De Do Do Do

Further to the note about the Puerto Pollensa "platform" in yesterday's piece, I should add that Garry tells me that this coming-together kicked off with a discussion of the very fine mess that is the front line and the pedestrianisation, but expanded its scope, as he puts it, to "nothing less than the regeneration of the dirty, neglected port". Mess, dirty: note these words. One is tempted to believe that Puerto Pollensa is the only place that suffers from filth. I can assure you that it isn't, but there is certainly a level of disquiet - no, wrong word - disgust at the state of the pavements and so on, which brings me, of course, to dogs, and what dogs do. Doggy-doo.

The other day, there was this what, had it had a sugary coating, a layer of marzipan and a sprig of holly, might have passed for something that would find itself among the Christmas fare alongside the turkey and the Brussels sprouts. There it was, slap bang outside the front of the house. What sort of giant of a hound had left that there? Some dog of war; it must have been extremely frightened. So, I think, well, am I going to get rid of this, or do I just leave it and wait for a natural degradable process to take its course? It would have taken months. A handy shovel and a copy of a local publication were put to decent, or indecent, effect, and the canine Christmas log found its way to the general rubbish container. Shame that Muro town hall seem to have cut back on what used to be daily collections, but have upped the rubbish tax not insubstantially. Still, it has now gone. Until the next one.

Dogs out on their own for a bit of a trot, a bark and a visit to the on-street throne are one thing, even if no dog is meant to be out without a chaperon and, moreover, without being tethered to one, but dogs with their human best friends that evacuate their bowels without tidying up after themselves are another. And so it was that yesterday Hayley, as in Hayley of Hayley and No-Frills Seamus and their dogs that have taken cute lessons, was lamenting the absence of doggy-doo bagettes in the local supermarkets. If you can't get them, then how are dogs' best friends meant to flush and brush or poop and scoop the streets of not just Puerto Pollensa but the entire north of the island? Is there an island- or world-wide shortage of doggy bags? Maybe the recent rise in oil prices blew a hole in the mutt mopping-up sector of the plastics industry. And holes can be a problem. I point out, well, just use an Eroski bag. They are so generous with giving away bags - that are, of course, pretty useless when it comes to recycling - that you often get a bag per item; keep you going, and the dogs, for months. Apparently though, they are prone to holes or leakage. Despite doggy bags being even thinner, they must have hidden powers of complex polymer chemistry to retain elements of Rover's bodily functions. Frankly, they would need to be made with reinforced concrete to have accommodated, minus breakage, the tonnage that was left outside the house: either that or newsprint.

So, when next expressing your indignation at the apparent indifference of dog owners to the result of the internal and ultimately external processing of a dog's dinner, berate not those owners but the plastics industry and the retail trade. For it is they who are responsible, or not.

And as a footnote to this. Had a thought. Ferreterias - the hardware shops. They sell everything. Bet they've got doggy bags. Llomgar in Alcúdia, for example. There you can also get filters for coffee machines, because - and can anyone explain this - Eroski don't sell filters in winter. Why not? Must be all that paper being diverted into the doggy business, as it were.


ANOTHER FINE MESS - REAL MALLORCA
Yes, the story goes from bad to worse. Like Subbuteo players having the odd arm snapped off or becoming dislodged from their plastic bases, the club and team are falling to pieces, losing to Huelva, a side even worse than Mallorca, and inspiring the waving of hankies in the direction of president Grande. And he has caught a cold; in fact a nigh terminal virus without a cure, unless the latest reports are to be believed, in which case cheery nurse Freddy Shepherd will arrive with some medication. It could probably be as little as a crate of Newcy Brown and some fog from the Tyne to take the club off Grande's hands. In fact, it will be a bit more and a bit stronger - an injection of between 12 and 16 million euros stronger, according to "The Diario". There is meant to be a consultation in a Newcastle surgery tomorrow. And coming back to dogs. And Freddy Shepherd. No, let's not go there, shall we. Yet.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Boney M, and if you really must - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgevV4tpXVE . Today's title - they did some very good singles; this wasn't one of them.

