BEING SPANISH - PART EIGHT (MUSIC)
"Well, I'm looking forward to some really good Spanish music."
Amongst the wish-lists brandished about by expectant EasyJet embarkers, attached to Leona Lewis via an MP3 player at Luton Airport, sun and crates of Saint Mick would loom large at number one and two spots, but music - Spanish music - would not even enter the top ten, pop-pickers. Earlier in this series, I listed - rather foolishly - music as an element which goes to forge an impression of being Spanish. So having done so, I challenge myself to come up with a good reason why I did list it ...
No. I'm struggling.
There are certain popular cultural images that the holidaymaker may hold prior to jetting off: Premier League football, Coronation Street and a full English - oh, hang on, what am I saying? - that should be sangria, sombreros and straw donkeys. But music, except in the smooth and swivel of the Iglesias family, would register as strongly as curling up with Dostoevsky on a Saturday evening rather than watching "X Factor", i.e. it wouldn't. At least with Julio and Enrique there are two acts, which is one more than when it used only to be Los Bravos. Some might argue the case for Sylvia ("Y Viva España") except, of course, she was in fact Swedish. There is Spanish music, but for the most part - and quite understandably - most holidaymakers would rather not subject themselves to the miserabilist caterwauling of classical flamenco singing. What they're likely to get served up, and X Factor is not irrelevant in this respect, is the Spanish equivalent wannabe-ing, factotum-impersonation everyone's a star, or not, but with a swarthy look (the males) and a sultry demeanour (the females). What it isn't, except by association through Iglesias (Enrique, normally) and some Latino beat, is particularly Spanish. What it is, and the same applies to X Factor, is lowest common denominator nothing music. Formulaic and non-descript. Oh, there is always some folk singing of a local sort, the type to which the visitor applauds politely and then heads off to the nearest hotel or show bar in search of a tribute act. Alternatively, there is always the wonder of the Spanish guitar. But put, albeit that this would be unlikely, Paco de Lucia on the stage at your typical 3-star, and the reps would be inundated with complaints.
The best of Spanish music - de Lucia, the contemporary cross-overs from flamenco, the chill of Café del Mar, the genuine salsa style and its expression in current-day dance - is largely ignored. And it's ignored because, unless one goes to a club that plays it, it is unlikely to be heard, while it is also as unlikely to have ever appeared on that pre-flight wish-list.
Music should be a raw ingredient of a summer holiday. Well, it is. It is just that it lacks almost any Spanish context. It is Abba and the modern musical and X Factor-styled, boys and girls, so-called family entertainment of an almost universally average standard. The desire to be entertained is on that wish-list. It has become a pre-requisite for many. Yet, what is served up is generally something you wouldn't otherwise leave home for. You'd watch X Factor instead: just as average but with more cynicism, viciousness and mobile-based revenue for the producers. In truth, it falls into the something-to-do category, a way of filling an evening. It is Polyfilla for the mind in the same way as flopping in front of whatever happens to be on the TV binds the cracks of vacant inter-aural space. And like TV, it helps to avoid the need for overly much interpersonal communication or the creation of one's own entertainment. Them were the days, when we'd gather round the piano and sing together. But, you know, Spanish it may not be necessarily be (indeed rarely or ever), and much as it may attract the opprobrium of some, karaoke is the making of entertainment. Spanish music, no. Just make your own, whatever it is and whether you're any good or not. Oh, and if you want Spanish music at Christmas, bear in mind what I mentioned yesterday - a Felipe Spector Navidad.
