Where Resort Time Stood Still

Wednesday is the feast day for Sant Pere, Saint Peter, patron of fishermen. The fiestas are, therefore, happening in different parts of the island, not all of them - oddly enough - by the coast. But one coastal place which has more right than any other to claim the fiestas as its own is Colonia Sant Pere.

Once upon a time, there was nothing where Colonia Sant Pere now stands other than dunes, pines and scrub. It came into being in 1880, one of a series of new "colonies" for land development. This was not speculative building or anything of such nature, but purely agricultural, though there was the obvious further attraction of fishing. Some of the colonies failed to survive. One that didn't was Gatamoix, the settlement that the British engineers established for the drying and cultivation of Albufera. Notable among those which did survive are Colonia Sant Jordi and Porto Cristo as well of course as Colonia Sant Pere.

The church that was built was dedicated to Sant Pere, an indication that fishing was to become a part of the economy of this tiny settlement. Nowadays, it's not a great deal bigger, in terms of population, than it was originally: there are some 500 plus regular inhabitants. But it is notable in different ways. Edging towards the north-eastern tip of Mallorca, Colonia forms part of an area that may well be where human settlement on the island was first established.

The evidence for this lies principally with two sites: one is the dolmen burial site in Son Baulo (Can Picafort) and the other is a similar dolmen in S'Aigua Dolça, east of Colonia Sant Pere, that only became truly known about around twenty years ago. It hasn't satisfactorily or definitively been established that these are evidence of first settlements, but both pre-date what is taken to be the Talayotic period, of which there are plenty of examples all over Mallorca and Menorca; Ses Païsses in Arta is one of the best known. An assumption that has been made is that these most ancient settlements were by people who had crossed from Menorca. It may well be correct, as Menorca has signs of even earlier habitation from the third millennium BC.

Colonia Sant Pere, therefore, sits along a stretch of coast on the bay of Alcudia that is rich with prehistory. To its west is the necropolis of Son Real, a burial site that is of more recent vintage (all things being relative) than the dolmen sites: more recent by around a thousand years. It is also a coastal area with very little development.

Arta, of which Colonia is a part, is peculiar in that it stands out among all the coastal municipalities that run from Alcudia around the north-eastern tip and along the east coast because of its lack of resort development. A reason for this is surely its mountainous terrain; Arta has more in common with municipalities of the Tramuntana than with its neighbours when it comes to beach tourism. While it has its coves, there are really only three obvious beaches: Colonia's is one and the smallest, Cala Torta is another and the third and largest is Sa Canova, which lies between Colonia and Son Serra de Marina.

This neighbouring development, part of Santa Margalida rather than Arta, has its own peculiarity: plenty of residential properties but no hotels. It is a place which, together with Colonia, conspires to make this part of Mallorca an area where time seems to have stood still. Not completely of course, but it is an area that is a world away from Can Picafort and Cala Ratjada to either side. There is a sense also of the less than conventional, and not just because of the naturist beaches of Sa Canova and Cala Torta, Colonia's naturist hotel (the only one on the island) and the ambitions that Colonia has for being a dog-friendly tourist destination. As befits the mysterious nature of the prehistory, Son Serra was once the location for a "didgeridoo encounter". It took place six years ago in a wooded area near to the Talayotic site of Cova de sa Nineta. All pretty alternative stuff.

And alternative adequately describes this part of Mallorca. It is redolent of an era before giant resorts. Even now, it's stretching things to describe Colonia as a resort, although it is the only one that Arta can claim to have. Quiet it may be, but on Wednesday there will be the bangs of fireworks for Sant Pere. Not quite enough, though, to waken the dead of all that prehistory.

* Photo of Sa Canova from Wikimedia.

The Saviours Of Mallorca

Mallorca needs saving, not from a collective fall from grace but by conservers and preservers of nature and of the manmade, fighting the good fight against claimers and defilers of the environment and of heritage. "Salvem" is the new rallying cry. Save this, save that. If we don't save whatever it is, then Mallorca is lost. Saving is all around us; calls for the conservation and preservation of both the great and the small are as never before.

