that names can be assigned even if they are inaccurate.
Some squares just seem to emerge, and they do so - or at least this is how it appears - in order to locate fiesta events. Puerto Alcudia has a Plaça Varadero. In reality, it is - like Can Picafort - part of the prom. It doesn't conform to the notion of a square, not least because one side of it is the sea and two more sides are just extensions of the prom.
The squares, the sheer number of them, conceal their own places in village history. Pollensa has a Plaça Major with a parish church but no evidence of local administration. Otherwise, it is a perfect example of the square, with an iconic bar (Ca'n Moixet) and various others. But it has only comparatively recently become the main square. The process started in the middle of the nineteenth century. They've even determined when - 1856. The square grew around the parish church, the first stone for which had been laid in 1714. The church, as it now is, took more than 150 years to complete, but its presence created what became the nucleus of the village and still is.
Before the Plaça Major, there was the Plaça Vella, which presumably had another name at some point (or maybe they hadn't bothered with a name). The old square dates from the fourteenth century. Streets that lead off it are the oldest in Pollensa, and so the old square was possibly the original nucleus. It has its own peculiar place in current-day culture because it is the square where they raise and climb the pine for Sant Antoni, assuming that it doesn't snap, like it did last week.
But Plaça Vella was probably not the first square. The Plaça Almoina, barely a square at all, given how small it is, is from the Middle Ages. It took its name from the Almoina "casa", a charity for the poor. The Valencian saint, Vicent Ferrer, preached in Pollensa in the fourteenth century, and there is an image of him on the Almoina house. The square is where streets such as Joan Mas converge, and it was named after the hero captain who led the local Christians to victory over the Moors. Plaça Almoina is the starting-point for the famous re-enactment.
Behind the squares, therefore, there is a great deal of the past. They aren't just simply places to sit, have a coffee or beer and watch the world go by. That square you're in today? What's its story?
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Sant Antoni 2018
Tonight (Saturday) there are demons correfocs in Pollensa and Sa Pobla. On Tuesday night it's the turn of Alcudia and Muro. The animals' blessings are as they always are on 17 January (Wednesday, the day of Sant Antoni), which is also the day for all the palaver with getting the pine trees from Formentor and the Ternelles finca. The pine climbs are at the same times as ever, but there's one big difference in Pollensa - there's no actual cockerel. It's been banned.
Choice of image - the Alcudia poster. Seems the most demonic of all.
Wherever and however you choose to celebrate Sant Antoni, enjoy. I know you will. They're the greatest fiestas of the year and, although they are celebrated across Mallorca, we really have the very best of them in the northern area.
Saturday, 13 January
Muro
19.30: Procession of pipers followed by lighting of the bonfire.
20.00: Concert by pipers - Xeremiers de Muro Es Reguinyol and Xafigà de Muro (Alicante). Municipal theatre, C. Joan Carles I.
21.15: Barbecue. In front of the town hall.
Pollensa
20.00: Correfoc with Dimonis Ca de Bou children's gang. Joan March Gardens. 20.30: Barbecue.
22.30: Correfoc - Dimonis Ca de Bou, Dimonis Hiachat de Santa Margalida, Fills de Lucifer de Búger. Joan March Gardens.
Sa Pobla
11.00: Procession of children's caparrot (bighead) workshop, plus pipers. C. Rosari to Plaça Major.
20.15: Sa Pobla Choir and the Sant Antoni Choir and the goigs for Sant Antoni. At the church.
24.00: "Redempció" - demons correfoc. Dimonis i Tamborers d'Albopàs and Dimonis de sa Pedrera de Muro. Followed by barbecue. Plaça Major.
Sunday, 14 January
Pollensa
19.30: Glosadors, pipers and others. Club Pollença, Plaça Major. Pay as you wish.
Sa Pobla
17.30: Sant Antoni folk dance, with the group Abenlara. Plaça Alexandre Ballester.
Tuesday, 16 January
Alcudia
16.30: Sant Antoni and the demons (plus pipers) leave the town hall. Procession and the occasional "kidnapping" of a child.
20.00: Bonfire, botifarró, llonganissa, bread and drink (one euro). Plaça Constitució. Bonfire and folk dance in Plaça Carles V.
22.30: Correfoc - Dimonis de sa Cova des Fossar. From the town hall to Plaça Carles V.
Muro
19.45: Procession of the demons, Sant Antoni and the Unió Artística Murera Band of Music. From Plaça Convent to Plaça Comte d'Empúries.
20.15: Dance of the demons and Sant Antoni. Plaça Comte d'Empúries.
20.30: Lighting of the bonfires with Dimonis de sa Pedrera, Bruixes de Mallorca, Dimonis Trabukats. Correfoc fire-run and spectacular. Plaça Comte d'Empúries.
23.00: Traditional music - Revetla d'Algebelí and Germans Martorell. Plaça Comte d'Empúries.
24.00: Islanders plus DJ. Plaça Sant Martí.
Pollensa / Puerto Pollensa
21.00: Lighting of the bonfires.
Sa Pobla
14.30: Departure of the demons and Sant Antoni and procession through the streets and squares of the town.
18.45: Ceremony of the historical sanctioning for the start of Sant Antoni Eve. In front of the town hall.
19.45: Departure of the paralympic demons of Grif, the demons d'Albopàs, the demons of the Obreria (Sant Antoni) and of the town hall, plus giants, bigheads, junior bigheads and the Sa Pobla band of music. From the town hall to the church.
20.00: Compline and acclamation of Sant Antoni.
21.15: Dance of the demons and of the gangs of bigheads and junior bigheads, accompanied by the Sa Pobla band of music.
21.30: Pyromusical spectacular. Plaça Major.
22.15: Gathering of singers and ximbomba players. Plaça Major.
00.30: Grand ximbombada and glosada - ximbomba playing and reciting of folk/satirical tales, verses and poems. Plaça Major.
Wednesday, 17 January
Alcudia
16.00: Traditional blessings of the animals, plus performance by Sarau Alcudienc (folk dance). From Passeig Pere Ventayol.
Muro
10.30: Firing of rockets and planting of giants in front of the town hall.
11.00: Mass in honour of Sant Antoni with the Miquel Tortell Muro Choir.
15.00: Ringing of bells.
15.30: Traditional blessings and parade of floats.
Pollensa
10.15: Traditional procession and animal blessings.
11.30: Setting off from Plaça Almoina to the Ternelles finca.
12.30: Lunch at Ternelles.
14.00: Departure of the pine.
19.00: Raising of the pine. Plaça Vella.
Puerto Pollensa
09.00: Bus leaves from behind the church to go to Formentor.
11.30: Procession and animal blessings.
12.00: The pine arrives in the port.
13.30: Planting of the pine in Plaça Miquel Capllonch.
Sa Pobla
10.00: Procession with the pipers Germans Aloy.
11.00: Solemn mass plus offering of farm produce and dance with Marjal en Festa.
12.30: Dance of the caparrot bigheads and young caparrots. Plaça Major.
15.30: Blessing of the animals in the church square with the pipers Germans Aloy and Xerebiols and the giants Antoni and Margalida.
16.00: Parade of floats, accompanied by the band of cornets of the Sant Antoni brotherhood and the demons of the Obreria de Sant Antoni.
Friday, 19 January
Sa Pobla (Sant Sebastià)
19.30: Gathering in C. Tresorer Cladera of Dimonis d'Albopàs and departure for Plaça Major and the lighting of the bonfires for Sant Sebastià.
Saturday, 20 January
Pollensa (Sant Sebastià)
19.30: Procession with the image of Saint Sebastian, of the Standard and of the cavallet horse dancers.
21.00: Dance of the cavallets at the bonfire in Plaça Major.
Sa Pobla
18.30: Line and ballroom dance, followed by barbecue (six euros). Plaça Mercat.
Saturday, December 30, 2017
From Wind To Wind: North Mallorca's Year
Wind and floods
January is a month in the north of Mallorca which is punctuated by the excitement for the Sant Antoni fiestas. Not everything went according to plan this year. There was weather.
The night of Sant Antoni Eve - bonfires and all - wasn't disrupted, despite the apparent madness of setting bonfires ablaze when the wind's howling. The closest thing there was to disaster was when an 18-year-old in an Audi decided to drive straight through a Sa Pobla bonfire. It was the next day when things went awry. The Formentor pine had to be transported over land rather than sea, and blessings were called off: Alcudia, Muro and Sa Pobla. Still, the pines were nevertheless climbed, which provoked its own spot of controversy - in Pollensa at any rate. Under-greased, the pine was a doddle, and the contest was all over in a few minutes.
The flooding in January led to the road that runs by the Albufera Nature Park from Playa de Muro to Sa Pobla having to be closed for several days. The Council of Mallorca came and had a look. The relevant councillor, Mercedes Garrido, said that there would be a plan for the road, about which nothing more was heard.
Valls and the cockerel
The Valls ice-cream kiosk saga dragged on. Pollensa town hall had said there would be a tender, then it said that there wouldn't be. It couldn't guarantee that the kiosk (whether in the same place or another) would be for the sale of "artisan" ice-cream or that the award would have to be to a local business; and by local the town hall meant from Pollensa.
The Sant Antoni cockerel (the one at the top of the Pollensa pine) was up for discussion. There was a council motion for the cockerel to be eliminated; 1992 animal-protection law regarding the use of animals in the "human environment" was cited. The motion was defeated. "Shameful," said the Alternativa per Pollença. Nevertheless, the mayor, Miquel Àngel March, who had been in favour of the motion, announced that there won't be a cockerel in January 2018.
Alcudia's name and pressure group
Salvem el Moll, the Puerto Alcudia pressure group, was regularly in the news, taking aim at Alcudiamar, the Balearic Ports Authority and Alcudia town hall. Was the fact that it only had 283 likes on its Facebook page (back in March) an indication of support? Numbers who turned out for its periodic protests barely reached double figures.
Muro town hall copped for some flak over a photo taken during the minute's silence for the Westminster terrorist attack. Of twelve people in the photo, only four had solemn expressions. The others were either smiling or laughing. If nothing else, could the town hall not have chosen another photo for its Facebook page?
Alcudia wanted to give its name to a car. The motor manufacturer Seat was introducing a new model and was looking for somewhere in Spain with a name that had to start with an A. The town hall therefore fired off a letter to Seat's president and advanced the case for the car to be the Seat Alcudia. It wasn't.
The bus station and no confidence
The Puerto Pollensa bus station (which we later learned isn't a bus station; just some bus stops) was finally approved, but not without an unholy row. So heated did things get that two councillors - Miquel Àngel Sureda (Junts) and Marti Roca (now unaccredited, formerly El Pi) - had something of a set-to. Denuncias were being threatened, etc, etc.
Miquel Àngel March, who had faced a possible vote of no confidence some months previously, was confronted with another one. This time, he himself threw down the gauntlet. It was all to do with approving the budget. He lost the vote, but there was never any possibility of his being replaced because the opposition was not in a position to muster sufficient votes. March knew this. The deadline for presenting an alternative to him passed, and so was the budget.
The students and wake park
The so-called Mallorca Island Festival at Bellevue, as each year, left a trail of complaints about noise, behaviour and vandalism. Also as each year, it was studiously ignored by the media. Was this to do with the fact that it was Spanish students causing the complaints? It may only have been three weeks, but there had to be some perspective: three weeks too many for residents denied sleep, for those whose cars were trampled on, for businesses which were robbed, for other businesses which suffered because a regular type of tourist wasn't present.
Members of the Spanish Royal Family came to Alcudia's Wake Park. The Queen Mother, Sofia, would have been among family members with no idea that the park on Lago Menor (aka Lake Placid) was the source of a row with the residents. One community had sent off a letter of complaint to the Costas Authority in Madrid about the noise from the zip system.
José's terrace
There was the war of José's chairs - José as in Bony in Puerto Pollensa. Full enforcement of Pollensa terrace and tables law had become an obsession of the town hall administration. The police turned up one evening in September. There were alternative versions. The police closed the bar. José decided to close it. Typically eccentric postings on Facebook only added to the confusion, but the situation was to settle down.
Salvem el Moll reappeared and was pressurising the town hall into closing the Alcudiamar Botel. Apparently, so it is claimed, there shouldn't be a hotel as such. The town hall said it wanted more information and wouldn't be acting in a "drastic" manner.
Catalonia and Monjo's route
Back at Pollensa town hall, the Catalonia referendum threatened to once more break the ruling pact between the Junts and the UMP. There was a compromise which avoided this, but the president of the UMP resigned in protest over a pro-referendum motion.
Santa Margalida's mayor, Joan Monjo, was livid that there was no tourist tax revenue for an archaeological route. It then emerged that this route would pass by an agrotourism establishment in Muro that is owned by the mayor. Monjo denied that this had anything to do with the project and that the route would in any event be some distance from the hotel.
The winds returned
And the year drew towards a close in similar fashion to how it had begun - with weather. The high winds of Cyclone Bruno contributed to the death of a windsurfer in Alcudia and whipped up a potentially disastrous fire in Puerto Pollensa.
January is a month in the north of Mallorca which is punctuated by the excitement for the Sant Antoni fiestas. Not everything went according to plan this year. There was weather.
The night of Sant Antoni Eve - bonfires and all - wasn't disrupted, despite the apparent madness of setting bonfires ablaze when the wind's howling. The closest thing there was to disaster was when an 18-year-old in an Audi decided to drive straight through a Sa Pobla bonfire. It was the next day when things went awry. The Formentor pine had to be transported over land rather than sea, and blessings were called off: Alcudia, Muro and Sa Pobla. Still, the pines were nevertheless climbed, which provoked its own spot of controversy - in Pollensa at any rate. Under-greased, the pine was a doddle, and the contest was all over in a few minutes.
The flooding in January led to the road that runs by the Albufera Nature Park from Playa de Muro to Sa Pobla having to be closed for several days. The Council of Mallorca came and had a look. The relevant councillor, Mercedes Garrido, said that there would be a plan for the road, about which nothing more was heard.
