Parasite Of Love: Mallorca's "picadors"

A picador is the horseman who thrusts a lance into the bull during the bullfight. Is he not? He is, but there is another type of picador, one who might possibly be said to still exist but who had his heyday during the years of Mallorca's great tourism boom.

The chances are that, of things you can do over the next few days, you will not be going to the Can March Gallery in Inca on Friday or the town hall in Montuïri on Saturday in order to hear a presentation about a book written in Catalan. It's a shame. As with several other books written about some of the idiosyncrasies of Mallorca during the early boom years, it isn't available in English, but be this as it may. The book in question is by a young Mallorcan historian, Tomeu Canyelles, who first came to my attention when he collaborated with one of Mallorca's leading musicologists, Francesc Vicens, in researching the book "Beatles Made in Mallorca". This complemented a previous work by Vicens, "Paradise of Love", which looked at how pop music and tourism collided in Mallorca in the sixties and into the 1970s. They are two historians who have studied and will doubtless continue to study the ways in which popular culture was shaped and influenced by tourism in the days of innocence and not-so-innocence under the Franco regime. And into this research mix has come the latest work by Canyelles. It is a study of a social phenomenon, one that couldn't have existed without the wave of tourism from countries where attitudes were more liberal than in the Spain of the time. The title of the book in Catalan is "Els Picadors Mallorquins". Its subtitle translates as "seducers and seduced during the touristic boom". "Els picadors mallorquins", the Mallorcan picadors, derived their name not from the bullfight but from the mosquito. A picador is a synonym. You get an unpleasant bite from a mosquito, and the mosquito is a parasite. The picador, it was to become accepted, was a parasite.

So, who was he? You may have already put two and two together. Seducer, seduced, more liberal attitudes, parasite? If not, let's spell it out. The picador was the sleazy, smarmy, greasy Latin lover, the tourist gigolo of legend. He wasn't a myth. He genuinely did exist. And there were few places where he existed in greater number than in Mallorca.

It has been said that the early days of tourism made young Mallorcan men distinctly uncomfortable - probably in more ways than one. They had not previously been exposed to the amount of female flesh that now presented itself. There were many who couldn't handle the cultural and psychological upheaval typified by the bikini once it was legalised. On the other hand, there were many who could handle it, and handling was what they principally hand in mind. And this was a mind firmly devoted to the body and to its pleasures.

The picador's modus operandi was pretty straightforward. Eye up a young foreign girl, use some well-practised foreign phrases, charm her with Latin looks and, with any luck, bingo. The picador's territory was also pretty obvious. The beach was ideal and so was the disco, the latter in some ways better on account of alcohol that was in those days cheaper even than chips and served in measures equivalent to a small bucket.

Once it became apparent, fairly early on during the tourism boom, that this new industry was spawning whole legions of lecherous young men with dodgy moustaches who showered in some concoction that made Brut smell good, moral outrage began to raise its head. The church, never a great fan of tourism in any event, condemned the lack of morality, while, and the reverse of how it is today, British newspapers highlighted the perils of the picador. In the 1960s, the young Mallorcan male was the sexual predator who was worthy of contempt. Nowadays, as we know, the loose morality flies in en masse wearing lads-on-tour t-shirts, heads for Magalluf and gets filmed with its pants down.

However, there was, as with contemporary Magalluf, another side of the coin. Despite the indignant stereotyping by Fleet Street and becoming the target for British comedians and dreadful film spin-offs from sitcoms, the picador had his appeal. Tomeu Canyelles admits that, in some respects, the picador may have actually helped to boost tourism, though by the same token he did very little to give Mallorca a good reputation in the eyes of many, including mostly all other Mallorcans.

The picadors didn't last. Or not in the same way. Many clubs were forced to close because of economic crisis in the mid-1970s, while female attitudes were changing. They were less impressed and less easily won over, while there was also far greater awareness of sexually transmitted disease. The picador story ended at the turn of the 1980s, but it lives on in different ways, and one is Tomeu Canyelles' book.