There are "salvem" campaigns, groups, platforms, blogs, social media sites in abundance. So great is the saving that it might prove counterproductive; the island could sink under its sheer weight. To all the previous savings, two more have just recently sprung up from a land which, while not all of it is fertile, manages to organically grow new sources of saviour sustenance. "Salvem Sa Canova", "Salvem Portocolom" have allied themselves with, inter alia, "Salvem Es Molinar", "Salvem Sant Kanut", "Salvem Ses Fontanelles", "Salvem Andratx", "Salvem Es Trenc", "Salvem els Paisatges de les Illes Balears".

The two most recent campaigns conveniently distinguish between conservation (the environment) and preservation (buildings and traditions). Sa Canova is the former; Portocolom the latter. But there is common ground between both: symbolism, iconic status, heritage. Sa Canova beach is symbolic of unspoiled coast and iconic as a consequence, while the lighthouse in Portocolom is symbolic of a history that stretches back to the middle of the nineteenth century and is iconic because, well, lighthouses are deemed to be iconic.

The descriptions are a touch overworked. So much is symbolic or iconic that the words lose their power through their constant reiteration. But let us not quibble with the sentiments that inspire saving campaigns to invoke them; these campaigns generally have right and sincerity on their side as well as a moral rectitude of conservation and preservation to support them.

Sa Canova beach lies between Son Serra de Marina and Colonia Sant Pere and falls within the municipality of Artà. It is rustic beach, backed by dunes with one-time submarine-target towers that are familiar to the bay of Alcúdia coastline. Part of it is well known for being a nudist beach, but this is not its only attraction. It represents beach life that was once how it was. Son Serra de Marina, from where most of its visitors come, is Mallorca beach of a past time; laidback and undisturbed with a veneer of contemporary coolness and surf.

Somewhere along its length, the town hall in Artà is considering the installation of a chiringuito beach bar. It would, in all likelihood, be in the more popular nudist section, a walk of perhaps five minutes or so from the couple of bars which mark where Son Serra ends. "Salvem Sa Canova" doesn't want this chiringuito. Rustic beach should be rustic beach and that means the exclusion of a building, even if it would only be temporary and would be dismantled at the end of the season.

Justification for the beach bar is slim. It might be argued that it would be advantageous in terms of providing an additional attraction to tourists, but the argument lacks weight. Tourists go there precisely because the beach is unspoiled, while it is not as if there aren't places for refreshment close by or as if it is too far to walk with cool boxes. Artà town hall might eye up some revenue from granting a concession, though even this might have to be shared with the Costas Authority (which appears to have given its blessing). Why bother? It seems unnecessary.

The lighthouse in Portocolom is one of six lighthouses that the Balearics Ports Authority wishes to privatise. It would still operate as a lighthouse but would be converted into a hotel, a form of privatisation which, while not uncommon in other countries, had not been pursued in Spain until the national development ministry gave the go ahead for regional ports authorities to permit it a couple of years ago.

"Salvem Portocolom" is planning a protest against the privatisation plan later this month, arguing that conversion would conflict with the lighthouse's heritage value, history and status within the public domain. However, though the lighthouse is, given its coastal location, within the (state's) public domain, it isn't for public use. At present, it is well maintained but perhaps the fear is that, sometime in the future, it might not be, while clearly the state has a source of revenue to interest it. But if its appearance were not altered, would privatisation and conversion be so harmful? Maybe not, but for the saviours of the lighthouse, what matters are the symbolism and the heritage. The opposition is essentially, therefore, an emotional one, just as it is in Sa Canova, but what's wrong with this? Some things are worth conserving and preserving for their emotional value, and the number of "salvem" campaigns across Mallorca prove the point.

The HOTguide for Alcúdia and Pollensa 2014

Already posted on The Hotguide blog (http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/), for double coverage, a note here as well that the summer 2014 HOTguide for the north of Mallorca is available as a PDF for free download. The online version is compressed, so the quality is not the same as with the original, but is still, hopefully, good. Go to: http://www.scribd.com/doc/225093704/The-HOTguide-Alcudia-and-Pollensa-2014

A Torrent Runs Through It: Sa Canova

Sa Canova in Artà lies just over the municipal border with Santa Margalida. One way of getting to Sa Canova beach is to go to Son Serra de Marina and then take a short walk. The other way is to walk from Colonia Sant Pere. Sa Canova was in the news earlier this year because the first official naturist hotel in Mallorca was opened nearby; part of the beach of Sa Canova has long been popular with naturists. It is in the news again because four municipalities in Mallorca have placed it in the news. Two of these - Santa Margalida and Artà - have a clear interest in Sa Canova. But why are Petra and Manacor getting involved?