Twelve Days of a Mallorcan Christmas
By way of an explanation for yesterday's "song":
God forbid there were twelve: Leapy Lee is the island's leading one-hit wonder celebrity, and his leaping did seem to fit in with the original. Eleven million: about the annual number of tourists to the island. Ten Elvis Presleys: the number of Elvis impersonators one can find of a summer's evening (actually, I've made the number up, but Elvises are ubiquitous). Nine mayors, in fact four mayors and five ex-mayors were implicated in another "scandal"; they were let off in this case. The eight Catalan winds of the Mediterranean, the Tramuntana, Mestral etc.; sometimes they all seem to be blowing at once. Seven knocking-shops: the number of "relax" houses in Alcúdia. Six dogs: could be any number in truth. Five euros a pint: yep, you can pay this. Four scratch cards: you only need one, but four and you really have been suckered into the holiday club clutches. Three tex-mexs: the number of Dakota restaurants in Puerto Pollensa - for now. Two parking spots: the number needed by Mallorcans in order to park one car in car parks. And a processionary caterpillar: the thing that destroys pines and can fall on you and sting if you're unlucky.
QUIZ
Today's title - Spanish made as pop, and who better to have done this than a part-Italian American. It's a line from?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Showing posts with label Spanishness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spanishness. Show all posts
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Being With You
BEING SPANISH - PART SEVEN (THE VERB "TO BE")
Catching up on the "being Spanish" series, I have had an email which does rather echo what I said about the Spanish "look" or rather its absence. John, damningly, characterises flats in both Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa as looking "not unlike Soviet post-war architecture". Whatever one thinks of developments such as Taylor Woodrow's in Puerto Pollensa, at least it has a certain style. It may be wrong for the port; indeed it almost certainly is wrong in terms of being out of place, but there again, what is "in place". I'm damned if I know. And that just emphasises the lack of a coherent architectural story, which is at least partly the fault of planning with no theme. There is certainly nothing obviously "Spanish" about any of it. However, I come back to the starting-point of where actually one derives a perception of being Spanish from, and John seems to agree with me that it is, in part at any rate, one lifted from Hollywood. As such, it is not Spanish at all, but American Western or Mexican. The association is one of language made physical in the form of buildings. We attempt to translate this language into the local setting - in Mallorca - and find that it doesn't in fact translate.
There is another, very different notion of being Spanish, and that is one which would doubtless escape the attention of many holidaymakers and indeed some of those who have moved here from the UK. It is one of describing, if you like, one's or another's existence or that of a thing. Which all sounds deeply profound, but it is not. It is actually very simple, if you can call a basic of both Castilian and Catalan differentiating between types of "being" simple. The piece I wrote the other day about Ramón Socias (8 December: We're Only In It For The Money) had as its source an article from the "Diario de Mallorca" newspaper. Perhaps it goes to show how useful it can be to read local Spanish papers as there was a usage there that, as such, I had never seen expressed before. It was this: "La cuestión está en estar o ser, ser o estar". Ok, maybe it doesn't make initial sense, but this is not a "to be or not to be" soliloquy, it is a "to be or to be" question. How can that make sense? Perfectly well, when one appreciates that there are two states of "being" - one permanent (ser) and one temporary (estar). It's why one asks "cómo estás" and not cómo eres. You are not how you are all the time, therefore the temporary form applies. The context in which Socias was speaking was that of politicians and of their holding posts for finite periods. When one states one's profession or job, "ser" is used, as in, for instance, "soy profesor" (I'm a teacher - and, incidentally - you don't use the article for "a" in Spanish for this sort of thing). Socias is challenging not just the permanence of a political appointment but also the rule of language in that he would rather it were "estoy político" (as opposed to "estoy de político" as the "de" is used when a temporary assignment is referred to, as in, possibly, I'm working as a politician at the moment in Spain). English makes no such explicit a distinction, but the mere presence - in Spanish - of different meanings for the most fundamental of verbs creates a conflict between the static and the fluid; a conflict and therefore a nuance in the way of thinking and of being. Being Spanish, therefore, could be ser or estar. Perhaps it is the latter in some instances, and this might explain the elusiveness of being able to define this state of "being Spanish".
Highly philosophical, you'll no doubt agree, and probably complete bollocks, but I, for one, find it intriguing as to the way in which language can determine how different cultures perceive things.