Valls and the cockerel
The Valls ice-cream kiosk saga dragged on. Pollensa town hall had said there would be a tender, then it said that there wouldn't be. It couldn't guarantee that the kiosk (whether in the same place or another) would be for the sale of "artisan" ice-cream or that the award would have to be to a local business; and by local the town hall meant from Pollensa.
The Sant Antoni cockerel (the one at the top of the Pollensa pine) was up for discussion. There was a council motion for the cockerel to be eliminated; 1992 animal-protection law regarding the use of animals in the "human environment" was cited. The motion was defeated. "Shameful," said the Alternativa per Pollença. Nevertheless, the mayor, Miquel Àngel March, who had been in favour of the motion, announced that there won't be a cockerel in January 2018.
Alcudia's name and pressure group
Salvem el Moll, the Puerto Alcudia pressure group, was regularly in the news, taking aim at Alcudiamar, the Balearic Ports Authority and Alcudia town hall. Was the fact that it only had 283 likes on its Facebook page (back in March) an indication of support? Numbers who turned out for its periodic protests barely reached double figures.
Muro town hall copped for some flak over a photo taken during the minute's silence for the Westminster terrorist attack. Of twelve people in the photo, only four had solemn expressions. The others were either smiling or laughing. If nothing else, could the town hall not have chosen another photo for its Facebook page?
Alcudia wanted to give its name to a car. The motor manufacturer Seat was introducing a new model and was looking for somewhere in Spain with a name that had to start with an A. The town hall therefore fired off a letter to Seat's president and advanced the case for the car to be the Seat Alcudia. It wasn't.
The bus station and no confidence
The Puerto Pollensa bus station (which we later learned isn't a bus station; just some bus stops) was finally approved, but not without an unholy row. So heated did things get that two councillors - Miquel Àngel Sureda (Junts) and Marti Roca (now unaccredited, formerly El Pi) - had something of a set-to. Denuncias were being threatened, etc, etc.
Miquel Àngel March, who had faced a possible vote of no confidence some months previously, was confronted with another one. This time, he himself threw down the gauntlet. It was all to do with approving the budget. He lost the vote, but there was never any possibility of his being replaced because the opposition was not in a position to muster sufficient votes. March knew this. The deadline for presenting an alternative to him passed, and so was the budget.
The students and wake park
The so-called Mallorca Island Festival at Bellevue, as each year, left a trail of complaints about noise, behaviour and vandalism. Also as each year, it was studiously ignored by the media. Was this to do with the fact that it was Spanish students causing the complaints? It may only have been three weeks, but there had to be some perspective: three weeks too many for residents denied sleep, for those whose cars were trampled on, for businesses which were robbed, for other businesses which suffered because a regular type of tourist wasn't present.
Members of the Spanish Royal Family came to Alcudia's Wake Park. The Queen Mother, Sofia, would have been among family members with no idea that the park on Lago Menor (aka Lake Placid) was the source of a row with the residents. One community had sent off a letter of complaint to the Costas Authority in Madrid about the noise from the zip system.
José's terrace
There was the war of José's chairs - José as in Bony in Puerto Pollensa. Full enforcement of Pollensa terrace and tables law had become an obsession of the town hall administration. The police turned up one evening in September. There were alternative versions. The police closed the bar. José decided to close it. Typically eccentric postings on Facebook only added to the confusion, but the situation was to settle down.
Salvem el Moll reappeared and was pressurising the town hall into closing the Alcudiamar Botel. Apparently, so it is claimed, there shouldn't be a hotel as such. The town hall said it wanted more information and wouldn't be acting in a "drastic" manner.
Catalonia and Monjo's route
Back at Pollensa town hall, the Catalonia referendum threatened to once more break the ruling pact between the Junts and the UMP. There was a compromise which avoided this, but the president of the UMP resigned in protest over a pro-referendum motion.
Santa Margalida's mayor, Joan Monjo, was livid that there was no tourist tax revenue for an archaeological route. It then emerged that this route would pass by an agrotourism establishment in Muro that is owned by the mayor. Monjo denied that this had anything to do with the project and that the route would in any event be some distance from the hotel.
The winds returned
And the year drew towards a close in similar fashion to how it had begun - with weather. The high winds of Cyclone Bruno contributed to the death of a windsurfer in Alcudia and whipped up a potentially disastrous fire in Puerto Pollensa.
Monday, October 16, 2017
Rentals In Pollensa: Legality Full Stop
You do come across some strange snippets of suspect information. A recent example, in the form of a comment, said that a business owner with a large-scale apartment block (fully tourist) had told the person who left the comment that "responsibility for defining who can/cannot rent has been passed to the local mayor".
Firstly I wondered what this large-scale (fully tourist) apartment block could mean. One has to suppose that it is one of those buildings with a tourism ministry licence with an activity as tourist apartments - the AT designation. If so, then the rentals' legislation is irrelevant. But more importantly was the bit about the local mayor. Where does this stuff come from? A mayor, a town hall is in no position to make this definition. A mayor may be, will be consulted about provisions stemming from the holiday rentals' law, but it is the Council of Mallorca which defines where rentals will be (the zoning) and it is the tourism ministry which grants licences (or not).
If mayors really were in this position, then this week's meeting in Pollensa with Miquel Àngel March would have had a quite different outcome. The mayor and Tomeu Cifre Bennàsar (urban planning) met with the Puerto Pollensa and Cala San Vicente residents' associations, the Pollensa trade association, the Pollensa restaurants' association and the association for holiday villa businesses. The result of the meeting was a lemon. The mayor said that he believed that there will be few restrictions on holiday rentals in Pollensa, suggesting that Mercedes Garrido, the Council of Mallorca councillor with ultimate responsibility for zoning decisions, has intimated this. The mayor may be right, but he was making it clear - as if this were needed - that it isn't he who makes these decisions.
They got together presumably so they could lobby the mayor in making the strongest possible representations to the Council. The mayor, one assumes, is already fully aware that Pollensa's tourism economy has a high dependency on rentals. He would probably already have known, as the Cala San Vicente people pointed out, that this part of the municipality is particularly reliant. Rentals, the Cala San Vicente association said, are a question of "survival" for what is the "most depressed" area of Pollensa.
The mayor, it shouldn't be forgotten, is a former spokesperson for GOB, the environmentalists. They were the ones leading the "massification" demo in Palma last month. They are the ones who are agitating for limits. Rentals are intimately linked to the issues of massification and limits. But the mayor represents the whole of Pollensa, he is a guardian of municipal welfare, well-being and wealth. I wonder what he really thinks about rentals.
There won't be much zoning in Pollensa, said the mayor. Does he know this for certain? And the point with zoning is that even if there little of it, there is still the issue of the allocation of rentals' places. These have to be decided - almost 43,000 are available - for the whole of Mallorca: private accommodation and hotels. The amount is not great, if there is to be anything like some equality in distribution, while Pollensa - as we know - already has an exceptionally high number of legal rentals: the proportion is much greater than anywhere else.
It isn't just a fear that apartments won't be legalised in Pollensa. There is a further fear. It is raised by the following clause in the legislation: "It will not be possible to commercialise tourist stays in any dwelling for which a sanction has been imposed for a serious or very serious infraction of urban legality, so long as this legality remains unrestored." Has been imposed or could be imposed.
Pollensa, as well as being known for its high number or rental properties, is now just as well known for its urban planning infractions. The anti-corruption prosecution service demanded documentation from the town hall. It has been handed over. The Council of Mallorca's Agency for the Defence of Territory will be interested. We are talking here about villas, and it is a question not of holiday rental legality but of legality full stop. The tourism minister, Biel Barceló, when explaining that existing rentals will be unaffected by the legislation did provide a caveat: so long as the properties are themselves fully legal.
Firstly I wondered what this large-scale (fully tourist) apartment block could mean. One has to suppose that it is one of those buildings with a tourism ministry licence with an activity as tourist apartments - the AT designation. If so, then the rentals' legislation is irrelevant. But more importantly was the bit about the local mayor. Where does this stuff come from? A mayor, a town hall is in no position to make this definition. A mayor may be, will be consulted about provisions stemming from the holiday rentals' law, but it is the Council of Mallorca which defines where rentals will be (the zoning) and it is the tourism ministry which grants licences (or not).
If mayors really were in this position, then this week's meeting in Pollensa with Miquel Àngel March would have had a quite different outcome. The mayor and Tomeu Cifre Bennàsar (urban planning) met with the Puerto Pollensa and Cala San Vicente residents' associations, the Pollensa trade association, the Pollensa restaurants' association and the association for holiday villa businesses. The result of the meeting was a lemon. The mayor said that he believed that there will be few restrictions on holiday rentals in Pollensa, suggesting that Mercedes Garrido, the Council of Mallorca councillor with ultimate responsibility for zoning decisions, has intimated this. The mayor may be right, but he was making it clear - as if this were needed - that it isn't he who makes these decisions.
They got together presumably so they could lobby the mayor in making the strongest possible representations to the Council. The mayor, one assumes, is already fully aware that Pollensa's tourism economy has a high dependency on rentals. He would probably already have known, as the Cala San Vicente people pointed out, that this part of the municipality is particularly reliant. Rentals, the Cala San Vicente association said, are a question of "survival" for what is the "most depressed" area of Pollensa.
The mayor, it shouldn't be forgotten, is a former spokesperson for GOB, the environmentalists. They were the ones leading the "massification" demo in Palma last month. They are the ones who are agitating for limits. Rentals are intimately linked to the issues of massification and limits. But the mayor represents the whole of Pollensa, he is a guardian of municipal welfare, well-being and wealth. I wonder what he really thinks about rentals.
There won't be much zoning in Pollensa, said the mayor. Does he know this for certain? And the point with zoning is that even if there little of it, there is still the issue of the allocation of rentals' places. These have to be decided - almost 43,000 are available - for the whole of Mallorca: private accommodation and hotels. The amount is not great, if there is to be anything like some equality in distribution, while Pollensa - as we know - already has an exceptionally high number of legal rentals: the proportion is much greater than anywhere else.
It isn't just a fear that apartments won't be legalised in Pollensa. There is a further fear. It is raised by the following clause in the legislation: "It will not be possible to commercialise tourist stays in any dwelling for which a sanction has been imposed for a serious or very serious infraction of urban legality, so long as this legality remains unrestored." Has been imposed or could be imposed.
Pollensa, as well as being known for its high number or rental properties, is now just as well known for its urban planning infractions. The anti-corruption prosecution service demanded documentation from the town hall. It has been handed over. The Council of Mallorca's Agency for the Defence of Territory will be interested. We are talking here about villas, and it is a question not of holiday rental legality but of legality full stop. The tourism minister, Biel Barceló, when explaining that existing rentals will be unaffected by the legislation did provide a caveat: so long as the properties are themselves fully legal.
Sunday, September 24, 2017
Anti-Tourism: Is It All About Palma?
So, they held the demo against so-called tourist "massification" in Palma yesterday. You would expect a major demo - around fifty associations/organisations and perhaps some 5,000 people (in the end more like 3,000) - to be in Palma and not elsewhere. But is all this anti-tourism stuff essentially a Palma-driven thing?
Around and about in Alcudia and Pollensa there is no sense at all of any anti-tourism sentiment. This doesn't mean that people don't have misgivings, but manifestations of this sentiment are absent. There will be at least two groups from the local area taking part this evening - the Alternativa per Pollença party and Moviment Alcudienc - but then everywhere on the island has similar types of political party or local protest organisations. At least with the Alternativa one can say that it has been consistent in its views of over many years, which have been to defend quality of life and the environment, to challenge some at times daft policy and to attack corruption and lack of transparency. The Alternativa was pretty much like Podemos before Podemos was ever heard of.
Most of us can probably point to examples of "massification" or saturation. Cycling in the spring is one such. It causes a whole load of people to get aereated, it does make the roads more difficult, but on balance it is positive. The general level of traffic is another as are the resultant difficulties with parking. This is perhaps most evident in Playa de Muro - Section 2, the part from the bridge to the forest. In years gone by the numbers of parked cars used to only ever reach saturation point on Sundays. Now, there is saturation mostly every day in high summer.
So, there are examples and there will be gripes, but is all this protesting nevertheless mainly a phenomenon that has emanated and is emanating from Palma? That is where the most important politicians gather, it is where half of the island's population live, it is where they have views on things which aren't the same to those in the "part forana".
Alcudia has the odd cruise ship, but so few are they and so low are the overall passenger numbers that they have no impact at all. In Palma, of course, it's a different matter. It might be recalled that it was cruise ships which were a major factor in sparking off all the saturation discussion - saturation of Palma, nowhere else.
The strains being placed on accommodation are a potential source of anti-tourism sentiment. It was no great surprise to learn this week that Pollensa has the highest number of illegal rental places per head of population (as advertised on Airbnb) in the whole of Spain. It was more of a surprise to discover that Alcudia ranks fourth. Those adverts will now of course be fewer. Palma, as in the government, has seen to it that this should be so. By and large I agree with Palma for once. If a proper balance is restored between residential and tourist accommodation, then the government is right. The trouble is of course that the government has gone too far and seriously risks jeopardising tourism and related businesses: far less so in Alcudia because of the hotel capacity, much more so in Pollensa.
And this is the nub of the issue. Whatever Palma thinks, however Palma acts, it can seem blind to the fact that municipalities such as Alcudia and Pollensa are so dependent on tourism. One understands demands for less dependence, for greater economic diversification - and God knows, I've made enough of them myself over the years - but Palma appears to wish to deem, through rhetoric and regulation, what is good to satisfy the ideologies of its politicians but which is prejudicial to other communities.
The demo took place. There were demands for "de-growth" and what have you. But notwithstanding the presence of the Alternativa and the Moviment, it was still Palma's demo, an expression of aloof separatism which is unrecognisable with the realities of our local communities in the north of the island.
