Reaching The Shopping Summit

They were holding a summit in Madrid earlier this week. This wasn't a summit for, say, climate change, nuclear disarmament or how to solve a problem like Brexit. It was for something far more important (some might believe) - shopping. Yes, shopping is that important that it merits a summit. Not a mere conference, seminar or a forum, but a summit. What happens now? Will the UN pass a resolution?

The Summit Shopping Tourism & Economy (Madrid 2016) is an awfully pompous and self-important title for the pleasures (or otherwise) of traipsing around the streets of major cities and handing over vast amounts of cash in exchange for ... . Ah, there you have it. That's why a summit is required. Cash. Lots of it. Now let's make more.

The importance of the occasion was such that the government's second-in-command, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, was there. As was China's ambassador to Spain, Lyu Fan. Among other notables were the secretary-of-state for tourism (Spain's that is), the director-general of Turespaña, the president of the World Travel & Tourism Council, the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce in Spain, and Spain's former ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

In addition, there were heads of tourism from Madrid (region and city) and from Barcelona. How many do you reckon where there from Palma or the Balearics? Correct. None. Oh, there may have been the odd one or two in the audience, assuming the town hall in Palma had been willing to fork out the 390 euros (IVA included) to attend, but as for speakers, official institutional and corporate representatives, the number was zilch.

China's ambassador wasn't there to extol the virtues of the local Chinese store (or several local Chinese stores). He took part because the summit was very keen to learn how to extract ever greater benefit from Chinese tourists. Spain currently only gets around 400,000 a year - a mere 5% of non-EU visitors, but a 5% which represents 35% of non-EU visitor spending. Likewise, you can appreciate why a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia might have been invited.

The Chinese tourist offers great fortunes, but the summit was at pains to stress that this shouldn't be the only market targeted. There needs to be greater global segmentation. In other words, we don't care where you come from so long as you are loaded and willing to part with all your cash in a city's main shopping centre. Like, for example, in Palma around the Born and Jaume III.

If only this were the case. A reason why no one from Palma was on the official list is that no Chinese tourists come to Palma (or very few anyway). The same can be said for tourists from other nations with credit cards to burn, except for those comparatively rare European beasts who are capable of meeting prices in a shopping zone with some of the highest rents not just in Spain but anywhere. Alas for Palma and for its ambitions to become Spain's or the Mediterranean's Shopping Central, there aren't direct flights from Asia and the Middle East, so - as with elsewhere in Mallorca - it has to get by with impoverished market suppliers like Great Britain, whose tourists' contribution to the retail economy generally amounts to no more than the purchase of several hundred Embassy, a dozen types of mosquito treatment and an inflatable crocodile for the beach.

But it isn't only the Britons who are cheapskates. Spain as a whole accounts for around 20% of all overnight stays in Europe but only has 4% of the European shopping tourism market. That's mainly because out of the 68 million tourists who come to Spain, 60 million of them are from the European Union. Those from outside the EU spend as much in a day as Europeans do in a week, and if the non-EU market were to be expanded by 25%, then spending on shopping would leap from a current 4,100 million to 8,900 million euros.

It was these 4,800 million additional euros (plus ever more) that the summit was so interested in and therefore why it was deemed to be important enough to be dubbed a summit. Essentially, though, it was a summit for Madrid and Barcelona. Vague references may have been made to "other cities" - and one could mention the likes of, for example, San Sebastian, Malaga, Valencia, plus Palma - but until such time that there are adequate flights, the summit's attention will remain focused on Madrid and Barcelona.

Perhaps, though, Palma can hope for a whole new line of cruises for Chinese tourists. One dreads to think what the reaction would be to that. Hordes of Chinese cluttering up the city then legging it back to ships with the entire contents of El Corte Inglés. Someone would have to learn how to do graffiti in Chinese.

Defending Christmas Shopping Tradition

Mallorca, we are led to believe, resists certain temptations to undo years of tradition and so bow to the commercial imperialism of the United States and to the excesses of rampant consumerism. One manifestation of this supposed resistance is Halloween. While there may be traditionalists who eschew its trappings on the grounds that it is all an American invention, Halloween has wormed its way into the affections of many, and so in more ways than the simple consumption of Allhallowtide doughnuts.