Council meetings at the four towns have all voted in favour of rejecting a development proposal for Sa Canova. But the rejection is not just confined to Sa Canova, its beach and its dunes, it also includes the torrent of Na Borges. This is the longest torrent in Mallorca. It originates between Porreres and Felanitx and passes through Petra on its way to the bay of Alcúdia. There is a torrent from Manacor which joins it. Na Borges is, where the four towns are concerned, a "place of common interest" which requires a specific plan of management to look after it. Studies have been going on for several years into the torrent's sediments and drainage and also into erosion of farming land that it passes through, so ecologically it is far from unimportant. The torrent enters the bay of Alcúdia at Sa Canova. Indeed, it is the torrent which forms the borderline in Son Serra de Marina between Artà and Santa Margalida.

While this is all very interesting in its own right, it is what has been proposed for Sa Canova which is very much more interesting and which is why the four towns have objected. The development envisaged at Sa Canova is for a holiday complex comprising some 200 bungalows. It was one which the Balearic parliament approved last year, despite Sa Canova being protected as an area of special natural interest and also despite the fact that, in theory, Artà town hall have the final word as to any development.

Artà's word is no. But one doubts that its word is the final word for a development which would occupy some sixty hectares of land that had been earmarked as a golf course back in the 1980s. This development was stopped when the land classification was changed, but there is some development there - five houses, roads, water supplies but not full electricity connections. Some of you might know this area. It is a semi-urbanisation called Ravenna.

The plan for the Sa Canova holiday club would entail the bungalows being built to five-star standard. There is much provision for environmental management, while investors behind the project have proposed that they fund restoration and maintenance work on the various prehistoric sites in the area (one of these, along the coast in Son Real, suffers from almost complete financial neglect). The club would employ up to 150 people in summer but, and crucially, it would remain open all year.

It is the all-year nature of the development, its location in an essentially rural setting and the fact that the investors are Belgian that makes one think of certain other holiday clubs. It is a coincidence that news has come through of Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs opening an all-year holiday complex in Benidorm. P&V, a French company, has its sights set on expansion into Mallorca. It might not create the type of Center Parcs that exists in, say, the Netherlands, but maybe it would.

The Sa Canova development would be in a location that would fit quite closely with the original Center Parcs concept. That's not what it would be, just as the P&V Benidorm complex is also not, but I am far from alone in having thought for many years that it is precisely this type of concept that should be considered for Mallorca.

I know the Sa Canova area reasonably well. There is much to be said for it keeping its "rustic" and unspoilt charm, but then the development wouldn't sit right on top of the beach. It would be set back and probably mostly obscured. As a project it has much to commend it, but whether it would ever go ahead is highly questionable. One thinks of the objections to the development at Es Trenc and so one knows how vociferous the lobby against such developments is and knows also that the competing demands of the environment and of tourism commerce seem to be almost irreconcilable in Mallorca.

* Photo of Sa Canova from Wikimedia Commons

The Dreamtime: Son Serra de Marina

The Dreamtime is when the world was created. It is an explanation of how things came to be and a time before there was time.

Over two days at the end of August three years ago, a meeting was planned in a camping area in woods not far from a beach. This camping area was located not far from the Bronze Age talaiot known as Cova de sa Nineta. This was a meeting called the "didgeridoo encounter". The Dreamtime was the dream time twice over in this part of Mallorca.

On a beach not far from the clearing in the woods, one can stare at the mountains as they rise shaded by silvery haze: spectral giants of boscage concealing more tombs of the pre-Neolithic. One can dream of these mountains, as seen from the beach, to one side of which is a sea of opaque luminescence. This is the place of Mallorca's Dreamtime, an essence of when it was created, an explanation of how it came to be. This is an aboriginal spirit land, where somnolence can consume and where there is an uncertainty as to being awake or asleep. Being in reality or in a dream.

This Dreamtime is a place where time is suspended. It came into being but it never moved forward. It stays as it was, for this is Son Serra de Marina. The beach is Sa Canova. The sun shines, but the shallows off Sa Canova show that a sea can shine. It radiates. It transmits light. It is luminescent but it is also transcendent. It is beyond normal experience. It exists in its own Dreamtime.