Around and about in Alcudia and Pollensa there is no sense at all of any anti-tourism sentiment. This doesn't mean that people don't have misgivings, but manifestations of this sentiment are absent. There will be at least two groups from the local area taking part this evening - the Alternativa per Pollença party and Moviment Alcudienc - but then everywhere on the island has similar types of political party or local protest organisations. At least with the Alternativa one can say that it has been consistent in its views of over many years, which have been to defend quality of life and the environment, to challenge some at times daft policy and to attack corruption and lack of transparency. The Alternativa was pretty much like Podemos before Podemos was ever heard of.
Most of us can probably point to examples of "massification" or saturation. Cycling in the spring is one such. It causes a whole load of people to get aereated, it does make the roads more difficult, but on balance it is positive. The general level of traffic is another as are the resultant difficulties with parking. This is perhaps most evident in Playa de Muro - Section 2, the part from the bridge to the forest. In years gone by the numbers of parked cars used to only ever reach saturation point on Sundays. Now, there is saturation mostly every day in high summer.
So, there are examples and there will be gripes, but is all this protesting nevertheless mainly a phenomenon that has emanated and is emanating from Palma? That is where the most important politicians gather, it is where half of the island's population live, it is where they have views on things which aren't the same to those in the "part forana".
Alcudia has the odd cruise ship, but so few are they and so low are the overall passenger numbers that they have no impact at all. In Palma, of course, it's a different matter. It might be recalled that it was cruise ships which were a major factor in sparking off all the saturation discussion - saturation of Palma, nowhere else.
The strains being placed on accommodation are a potential source of anti-tourism sentiment. It was no great surprise to learn this week that Pollensa has the highest number of illegal rental places per head of population (as advertised on Airbnb) in the whole of Spain. It was more of a surprise to discover that Alcudia ranks fourth. Those adverts will now of course be fewer. Palma, as in the government, has seen to it that this should be so. By and large I agree with Palma for once. If a proper balance is restored between residential and tourist accommodation, then the government is right. The trouble is of course that the government has gone too far and seriously risks jeopardising tourism and related businesses: far less so in Alcudia because of the hotel capacity, much more so in Pollensa.
And this is the nub of the issue. Whatever Palma thinks, however Palma acts, it can seem blind to the fact that municipalities such as Alcudia and Pollensa are so dependent on tourism. One understands demands for less dependence, for greater economic diversification - and God knows, I've made enough of them myself over the years - but Palma appears to wish to deem, through rhetoric and regulation, what is good to satisfy the ideologies of its politicians but which is prejudicial to other communities.
The demo took place. There were demands for "de-growth" and what have you. But notwithstanding the presence of the Alternativa and the Moviment, it was still Palma's demo, an expression of aloof separatism which is unrecognisable with the realities of our local communities in the north of the island.
Monday, June 26, 2017
The Death Of An Architect
Ferragut was also involved with the City of Lakes project in Alcudia. It was he who basically mapped out the canals, the lakes and the urban development on which the likes of Bellevue were to rise. Prior to his work in Alcudia, he had worked with another architect, Gabriel Alomar, on the project to redefine the centre of Palma. This involved, for example, the creation of the Jaume III avenue, the Passeig Mallorca and a new municipal market (Mercat de l'Olivar). The Plaça Major was completed as were the steps to connect it to La Rambla.
After the work in Alcudia, Ferragut was responsible for Palma's GESA building and the Església de Nostra Senyora dels Àngels de la Porciúncula, better known as the Glass Church of Playa de Palma. The church was consecrated on 6 October 1968. Ferragut didn't live to experience the moment.
He was active at the time when Mallorca was experiencing its tourism boom. Ferragut is generally characterised as an architect who took issue with uncontrolled development and the corruption that went hand in hand with it. He was also for a time the municipal architect in Pollensa and had fought against high-rise in Puerto Pollensa. His advice was initially heeded, but factors beyond his control were to mean that the recommendation wasn't totally adhered to.
In Alcudia, it might be argued that his work with the City of Lakes contradicted his desire for there to be control. However, it wasn't Ferragut who was responsible for what later emerged, such as the Reinas (now Club Mac). He had been dead for a few years when the Bellvista Urbanisation took shape: what became Bellevue and the Siestas. In fact, Ferragut's vision had been for a development with low population density and abundant green areas.
Another Josep Ferragut - Josep Ferragut Canals - is a nephew. Also an architect, he took over the studio in Palma that his uncle had used. He has said that his relative was a cultured person with one foot firmly in Mallorca's traditions. He had an ethical view of his work. When he was hired by Pollensa town hall, he vowed not to take on any "personal commissions".
The impression formed, therefore, is of an essentially honest man, a rare breed in those days. He recognised the architectural conflicts of modernity and tradition and sought to find ways of reconciling them. But this personal stance was to bring him into conflict with members of the College of Architects, the professional institute, and with the Provincial Deputation's urban planning commission. There was, however, something else that caused conflict. Ferragut was a homosexual.
On 21 February 1968, a body was found along the Bunyola road, a few kilometres from Palma. The press was to refer to his face having been horribly smashed in. Josep Ferragut had been bludgeoned to death with a stone. He was 56 at the time, and according to police he had met two men - one 20, the other 26 - the night before. The two were arrested. In July the following year, they were released due to a lack of evidence. The case was not reopened.
Just after Ferragut's murder, the poet and novelist Jaume Vidal Alcover had been due to give a lecture at what was then the University of Palma. He didn't show up. Instead, he had left Mallorca on the ferry to Barcelona. The historian Damià Ferrà-Ponç has said that Vidal hadn't wanted to appear because of the indiscriminate arrests of Mallorcan homosexuals.
Homophobic paranoia was as rampant as corruption. Ferragut had the misfortune to have been a homosexual in such an atmosphere, while he was adamant in his disapproval of the corruption that had led to uncontrolled development and continued to. It is unlikely that the truth behind his murder will ever be known. The press had portrayed the two who were arrested as "blackmail specialists", but then the press wrote what it was told to or what was wise to report. If there had been a need to silence Ferragut - by then at real loggerheads with the professional body and the government - it would have been simple enough, rather than for him to have been killed, to have blackmailed him. Although he was discreet, enough was known about his homosexuality. However, there were all sorts of interests and a great deal of money at stake.
The version of his murder that was allowed to prevail was that he had been the victim of two male prostitutes, though they were of course never convicted. The other is that he was killed because his ethics frustrated developments. The Ferragut family hired a private detective. He focused on Pollensa and Alcudia, which were where Ferragut had been at his most outraged. He referred to "barbarities" in Puerto Pollensa and was against the exploitation of unspoiled areas, especially in Alcudia, even if he was partially responsible for what was to transpire. The detective concluded that, although there was no specific evidence, there were enemies who had conspired against Ferragut, angered about his denouncing of corruption.
A work by novelist Guillem Frontera was published two years ago. Its title is Sicília Sense Morts, Sicily Without The Dead (or corpses). Frontera alludes to an epigram that has become distorted: its actual wording is "Mallorca es como Sicilia, pero sin muertos". There is debate as to who originally coined it - either of the journalists Andreu Manresa or Matias Vallés - but it is now mistakenly expressed as Sicily without the guns. Regardless of this, the expression is pertinent. In 1969, Frontera wrote a novel entitled Cada Día Que Calles (roughly Every Day That Remains Silent). It is taken to have been about the murder of Ferragut.
The murder was scandalous, not least because no one was ever convicted and the case was closed. It could well be that Ferragut was killed by the two men and that it was therefore a form of gay scandal that the Francoist regime preferred to hush up. But there was the other possibility. Mallorca is like Sicily and it has the corpses - one at any rate.
* Tomorrow evening at Bellver Castle, there is the premiere showing of the documentary Vida i mort d’un arquitecte. It is the opening gala for the Atlàntida Film Fest and is the work of Miguel Eek. It will be broadcast simultaneously on IB3. It is about the life and death of Josep Ferragut.
** Photo: https://joseferragutpou.com
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
No Trespassing On The Coast
It was the early 1960s. Summer holidays. We'd grown bored hunting for newts and waiting to see the London train rattle along the viaduct that crossed the dusty lane that led to the estate. To pass under the bridge was to enter enemy territory. We lived on an estate, but it wasn't like the other estate. That was council; ours was pretentious posh. The lane petered out into an even dustier narrow track that bordered part of the estate. To the other side was scrub, waste and field. There was a sign in black lettering: "No Trespassing".
Such an order was of little deterrence. We had already mastered the art of trespassing in the dark and mysterious copse with its pond that was as deep as Australia. A gate of greater height than we were served only to be a challenge. A warning of no trespassing carried an assumption of hidden dangers and horrors. The field with its long grass next to the estate, we convinced ourselves, was full of snakes. We climbed another gate. There were no snakes.
Nowadays, and as responsible citizens, no trespassing would mean precisely that. But there are those who have never lost their inner small child. Provide a warning, and the warning will be ignored. Indeed, the very existence of a warning elevates the forbidden territory to a status of seemingly very much greater importance than it might otherwise deserve. However, there is a principle at stake. The right of access, especially if it involves the sea.
The coast is the public domain. When superyacht occupants invade a stretch of beach in Cabrera, they are accused of "privatising" it. Not that they did (this was last summer), but installing luxury tents and what have you amounted, in the eyes of some, to a privatisation. When hotel groups (one in particular) appear destined to dominate beach of a Calvia and beach club variety, this is also privatisation, even if it is not. The coast is free. Unfettered access to it reinforces the unshakeable relationship with the "playa", the playground for all.
Cala Castell in Pollensa is accessible from the sea. It can't, strictly speaking, be accessed from the land, except for special reasons; these mainly being scientific. The cove lies at the end of the finca of Ternelles, and the access to the finca has been a matter of controversy for years.
There was once, during the administration of Francesc Antich from 2007 to 2011, a mass trespass. Famous photos are regularly reused to highlight the Ternelles case, and they show ramblers clambering over the gate to the finca. The reasons for access being denied are twofold. One has to do with protection zones in the Tramuntana region. The finca has such a zone; it encompasses the cove and the ancient Castell del Rei. Balearic law may lead to these zones being removed, thus allowing rambling in areas deemed significant as natural habitats.
The other reason is ownership. The finca belongs ultimately to the March family, the Banca March, March family, the descendants of Joan March. When the mass trespassers, including notable eco-nationalist politicians, smilingly climbed the gate, there was at least some feeling that they were doing so as a gesture against the legacy of the old rogue, March. Gleeful disobedience of no trespass betrayed no fear of hidden dangers: the finca, the estate, was being confronted. How many of those trespassers had an account with Banca March one didn't know.
The legal arguments continue. They are batted back and forth between upper courts. The Supreme Court in Madrid once took the view that there should be right of access precisely because of the coast. The public domain of Cala Castell was being denied. The arguments, though, have been far more complex than just that. They still are.
Had there never been any denial of access, how popular would the ramble across the finca be? One asks the question because Ternelles has acquired its reputation principally because of the "verboten" nature of access; there is access but in a highly controlled way. Is the principle more significant than any mass desire to go wandering over the land? And has this principle been elevated because of the ownership?
Move east along the coast from Cala Castell and you come to the headland that separates the bays of Pollensa and Alcudia. On its tip is Cap Pinar. It isn't even accessible by sea. It's a military zone. There have been arguments about access here as well, but they have never been in the Ternelles league. There is, like Ternelles, the possibility of limited and controlled access. But Alcudia's mayor, Toni Mir, says that since he took office in 2015 there hasn't been a single request.
Why the difference? There are no snakes in Ternelles, but there is greater temptation and challenge. The black lettering is that much bigger and so is the gate.
Such an order was of little deterrence. We had already mastered the art of trespassing in the dark and mysterious copse with its pond that was as deep as Australia. A gate of greater height than we were served only to be a challenge. A warning of no trespassing carried an assumption of hidden dangers and horrors. The field with its long grass next to the estate, we convinced ourselves, was full of snakes. We climbed another gate. There were no snakes.
Nowadays, and as responsible citizens, no trespassing would mean precisely that. But there are those who have never lost their inner small child. Provide a warning, and the warning will be ignored. Indeed, the very existence of a warning elevates the forbidden territory to a status of seemingly very much greater importance than it might otherwise deserve. However, there is a principle at stake. The right of access, especially if it involves the sea.
The coast is the public domain. When superyacht occupants invade a stretch of beach in Cabrera, they are accused of "privatising" it. Not that they did (this was last summer), but installing luxury tents and what have you amounted, in the eyes of some, to a privatisation. When hotel groups (one in particular) appear destined to dominate beach of a Calvia and beach club variety, this is also privatisation, even if it is not. The coast is free. Unfettered access to it reinforces the unshakeable relationship with the "playa", the playground for all.
Cala Castell in Pollensa is accessible from the sea. It can't, strictly speaking, be accessed from the land, except for special reasons; these mainly being scientific. The cove lies at the end of the finca of Ternelles, and the access to the finca has been a matter of controversy for years.
There was once, during the administration of Francesc Antich from 2007 to 2011, a mass trespass. Famous photos are regularly reused to highlight the Ternelles case, and they show ramblers clambering over the gate to the finca. The reasons for access being denied are twofold. One has to do with protection zones in the Tramuntana region. The finca has such a zone; it encompasses the cove and the ancient Castell del Rei. Balearic law may lead to these zones being removed, thus allowing rambling in areas deemed significant as natural habitats.
The other reason is ownership. The finca belongs ultimately to the March family, the Banca March, March family, the descendants of Joan March. When the mass trespassers, including notable eco-nationalist politicians, smilingly climbed the gate, there was at least some feeling that they were doing so as a gesture against the legacy of the old rogue, March. Gleeful disobedience of no trespass betrayed no fear of hidden dangers: the finca, the estate, was being confronted. How many of those trespassers had an account with Banca March one didn't know.
The legal arguments continue. They are batted back and forth between upper courts. The Supreme Court in Madrid once took the view that there should be right of access precisely because of the coast. The public domain of Cala Castell was being denied. The arguments, though, have been far more complex than just that. They still are.