Heroes And Villains: Mallorca's hoteliers

The regional tourism minister, Jaime Martínez, remarked the other day that, though Mallorca's main hotelier groups were investing heavily in overseas markets, they were still also investing in Mallorca. If one were being cynical, one could consider this final clause to be a defence against a widely levelled accusation: that these main hoteliers are far more interested in developments in foreign lands than in ones in their own small land.

Quite clearly the hoteliers are investing in Mallorca. Meliá we know all about, but of others? Well, Iberostar has been spending a pretty centimo or two in Cala Millor and Playa de Palma, where Riu is likewise engaged in putting up investment cash. There are plenty of other examples. But for any one or two investments on the island, greater investment activity abroad can be pointed to. To take Riu as an example, between 2014 and 2016 it will have invested in, had built or acquired hotels in Aruba, Mauritius, Morocco, Tunisia, Sri Lanka and New York, to say nothing of developments in Bulgaria and Tenerife. Though Riu has decided to abandon Cuba, its large fellow Mallorcan players are quite happy to take a deeper plunge in the scramble for the Castro-lite Cuba, now undergoing a relationship normalisation with the White House.

All of this overseas activity is, therefore, picked up on and used as evidence for the prosecution in damning the large hoteliers for seeking ever greater riches on foreign shores and leaving poor Mallorca to a slow death of comparative lack of quality and investment. How can these companies, these Mallorcans do such a thing?

It's all nonsense of course. Mallorca's "Big Four" (Meliá, Riu, Iberostar, Barceló) and some of the smaller pretenders to this quartet are global businesses. The clue to their interest in foreign investment lies with the adjective. Global businesses don't become global businesses by channelling all their wealth into markets with limited (very limited) scope for growth; and Mallorca offers very limited scope, especially for new developments. They act in accordance with principles of growth that are relevant to any industry: if you have built a strong home market with limited further opportunity, then you look elsewhere, especially when the industry you serve - tourism - is as avaricious for new destinations as it is.

Do Mallorcans (and indeed foreign residents living in Mallorca) love the Big Four and the other large hoteliers? Those who are employed by them or who have businesses that supply them would probably say yes. But as for everyone else?

The people who criticise the apparent neglect of Mallorca in favour of global development are probably among the ones who also harangue the hoteliers for their opposition to the private holiday accommodation sector. The hoteliers are, therefore, damned whatever they do. Invest much more heavily in Mallorca, and they'll get slammed for their attempts to further dominate the island's accommodation market and for being the sole beneficiaries of Delgado-Martínez Law, i.e. the 2012 tourism bill. Plough millions upon millions into some desert island, and they are branded traitors on account of their imperialist ambitions at the expense of little old Mallorca. And, to compound the apparent felony of imperialism, it is these very hotel groups which have exported know-how that has enabled other destinations to grow. Treachery.

The Big Four and others should be businesses of which Mallorcans can be proud. They are Mallorca internationally. But the pride seems reserved, while often there is little or no pride; only antagonism. It is a pity. These are businesses which haven't got where they are by luck. They are pretty damn good at what they do, and when puerile remarks are made along the lines of the "Mallorcans don't know what they're doing" (in terms of tourism), then perhaps those who make such remarks should spend a bit of time studying the histories of the leading hotel chains.

All this overseas activity casts the hoteliers in a type of ambassadorial role. Meliá's Gabriel Escarrer, for one, believes that the hotel chain's presence in some forty countries helps to enhance Spain's brand internationally. Consequently, global growth over some three decades has led to a reciprocal benefit for Spain in drawing visitors attracted by values of service, culture and lifestyle inherent to the Meliá brand.

But then, perhaps this is, for some Mallorcans, a different problem. Globalisation has assisted the Spanish brand, not that of Mallorca. The hoteliers are thus cast in a different role, that of being "españolistas" and not "nationalistas" (Mallorcan ones, that is).