Son Serra de Marina inspires curiosity because of its very curiousness. It is urban but it isn't urban. And it is this quasi state of urbanism that allows it to transcend the clichéd appeal and descriptiveness of more obviously urbanised resorts. Not that one can really call Son Serra a resort. It is hard to know what to call it.

Semi-urbanisation of an almost perversely repetitious style - perverse because to hint at a pejorative of repetitiousness for this wondrous curio is in itself perverse - drifts, as sea grass residue drifts with the winds and the movement of the waves and dunes shift with unseen subtlety, from the built to the unbuilt. At the beach end of this semi-urbanisation, rusticity takes over, punctuated only by the obelisk mystery of a post-Civil War tower.

Because nature and artificiality have not collided in the same way as, for example, a pine walk, Son Serra's superlatives are abstract. They cannot be overworked. They cannot be defined with predictability. They reside within a spirit world, within a Dreamtime.

The curiosity of Son Serra can be explained. Its being has a functionality, even if today, owing to the lack of true urbanisation, it defies obvious functionalism. Joan Massanet Moragues was the man who made Son Serra. He was a supporter of both of Spain's dictators - Primo de Rivera and Franco. He was mayor of Palma for ten years from 1954. It was he who brought about the first small houses in the 1940s. And it was he, as owner of Son Serra, who properly urbanised it in the late 1960s. Before this urbanisation, it wasn't called Son Serra. It was called Colonia de la Mare de Déu del Carme (there are variations on this name). It then became known as Serranova before finally being named after the Son Serra estate, one of the oldest country houses in Mallorca.

The story of its ownership explains much. Son Serra was not totally untypical in being, in effect, a privately owned village. It was when more contemporary needs arose that questions as to how it was to be looked after or developed cropped up. Santa Margalida town hall has responsibility for Son Serra, but it remains more or less what it always was - a private estate with residences for which there was no plan other than it was there.

As a consequence, and although there are now any number of streets of villas and apartments, Son Serra has never become anything. It is still just there. And it is this which gives it its Dreamtime quality. It is tranquil but it is oddly vibrant. It is caught in its own Dreamtime, one of beach life of the past, one in which it is possible to imagine Eagles' records playing from a 1970s jukebox. It has bequeathed a beach life of kitesurfing and other water sports but also an unmistakable flavour of how beach life once was. The Sol, the restaurant at the end of the world by the main beach, is an expression of beach coolness without any sense of irony or of embarrassment.

This is Son Serra. A place where time has been suspended. 


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Son Serra yacht club members against expansion

Members of the yacht club at Son Serra de Marina have voted against the increase in the marina to include 300 new moorings. The expansion of the marina, which the regional government has given the green light to, is also opposed by ecologists and the town halls of Artà and Santa Margalida.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - Son Serra pier expansion opposed

The regional government has approved the expansion of the pier at the yacht club in Son Serra de Marina, provoking further opposition from local politicians. (The expansion has long been opposed.) The expansion is opposed because of the destruction of posidonia sea grass that would occur and which would go against European Union rules on marine protection.

See more: Ultima Hora

The Lower League Of Fiestas

The fiesta season is in full swing. No sooner have the fireworks of Alcúdia's Sant Jaume crashed into the night sky than the daddy of them all, in northern terms that is, gets underway. They were firing rockets of a different variety in Pollensa yesterday, announcing the start of Patrona. Because the fiestas merge into each other, at the same time as the Moors attempt the annual impossibility of pinching an away win against the Christians, Can Picafort will be putting up the bunting ahead of the most spectacularly stupid event in the fiesta calendar: the rubber-ducky race of Mare de Déu d'Agost.

Away from the highly publicised Premier League fiestas, there are the Division 1 and Division 2 events as well. If Mallorca's fiestas were English football teams, the typical tourist would always opt for the Manchester United of, say, Patrona, as opposed to a Donny Rovers or Dagenham & Redbridge where there are not the same high-profile fiesta players like the spectacular street theatre players of the Moors and Christians.

Yet for all that the main fiestas can boast some marquee events, the lower league fiestas bear considerable resemblance to the popular and better-known ones. Fiestas, at their heart, are essentially the same; they differ only in scale and in location.