Had there never been any denial of access, how popular would the ramble across the finca be? One asks the question because Ternelles has acquired its reputation principally because of the "verboten" nature of access; there is access but in a highly controlled way. Is the principle more significant than any mass desire to go wandering over the land? And has this principle been elevated because of the ownership?
Move east along the coast from Cala Castell and you come to the headland that separates the bays of Pollensa and Alcudia. On its tip is Cap Pinar. It isn't even accessible by sea. It's a military zone. There have been arguments about access here as well, but they have never been in the Ternelles league. There is, like Ternelles, the possibility of limited and controlled access. But Alcudia's mayor, Toni Mir, says that since he took office in 2015 there hasn't been a single request.
Why the difference? There are no snakes in Ternelles, but there is greater temptation and challenge. The black lettering is that much bigger and so is the gate.
Tuesday, April 04, 2017
The Defectors Of Pollensa
There was a good deal of talk about defection in Pollensa last week. There were two defectors. One was Martí Roca, the former councillor from El Pi who was ejected by the party but remains a councillor ("non-accredited"). A motion was raised, egged on by the El Pi apparatus which doesn't otherwise have a councillor and enthusiastically proposed by the ruling coalition of the Junts (Altogether Now, Altogether Now). Defection was to be officially abhorred. The motion failed. Of those against were the Tots, the creation of ex-mayor Tomeu Cifre. He defected from the PP when he fell out with Bauzá.
Yes, Cifre was a defector, but there again he was a fairly honourable one. He'd had enough of Bauzá (many others had but didn't take such action) and did what he did - form another party, indistinguishable from the PP, just with a different name. Roca, though, wasn't a defector as such. How could he have been? He was chucked out of the party. That isn't the same as defection.
The Alternativa, abstaining on the motion, took the view that El Pi were the last ones to be giving lectures on defection. They had, after all, been formed with the help of one-time Manacor mayor Antoni Pastor, a defector from the PP. Which was also wrong. Pastor was a much earlier objector to Bauzá than Cifre. He was thrown out of the PP. How could he have been a defector therefore?
If you want an example of defection, then you can go back to the 2011 election in Alcudia. A PSM (Mallorcan socialist) councillor, Carme Garcia, was elected. She then threw her lot in with the PP and allowed it to run the town administration. Had she not, the PP would not have had a majority. Removed from the party, hers was a case of defection. You don't just let the enemy in as easily as that and secure yourself a post as one of the deputy mayors.
Back in Pollensa, the further defection involved the mayor. Miquel Àngel March was once the spokesperson for GOB. He's as enviro-conscious as it gets. Yet, there he was, seemingly backing a proposal which, although it didn't spell it out, was calling on the tourism ministry to exempt holiday rental villas that aren't strictly speaking legal. This is because, under the forthcoming legislation, such villas cannot be official if they a) have any pending infraction for planning violation hanging over them or b) do not have a certificate of habitability. This latter aspect means, for instance, being unable to show how - to put it bluntly - shit is dealt with.
As a committed GOB-ite, it might have been thought that March would be firmly opposed to any exemptions. However, there is of course the awkward situation in Pollensa that without holiday rentals the tourist economy would collapse. Even a GOB-ite can understand that.
The Alternativa were not satisfied. They accused the mayor of ideological defection, an allusion to the Roca motion, and one which apparently left councillors examining their shoes while the tourism councillor made a brave attempt at explaining things and March maintained an undignified silence.
The tourism ministry, responding to this, said that if properties don't comply, then they're going to have to, if they want to remain legally registered holiday rentals. The ministry's position is, one would suggest, perfectly reasonable.
Defection or not, March knows he faces a very awkward situation. Ideologically he would be opposed to liberal application of rentals' legislation, but as a defender of Pollensa interests he would be mad to be. The crunch is going to come with all the zoning that it is to be done. Tourism minister Barceló has intimated that currently registered rentals' properties could be de-registered. Villas which are fully legal might conceivably fall outside the zones. Then there are apartments, ones which may or may not become eligible for legal registration. If they do become eligible, then they will be part of the wider narrative of the devil's work of tourist saturation, a narrative to which GOB is an adherent.
What more defection might there yet be?
Yes, Cifre was a defector, but there again he was a fairly honourable one. He'd had enough of Bauzá (many others had but didn't take such action) and did what he did - form another party, indistinguishable from the PP, just with a different name. Roca, though, wasn't a defector as such. How could he have been? He was chucked out of the party. That isn't the same as defection.
The Alternativa, abstaining on the motion, took the view that El Pi were the last ones to be giving lectures on defection. They had, after all, been formed with the help of one-time Manacor mayor Antoni Pastor, a defector from the PP. Which was also wrong. Pastor was a much earlier objector to Bauzá than Cifre. He was thrown out of the PP. How could he have been a defector therefore?
If you want an example of defection, then you can go back to the 2011 election in Alcudia. A PSM (Mallorcan socialist) councillor, Carme Garcia, was elected. She then threw her lot in with the PP and allowed it to run the town administration. Had she not, the PP would not have had a majority. Removed from the party, hers was a case of defection. You don't just let the enemy in as easily as that and secure yourself a post as one of the deputy mayors.
Back in Pollensa, the further defection involved the mayor. Miquel Àngel March was once the spokesperson for GOB. He's as enviro-conscious as it gets. Yet, there he was, seemingly backing a proposal which, although it didn't spell it out, was calling on the tourism ministry to exempt holiday rental villas that aren't strictly speaking legal. This is because, under the forthcoming legislation, such villas cannot be official if they a) have any pending infraction for planning violation hanging over them or b) do not have a certificate of habitability. This latter aspect means, for instance, being unable to show how - to put it bluntly - shit is dealt with.
As a committed GOB-ite, it might have been thought that March would be firmly opposed to any exemptions. However, there is of course the awkward situation in Pollensa that without holiday rentals the tourist economy would collapse. Even a GOB-ite can understand that.
The Alternativa were not satisfied. They accused the mayor of ideological defection, an allusion to the Roca motion, and one which apparently left councillors examining their shoes while the tourism councillor made a brave attempt at explaining things and March maintained an undignified silence.
The tourism ministry, responding to this, said that if properties don't comply, then they're going to have to, if they want to remain legally registered holiday rentals. The ministry's position is, one would suggest, perfectly reasonable.
Defection or not, March knows he faces a very awkward situation. Ideologically he would be opposed to liberal application of rentals' legislation, but as a defender of Pollensa interests he would be mad to be. The crunch is going to come with all the zoning that it is to be done. Tourism minister Barceló has intimated that currently registered rentals' properties could be de-registered. Villas which are fully legal might conceivably fall outside the zones. Then there are apartments, ones which may or may not become eligible for legal registration. If they do become eligible, then they will be part of the wider narrative of the devil's work of tourist saturation, a narrative to which GOB is an adherent.
What more defection might there yet be?
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Driving The Rooster Of Pollensa Home
It was Willie Dixon who provided one of the means by which The Rolling Stones demonstrated that they were originally a blues group. In Little Red Rooster, Mick, as had been the case with Willie himself, pleaded for anyone seeing his little red rooster to drive it home. This was because, as Mick and Willie informed us, there had been no peace in the farmyard since the little red rooster had been gone.
The little red rooster of Pollensa is now typically driven home. Or at least to a finca belonging to the conqueror of the Sant Antoni pine on top of which the rooster (some say cock) had been too lazy to "crow for day" because it had been stuck in a bag. Well, it's always possible that it had crowed earlier on, but by seven in the evening, it would indeed have been too lazy. Once upon a time, the cock would have been driven home and ended up dead meat to be served on a plate. Not now. The cock has his own finca yard home, unless another cock from on top of the Sant Antoni pine is brought along to share the same living space and promptly kills him. Which has happened in the past.
The fact that the cock is now typically allowed to grow and crow old gracefully hasn't persuaded opponents of the pine climb that all is right in an animal-welfare style. The Alternativa per Pollença party, perfectly capable of starting a political fight - and often with very good justification - in a bag empty of a cock or anything else, has registered a motion to be debated at the next council meeting. It says that the use of a cock aloft the pine in the Plaça Vella each Sant Antoni Day in January breaches the 1992 animal-protection law.
The party objects to the use of a cock for purposes of "simple entertainment", observing that it can suffer if it is thrown or falls from the top of the pine. But the objection is based more on a point of law, and it is the one contained in the 1992 act under which traditions involving animals are defined. In itself, this is a curious approach to setting law, a seemingly arbitrary longevity established as a threshold for defining tradition or not. The law states that an act, such as the use of a cock at the Sant Antoni fiesta, can be deemed an exemption if there is evidence of one hundred years uninterrupted use. If there isn't evidence, then the involvement of live animals on fiesta occasions is proscribed.
This is the situation in Can Picafort. The use of real ducks for the mid-August swim was finally stopped ten years ago, the town hall in Santa Margalida having consistently ignored the law. Only when legal action was being taken seriously did the town hall comply. There are those in Santa Margalida, and not just at the town hall, who want the law amended and have proposed that the 100-year threshold is reduced, the point being that the earliest evidence of the ducks and swim comes from the 1930s.
As far as the cock of Pollensa is concerned, there is little documentary evidence to back up how long the cock has been a feature of the pine climb. Indeed there is little evidence that shows when the climb started (with or without a cock). A newspaper report from the early twentieth century appears to be one of the few actual references.
The Alternativa is pursuing a line that it adopted ten years ago. On its Urxella blog in March 2007, it referred to an official complaint lodged with the Balearic government by ANPBA, the national association for the protection and welfare of animals, and also to an initiative by the town hall itself (in 2004) to prevent actions that cause suffering to animals. Proceedings were to have been initiated to withdraw the cock, but these were not seen through, the suggestion having been that it would have been a vote loser.
In 2010, it would seem that the town hall was in fact fined for breaching the animal-protection law and that there is also an open case for the same reason that is outstanding since 2015. At the start of that year, the Baldea animal-rights group proposed to the town hall that the cock should be substituted by a rag-doll version. It set out seven ways in which the law was being violated, referring, for example, to "unnatural treatment" by suspending the cock at a height of some twenty metres on top of the pine. To authorise such "illegality" would warrant a charge of abuse of public office.
A hundred years or not, why should longevity have anything to do with it? Should the little red rooster stay in the farmyard and never need to be driven home?
The little red rooster of Pollensa is now typically driven home. Or at least to a finca belonging to the conqueror of the Sant Antoni pine on top of which the rooster (some say cock) had been too lazy to "crow for day" because it had been stuck in a bag. Well, it's always possible that it had crowed earlier on, but by seven in the evening, it would indeed have been too lazy. Once upon a time, the cock would have been driven home and ended up dead meat to be served on a plate. Not now. The cock has his own finca yard home, unless another cock from on top of the Sant Antoni pine is brought along to share the same living space and promptly kills him. Which has happened in the past.
The fact that the cock is now typically allowed to grow and crow old gracefully hasn't persuaded opponents of the pine climb that all is right in an animal-welfare style. The Alternativa per Pollença party, perfectly capable of starting a political fight - and often with very good justification - in a bag empty of a cock or anything else, has registered a motion to be debated at the next council meeting. It says that the use of a cock aloft the pine in the Plaça Vella each Sant Antoni Day in January breaches the 1992 animal-protection law.
The party objects to the use of a cock for purposes of "simple entertainment", observing that it can suffer if it is thrown or falls from the top of the pine. But the objection is based more on a point of law, and it is the one contained in the 1992 act under which traditions involving animals are defined. In itself, this is a curious approach to setting law, a seemingly arbitrary longevity established as a threshold for defining tradition or not. The law states that an act, such as the use of a cock at the Sant Antoni fiesta, can be deemed an exemption if there is evidence of one hundred years uninterrupted use. If there isn't evidence, then the involvement of live animals on fiesta occasions is proscribed.
This is the situation in Can Picafort. The use of real ducks for the mid-August swim was finally stopped ten years ago, the town hall in Santa Margalida having consistently ignored the law. Only when legal action was being taken seriously did the town hall comply. There are those in Santa Margalida, and not just at the town hall, who want the law amended and have proposed that the 100-year threshold is reduced, the point being that the earliest evidence of the ducks and swim comes from the 1930s.
As far as the cock of Pollensa is concerned, there is little documentary evidence to back up how long the cock has been a feature of the pine climb. Indeed there is little evidence that shows when the climb started (with or without a cock). A newspaper report from the early twentieth century appears to be one of the few actual references.
The Alternativa is pursuing a line that it adopted ten years ago. On its Urxella blog in March 2007, it referred to an official complaint lodged with the Balearic government by ANPBA, the national association for the protection and welfare of animals, and also to an initiative by the town hall itself (in 2004) to prevent actions that cause suffering to animals. Proceedings were to have been initiated to withdraw the cock, but these were not seen through, the suggestion having been that it would have been a vote loser.
In 2010, it would seem that the town hall was in fact fined for breaching the animal-protection law and that there is also an open case for the same reason that is outstanding since 2015. At the start of that year, the Baldea animal-rights group proposed to the town hall that the cock should be substituted by a rag-doll version. It set out seven ways in which the law was being violated, referring, for example, to "unnatural treatment" by suspending the cock at a height of some twenty metres on top of the pine. To authorise such "illegality" would warrant a charge of abuse of public office.
A hundred years or not, why should longevity have anything to do with it? Should the little red rooster stay in the farmyard and never need to be driven home?
Monday, August 01, 2016
1550 And All That: Dragut's failure in Pollensa
Around eleven o'clock on the night of 30 May 1550, a force of some 1500 men landed at a cove between the Punta Avançada and the beach of Formentor. The force had sailed from Ibiza the afternoon before. It had arrived off the port of Sant Miquel in the north of that island on 27 May and had proceeded to undertake raids. The governor of Ibiza, Jaume Salvà, got wind of a larger operation - one against Mallorca. He was able to get notice of this to the Mallorcan viceroy, Gaspar de Marrades. There was to be an immediate assault on Mallorca, but it wasn't known where.