Maybe the lack of love boils down to a simple dislike of big business - and the hoteliers are Mallorca's big business - and to a more fundamentalist disapproval of the changes that have been wrought by tourism business. Or perhaps it's simpler still. Plain jealousy. There are a few seriously wealthy families in Mallorca, and it doesn't take much to figure out which ones they are.

Losing Their Religion: Attitudes towards the Church

The Fundación Gadeso is probably an organisation you are unfamiliar with. But much of the information about social and economic issues in Mallorca comes from the foundation.

Gadeso (Gabinete de Estudios Sociales - office of social studies) was formed in 1975 and became a foundation in 2002. It has been an important source of monitoring social and economic activity since the collapse of the Franco regime. It is an uncontroversial organisation, but it does consider controversial issues, such as corruption. One of the few links from its website - www.gadeso.org - is to a blog called the observatory of corruption which lists everything that is currently happening in respect of corruption allegations in Mallorca.

Also on its website there is, at present, a reader poll inviting responses to the significance of Christmas. The possibilities range from a religious festival to signifying nothing. Gadeso has just undertaken a survey of religious attitudes in the Balearics. This survey, unsurprisingly enough, finds a divergence in opinion across age groups, but it is one, were attitudes not to change as Balearic youth enters adulthood, which highlights the waning dominance of Catholic religious orthodoxy: well under a half of those in the 16-20 age group say they are believers.

Religious belief is one thing, another is the attitude towards issues with a religious dimension. On every issue, a majority of the youth group agrees with divorce, sex outside marriage, passive euthanasia (meaning the refusal or withdrawal of treatment), gay marriage and adoption, and abortion. Only one of these issues, divorce, gets almost unanimous support across different age ranges, but there is a further, more obscure issue which receives very little support, regardless of age. A mere 27% of all those surveyed agree with the system of financing the Catholic Church.

In theory, the Church is meant to depend upon funding through the tax system, i.e. from a percentage of income tax that taxpayers opt to donate to the Church (0.7%). It does of course have sizable assets, being the second largest land and property owner after the state, but its, if you like, working capital comes from this percentage. Or does it?

As long ago as 1987, when the so-called "church tax" was introduced, the Church agreed to be self-financing within three years. It never happened. In 2006 the Zapatero administration announced, belatedly perhaps, that government subsidy of the Church would come to an end, but that the Church would benefit from an increase in the tax to the current level, so it was still not to be self-financing.

Another research organisation, the nationwide Europa Laica (Secular Europe), estimated last year that the Church receives, via different means, some six billion euros of funds from different governmental bodies. The organisation supplied a caveat to its estimate, owing to what was described as a lack of transparency on behalf of both the Church and the government. But its estimate included 3.8 billion euros for private schools that follow the national curriculum and which have Catholic religious education. It also included some 100 million euros that came from taxpayers who had opted not to pay the church tax but to divert the money for social and charitable purposes; there are a large number of Catholic charities. There was also the matter of some 900 million euros of lost tax income because of exemptions.

On this latter point, however, there may well now be a tightening of the tax noose. Three parish churches, those of Son Servera, Felanitx and Pollensa, were recently presented with a combined IVA (VAT) bill of 344,000 euros for building works, following a decision by the Balearics' Supreme Court.

What this all suggests though is that, despite other confrontations with the Church, the Zapatero government hasn't been as aggressive when it comes to funding. The implication of the Gadeso survey, however, is that perhaps it should have been. Whether it has the opportunity to be so in the future depends upon whether there is a future. The Partido Popular (PP) has vowed to turn back the secularism of Zapatero, and this may also include instituting a more favourable financial regime.

Though the Gadeso survey reveals differing attitudes among age groups, they show broad support for many of the government's social policies in the Balearics and echo support elsewhere in Spain. Gadeso is important in that it acts as a barometer of attitudes. Politicians, especially those from the PP, might do well to take some notice of them.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.