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Painter Man

I almost reversed over who I thought was the postman yesterday morning. Just about to exit the driveway, there was a voice from the rear. I looked in the mirror and there was this chap with things in his hand. "Bon día", he was saying. Couldn't have been Postman Pedro though, what with it being Immaculate Conception and everything being closed down (you know it's a biggy of a holiday when not even the supermarkets are open). The chap, it turned out, was not a Postman Pedro but a Painter Pedro, from Can Picafort - painter and decorator, home improvements. The papers in his hand were his advertising. You know the sort of thing - Microsoft Word Art type with drop shadows and shades of pinks and blues plus a couple of photos. 500 euros for painting your apartment, it said. As I don't have an apartment, it didn't necessarily apply, but Pedro seemed a decent sort of cove, smiling and, hats off to him, you have to say, for tramping around on a holiday handing out his literature in search of drumming up business. Unfortunately, the ad also said: "pintor profesiomal". And, no, you don't spell it with an "m", even here. Anyway, at least he hadn't stuffed the letter box, unlike those who want to sell you artificial lawns and a new house around the corner. And though he was smiling, he wasn't one of the perma-smiley religious maniacs who periodically arrive mob-handed, with small children in tow and some booklet that will lead to a life of greater happiness. No, it will not. What will is a large cheque and their buggering off. The only nuisances at the garden gate are otherwise a brace of local policeman who turn up three times in one day (different braces, that is) to try and hand you a summons for someone who has not lived there for years and those other devils behind a smile, the gas con artists who will happily divest you of the contents of your wallet in return for checking your butane connection when it doesn't need doing and they are not the ones to do it anyway. With the God squad, I find a simple "no hablo español" to be an easy way of getting rid of them, as is the case when there is a phone cold call to sell you water filters or broadband that is even more crap than the service you already have, which is saying something. The butane chaps, however, get it with both barrels in English or Spanish. This island's full of bloody thieves, and you are one of them and if you don't piss off I'm phoning the police who would then, no doubt, send out three couples of plod to investigate.

People who sell things or themselves, as in looking for work. There would be more of it right now, you would think. Perhaps the Saturday morning boot sale at The Jolly Roger off The Mile is doing a roaring trade at the moment. Rather than just be a venue for local expat gossip, there are probably expats in desperate need of selling their microwaves or tat they picked up at another market. I suppose I should go and find out. But what do people sell and what services do they offer? I had a trawl through the Sunday edition of "Majorca Daily Bulletin", the most important medium for the expat classified. Other than property, of which there is nothing like as much as the acres of forest that are used for this purpose in the Spanish papers, along with the ads for "relax" and "massage", the most regular ads are for bars and restaurants (Christmas or pre-Christmas do's and Leapy Lee's curry nights), cars (mainly Mercedes, for some reason), building, renovations, painting, decorating, plumbing etc, removals, and Sky television. I sometimes wonder quite what Sky make of all this Sky trade here, given that in order to get a Sky card - or so I understand (not having one myself) - there is meant to be a UK address. Anyway, be that as it may. Most of what's on offer is pretty obvious stuff, but then there is the quirkier - tarot readings, a unicycle and some jetskis. Amongst it all, you can find a mooring for sale in Alcúdia that will only set you back 300,000 euros, South African products (for all the thousands of South Africans who have not been denied a residency), gourmet sausages and a system for getting rid of processionary caterpillars from pine trees (there is already a system - it's known as an air rifle). Then there are translation services, those companies that will help with your papers, like your residency, which is something I find odd as it is a simple enough, if tedious, procedure and you have to go personally anyway, and the business agencies who will help you to buy and sell, except no-one is doing the former and everyone is doing the latter. And mention of things quirkier, there was one display ad for the PQ Academy. Who he, you ask. More, who she, as it's Pauline Quirke for all those of you with a celebrity bent. The one-time star of a series with a sort of eponymous play on her name is starting a drama, musical and TV thing. Actually, I quite like Pauline Quirke, not for "Birds of a Feather", but for the likes of her appearance in "David Copperfield". If Mallorca is to be home to a celeb, then I would go Pauline every time rather than Peter Stringfellow. Somewhere, I have a photo of her at the old Tango restaurant in Puerto Pollensa, or if it isn't her, it was someone who had presumably been to a Pauline academy. But amongst all the ads offering the likes of dog care, nursing and piano lessons, there is not one for the most secure of all recession-proof businesses. And that is? Funerals. www.yourmallorcafuneral.com. I've checked. There is no domain name. Don't all rush at once.


PUERTO POLLENSA - THE WHOLE NINE YARDS
As thought, the "platform" of citizen and business groups is indeed a port-wide coming-together of the nine associations. According to Garry Bonsall, the associations are so angry with the mayor that the platform has been created in order to regenerate the port and to pressurise the mayor, for whom one feels almost rather sorry; this is becoming a quite extraordinary situation.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Mothers of Invention. Today's title - God, how I disliked this German-Caribbean act.

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Vote For Me And I'll Set You Free

So, I had gone to pay for the coffees, and there was a familiar expat at the bar. He noticed the copy of "The Bulletin" and wondered what I was doing reading the paper, about which he was less than complimentary. The answer was because it has things in it that the Spanish or British press would not. And one of those things is its letters. This I explained to the chap at the bar. "A letter by Garry Bonsall." "Again!!?" was the response. It seemed somewhat surprising a response from someone who seemingly didn't read the paper, but be that as it may. The drift of the resultant argument was that there are certain expats who are driven by certain motives to appear regularly in the paper's letters section. The implication was that they should shut it - sending the letters, that is, as opposed to the paper.