The lookout warning system was to fail. There was a full moon on the night of 30 May and it is possible that there was cloud cover as well. The force had been by Dragonera off Andratx at dawn on 30 May. It seems that no one was aware of the fact. By sunset it was by Pollensa. The landing was led by Dragut, otherwise known as Turgut Reis, the supreme commander of the naval forces of the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean, who had succeeded Barbarossa in 1546. The size of the army - the 1500 men - was later to be confirmed by a notary, Joan Morro, and by the Manacor-born priest and historian, Joan Binimelis.
But Binimelis was only twelve at the time. The author of the "new history" of the island of Mallorca, his work wasn't to appear (in Mallorquín, remarkably enough for a language that has so little evidence of having been written) until 1595. This is just one reason why it is hard to say for certain what really happened in 1550. Binimelis, as with providers of contemporary documentation, would have adopted a one-sided perspective; it would have been subject to elaboration, embellishment and falsehood.
Where there is certainty is the date. The actual landing spot has been taken to be certain, but it was a curious place to come ashore. The Formentor promontory would not have been easy to negotiate on foot. It would also have added distance to the march to Pollensa town. Moreover, had there been an army in waiting, the invasion force would have had great difficulty in making advances on Pollensa. There was no army in waiting. Not near Formentor anyway.
The story goes of course that it was the traitor, Joan Xumet, who had enabled the landing. His act of treachery is what led him to be given the ironic name Lloctinent, the lieutenant to Dragut. The keeper of the watchtower of Albercutx was supposedly asleep when the force appeared in the bay of Pollensa. Or had he been bribed? Had other keepers of watchtowers been likewise "got at"? Historians of the present day put events of that fateful night down to corruption. Perhaps there had been cloud obscuring the full moon. No one knows, but cloud cover wouldn't have been a factor in daylight as the force made its way off the coast of the Tramuntana mountains.
Pollensa, though it wouldn't have had a regular army as such, would have been able to draw on a sizable force of armed men. There was an obligation to carry arms in the event of incursions by enemies. This had been emphasised by a Saracen assault at Cala San Vicente almost twenty years before. With reinforcements that could have been expected to have been drafted in from other villages, such as Campanet, a local force, ready and waiting, would have been able to repel Dragut's army before it got to Pollensa.
As things turned out, or so it is said, Dragut made a mistake. For a supreme commander it might have seemed a basic one. Dividing his force into three perhaps made sense in being able to create different flanks to attack Pollensa, but it appears that lack of local knowledge was to prove to be the plan's downfall. Two divisions got lost.
The rest is, sort of, history. Joan Mas led the people of Pollensa. He called on the assistance of Our Lady of the Angels, Dragut and his men (those not killed and presumably also those who had been lost) were put to flight, Dragut took it out on the castle in Cabrera and the odd Menorcan village before heading away from the Balearics. Some 300 years later - 1860 to be precise - the re-enactment of the Moors and Christians of Pollensa was decided upon. And it was to take place not on 30 or 31 May but on 2 August, the day of Pollensa's patron: "Mare de Déu dels Àngels, assistiu-mos. Pollencins, aixecau-vos, que els pirates ja són aquí!"
The lookout warning system was to fail. There was a full moon on the night of 30 May and it is possible that there was cloud cover as well. The force had been by Dragonera off Andratx at dawn on 30 May. It seems that no one was aware of the fact. By sunset it was by Pollensa. The landing was led by Dragut, otherwise known as Turgut Reis, the supreme commander of the naval forces of the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean, who had succeeded Barbarossa in 1546. The size of the army - the 1500 men - was later to be confirmed by a notary, Joan Morro, and by the Manacor-born priest and historian, Joan Binimelis.
But Binimelis was only twelve at the time. The author of the "new history" of the island of Mallorca, his work wasn't to appear (in Mallorquín, remarkably enough for a language that has so little evidence of having been written) until 1595. This is just one reason why it is hard to say for certain what really happened in 1550. Binimelis, as with providers of contemporary documentation, would have adopted a one-sided perspective; it would have been subject to elaboration, embellishment and falsehood.
Where there is certainty is the date. The actual landing spot has been taken to be certain, but it was a curious place to come ashore. The Formentor promontory would not have been easy to negotiate on foot. It would also have added distance to the march to Pollensa town. Moreover, had there been an army in waiting, the invasion force would have had great difficulty in making advances on Pollensa. There was no army in waiting. Not near Formentor anyway.
The story goes of course that it was the traitor, Joan Xumet, who had enabled the landing. His act of treachery is what led him to be given the ironic name Lloctinent, the lieutenant to Dragut. The keeper of the watchtower of Albercutx was supposedly asleep when the force appeared in the bay of Pollensa. Or had he been bribed? Had other keepers of watchtowers been likewise "got at"? Historians of the present day put events of that fateful night down to corruption. Perhaps there had been cloud obscuring the full moon. No one knows, but cloud cover wouldn't have been a factor in daylight as the force made its way off the coast of the Tramuntana mountains.
Pollensa, though it wouldn't have had a regular army as such, would have been able to draw on a sizable force of armed men. There was an obligation to carry arms in the event of incursions by enemies. This had been emphasised by a Saracen assault at Cala San Vicente almost twenty years before. With reinforcements that could have been expected to have been drafted in from other villages, such as Campanet, a local force, ready and waiting, would have been able to repel Dragut's army before it got to Pollensa.
As things turned out, or so it is said, Dragut made a mistake. For a supreme commander it might have seemed a basic one. Dividing his force into three perhaps made sense in being able to create different flanks to attack Pollensa, but it appears that lack of local knowledge was to prove to be the plan's downfall. Two divisions got lost.
The rest is, sort of, history. Joan Mas led the people of Pollensa. He called on the assistance of Our Lady of the Angels, Dragut and his men (those not killed and presumably also those who had been lost) were put to flight, Dragut took it out on the castle in Cabrera and the odd Menorcan village before heading away from the Balearics. Some 300 years later - 1860 to be precise - the re-enactment of the Moors and Christians of Pollensa was decided upon. And it was to take place not on 30 or 31 May but on 2 August, the day of Pollensa's patron: "Mare de Déu dels Àngels, assistiu-mos. Pollencins, aixecau-vos, que els pirates ja són aquí!"
Monday, July 11, 2016
Keeping Pollensa Clean: It's never easy
Another spot of bother in Pollensa. This time it's not one involving tourists (and residents) getting agitated about - choose as applicable - ice-cream kiosks, beach services, poor quality semi-pedestrianisation work or semi-pedestrianisation work, period. It's all to do with the municipal services agency, Emser, a body that is not unfamiliar with the occasional controversy.
A year or so ago the Balearic High Court ruled that the existing contract for Emser's cleaning service should be annulled. It was (may still be) with a joint venture organisation consisting of three firms. An appeal against this contract had been launched by two other companies, both of them rather better known than the three with the contract - Melchor Mascaró and FCC.
The contract had been in place for some five years by then, its announcement made with a bit of a fanfare and vehicles parked in Pollensa's Plaça Major with accompanying dignitaries, such as the then mayor, Joan Cerdà, and a selection of workers. Challenges to contracts do, it has to be said, take their time, and the court's decision came at an awkward moment for the town hall: the new administration was only just being put together following the May municipal election.
There was further awkwardness. The town hall couldn't just stop the service, as there would obviously have been no street cleaning. A new contracting procedure needed to be undertaken. Whether it has been, I'm unclear.
Soon after the court's ruling, Pollensa favourite awkward squad - the Alternativa per Pollença - was having a go at the Emser management over alleged "malpractice" in hiring of staff. This had arisen, the Alternativa suggested, because the previous town hall administration under Tomeu Cifre (when he was still with the Partido Popular) was "not a great lover" of transparency when it came to things like managing public services.
The latest problem has to do with Emser's fleet of vehicles, which include the rubbish-collection trucks. Worker representatives at Emser have denounced the company to the employment ministry's inspectorate and to the social security. This is because, they say, the ITV (MOT) of "many of the vehicles" has expired. It's probably as well that these vehicles aren't travelling along certain stretches of motorway where there are hidden cameras which check on expired MOTs therefore.
Furthermore, Emser is said to be paying less than diligent attention to hygiene standards and labour rules regarding overtime. The worker representatives say that they will withdraw their "denuncias" if the town hall sorts things out quickly. The Alternativa, never slow off the mark in demanding transparency, has called for a company which is "efficient, democratic and transparent": the Alternativa is none too impressed by the level of transparency being displayed by the left-dominated administration of Junts Avançam.
Well, maybe there will be some solution. The councillor for Emser matters is Andres Nevado, the very same delegate for Puerto Pollensa who has found himself in the eye of the various storms to break out over the Moll. He was recently in Germany looking at new trucks for the rubbish-collection service. At least those would be ok with their MOTs, one would think, though their purchase will doubtless raise some further issue of transparency. Which is not to suggest for one moment that there would be anything wrong; only to suggest that the Alternativa is bound to find some reason to question the transparency.
That's Pollensa; that's how they do it. Never in a straightforward manner.
A year or so ago the Balearic High Court ruled that the existing contract for Emser's cleaning service should be annulled. It was (may still be) with a joint venture organisation consisting of three firms. An appeal against this contract had been launched by two other companies, both of them rather better known than the three with the contract - Melchor Mascaró and FCC.
The contract had been in place for some five years by then, its announcement made with a bit of a fanfare and vehicles parked in Pollensa's Plaça Major with accompanying dignitaries, such as the then mayor, Joan Cerdà, and a selection of workers. Challenges to contracts do, it has to be said, take their time, and the court's decision came at an awkward moment for the town hall: the new administration was only just being put together following the May municipal election.
There was further awkwardness. The town hall couldn't just stop the service, as there would obviously have been no street cleaning. A new contracting procedure needed to be undertaken. Whether it has been, I'm unclear.
Soon after the court's ruling, Pollensa favourite awkward squad - the Alternativa per Pollença - was having a go at the Emser management over alleged "malpractice" in hiring of staff. This had arisen, the Alternativa suggested, because the previous town hall administration under Tomeu Cifre (when he was still with the Partido Popular) was "not a great lover" of transparency when it came to things like managing public services.
The latest problem has to do with Emser's fleet of vehicles, which include the rubbish-collection trucks. Worker representatives at Emser have denounced the company to the employment ministry's inspectorate and to the social security. This is because, they say, the ITV (MOT) of "many of the vehicles" has expired. It's probably as well that these vehicles aren't travelling along certain stretches of motorway where there are hidden cameras which check on expired MOTs therefore.
Furthermore, Emser is said to be paying less than diligent attention to hygiene standards and labour rules regarding overtime. The worker representatives say that they will withdraw their "denuncias" if the town hall sorts things out quickly. The Alternativa, never slow off the mark in demanding transparency, has called for a company which is "efficient, democratic and transparent": the Alternativa is none too impressed by the level of transparency being displayed by the left-dominated administration of Junts Avançam.
Well, maybe there will be some solution. The councillor for Emser matters is Andres Nevado, the very same delegate for Puerto Pollensa who has found himself in the eye of the various storms to break out over the Moll. He was recently in Germany looking at new trucks for the rubbish-collection service. At least those would be ok with their MOTs, one would think, though their purchase will doubtless raise some further issue of transparency. Which is not to suggest for one moment that there would be anything wrong; only to suggest that the Alternativa is bound to find some reason to question the transparency.
That's Pollensa; that's how they do it. Never in a straightforward manner.
Thursday, July 07, 2016
The Dysfunctional Town Hall: Pollensa
The bickering between the current administration in Pollensa and the grouping formed by ex-mayor Tomeu Cifre Ochogovia, Tots per Pollença, appears to have no limit. Cifre, who has had some legitimate reasons to take the administration (Junts Avançam and the UMP, Unió Mollera Pollencina) to task, such as with the beach services, seems intent on keeping up a barrage of complaint and criticism. The latest, related to the cost of maintenance for a municipal sea rescue vessel, has led mayor Miquel Angel March to demand that Cifre withdraw "serious accusations of misappropriation of funds".
March seems to have good grounds for making this demand. The amount involved is in any event small - 6,800 euros - on repairing a vessel that is over ten years old, and it corresponds to two years' worth of such repair, according to the town hall. The spending is apparently in line with that which the ex-mayor, when still a Partido Popular politician, would have authorised. The lifeboat service as a whole costs the town hall around a quarter of a million euros per annum: the maintenance of a vessel is, as March points out, pretty important.
Given the apparent pettiness of this, what does it tell us about Pollensa's politics? They have long been fraught at a town hall that has become a byword for dysfunctionalism, but there are at present some specifics. Cifre, more than just opposing, which he is of course entitled to do and should do, seems to have an agenda to challenge the administration on everything. Perhaps it is because he cannot accept that he is no longer (or not at the moment) mayor, which he has been on two occasions. Or does it have to do with his cousin, the councillor for urban planning with a very similar name?
It has been said to me that there is some disquiet where March is concerned in that he doesn't show strong leadership. The suggestion is that the real power at the town hall is Tomeu Cifre Bennasàr, the cousin of Tomeu Cifre Ochogovia. He, Bennasàr, has been involved with town hall politics for some years; he's been around the block. The same cannot be said for March. As former spokesperson for the environmentalists GOB, he was selected as mayor as an independent, though his politics would closely align themselves with the eco-nationalism of Bennasàr and Més. With GOB, March would have been well used to the politics of confrontation: this is, after all, what GOB engages in. But running a town hall is a very different proposition to heading an environmentalist pressure group, even for the son of a one-time Pollensa mayor, which March is.
It would be stretching things to say that the fighting is all due to some form of family feud, but it might be recalled that the ground rules were laid at the very first council meeting after the municipal election last year. Ochogovia challenged Bennasàr's compatibility for his responsibility for urban planning. An architect by profession, it was claimed that there could (would) be a conflict of interests. March, in so many words, told Ochogovia to stop trying to stir the shit.