The denial of consumerism is such that there have of course been no Mallorcans contributing to the jams to get into the FAN Mallorca Shopping complex and therefore to Trafico closing a motorway exit. Consumerism is so widely ignored that each month extensive statistics are produced which itemise how much has been spent (or not) on what particular products. The stats are produced for various reasons, one of which is to indicate the strength (or otherwise) of the local economy. Consumer spending, it might come as a shock to realise, is a vital factor in growth.

Then there is Christmas, a time when Mallorca turns its back on the various reports estimating how much every household will fork out and when municipalities (those which can afford to) drape Bon Nadal lights across roads in early November and then forget to take them down until March. No, Mallorca doesn't do Christmas. It holds up a metaphorical cross to ward off the evil spirit of the devil of commercialism in defence of religious tradition. If only it were so.

There is one good reason why there has been an appearance of avoiding the appetite for overindulgent Christmas consumerism. And that is legislation, both national and regional. Until recently, the gun to mark the start of the Christmas shopping rush was fired over the two holiday days' period of 6 and 8 December. Major stores would open their doors at seven in the morning. In they would all flock, then exit with several trolley loads. Stores were allowed to open - and still are - if one of these holiday days is a designated day when all shops (i.e. the big ones) can open, and of course they (the regional government) would have made sure that this was the case. Legislation demands that at present there are sixteen such days (Sundays and holidays) a year, soon to be reduced to ten.

Legislative reform has, however, disrupted this. Stores which were obliged to only have sales at set times of the year can now have them whenever they want to. This reform is absolutely crucial to understanding why Black Friday, a further example of gross Americana, has appeared from almost nowhere over the past two to three years. Without the reform, it couldn't happen.

Black Friday has, therefore, pushed the start of the Christmas shopping season forward a couple of weeks, and such is the lack of local Mallorca interest in this consumer bonanza that - according to surveys - at least 70% of the population will be turning its credit card hot.

However, lurking in the traditionalist background are those who insist on maintaining a tradition in defence of the smaller stores and so against the advance of big business and all the retail razzmatazz of Black Friday. Among them are elements at the town hall in Palma.

Much has been made of the decision to delay the switching-on of the Christmas lights until 3 December. The retailers wanted them to go on in order to coincide with Black Friday. The various justifications as to why there is the delay have included the fact that 25 November is considered to be too early, inviting a question as to too early for what. The answer to that is those elements within the town hall who would prefer that Black Friday had stayed firmly put on the other side of the Atlantic.

Take Antonia Martin, for example. She is the councillor for consumer affairs. She is also a member of Som Palma, the city's branch of Podemos. Last month she announced that the Christmas market would open on the same day as Black Friday in order that it could "fight" against large retailers. Martin is one of a Som Palma collective at the town hall which takes a quite different view of commercialism to others within the administration. Hence, the Christmas season has been theirs to dictate, and not the councillor for trade and tourism, Joana Adrover (PSOE).

It is politics which have determined the switching-on of the lights. Nothing else. Adrover, disposed to the lights having gone on tomorrow, knows full well that shopping is a strategic product in Spain's national tourism promotion. Consumers, both local and foreign, are key to the success of this product. But not in Palma, given the fights between the parties at the town hall. If there is one tradition being maintained, it is that of political battle.

Un-Weather: Retail and alcohol therapy

In the days, and there were once such days, when I enjoyed a holiday - a summer holiday, of the type which Cliff had invented - there would be this occasional bad dream. Maybe Bomb The Bass were to blame. They had, after all, or rather he had - Tim Simenon - provided the electronic lament "Winter in July". Into the dream would come snow: right around the time when the plane was on the tarmac ready to whisk us away to hot and sunny climes.

Fortunately, it was only a bad dream. Snow in summer never materialised. Climate change hadn't been that dramatic in spinning in a different direction and creating the new Ice Age. But the realisation did occasionally involve precipitation. Rain. And a glowering sky. What a strange word "glower" is. The addition of two letters and a change in pronunciation converts "glow" into the complete opposite. The Germanic branch line of English is to blame for a glowering sky, and the German language is littered with the vocabulary of meteorological foreboding and pragmatism: the frightening "Gewitter" or the explanatory "Unwetter", un-weather, a word of linguistic genius.