This weekend there are two such fiestas (and I am talking north of Mallorca here): one in Playa de Muro, the other in Son Serra de Marina. Playa de Muro's fiesta, which lasts only for the two days of the weekend, has always had a touch of tokenism about it. Like the resort itself, it is an invention. There is no historical basis, as there is, for example, to Alcúdia's Sant Jaume fiesta, which can be traced back to the thirteenth century.

As such, the resort's fiesta is essentially a tourist event, which makes it different to other fiestas which are only incidentally for tourists. Were Playa de Muro not a major tourism centre, it is unlikely that there would be a fiesta. So, what does it have for the tourist? Well, it has many of the usual ingredients: the obligatory concert by a music band; giants going walkabout; a tapas route (which has now become obligatory whether at fiesta time or not); samba batucadas bashing about; and even fireworks.

Whether anyone much will be attending the fiesta, unless they live in Playa de Muro or are on holiday there, is probably doubtful. It simply doesn't have a fiesta name to live up to. Indeed, it doesn't have a name at all, as in there is no saint.

Son Serra de Marina, one of Mallorca's more bizarre places (how does one actually describe it, as it isn't a village, it isn't a resort, it isn't anything really), stages a remarkably good fiesta. But no one knows about it, much like many people don't know about Son Serra at all, which is probably just as well, because if they did it might lose the impression it conveys of having been abandoned even in summer.

This isn't strictly true of course. You tend not to see anyone because there is not one single hotel and the people who are there are all on the beach, which is Son Serra's main reason for existing. Fiesta events this weekend will have included two music parties into the wee small hours and on Sunday evening, if you could understand a word of it, the fiesta lecture is being given by the granddaughter of Joan Massanet, who founded the initial urbanisation, and so which might shed some light on how this peculiar place ever came into being.

Next week, there is another local fiesta no one has ever heard about. This one is almost non-league by comparison with those of Playa de Muro and Son Serra. It is the Sant Llorenç fiesta in the Ses Casetes des Capellans enclave in Playa de Muro. This is another odd place, one of small, former church cottages that are now holiday homes (though they might not be for much longer, if the Costas Authority gets its way and bulldozes the lot of them into oblivion). The fiesta here reflects the fact that Ses Casetes is very much its own little community. One would think twice about encroaching on it, but the fact that it is being publicised suggests visitors are welcome. There is nothing at all remarkable about the fiesta. It is just very homely, very simple and rather appealing for being so.

Fiestas don't have to deal in the spectacular. It's nice if they do, but even the smaller fiestas can create their own atmospheres without having any great pretensions to being something they are not. Playa de Muro's two fiestas and that of Son Serra prove the point. Support your local fiesta!


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Nautical club developments in Santa Margalida opposed

Opposition parties and the mayor of Santa Margalida have positioned themselves against any expansion of the nautical club in Son Serra de Marina which would see the number of moorings more than treble. Meanwhile, the town hall is opposing a proposal by the nautical club in Can Picafort that a new club building is created.

MALLORCA TODAY - Concerns over Son Serra yacht club

Santa Margalida town hall has said that it has received as yet no notification of any plan from the regional government to expand the yacht club in Son Serra de Marina as part of a government initiative to increase nautical facilities around Mallorca's coast. Residents are worried that an expansion would lead to noise.

MALLORCA TODAY - Son Serra de Marina fire 26 August

Another fire. This one started around two this afternoon near to Son Serra de Marina, seven kilometres from Can Picafort. Canadair and other fire-fighting teams are attending.


There has also been a small fire this afternoon in Albufera near to Sa Pobla which was brought swiftly under control.

I'm A Cowboy, On A Steel Horse I Ride

It's not Southfork but it is a ranch. I was there the other day. Rancho Grande. Big ranch in a small country, well island. There is though a touch of the wild west even if we are heading to the east of Mallorca. Wild, as this is just land, dust, mountains to the back, dunes away towards the beach at Son Serra. Otherwise there's the house, in which one might anticipate Ben and the boys pondering the Ponderosa - Hoss and Little Joe, the two least likely of television brothers until Coronation Street tried to claim that Steve and Andy McDonald were twins. But of course there are no Cartwrights, only Pepe and the rest. And past the house is the terrace and the vast barbecue before one gets to the little zoo, the wagons, the swans, the peacocks and parrots and all those horses. The land, the ranch stretches away, and one awaits the arrival of an imaginary posse or Wyatt, Wild Bill or Jessie. I'm a cowboy; I'm wanted dead or alive.