Against this background, we have the suspicion that a plot for a vote of no confidence in the Junts was being hatched. The Alternativa per Pollença, not officially part of the administration but crucial to its existence as it lent support to allow it to govern, alleged recently that the UMP councillor, Andres Nevado, was talking with Cifre Ochogovia and others (the PP and El Pi opposition councillors) about such a no-confidence vote. Nevado denied this, pointing out that a meal which involved some business people and opposition leaders was one to which he had invited various friends, such as Cifre Ochogovia.
There may indeed have been nothing more to the meal gathering, but votes of no confidence do happen and do lead to changes of administration. There was one in Manacor not long after the municipal election in 2015. There has been another in Maria de la Salut. If nothing else, the mere suspicion raises a question as to how strong the Junts-UMP alliance really is, given that the UMP is politically well to the right of most of the Junts make-up.
The confidence word has, since the Alternativa raised its suspicions, been voiced in another context, and also by the Alternativa. It is seeking to have its confidence in the administration restored, as it is not standing by agreements that facilitated the Alternativa's support and so selection of March as mayor. These specifically have to do with what the Alternativa argues is a failure to comply with demands for transparency and participation: both pillars of the Alternativa's philosophy since it was created.
The overall impression, therefore, is that of an administration which is shaky. There again, one could say the same of the previous administration, the one before that, and ... . Dysfunctional. That's Pollensa.
March seems to have good grounds for making this demand. The amount involved is in any event small - 6,800 euros - on repairing a vessel that is over ten years old, and it corresponds to two years' worth of such repair, according to the town hall. The spending is apparently in line with that which the ex-mayor, when still a Partido Popular politician, would have authorised. The lifeboat service as a whole costs the town hall around a quarter of a million euros per annum: the maintenance of a vessel is, as March points out, pretty important.
Given the apparent pettiness of this, what does it tell us about Pollensa's politics? They have long been fraught at a town hall that has become a byword for dysfunctionalism, but there are at present some specifics. Cifre, more than just opposing, which he is of course entitled to do and should do, seems to have an agenda to challenge the administration on everything. Perhaps it is because he cannot accept that he is no longer (or not at the moment) mayor, which he has been on two occasions. Or does it have to do with his cousin, the councillor for urban planning with a very similar name?
It has been said to me that there is some disquiet where March is concerned in that he doesn't show strong leadership. The suggestion is that the real power at the town hall is Tomeu Cifre Bennasàr, the cousin of Tomeu Cifre Ochogovia. He, Bennasàr, has been involved with town hall politics for some years; he's been around the block. The same cannot be said for March. As former spokesperson for the environmentalists GOB, he was selected as mayor as an independent, though his politics would closely align themselves with the eco-nationalism of Bennasàr and Més. With GOB, March would have been well used to the politics of confrontation: this is, after all, what GOB engages in. But running a town hall is a very different proposition to heading an environmentalist pressure group, even for the son of a one-time Pollensa mayor, which March is.
It would be stretching things to say that the fighting is all due to some form of family feud, but it might be recalled that the ground rules were laid at the very first council meeting after the municipal election last year. Ochogovia challenged Bennasàr's compatibility for his responsibility for urban planning. An architect by profession, it was claimed that there could (would) be a conflict of interests. March, in so many words, told Ochogovia to stop trying to stir the shit.
Against this background, we have the suspicion that a plot for a vote of no confidence in the Junts was being hatched. The Alternativa per Pollença, not officially part of the administration but crucial to its existence as it lent support to allow it to govern, alleged recently that the UMP councillor, Andres Nevado, was talking with Cifre Ochogovia and others (the PP and El Pi opposition councillors) about such a no-confidence vote. Nevado denied this, pointing out that a meal which involved some business people and opposition leaders was one to which he had invited various friends, such as Cifre Ochogovia.
There may indeed have been nothing more to the meal gathering, but votes of no confidence do happen and do lead to changes of administration. There was one in Manacor not long after the municipal election in 2015. There has been another in Maria de la Salut. If nothing else, the mere suspicion raises a question as to how strong the Junts-UMP alliance really is, given that the UMP is politically well to the right of most of the Junts make-up.
The confidence word has, since the Alternativa raised its suspicions, been voiced in another context, and also by the Alternativa. It is seeking to have its confidence in the administration restored, as it is not standing by agreements that facilitated the Alternativa's support and so selection of March as mayor. These specifically have to do with what the Alternativa argues is a failure to comply with demands for transparency and participation: both pillars of the Alternativa's philosophy since it was created.
The overall impression, therefore, is that of an administration which is shaky. There again, one could say the same of the previous administration, the one before that, and ... . Dysfunctional. That's Pollensa.
Sunday, May 29, 2016
The John Of Corpus Christi
The first Hairy John of the season appears today. The Sunday after Corpus Christi: the same procedure as every year. Hairy John will dance in the streets of Pollensa as will the eagles. To give him his proper (Catalan) name, John is Sant Joan Pelós. He is one of a handful of Johns who do their dancing stuff on the occasion of a Mallorcan fiesta. The Felanitx John comes out at midsummer. He's the island's head John, the best known of them all. His emergence for the midsummer fiestas of Sant Joan would seem obvious given his name, though he and other Johns do require some explanation. Sant Joan Pelós is a representation of John the Baptist, who was supposedly born on Midsummer's Day, i.e. 24 June; hence the fiestas.
This being the case, why is the John of Pollensa allowed out on the first Sunday after Corpus Christi? Moreover, why is he hairy?
To arrive at some sort of an answer - possibly - one needs to take account of the other protagonists in today's dancing procession in Pollensa. The girls with the eagles strapped to their waists in the style more commonly associated in Mallorcan folk tradition with the figures of horses may hold the key to the earlier appearance of Sant Joan Pelós in Pollensa.
An eagles' dance from mediaeval times was practised in Catalonia and Valencia, but its first documented staging in Pollensa comes from the eighteenth century, and the roots of it would seem to go back to the year 1614 and to Palma. During the Corpus Christi procession of that year, a giant eagle supposedly appeared. The Mallorcan version of the eagles' dance, based on old Catalan tradition, was thus perhaps developed because of the 1614 eagle. For reasons no one can really explain, it was Pollensa which took it upon itself to maintain the tradition: it is the only town in Mallorca with such a dance.
So where does Sant Joan Pelós fit into the story? Well, this may be on account of John the Baptist's association with the symbol of the eagle. From the point of view of religious interpretation, the eagle symbol when it has a halo is John the Baptist. John was responsible for his "soaring" gospel and is thus represented by an eagle. Another explanation is that the eagle symbolises the resurrection and ascension and so all baptised Christians.
Is this the explanation then? Well not necessarily, indeed many of the commonly held assumptions are open to question. Take, for instance, the eagle of 1614. There is an alternative version of events that places the appearance of a giant white eagle in Palma on 29 June. It was nothing to do with Corpus Christi, which had been on 23 May that year. An eagles' dance was as a thanksgiving response to the good fortune of the appearance of the eagle, as the crops would prove to be good.
Then, where Pollensa is concerned, there is the fact that Sant Joan Pelós did in fact once upon a time do his dance when all the other ones do: at midsummer. A further element in the conundrum is evidence which suggests that eagles were one of various images at Palma's Corpus Christi procession from at least the first half of the sixteenth century, so many years before the 1614 eagle arrived on the scene.
One also has to take account of the view that the image of Sant Joan Pelós is a relic from ancient history, a symbol perhaps of pagan ritual. This may fit with notions of midsummer but offers nothing to explain why he came to be associated with Corpus Christi. Except, and here is another version, he was associated with it and as long ago as the fourteenth century. All that time ago, he was to be found in Corpus Christi processions in Palma and quite possibly elsewhere.
The fact is that no one can state with certainty how the Pollensa dances came about. The Sant Joan Pelós and eagles' dance stories and legends are all open to varying interpretations. But here's another one for you. If there's any truth to the 1614 eagle version, why did the eagles' dance seemingly not take place in Pollensa until the eighteenth century? Was it in fact all something of a commercial enterprise? There are certainly grounds to suggest that the local weavers' guild was behind it. Pollensa's textile industry has a long history, and so were the dresses of the girls with the eagles, still made with the careful weaving of jewels into them, all part of a promotion? And might Hairy John have been included as an added attraction?
Who can honestly say. But as for why he's hairy. Well, have you ever seen an image of John the Baptist when he wasn't?
Saturday, November 07, 2015
Autumn Fairs: Muro and Pollensa
Information in English for the two local fairs next weekend: 13-15 November.
http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/2015/11/muro-fair-2015.html
http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/2015/11/pollensa-fair-2015.html
Sunday, August 02, 2015
Traditional Inaccuracy: Moors and Christians
With the greatest of respect to Sant Elm, Valldemossa (where they only got going on the battle front for the first time last year) and Inca (where they haven't bothered this year), the island's big three Moors and Christians battles are those of Santa Ponsa, Sóller and Pollensa. And of this threesome, Santa Ponsa's scrap is of a different nature to those of Sóller and Pollensa. It was the original 1229 run-in between the invading Christian Catalan forces and the Muslim occupants, while the other two date from the sixteenth century and set-tos involving marauding and piratical fleets of the Ottoman Empire.
Despite its centrality to the cultural narrative of Mallorca - all things Catalan - Santa Ponsa's battle doesn't have quite the same cachet as Sóller and Pollensa. Maybe it has to do with there being a lack of documentary evidence and so not quite the same detail and characterisation. In Pollensa this exists to the extent that they've made some adjustments to today's simulation in order to make it even more like the original. Whatever the reason, when it comes to Mallorca and Moors and Christians, then it is Es Firó in May and La Patrona in August which take pride of place. Of these, Sóller does arguably have the greater international reputation. It also has a wider battleground as it involves the port as well; Pollensa doesn't. Yet, and it may simply have to do with its taking place in high summer, Pollensa has acquired something of a supremacy in the island's Moors and Christians league.
A curiosity of the way in which the town will be packed to its narrow-streeted gunwales today and of the pre-battle electioneering to choose the protagonists is that the popularity of the 2 August battle was attained only relatively recently. Such was a general lack of interest at the end of the 1970s and into the early 1980s that the town hall would issue tickets as a means to try and encourage more spectators. But this incentivising was a reflection of the fact that the battle had long been in the doldrums. Reminiscent of so many other aspects of the Mallorcan fiesta, there was a concerted effort at Moors and Christians revivalism, and one has to say that it paid off. It has been suggested that nowadays tickets should be given out to get people to stay away.
1550 was the year when Joan Mas led the people of Pollensa in repelling the Moorish invaders, but it was to be three hundred years before their descendants started re-enacting the events. 1860 is the year cited as being when the battle was first staged, although it may have been earlier. Whatever the actual starting date, Moors and Christians in its nineteenth century guise was not a permanent fixture until the whole day was given a boost in 1882 through the introduction of the "Alborada", the work of a Galician, Nicolás de Castro and later re-worked by the Pollensa composer Miquel Capllonch. This dawn wake-up now starts at 5am.
Into the twentieth century and to the period of the Second Republic just prior to the Civil War and the battle was at the centre of a political battle. The town had two clubs which represented differing sides of the ideological debate in the years immediately before Franco. One was the Club Pollença and the other was the Solteros. The latter took the Republican side and it considered the Moors and Christians to be the stuff of reactionaries. The Solteros would happily have seen the battle consigned to the bin of fiesta history, but it wasn't.
Coming up to the present, and by contrast with Republican thinking of the 1930s, Pollensa has a mayor, Miquel Àngel March, who is of a coalition which has its contemporary republican sympathies. March, though, has been a consistent supporter of the battle and indeed a participant (on the Moors side). Political correctness does not invade debate over the Moors and Christians to any great extent. What does, is the cultural and historical significance for Pollensa and for Mallorca. Hence, you have what you have this year, which are some slight modifications in order to reflect greater historical accuracy.
However, there is one very fundamental flaw in this accuracy and there always has been, and that is that the battle didn't take place on 2 August. Had Pollensa stuck to the true dates of 30 and 31 May, then it is far less likely that the town's version of the Moors and Christians would have assumed top ranking over Sóller. The question has to be asked, though - why is the simulated battle on 2 August and not at the end of May? The answer lies with the celebration of the fiestas for the town's patron - La Patrona, the Mother of God of the Angels. Her day is 2 August, and there is, in the Pollensa Moors and Christians tradition, the central part that she plays, and that is Joan Mas's appeal to her for help: "Mare de Déu dels Àngels, assistiu-mos. Pollencins, aixecau-vos, que els pirates ja són aquí!"
Despite its centrality to the cultural narrative of Mallorca - all things Catalan - Santa Ponsa's battle doesn't have quite the same cachet as Sóller and Pollensa. Maybe it has to do with there being a lack of documentary evidence and so not quite the same detail and characterisation. In Pollensa this exists to the extent that they've made some adjustments to today's simulation in order to make it even more like the original. Whatever the reason, when it comes to Mallorca and Moors and Christians, then it is Es Firó in May and La Patrona in August which take pride of place. Of these, Sóller does arguably have the greater international reputation. It also has a wider battleground as it involves the port as well; Pollensa doesn't. Yet, and it may simply have to do with its taking place in high summer, Pollensa has acquired something of a supremacy in the island's Moors and Christians league.
A curiosity of the way in which the town will be packed to its narrow-streeted gunwales today and of the pre-battle electioneering to choose the protagonists is that the popularity of the 2 August battle was attained only relatively recently. Such was a general lack of interest at the end of the 1970s and into the early 1980s that the town hall would issue tickets as a means to try and encourage more spectators. But this incentivising was a reflection of the fact that the battle had long been in the doldrums. Reminiscent of so many other aspects of the Mallorcan fiesta, there was a concerted effort at Moors and Christians revivalism, and one has to say that it paid off. It has been suggested that nowadays tickets should be given out to get people to stay away.
1550 was the year when Joan Mas led the people of Pollensa in repelling the Moorish invaders, but it was to be three hundred years before their descendants started re-enacting the events. 1860 is the year cited as being when the battle was first staged, although it may have been earlier. Whatever the actual starting date, Moors and Christians in its nineteenth century guise was not a permanent fixture until the whole day was given a boost in 1882 through the introduction of the "Alborada", the work of a Galician, Nicolás de Castro and later re-worked by the Pollensa composer Miquel Capllonch. This dawn wake-up now starts at 5am.