Likewise, Spanish has granted us "tormenta": the torment of weather akin to the tormenta of a differing kind - that which the Inquisition engaged itself in. The national meteorological agency tells us, and it is not wrong in this regard, that tormenta in August is not uncommon, but it is knowledge dissemination greeted with little satisfaction. When the sky glowers, when the rains doth fall, what the hell is there to do?

It is the lament of many parts of coastal resort Mallorca that if, only temporarily, one part of the sun-and-beach equation is removed (meaning, in practice, that both are), there is nothing to do. An answer is to get hold of the last available hire car in town and head off in a storm in order to go and get soaked somewhere else. Or to make the pilgrimage of the car-rental sector to the capital, and bring Palma to a standstill in the process. The Cathedral car park, the only one most visitors are familiar with, creates its own traffic jam. The inner lane of the Paseo Marítimo becomes almost impassable because of the queue to get in. If you can get in.

Palma does, though, provide a clue to the bad-weather conundrum as it offers the palliative of retail therapy for the beach-denied. Shops have been reporting that business is up by 40% in some instances. For the retailers, it might as well, as Carole King once observed, rain until September. What is everyone buying? They'll be declaring a crisis in the umbrella market on account of the shortage. Supply, demand, and the price of umbrellas suddenly sky rockets. But if shopping is the principal alternative, then the regional government might pay heed. Its anger at the "aggression" of Madrid and national government's constitutional challenge to local law limiting vast retail centres should be diluted. In the absence of fallback theme park and attraction alternatives in most of Mallorca, there should be vast retail palaces, prepared to admit the beach diaspora a couple of times each high summer.

Were they ever to get round to developing theme parks or at least attractions on any type of scale away from the thematic epicentre of the island's south-west, here's a suggestion. The Noah's Ark theme park. It is surely a better idea than that Christian theme park thing, about which we mercifully no longer hear anything. Animals two by two. A zoo perched above the floods. Perfect for the conversion of old arks which are lying around and rotting in small ports of the Mallorcan coast. There won't, of course, ever be such attractions. For the same reason as there won't be vast retail malls. It's the environment, stupid, the one that is buried under the weight of the car-rental sector when the un-weather rains of August are unleashed in their torment.

The shopping solution, and the impressive sales figures, will presumably reveal a sudden and high upward blip on the tourist spend monitor, and in so doing will contradict a further lament - that of the all-inclusive killing the complementary sector. Yet, it should be acknowledged that not all all-inclusive comes with an economy-class rating. It is here, at the lower end of all-inclusive, where the greatest torment is felt. Receptionists reduced to tears by guests demanding they do something about the weather, demanding that they tell them what to do. Deprived of the yellow thing, even low-grade beer, never tasty anyway, tastes that much less tasty when the sun don't shine. Drink, nonetheless, is an option, and not one that requires hiring a car in order to sit in a queue for a car-parking space. The bars love a good spot of un-weather.

Cruise Shipping Saturation?

Palma port received four cruise ships on Tuesday morning which were carrying more than 10,000 passengers. It seems strange that, with most of the island having gone into touristic hibernation, so many tourists can appear, even if they then disappear rapidly. Still, an estimated one million euros of spend from the 10,000 are not to be sniffed at, though whether all cafés were open to accept the 10,000 is doubtful. They came into port in the early morning, and there are cafés which don't open until midday. Winter hours. Oh well, their loss, though it must be asked, as it is often is, whether these cruising tourists were actually spending in Palma and not being whisked off to parts of the island on excursions.

Cruise tourism continues to be, so to speak, buoyant. Growth expectations for the Balearics in 2015 are placed at 30%, which represents some considerable growth if the forecasts turn out to be accurate. But is this growth about to plateau? Certain industry observers suggest that it might. The Western Mediterranean, they argue, is close to cruising saturation point. This is not the view, however, of cruise operators like Royal Caribbean and Costa. There is further room for growth. Spain, including therefore Mallorca, has not reached a point of product maturity, while the range of customer types allows for a diversified cruise product such as, one might suggest, a November cruise in the Mediterranean which stops off in Palma. It is quite different to the all-inclusive-style floating leviathans of summer.