It is fair to say that there are a few names that do appear regularly with their names appended to letters, but if they have something relevant to say, what is the problem? My friend at the bar considers it an exercise in oversized egos. One could take a different view, which is that they care, and are prepared to express this. The problem is that if someone sticks his or her head above the expat parapet, there are plenty who will delight in shooting it off. Perhaps this blog is merely an exercise in ego, too. If so, I shall, like the birds being hunted at the moment, watch out for rifles glinting in the autumn sun.

The English-speaking fourth estate in Mallorca, most obviously "The Bulletin", is the the most significant medium that British expatriates can use to voice their opinions. That only a few seem to choose to do so is neither their problem nor the paper's. But the question of motive is a fair one. And that brings me to what Dr. Bonsall had to say this time. In brief, his letter was a form of call to arms to expats to create associations (together with local people) in all the island's municipalities as a force to influence the local political process. The motive was political.

It is probably fair to say that the expat voice and vote is largely overlooked, and one reason for this is that the expat is generally apathetic. He is more interested in British politics than in a Spanish or local Mallorcan alternative. Even those who might be inclined to vote (as they can, assuming they are registered, in local and European elections) would probably find it challenging to know what the issues were. Certainly at a local municipal level, there is no mechanism to spell out in English what these might be, and, for most expats, that would be necessary, even for those with a reasonable grasp of Castilian or Catalan. The language effectively disenfranchises the expat, except where they choose on purely party grounds. And my guess would be that the favoured party would be the conservative Partido Popular. How many expats would vote for the nationalists, for example?

What Garry is arguing is that political parties prepared to support the agendas of these local associations would benefit from their vote. In certain instances, this might well prove to be decisive. His own association, the Gotmar residents in Puerto Pollensa, has a considerable beef with the nationalist-topped Pollensa town hall (it is actually a coalition). I don't know that it takes too much imagination to think which opposition party it may wish to talk to. There are, however, certain issues that this raises. Firstly, there are really only four municipalities in Mallorca where there is anything like a sizeable (UK) expat registered population. In order of size, these are Calvia (which includes the likes of Magalluf and Santa Ponsa), Palma (where the numbers are dwarfed anyway), Pollensa and Alcúdia. To give an example of the smallness in other towns, the figures for the start of 2007 showed that there were 2100 people from the UK registered in Pollensa and Alcúdia and five other places - Sa Pobla, Campanet, Búger, Muro and Santa Margalida. Of this total, only 17% reside in those five municipalities together. And these figures do not take account of those actually registered to vote; they are population statistics. In Pollensa and Alcúdia, the percentage of the town's populations made up of UK people is less than 10% in both cases. It is not insignificant, but would it ever amount to some sort of unified pressure group or voting bloc either municipal-wide or neighbourhood-based?

Even if one were to add on other expat nationalities, who is to say that there would be a harmonious and unanimous agenda? Take any group and rub them with politics and the likelihood is that they would form factions, whether on the basis of issues or nationality (if there were wider expat groups). With the Gotmar residents, who are multi-national, there are basically two issues - the town hall's apparent indifference to the state of amenities in the urbanisation and the perceived injustice of the pedestrianisation scheme as it affects them. They are issues around which unanimity can form. Yet is there not the potential for a certain bias to then be played out? Were a political party to say yes to their grievances, secure their vote and then win, what has happened to all the other issues in the municipality? The association may well be exercising a democratic right to press its claims, but at what cost to others? It would be a classic example of how single-issue (or double-issue if you prefer) politics can skew the practice of democracy. But this is to assume that the chosen political party would then indeed follow through. Promises and broken promises are the stuff of politics.

There is the potential also for this to be seen as the work of some uppity foreigners, even where the associations comprise Mallorcans as well. Let's assume that the Gotmar residents attracted the support of a party, voted for it, and it then won, with the Gotmar vote being seen as decisive in the election of a new mayor. It is not strange for self-interest to influence a vote and nor is it undemocratic, but Gotmar is recognised as an area of some affluence. Whether inclusive of Mallorcans or not, one could see the possibility of a degree of resentment among the wider electorate at the actions and influence of a vociferous and minted group that would inevitably be regarded as "foreign". A way of combatting this would be to present the Gotmar case in the context of a municipal-wide dissatisfaction with the present administration, though that would make what was just a neighbourhood group a de facto political entity. But effectively that is what it would have become anyway. Garry has said previously that his association is non-partisan in the political sense, but by auctioning off its vote to a particular party, does it not become partisan?

However, as a way of engaging the otherwise apathetic expat with local politics, there is probably merit in what is being proposed. There again, that chap at the bar. He turned back to his British newspaper and was going to head home for some bacon and eggs, and that would have been the end of the local politics for the day and probably the rest of the year. Just about sums it up.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Spandau Ballet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLR9yyI9CHg). Today's title - line from something that shifted a famous record label towards a touch of psychedelia.

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