Take the entrance track and there's a cowgirl on horseback to greet the visitors and to usher them towards the photo shoot. One of the first times I went to the ranch, a group turned up and one of its members started belittling the head and shoulders photos with a cowboy hat. Forget your cynicism. And maybe you'll forget a lot more as the sangria flows, the barbecue is stoked and the music starts. There used to be the single worst act I have ever seen in Mallorca at the ranch, and that is saying something. But he was that bad he was brilliant. And keep forgetting that cynicism and stomp with the line-dancing. There is music, much of it cowboy-themed; Natasha Bedingfield seemed somewhat incongruous the other day. In this vast open space there is not too much worry about neighbours and limiters, the music drifts out towards the darkness where somewhere is the sea and the moonlight riders.

This is the most friendly of places. I'm standing by the queue for the photos and a quad bike comes bumping across the raw-sienna earth. "Hombre." It's the Spanish learnt from Westerns. Hombre, amigo. On the straight stretch of road heading out of Can Picafort towards Son Serra is a sign off to the left which bears the words "El Paso". It's not John Wayne but Pepe on the quad; I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride. Another time I was standing at the same spot and this boy asked me if he could stroke a horse. Sometimes you detect a sadness, and it was touching as the horse blew gently. Animal therapy.

Some things come and go, but there has been a Martorell family horse business since the early '60s; it used to be in Puerto Pollensa. Forty-five years and they issued a photo souvenir to celebrate. Grainy photos of Pepe and his father, a shot in the streets of Muro in from 1966 and from 1973 by the Molins bay at Cala San Vicente, and then to today and the animals, the dancing and the cowboys.


HOUSE OF PAIN (THE BREAK-IN REMIX)
I bumped into John-Michael this morning. A lot of folk know Michael; one-time Bar Bamboo, then he ran Dreams for a period and was at Epcot after that. How is it all going? Ok, but shit. Why's that? Break-in. First-floor flat around the Magic area of Alcúdia. A couple of grand swiped off a credit card plus DVD player, PC ... .

You kind of expect tourist places to be more of a target in summer, but by no means exclusively. One neighbour had a break-in two Augusts ago; another, kitted out with state-of-the-art security (well now anyway), woke up to find an uninvited guest in the early hours. My place was done in February; more like you might anticipate as there's no one much about. I have a cricket bat, my old Gunn and Moore. It has a fine sweet spot. For one with a reputation as a Chris Tavaré dogged opener, the time I got in one good stride to an opening quick and with not much effort watched the ball sail far and far over his head into some Cambridgeshire woodlands was testimony to its good middle. It's heavy as well, a 3-pounder. It stands in a convenient position in the house.

There was that politician recently who said that the "crisis" might result in more crime. Could be, I guess. One thing is that there are going to be more this winter who have not done the required number of months to qualify for unemployment benefit. Michael was saying that it's not as if this is the first time there has been recession; it will be about the fourth in four decades. In the past people have just struggled through as best they can. But people change and the number of people increases, and so the temptations and the opportunities change and increase. It's not though that it's a case of robbing from the rich. The million-euro and much more villas have tended to be the magnets; not only them now, according to the Guardia. Anything will do.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Jump Around" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZZADbubu0Y). The Robin Williams connection? Among the schmaltz of Mrs Doubtfire was a funny scene of a kids' party with this as the music. Today's title - I never got it with this band, but this was damn good.

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

In The Middle Of Nowhere

“Totally abandoned.” “Closed.” “Gives no service.”

Three descriptions of facets of life in the splendidly weird place that is Son Serra de Marina. I thought to say “weird town”, but can Son Serra be called a town? Indeed what can it be defined as? Perhaps I should start a competition.

The descriptions emanate from a spokesperson for the PSOE opposition in the municipality of Santa Margalida, in which it is Son Serra’s misfortune to find itself. They refer, respectively, to the attitude of the governing regime at the town hall, the library and the municipal office. All of this comes from today’s “Diario”, the main thrust of which is to highlight the lack of local policing in Son Serra.

There are different strands to policing here, one of which is the local service. This is organised via the town halls, and in the case of Santa Margalida it would appear that the police service it is meant to provide to Son Serra has been more or less absent for some eight months. That at least is the view of the opposition and of local residents; the ruling PP denies it.