Arriving midweek, passengers would have found shops open if not all the cafés. The old chestnut of shop opening times at weekends in Palma needs to be considered not just in the context of cruise tourism but also that of a campaign unveiled at national level. The "Shopping Tourism Plan 2015", backed up by a promotional budget of just under three million euros, aims to increase shopping spend by tourists while also attracting tourists with greater purchasing power. The campaign will go wider than just the regular European markets and bring in Russia, China and other Asian countries, the Middle-East, the USA and South America. It sounds, therefore, a highly ambitious plan, though to what extent it might have any impact in Mallorca is questionable. To take the Chinese tourism market as an example, Malaga is anticipating growth of over 50% in this market in 2015. Mallorca and the Balearics don't as yet figure with the Chinese tourism industry. Catalonia is by far the most popular region of Spain - it accounts for almost 60% of Chinese tourism - followed by Madrid with 25%.

Justin Bieber And Can Picafort

Steady. Don't get excited. Not that you probably were getting excited. A year or two ago maybe, but not now. Justin Bieber, teen moppet turned bad boy, just doesn't raise the excitement in the way he did. But then who knows, maybe he'll prove to be the male Britney Spears, re-emerging on the other side after a time in the darkness. It was never like this in David Cassidy's day.

In case you were wondering, Bieber isn't in Can Picafort and has never been in Can Picafort. But his image is. I was looking at it the other day. It was staring back at me from a display near the entrance to a perfumery. I know the owner well. Is Bieber selling? Not this summer, she replied. Last summer yes, but not now. It's all about the image, I supposed. Becoming a bad boy doesn't do much for the Bieber perfume range. She agreed, though there is always the other factor. The less-than-X factor for a place like Can Picafort. Tourist spend has evaporated into the hot air over a summertime resort that has become All-Inclusive Central.

I enjoy my towards-the-end-of-the-season chats with the perfumery owner. Enjoy because she's a lovely lady, but enjoy is not really the right word. It's enjoyment through her honesty, and the honesty of her impressions of Can Picafort is not terribly positive. It is an honesty that has been characterised by a declining positivity as the years have passed, but she keeps retaining her optimism and her business sense. Among perfumeries which, let's face it, can all seem like much of a muchness, she puts herself out there, advertising, keeping going. Hers is the only perfumery I know of in the area that makes such an effort.

With Bieber in decline, what have been the big-sellers this season, I wonder. There haven't been any. Not in the sense of there having been what she calls a "boom" range. The solid, classic brands sell well enough, Dior, Chanel, Paco Rabanne, Dolce & Gabbana. The last real boom was the Paco Rabanne One Million range. It sold on the back of excellent advertising. She reckons there wasn't a household on Mallorca that didn't have a One Million of some sort. Strange in a way. We both agree that the packaging is not the most tasteful you'll ever see.

But this is a perfumery (two in fact) on the main drag in Can Picafort, the one that runs behind the narrow promenade frontline, where mostly tourists would be customers, wouldn't they be? Yes and no. Without the trade from the locals, it would be hard to survive, I'm guessing, as it would be for the other shops. And shops is about all you see. I hadn't appreciated until she told me that there are now virtually no cafes along the road, the victims of all-inclusive. Paris disappeared a year or so back; it's now a fashion shop. It was once almost synonymous with Can Picafort.

Yet, the replacement by shops hasn't changed the dynamic. Time was, a few years ago, when the perfumery would have been packed around eight in the evening during the summer. Not now.

Perfume is of course a discretionary purchase for the tourist. But then it always was. And more or less anything else that a tourist buys is discretionary, including a beer in a bar or a meal in a restaurant. Tourists have to eat and drink, but they have other options - the supermarkets or more likely the all-inclusive. You tend not to hear as much about how the shift in the tourism market has affected the retail sector as you do about its impact on bars and restaurants or attractions, the ones who shout louder and make their voices heard more. Sure, you hear from the large retailers, like the supermarket multiples, but little from the small businesses. They suffer in a more silent way.