Into the twentieth century and to the period of the Second Republic just prior to the Civil War and the battle was at the centre of a political battle. The town had two clubs which represented differing sides of the ideological debate in the years immediately before Franco. One was the Club Pollença and the other was the Solteros. The latter took the Republican side and it considered the Moors and Christians to be the stuff of reactionaries. The Solteros would happily have seen the battle consigned to the bin of fiesta history, but it wasn't.
Coming up to the present, and by contrast with Republican thinking of the 1930s, Pollensa has a mayor, Miquel Àngel March, who is of a coalition which has its contemporary republican sympathies. March, though, has been a consistent supporter of the battle and indeed a participant (on the Moors side). Political correctness does not invade debate over the Moors and Christians to any great extent. What does, is the cultural and historical significance for Pollensa and for Mallorca. Hence, you have what you have this year, which are some slight modifications in order to reflect greater historical accuracy.
However, there is one very fundamental flaw in this accuracy and there always has been, and that is that the battle didn't take place on 2 August. Had Pollensa stuck to the true dates of 30 and 31 May, then it is far less likely that the town's version of the Moors and Christians would have assumed top ranking over Sóller. The question has to be asked, though - why is the simulated battle on 2 August and not at the end of May? The answer lies with the celebration of the fiestas for the town's patron - La Patrona, the Mother of God of the Angels. Her day is 2 August, and there is, in the Pollensa Moors and Christians tradition, the central part that she plays, and that is Joan Mas's appeal to her for help: "Mare de Déu dels Àngels, assistiu-mos. Pollencins, aixecau-vos, que els pirates ja són aquí!"
Monday, June 22, 2015
The Long March Of Miquel March
In September 1990 the Dalai Lama came to Mallorca. A principal reason for him having done so was to attend the closing of an exhibition of Tibetan art in Pollensa. He donated the Buddhist Kalachakra mandala that is now to be seen in the town's museum. When he had arrived at Palma airport, one of the dignitaries who was there to greet him was Martí March, the then mayor of Pollensa. Twenty-five years on, there is another March who is mayor of the town. He is one of Martí March's three sons: Miquel Àngel March.
There is something vaguely spiritual, other-worldly about March the son, as though he doesn't quite belong in the world of politics. But that world has been turned upside down over the past weeks. He's not a Podemos man, but he is a GOB man: for one score years he was its face. In 1988, two years before the the Dalai Lama's visit, he became the spokesperson for the environmentalists. Those who once might not have belonged in politics now do belong. Local politics - some local politics - is unrecognisable compared with what it was.
The Catalan section of "El País" ran a profile of March recently. It was like a paean, an expression or hymn of thanksgiving rooted in Greek mythology, littered with references such as to the "mythical" beach of Es Trenc (a battleground for GOB), to melancholic walks, to the playing of the flute and the drum alongside the piping xeremiers, to living in the mountains. Another world to the typical one of local politics.
GOB was once challenged - by a Partido Popular politician whose name I cannot now recall - to either put up or shut up. The allusion was to GOB's influence. If it was so determined to direct political thinking, then it should become its own party. It didn't but its former spokesperson is now a political leader. He had been approached previously but had declined offers to enter mainstream politics (insofar as there now is a mainstream). As an independent and a well-known figure in Pollensa, he was brought into the Junts Avançam fold along with PSOE, Més and the Republican Left. There was a chance to change things, he noted before the election. Change will doubtless come.
But you cannot have been GOB's leader for twenty years or have been subject to assaults from the right-wing press and not have developed a hard-nosed edge. Even the lyricism of the "El País" article recognised this. It mentioned issues that had already occurred to me: those to do with Formentor, i.e. the definition of planning, the expansion of the hotel, the Alfonso Cortina chalet. Planning - urban or rural - is a March forte. Combine this with environmentalism and plenty of attention will now be turned to the landscapes of Pollensa, to developments or not-developments. With the support of Més and that of the Alternativa (not part of the administration but a willing ally), the long march of March to the mayoral throne in Pollensa will culminate with more than just seeking, once and for all, to gain open access for the marchers to the Castell del Rei - across land owned by a different March family, the banking one.
There will be faults to cross on the Pollensa landscapes along the way. One has already and inevitably opened up: the semi-pedestrianisation scheme for Puerto Pollensa. Tomeu Cifre's "stellar" project was not realised during his mayoral lifetime and it will now be redefined. This is not surprising. It was GOB who put one of the final spanners in the constantly delayed works by citing an urban plan of the early 1990s that the pedestrianisation had to be total, not semi. The coastal road, however (or if) it is pedestrianised, passes by the Ullal area. The project for a five-star hotel will now surely be allowed to finally drown under the negligible water content of a wetland long since mostly dried up. But here is another fault to tackle.
The Junts were handed the Pollensa administration courtesy of the Unió Mollera Pollencina, the Puerto Pollensa party. This is a party minus an ideology but defensive of business interests. There is a revealing entry on its Facebook page about luxury hotels, a link to an item in "Ultima Hora". The comment says: "Very little of this tourism is coming to our town. The lack of five-star hotels is a deficit in our hotel offer. This is a challenge for our new administration". Challenge indeed. The UMP wants new hotels. The call from business for there to be new hotels has been sounded for several years.
There will be battles aplenty. Over the Pollensa festival, for example, and the apparent lack of consultation surrounding its programme for this year and the continued appointment (by Tomeu Cifre) of Joan Valent as director. The Alternativa has kicked up a fuss over this. It will be renewed. But will there continue to be one battle for Miquel March? He is a regular Moor on behalf of the Moors versus Christians. The march has just begun.
There is something vaguely spiritual, other-worldly about March the son, as though he doesn't quite belong in the world of politics. But that world has been turned upside down over the past weeks. He's not a Podemos man, but he is a GOB man: for one score years he was its face. In 1988, two years before the the Dalai Lama's visit, he became the spokesperson for the environmentalists. Those who once might not have belonged in politics now do belong. Local politics - some local politics - is unrecognisable compared with what it was.
The Catalan section of "El País" ran a profile of March recently. It was like a paean, an expression or hymn of thanksgiving rooted in Greek mythology, littered with references such as to the "mythical" beach of Es Trenc (a battleground for GOB), to melancholic walks, to the playing of the flute and the drum alongside the piping xeremiers, to living in the mountains. Another world to the typical one of local politics.
GOB was once challenged - by a Partido Popular politician whose name I cannot now recall - to either put up or shut up. The allusion was to GOB's influence. If it was so determined to direct political thinking, then it should become its own party. It didn't but its former spokesperson is now a political leader. He had been approached previously but had declined offers to enter mainstream politics (insofar as there now is a mainstream). As an independent and a well-known figure in Pollensa, he was brought into the Junts Avançam fold along with PSOE, Més and the Republican Left. There was a chance to change things, he noted before the election. Change will doubtless come.
But you cannot have been GOB's leader for twenty years or have been subject to assaults from the right-wing press and not have developed a hard-nosed edge. Even the lyricism of the "El País" article recognised this. It mentioned issues that had already occurred to me: those to do with Formentor, i.e. the definition of planning, the expansion of the hotel, the Alfonso Cortina chalet. Planning - urban or rural - is a March forte. Combine this with environmentalism and plenty of attention will now be turned to the landscapes of Pollensa, to developments or not-developments. With the support of Més and that of the Alternativa (not part of the administration but a willing ally), the long march of March to the mayoral throne in Pollensa will culminate with more than just seeking, once and for all, to gain open access for the marchers to the Castell del Rei - across land owned by a different March family, the banking one.
There will be faults to cross on the Pollensa landscapes along the way. One has already and inevitably opened up: the semi-pedestrianisation scheme for Puerto Pollensa. Tomeu Cifre's "stellar" project was not realised during his mayoral lifetime and it will now be redefined. This is not surprising. It was GOB who put one of the final spanners in the constantly delayed works by citing an urban plan of the early 1990s that the pedestrianisation had to be total, not semi. The coastal road, however (or if) it is pedestrianised, passes by the Ullal area. The project for a five-star hotel will now surely be allowed to finally drown under the negligible water content of a wetland long since mostly dried up. But here is another fault to tackle.
The Junts were handed the Pollensa administration courtesy of the Unió Mollera Pollencina, the Puerto Pollensa party. This is a party minus an ideology but defensive of business interests. There is a revealing entry on its Facebook page about luxury hotels, a link to an item in "Ultima Hora". The comment says: "Very little of this tourism is coming to our town. The lack of five-star hotels is a deficit in our hotel offer. This is a challenge for our new administration". Challenge indeed. The UMP wants new hotels. The call from business for there to be new hotels has been sounded for several years.
There will be battles aplenty. Over the Pollensa festival, for example, and the apparent lack of consultation surrounding its programme for this year and the continued appointment (by Tomeu Cifre) of Joan Valent as director. The Alternativa has kicked up a fuss over this. It will be renewed. But will there continue to be one battle for Miquel March? He is a regular Moor on behalf of the Moors versus Christians. The march has just begun.
Friday, April 03, 2015
The Imploding Partido Popular
In the end he didn't wait to have his fate decided for him by Partido Popular head office. Tomeu Cifre, threatened with being removed as mayoral candidate in Pollensa because of legal cases hanging over him, got his retaliation in first and announced that he would be forming a separate political entity that will fight for election in May.
Though he hasn't handed in his PP card, Cifre made it clear that he could no longer support the PP of José Ramón Bauzá, who he accused of "authoritarianism" and of "losing people along the way". He was referring to issues such as language policy, with which he has disagreed. The PP needed to change course, he suggested.
His first step is to ensure that he has sufficient support to enable him to establish his new political group, though there has been talk of him allying himself with the UNPI (Unió Pollencina Independent party), which is undergoing something of a revival. Whatever now emerges, he has the support of three of the four other PP councillors. David Alonso is the only one who has stayed loyal to the PP.
While Cifre has had his disagreements with Bauzá, the threat of not being allowed to re-stand as mayor does appear to have precipitated his decision. But if this is the case, why did he appear all chummy with Bauzá when his selection as mayoral candidate was made some weeks ago? Never underestimate the stage management of the smiles and the pats on the back or the propensity for political hypocrisy.
Being under threat of not being able to stand as a candidate or having had that threat carried out has caused chaos in parts of Mallorca. The Bauzá PP ethical code, one not supported by Mariano Rajoy, whereby a candidate who is "imputado", i.e. under investigation but not charged, has led to the mayors of Alaró and Vilafranca stepping down and forming their own parties.
The code, part of Bauzá's drive to clean up the PP in Mallorca, has been criticised because being "imputado" does not automatically mean that wrongdoing has been done or will lead to the courts. Many is the example of an "imputado" later having his or her case dropped. But unfairness of the code is being used to voice discontent with Bauzá when it should be his policies that drive mayors to form their own political entities. Herein is the hypocrisy.
In one municipality, Costitx, this has been the case. The PP there have simply had enough of Bauzá, and it is a sentiment that is widespread across Mallorca. Had the PP taken the bold step and replaced Bauzá, it might now be expecting to fare better in the elections in May. But it didn't take this step.
To come back to Pollensa, at a time when most of the left in Pollensa have come together to form one group for electoral purposes, it is the right which is now fragmenting, and so, as ever, there will be an abundance (too great an abundance) of parties, a point I have made repeatedly in identifying Pollensa as a town which is different from others in its sheer dysfunctionality and one which, interestingly, the Alternativa per Pollença has also now alluded to.
Though he hasn't handed in his PP card, Cifre made it clear that he could no longer support the PP of José Ramón Bauzá, who he accused of "authoritarianism" and of "losing people along the way". He was referring to issues such as language policy, with which he has disagreed. The PP needed to change course, he suggested.
His first step is to ensure that he has sufficient support to enable him to establish his new political group, though there has been talk of him allying himself with the UNPI (Unió Pollencina Independent party), which is undergoing something of a revival. Whatever now emerges, he has the support of three of the four other PP councillors. David Alonso is the only one who has stayed loyal to the PP.
While Cifre has had his disagreements with Bauzá, the threat of not being allowed to re-stand as mayor does appear to have precipitated his decision. But if this is the case, why did he appear all chummy with Bauzá when his selection as mayoral candidate was made some weeks ago? Never underestimate the stage management of the smiles and the pats on the back or the propensity for political hypocrisy.
Being under threat of not being able to stand as a candidate or having had that threat carried out has caused chaos in parts of Mallorca. The Bauzá PP ethical code, one not supported by Mariano Rajoy, whereby a candidate who is "imputado", i.e. under investigation but not charged, has led to the mayors of Alaró and Vilafranca stepping down and forming their own parties.
The code, part of Bauzá's drive to clean up the PP in Mallorca, has been criticised because being "imputado" does not automatically mean that wrongdoing has been done or will lead to the courts. Many is the example of an "imputado" later having his or her case dropped. But unfairness of the code is being used to voice discontent with Bauzá when it should be his policies that drive mayors to form their own political entities. Herein is the hypocrisy.
In one municipality, Costitx, this has been the case. The PP there have simply had enough of Bauzá, and it is a sentiment that is widespread across Mallorca. Had the PP taken the bold step and replaced Bauzá, it might now be expecting to fare better in the elections in May. But it didn't take this step.
To come back to Pollensa, at a time when most of the left in Pollensa have come together to form one group for electoral purposes, it is the right which is now fragmenting, and so, as ever, there will be an abundance (too great an abundance) of parties, a point I have made repeatedly in identifying Pollensa as a town which is different from others in its sheer dysfunctionality and one which, interestingly, the Alternativa per Pollença has also now alluded to.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Alcúdia Versus Pollensa: The day of destruction
Alcúdia is taking Pollensa on today. And they'll be doing so at the Club Pollença. A rivalry there has long been between the two towns, but what is that brings them head to head today? Well, it's nothing physical. It's nothing controversial. Not in current-day terms at any rate. "Alcúdia versus Pollensa" is the title of a session that forms part of the annual series of history courses that Pollensa organises during the winter months, and the clash between the two towns has to do with a specific set of studies devoted to "El día de la destrossa" (the day of destruction).