One resident is quoted as saying that he (or she) has been subject to seven burglaries over ten years. With or without a local plod, you can kind of understand it. Son Serra’s location makes it something of an easy target, as does the fact that there never seems to be anyone there, especially in winter. It is some 7 kilometres from Can Picafort and 13 from Santa Margalida, stuck out on its own along the coast; it is nowhere town, and there are those who assume that it is not part of Santa Margalida at all. But it is, and Santa Margalida is not a rich authority, albeit that it could find the ackers to help fund a new church in Can Picafort but cannot dig into the coffers for effective policing for Son Serra, or effective anything come to that. Out of sight, out of mind is the saying that springs to mind, though the town hall says it is now looking at building a primary school there. According to the town hall, there are 60 or 70 children of infant and primary school age. So there are people living in Son Serra, not that you tend to see much of them.

My guess with Son Serra is that many of the houses and villas there are holiday lets or second homes, some of them owned by Germans who may well have been attracted by lower prices. There has to be some reason for its deadness. Not that an abundance of absentee owners is an excuse for no police. The sense of abandonment in Son Serra is real enough though. It lends the place a charm of strangeness, though whether one would want to actually live with oddness is another matter. Homes may have once been cheaper there, but prices I have seen suggest that they are no longer. But a representative of a leading estate agency here once told me that he (and his company) don’t really bother with Son Serra as it is hard to sell property. The lack of basics make it unappealing, one of those basics being – at present it would appear – a proper police presence.


QUIZ
Yesterday – Miles Davis (composed by Joe Zawinul). Today’s title – by one of the greats of the ‘60s.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

A Horse, Of Course

Look away now, if you are easily offended. I am going to talk about shit. Or rather I am going to get to this via a typically circuitous route.

The other day I asked for nominations for the weird. Let´s go big here, well relatively big. Forget the mere restaurant or bar, I hereby nominate Son Serra de Marina as not just the weirdest place in northern Mallorca, but in the whole of Mallorca.

Son Serra is a ghost town even in summer. You can fully imagine tumbleweed rolling along the empty streets, and a toothless old gummer manning a one-pump garage that doubles as a bar (with no drink of course).

Can anyone tell me what the point of Son Serra is? It's as though it was developed as a mini Can Picafort and then someone forgot it was there. Unlike Can Pic, there is nothing save for less than a handful of restaurants and a nautical club that always seems shut.

Well, there is one point to Son Serra. Its beach. I’m not talking the beach where the houses end, which is constantly chocker with sea detritus, I’m talking the one further along where the Germans get their kit off.

And now I start to get to the point. Ok, I admit I have been to this beach too. It’s a very nice beach. But you can be lying there, minding your own business and suddenly be aware of a rumbling. A rumbling of hooves coming ever closer. You look up and there’s this posse of cowboys galloping towards you. It’s the Rancho Grande boys taking dobbin for a spin.

Now there is something extremely liberating and thrilling about riding horseback on a beach. But.

Horses have this tendency to crap when you least expect them to. Indeed horses are remarkable in being able to produce a motion whilst in motion. Humans can only do this trick with the aid of a dodgy curry.

So, my point is, you get these horses coming along and having a dump on the sand. Why is this seemingly ok? Dogs are meant to be banned from beaches as they too are less than decorous and choosy when at their toilet. Maybe it’s because of the volume. At least with a horse you can see only too clearly what it’s produced, and steer an avoiding course. A dog. Bit trickier. So, I suppose that’s the reason why horses can go on beaches and dogs can’t.

Enjoy the beach.


At the same time as a minor oil slick caused beaches around Magalluf to be closed for a short while, word comes of worries among Balearic hoteliers as to the jellyfish problem. Specifically, they are calling for measures to eliminate the pesky little monsters. But to suggest that jellyfish may cause tourists not to come to the islands is probably stretching a point.


Pop Quiz time: Come on down, Mark Draper. “Red Rain” was of course Peter Gabriel. Mark, you get the hour’s point-duty as no-one´s got the Crusaders’ line-up. It was: Joe Sample, Wilton Felder, Wayne Henderson and Stix Hooper.
No prizes for knowing that Peter Gabriel was an original member of Genesis, but which disgraced music entrepreneur was instrumental, as it were, in the development of Genesis’s early career?

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