The double-whammy of reduced spend and the rise of the all-inclusive is so familiar a theme that it seems to almost no longer warrant mentioning. But mention has to continue if only to ask where we are heading: where a resort like Can Picafort is heading. My perfumery owner, ever looking for reasons to be optimistic, tells me that one of the better-known all-inclusives in town is separating off part of the hotel and creating a hotel within a hotel. It won't be all-inclusive. It will be for a better type of tourist, a euphemism for one who spends money. Perhaps others will follow, but even if they do, will they only nibble away at the edges of a frayed resort that faces such future uncertainty? Can Picafort needs a boom. It needs a Bieber, but one that doesn't go bad.

Are You Being Served? Spanish retailing

Ten years ago I splashed out 1500 euros on a decent digital camera. Having parted with the cash, the camera soon developed a fault. It turned out to have been just one of those things. The replacement was perfectly ok and served me for several years until it was stolen.

There had been no difficulty in obtaining the replacement from the retailer. I explained that there was a fault. There were no questions, there was no examination of the camera, and no quibbling whatsoever. The sales assistant got a new boxed-up camera and handed it over.

The point of this story is that the camera was bought at and then replaced by the main El Corte Inglés department store in Palma. El Corte Inglés doesn't do cheap. But what it does do is quality and service.

Gripes about service in Mallorca are legitimate, but there are many examples which disprove a widely-held belief that service is universally lousy. El Corte Inglés is one, and it is an example from a sector - retail - that is often damned for its unreliable opening hours and apparent lack of interest in the customer.

A while ago I mentioned the fact that it was hard to think of really world-class Spanish businesses. A correspondent referred to a handful which had escaped my attention, one being the Zara fashion store chain. Being strictly accurate, Zara is just a brand; it is one part of a suite of stores that comprise a company called Inditex. And Inditex has something in common with El Corte Inglés; they both feature in the list of the world's top 50 retailers.

The consultants at Deloitte are a busy bunch. They churn out surveys left, right and centre. Coming hard on the heels of one of Spanish travel agents, Deloitte has issued, in collaboration with Stores media, its 2012 "Global Powers of Retailing" survey.

This ranks, in order of sales, the leading 250 retailers across the globe. Dominating the top 30 are US companies - Wal-Mart is way out on its own at number one, but the UK's Tesco is number three in the world - but just under these real powerhouse companies comes a trio of Spanish retailers. El Corte Inglés is at 47, Inditex is at 49, but beating them both, and therefore Spain's leading retailer, is Mercadona, which is ranked at 42. There is only one other Spanish company in the 250, and that is Eroski (98).

It's when the list is broken down according to style of store that Spanish performance becomes more significant. Mercadona can't really compete with fast-moving consumer goods giants like Wal-Mart and Tesco, but El Corte Inglés is the world's fifth largest diversified retailer (beating Marks and Spencer into sixth place) and Inditex is the fifth largest fashion goods retailer.

The growth of Inditex has been impressive, despite economic conditions. It hasn't relied on acquisition but on expansion into new geographic markets. So well has it been doing that it is likely to overtake two well-known US companies, Kohl's and J.C.Penney, and is not so far behind Macy's, the world's number one fashion retailer.

Zara and Inditex's growth is in keeping with the fact that the most profitable of the retail sectors is fashion, but Inditex's success could also be a cause of competition. The Chinese, now developing quality brands but at lower prices, have been moving in, the likes of Mulaya seeking to take on Zara. But as with El Corte Inglés, a reputation for quality is likely to maintain Zara's strong position. However, where Inditex can expand into foreign markets, so can others.

Of UK (Irish) stores that many an expat has expressed a desire to have in Mallorca, Argos and Primark are names that regularly crop up. Argos would find it difficult, and the fact that at number four in the world's list of so-called hardlines and leisure goods retailers is Amazon.com partly explains why it would. Primark would be a different matter. It has already been successful in moving into mainland Spain and as it is also in Gran Canaria, then why not Mallorca? And it's not just the expats who would be thankful for a Primark. There is a Facebook page called "Queremos un Primark en Palma!" ("queremos" being we want) that has over 4,000 likes.