Of dates in Pollensa's history, none offers greater pride than 30 May 1550. We know that the simulation of the Moors and Christians battle takes place on 2 August each year during the Patrona fiestas, but the actual battle of 1550 had been staged some weeks before. 30 May 1550 is central to the historical and cultural narrative of Pollensa, but it is linked, through family ties and the town's psyche, to events that occurred 28 years previously. 29 October 1522 is known as the day of destruction. It was a day that witnessed scenes of unparalleled barbarity, it was a day that ripped the heart out of Pollensa, killed many of its inhabitants and rendered it meek, impotent and deprived of resistance. 29 October 1522 was the day of quite appalling massacre.
The context was the uprising of the "Germania", the brotherhood. It had broken out in February 1521 and was the response of the peasant and artisan class in Mallorca (the impetus did actually come from a different revolt in Valencia) against grand land owners who, through abusive taxes, blatant exploitation and grinding poverty, had trodden the common people of Mallorca so far down that no other response was possible than that of direct and violent conflict, and it was a conflict which broadened in scope - the revolt was against the Spanish monarch (Carlos I) as well.
The people of Pollensa would have been aware of what was coming. The revolt in Mallorca was finally met with the might of royal forces. A squadron appeared off the northern coast in mid-October. The viceroy in Mallorca ordered a campaign of blood and fire to stamp out the uprising in different parts of the island. Pollensa was attacked. Women and children took refuge in the church. It was set ablaze: two hundred died. Men who had taken to defend their families and their town were slaughtered, hung and quartered. The streets were littered with bodies. Buildings were ablaze. Those who survived were cowed into meekness. They would not revolt again and they faced retribution: the price of having to pay the royal treasury for their town to be rebuilt.
How did Alcúdia come to be the opponent in all this? Well, it was Alcúdia where the royal troops landed, and Alcúdia was where supporters of the crown and of the nobility in the "part forana" of Mallorca had been holed up. They had sought refuge behind the town's walls and they had got it. Ten months before the Pollensa massacre, a siege of Alcúdia by the "Germanies" (also known as "agermanats") was ended. The battle of Alcúdia took place on Boxing Day, 1521, and it proved decisive. The Germanies were defeated and so Alcúdia could be prepared as the operations centre to end the revolt across the island.
There were of course other battles. A fierce one took place in Sa Pobla in November 1522, for example. The Germanies were being defeated everywhere, and the uprising was finally and definitively crushed in March 1523. As a mark of the gruesome nature of the conflict, one of the revolt's leaders, Joan Colom, was hung, drawn and quartered. His quarters were placed on pillars in Palma, while his head was mounted on the city's Puerta Pintada. It stayed there until 1820, a reminder to all of the consequences of rising up against the nobility and the crown.
But what of those links between Pollensa's day of destruction and the battle against the Moors in 1550? One link was that this battle marked the recovery of the town's pride that had been shattered in 1522. Another was a very notable family link. Someone who survived the massacre was a young Joan Mas. His father was slaughtered in 1522, but twenty-eight years later, it was Joan who led the people of Pollensa in repelling the Moorish invaders and who is, of course, represented each year in the famous battle simulation.
It took a generation for Pollensa to regain its esteem. The rivalry with Alcúdia has never since been of the style it was in those days of the sixteenth century while nowadays, it is simply a case of who claims bragging rights for tourism infrastructure and other contemporary matters. The day of destruction and its awfulness does live on in the memory, but it is said that there are many people in Pollensa who are unfamiliar with it. They know all about the Moors and the Christians and the glorious victory; far less about the inglorious 29 October 1522. That's why, therefore, there are history courses and why today the memory will certainly be relived.
Of dates in Pollensa's history, none offers greater pride than 30 May 1550. We know that the simulation of the Moors and Christians battle takes place on 2 August each year during the Patrona fiestas, but the actual battle of 1550 had been staged some weeks before. 30 May 1550 is central to the historical and cultural narrative of Pollensa, but it is linked, through family ties and the town's psyche, to events that occurred 28 years previously. 29 October 1522 is known as the day of destruction. It was a day that witnessed scenes of unparalleled barbarity, it was a day that ripped the heart out of Pollensa, killed many of its inhabitants and rendered it meek, impotent and deprived of resistance. 29 October 1522 was the day of quite appalling massacre.
The context was the uprising of the "Germania", the brotherhood. It had broken out in February 1521 and was the response of the peasant and artisan class in Mallorca (the impetus did actually come from a different revolt in Valencia) against grand land owners who, through abusive taxes, blatant exploitation and grinding poverty, had trodden the common people of Mallorca so far down that no other response was possible than that of direct and violent conflict, and it was a conflict which broadened in scope - the revolt was against the Spanish monarch (Carlos I) as well.
The people of Pollensa would have been aware of what was coming. The revolt in Mallorca was finally met with the might of royal forces. A squadron appeared off the northern coast in mid-October. The viceroy in Mallorca ordered a campaign of blood and fire to stamp out the uprising in different parts of the island. Pollensa was attacked. Women and children took refuge in the church. It was set ablaze: two hundred died. Men who had taken to defend their families and their town were slaughtered, hung and quartered. The streets were littered with bodies. Buildings were ablaze. Those who survived were cowed into meekness. They would not revolt again and they faced retribution: the price of having to pay the royal treasury for their town to be rebuilt.
How did Alcúdia come to be the opponent in all this? Well, it was Alcúdia where the royal troops landed, and Alcúdia was where supporters of the crown and of the nobility in the "part forana" of Mallorca had been holed up. They had sought refuge behind the town's walls and they had got it. Ten months before the Pollensa massacre, a siege of Alcúdia by the "Germanies" (also known as "agermanats") was ended. The battle of Alcúdia took place on Boxing Day, 1521, and it proved decisive. The Germanies were defeated and so Alcúdia could be prepared as the operations centre to end the revolt across the island.
There were of course other battles. A fierce one took place in Sa Pobla in November 1522, for example. The Germanies were being defeated everywhere, and the uprising was finally and definitively crushed in March 1523. As a mark of the gruesome nature of the conflict, one of the revolt's leaders, Joan Colom, was hung, drawn and quartered. His quarters were placed on pillars in Palma, while his head was mounted on the city's Puerta Pintada. It stayed there until 1820, a reminder to all of the consequences of rising up against the nobility and the crown.
But what of those links between Pollensa's day of destruction and the battle against the Moors in 1550? One link was that this battle marked the recovery of the town's pride that had been shattered in 1522. Another was a very notable family link. Someone who survived the massacre was a young Joan Mas. His father was slaughtered in 1522, but twenty-eight years later, it was Joan who led the people of Pollensa in repelling the Moorish invaders and who is, of course, represented each year in the famous battle simulation.
It took a generation for Pollensa to regain its esteem. The rivalry with Alcúdia has never since been of the style it was in those days of the sixteenth century while nowadays, it is simply a case of who claims bragging rights for tourism infrastructure and other contemporary matters. The day of destruction and its awfulness does live on in the memory, but it is said that there are many people in Pollensa who are unfamiliar with it. They know all about the Moors and the Christians and the glorious victory; far less about the inglorious 29 October 1522. That's why, therefore, there are history courses and why today the memory will certainly be relived.
Tuesday, February 03, 2015
Podemos Power Struggles
When you are a new political entity, you can probably expect to encounter the odd teething trouble, and so it is with Podemos in Mallorca. First there was the resignation of one of the steering committee (or citizens' council to give it its proper name) in Palma. This was attributed to "personal reasons" but it has been suggested that it was all to do with some form of power struggle within a body that is barely a month old and also with notions of "traditional political practices". It is hard not to feel that these traditional practices have been quickly discovered by Podemos in Palma. A power struggle and citing personal reasons; it all sounds very familiar. It could just as easily be the Partido Popular.
Following the local difficulty in Palma, we move onto Pollensa, a town bedevilled by its proliferation of political parties and factions, and to which we now have to add the Podemos element. Its ten-person citizens' assembly, considerably smaller than the 34 who make up Palma's council, had voted Martí Cifre to be its secretary-general, though the vote was not overwhelming: five in favour, five abstained. Only a short while later and the assembly decided unanimously that Cifre's post should be revoked. He is far from happy and has said he will take the matter to court. It doesn't appear that there were personal reasons in Pollensa but instead a fear that Cifre had already started to use the Podemos name and connection for personal interest and for interests of certain businesspeople. Yes, all very familiar, if this indeed was what had been happening. It is rather depressing that a Podemos-ite should see fit to go to court. It is there, in court, where so much of Spain's politics end up. Alternatively though, it is reassuring to learn that a Podemos-ite has confidence in the legal system.
Are these two examples symptomatic of understandable teething troubles for a political entity which is fluid in its nature and in its policies? In Palma, the problem does seem to have been due in part to differences in perspective, but both of them highlight what is almost an inevitable consequence for a new political formation - the battle for power. Cifre in Pollensa has said that the Podemos assembly "wants to have power without going to the ballot box". It's not clear what he means by this, but the mere mention of the power word gives the game away.
A point that needs to be made about these councils or assemblies or whatever they call them is that members ("the politicians") cannot have previously been a member of another established party. One of those who supposedly has been involved in the power struggle in Palma has ceased to go to the Podemos national assembly (he is the only Balearic member of this assembly) because he was once included on the list for candidates of the old Unió Mallorquina in Banyalbufar. He had also been a councillor, which was ok in that he had been an independent: it was the one-time inclusion on the UM list, although he wasn't actually a member, that is the issue.
Not being tainted by and not having been involved in established politics is central to the Podemos narrative, but it does give rise to suspicions that some will view Podemos as a springboard for ambition. Power, personal power that is, is a contradiction to the Podemos philosophy, and yet it is bound to be an influence, and power, as the maxim has it, "tends to corrupt".
Other cases, like those in Palma and Pollensa, seem almost unavoidable as members of the local organisations jockey for position. In one sense, it is no bad thing if differences are aired, but when these differences lead someone to consider going to court, then you wonder what sort of beast has been unleashed. The very nature of Podemos is that there isn't a central discipline and in its absence there is the potential for a chaotic thrashing-around of ideologies, interpretations and personal interests at local levels.
Pablo Iglesias had once intimated that Podemos wouldn't participate in municipal elections. The growing force that it has become has persuaded him otherwise, but the technologically switched-on, online democracy of citizen participation that it represents might not be quite so achievable right at local levels where personal interests, even among those signed up to the Podemos philosophy, have an unfortunate habit of coming into play. This said, they can be avoided, and Pollensa gives an example of this. The Alternativa per Pollença is a party of transparency and of an endless seeking after the truth and of the possibly irregular. In a way, you wonder why Pollensa needs Podemos. The Alternativa has been doing its work for them. But this is the nature of politics, even for new political entities. Power.
Following the local difficulty in Palma, we move onto Pollensa, a town bedevilled by its proliferation of political parties and factions, and to which we now have to add the Podemos element. Its ten-person citizens' assembly, considerably smaller than the 34 who make up Palma's council, had voted Martí Cifre to be its secretary-general, though the vote was not overwhelming: five in favour, five abstained. Only a short while later and the assembly decided unanimously that Cifre's post should be revoked. He is far from happy and has said he will take the matter to court. It doesn't appear that there were personal reasons in Pollensa but instead a fear that Cifre had already started to use the Podemos name and connection for personal interest and for interests of certain businesspeople. Yes, all very familiar, if this indeed was what had been happening. It is rather depressing that a Podemos-ite should see fit to go to court. It is there, in court, where so much of Spain's politics end up. Alternatively though, it is reassuring to learn that a Podemos-ite has confidence in the legal system.
Are these two examples symptomatic of understandable teething troubles for a political entity which is fluid in its nature and in its policies? In Palma, the problem does seem to have been due in part to differences in perspective, but both of them highlight what is almost an inevitable consequence for a new political formation - the battle for power. Cifre in Pollensa has said that the Podemos assembly "wants to have power without going to the ballot box". It's not clear what he means by this, but the mere mention of the power word gives the game away.
A point that needs to be made about these councils or assemblies or whatever they call them is that members ("the politicians") cannot have previously been a member of another established party. One of those who supposedly has been involved in the power struggle in Palma has ceased to go to the Podemos national assembly (he is the only Balearic member of this assembly) because he was once included on the list for candidates of the old Unió Mallorquina in Banyalbufar. He had also been a councillor, which was ok in that he had been an independent: it was the one-time inclusion on the UM list, although he wasn't actually a member, that is the issue.
Not being tainted by and not having been involved in established politics is central to the Podemos narrative, but it does give rise to suspicions that some will view Podemos as a springboard for ambition. Power, personal power that is, is a contradiction to the Podemos philosophy, and yet it is bound to be an influence, and power, as the maxim has it, "tends to corrupt".
Other cases, like those in Palma and Pollensa, seem almost unavoidable as members of the local organisations jockey for position. In one sense, it is no bad thing if differences are aired, but when these differences lead someone to consider going to court, then you wonder what sort of beast has been unleashed. The very nature of Podemos is that there isn't a central discipline and in its absence there is the potential for a chaotic thrashing-around of ideologies, interpretations and personal interests at local levels.
Pablo Iglesias had once intimated that Podemos wouldn't participate in municipal elections. The growing force that it has become has persuaded him otherwise, but the technologically switched-on, online democracy of citizen participation that it represents might not be quite so achievable right at local levels where personal interests, even among those signed up to the Podemos philosophy, have an unfortunate habit of coming into play. This said, they can be avoided, and Pollensa gives an example of this. The Alternativa per Pollença is a party of transparency and of an endless seeking after the truth and of the possibly irregular. In a way, you wonder why Pollensa needs Podemos. The Alternativa has been doing its work for them. But this is the nature of politics, even for new political entities. Power.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