Analysts have identified over 140 cities in 12 countries that could be ripe for a Primark store. If there were more in Spain, and at least one in Mallorca, then Inditex may just have to watch out.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

All Or Nothing

Is the all-inclusive running out of low-grade beer-fuelled steam? If it is, they will be celebrating with a special fiesta. Take soundings around Alcúdia, and word is that the exclusive all-inclusives (which can sound like a contradiction but refers to those hotels which are AI only) are having a particularly hard time of it. Lagomonte's occupancy travails are well aired, the Delfin Verde may close its doors on barely a score percentage in October and talk has been of the Marte having been empty for a while with the Club Macsters being penned into Jupiter and Saturn.

It is worth asking why the likes of the Lagomonte and the Verde seem to be suffering when others, such as the half board Delfin Azul and the self-catering Alcúdia Beach, are full. It's not simply a question of size; the Delfin Azul and Lagomonte, for instance, are roughly similar in terms of beds, and the Verde is comparatively small. The Marte situation may have occurred, but it at least seems to be operating at reasonable capacity. I took a stroll around the Club Mac site yesterday. Stroll is not the right word; elbowing your way along Oxford Street on the last Saturday before Christmas comes to mind. It was its normal impersonation of a Dante-esque vision.

One wonders if those reviews that hurl around cyberspace have any effect. The Macs have copped more than their fair share of flak, the Verde has not been immune but Lagomonte has generally escaped the worst of the comments. There again, for every review that talks of vomit and crap in the pool there is one that could have been written about the Ritz. Maybe punters have rumbled the fact that all-inclusive often stands for inferior quality - in mostly all services and facilities. But there still are plenty who don't mind iffy lager served in a plastic glass and feeding times at zoos.

Perhaps it is just a case of economics. Despite the cost attractions of the all-inclusive, they still cost. They cater, in general, for less well-off families whose budgets are as affected as any others by the economic climate. Nevertheless, the word going round that the Verde may switch to half board could be an indication that the AI beast is being tamed. If the Azul can do well on such a basis, why not others?


And just returning to the Alcúdia Beach. There I was walking from the back of the hotel on my normal going-around hotels routine, when ... what was that? A voice in the air. Something disembodied like the PA system in "The Prisoner". "Good morning, Andrew, of the Alcudia Guide. Nice yellow t-shirt." I couldn't see him but I knew he was somewhere. How had he seen me that was the question. Grizz, aka Minty.


Further to yesterday's note about things going on in the port, the town hall sent me a poster which I've put on the WHAT'S ON BLOG. It implies that what the press report called craft workshops are in fact kids' workshops and that the events are "Shopping". Which makes one ask, well what about the shops that are already there? Also, rather than just Wednesdays and Saturdays, they are taking place on more occasions. Wish they'd make their minds up.


There has been a comment to the WHAT'S ON BLOG. It was in Spanish, a chap moaning about the Playa de Muro fiesta this weekend serving up little more than a local music band when other fiestas have all sorts of groups and DJs etc. It's a point. Alcúdia and Pollensa can have big events in both the towns and the resorts, why does Muro reserve the special stuff for the town only? So I tend to agree with whoever it was. Anyway, there are times when I take a certain perverse delight in putting Spanish stuff into a machine translator. And I have done so with this comment. This is how Babelfish mangled it. Brilliant stuff:

"Because it fence wall beach celebrations those. Whereas in other municipalities they bring to well-known people for the concerts we dedicated ourselves here to the band because? you will say it to us. Then he will be that Beaches of Wall do not give money enough to the city council not to deserve celebrations in conditions. Then already it is saying, goes celebrations that organize to us."


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Eric Clapton (with some mates at the Albert Hall) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64dUqMxxyjQ. Today's title - who?

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

My Favourite Shop

I'll be honest. I don't get the whole deal with shopping on holiday. Clearly it is a male-female thing. The WAGS and daughters wanna go shoppin'. The guys go to the bar. Lagerfeld or lager. Ne'er the twain do meet. Of course, sometimes needs must, like when you forget to pack your underpants or the luggage goes for its own fortnight vacation. Many years back at the time of Tito in the former Yugoslavia, a group of us went to this place in Croatia. Unfortunately the baggage handler who absconded with the suitcase took the one belonging to the guy who was a former basketball player with a by-now expanding girth line. 6 feet six in both directions. His greatest need was for some swimming trunks. Umag, that was the place. It had one clothes shop with no clothes, except - would you believe it - one outsize pair of swimming trunks. It was like Michael Palin coming across the bicycle repair shop in that old Python sketch. So, as I say, needs must on occasion.

But to come on holiday and shop. Fortunately for shops hereabouts, not everyone is either male or is disinterested, and - to be fair - there are some quite good shops in both Alcúdia and Pollensa. Clothes, perfumes, jewellery. All pretty much girlie stuff. The lads can wander off if they want though and find somewhere like Totymar in Puerto Alcúdia with its fishing and diving gear or, of course, go to the bar. Anyway, it so happens that I was in one of Puerto Pollensa's top perfumeries today - Stefanel. Not for shopping purposes I hasten to add. And so it gives me an excuse to post a photo of the shop (that was the reason for being there). Oddly though, there is something quite intoxicating about a perfume shop, though I do wonder do men ever actually buy the male perfumes and stuff for themselves? Whatever.

There are some favourite shops around. One that I have mentioned before is Llomgar in Alcúdia. Maybe it's the drills and those high-pressure water-jet things that will strip the paint off your car if you're not careful. But you can more or less buy anything there. Electrical goods, lights, garden furniture. Yea ok, one of them, one of them and one of them. Oh, and you deliver, too. Job's a good 'n. That's what I call shopping.


QUIZ
Yesterday - "She's The One", Robbie Williams. Today's title - who had an album with this title except that it was "our" and not "my"? (Have we had this before? Must keep a record, seems familiar.)

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

So Here It Is Merry Christmas

The Mallorcan Christmas. Like other fiestas, there is not just one day, there is a whole series of days, nearly two weeks in the case of Christmas. The Mallorcan Christmas is, in effect, from 24 December to 6 January.

But what of this Mallorcan Christmas? There is a fascination among those from the UK who don’t live here as to what it is like. And because the UK Christmas is a festival of gluttony and goodwill to all men so long as they come bearing gifts with a sizeable price tag, there is no more fascination than in how that aspect compares.

The impression one may have is of a wholly more low-key affair in which the religious aspect, the true meaning of Christmas if you will, far outweighs the commercialism. Even I have had that impression, but I’m not sure it obtains. Go to the hypermarkets such as Al Campo and see the trolley-loads of toys and gifts being wheeled out. Observe the “cestas” (hampers) for sale in the supermarkets, the shelves of specially brought in chocolates, nut-and-biscuit selections – could just as easily be Manchester as Mallorca.

By way of appreciating the “meaning” of a Mallorcan Christmas, there is a good indication in the form of a supplement to a recent “Ultima Hora” – a 64-page pull-out Christmas special; traditional Christmas yes, but far from only. Fashion for men and women; funky hairstyles for the festive season; perfumes; decorations; crackers and designer wrapping; exclusive gifts and gift ideas; CDs and books; how to keep fit having gorged on Christmas pastries, croquettes, cheese and cold-cut collections, Balearic sausages, herb liqueurs, wines and other produce, gourmet delights, fresh seafood, special recipes to try at home. And then those traditions, one of them being the celebrated “Gordo” that can be traced back to the start of the nineteenth century. Gordo is? The mega lottery just before Christmas. Yes there is also more tradition besides, but let’s adjust this rather sanctimonious notion that at Christmas Mallorca (and Spain) is in some way less in thrall to the shopping mall and supermarket shelf than Britain. I’m not so sure it is.


And with this, I am going to sign off for the festive period. No more blogging till the new year, probably around the 4th of January. So let me wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. When I return, hopefully I will have had time to put together the annual awards and annual turkeys, but don’t bank on it. I might just have spent the intervening period gorging, visiting shopping malls, pushing a heavily-laden trolley around a supermarket …


QUIZ
Yesterday – Bob James wrote the theme. Danny de Vito was the connection. Today’s title – every shopping mall plays it.

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