Anyway, to matters less cerebral and to hoteliers in Palma who are hacked off with the tourist authorities and the town hall for not doing more to promote the city. Bookings are down, and so someone has to carry the can. It's an old and familiar theme, and could apply to other towns, but Palma is a special case because it is the capital, it is big and it does have a lot to commend it, except for the likes of its shopping hours. I am still to be convinced that people would make Palma a weekend-break destination for the purposes of doing some shopping, but it cannot help the city if everything pretty much closes down by Saturday lunchtime. It may not assist the rest of the island, certainly not the north, for a sizeable chunk of the tourism promotional budget to be spent on the capital, but one has to be realistic, especially when it comes to the winter. Palma is open (well until Saturday lunchtime) in a way that other places are not. At least, that is how it is argued. But it is inaccurate. Alcúdia and Pollensa may be quiet in winter, but they are far from closed down. Special case it may be, but winter promotion should be for the whole island and not just the capital. But on specific international promotion of Palma - and that for its excellent San Sebastian celebrations in January - I wonder what they are doing. After last January's event, there was an admission that more needed to be done to attract overseas visitors to something that is deserving of greater foreign interest. So, is it?
PUERTO POLLENSA - YET MORE PEDESTRIANISATION
And for the latest ... Now it's to be just the bit between the Calles Elcano (the road opposite the pier with restaurant Stay) and Temple Fielding (on the corner of which is Sail & Surf). Heavy traffic is going to all be diverted along the new road. Does this include coaches? Is Temple Fielding to be two-way traffic? Don't know. Meantime, the annual let's-rip-up-Puerto Pollensa scheme is to start in January, with the promenade (that part from the roundabout to the pinewalk which is of course pedestrianised) being dug up for drainage works. It will be finished by the middle of March. Oh no it won't. Oh yes it will. Oh no it won't. What a pantomime. But at least this may prevent that other annual event, namely the outpouring of sewage into the sea.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Fine Young Cannibals with Jimmy Somerville (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRyAD9dMQ64). Today's title - boy oh boy, does this bring back memories; one of the smoochiest and most romantic of all Motown songs. But I'm not telling.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Catching up on the "being Spanish" series, I have had an email which does rather echo what I said about the Spanish "look" or rather its absence. John, damningly, characterises flats in both Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa as looking "not unlike Soviet post-war architecture". Whatever one thinks of developments such as Taylor Woodrow's in Puerto Pollensa, at least it has a certain style. It may be wrong for the port; indeed it almost certainly is wrong in terms of being out of place, but there again, what is "in place". I'm damned if I know. And that just emphasises the lack of a coherent architectural story, which is at least partly the fault of planning with no theme. There is certainly nothing obviously "Spanish" about any of it. However, I come back to the starting-point of where actually one derives a perception of being Spanish from, and John seems to agree with me that it is, in part at any rate, one lifted from Hollywood. As such, it is not Spanish at all, but American Western or Mexican. The association is one of language made physical in the form of buildings. We attempt to translate this language into the local setting - in Mallorca - and find that it doesn't in fact translate.
There is another, very different notion of being Spanish, and that is one which would doubtless escape the attention of many holidaymakers and indeed some of those who have moved here from the UK. It is one of describing, if you like, one's or another's existence or that of a thing. Which all sounds deeply profound, but it is not. It is actually very simple, if you can call a basic of both Castilian and Catalan differentiating between types of "being" simple. The piece I wrote the other day about Ramón Socias (8 December: We're Only In It For The Money) had as its source an article from the "Diario de Mallorca" newspaper. Perhaps it goes to show how useful it can be to read local Spanish papers as there was a usage there that, as such, I had never seen expressed before. It was this: "La cuestión está en estar o ser, ser o estar". Ok, maybe it doesn't make initial sense, but this is not a "to be or not to be" soliloquy, it is a "to be or to be" question. How can that make sense? Perfectly well, when one appreciates that there are two states of "being" - one permanent (ser) and one temporary (estar). It's why one asks "cómo estás" and not cómo eres. You are not how you are all the time, therefore the temporary form applies. The context in which Socias was speaking was that of politicians and of their holding posts for finite periods. When one states one's profession or job, "ser" is used, as in, for instance, "soy profesor" (I'm a teacher - and, incidentally - you don't use the article for "a" in Spanish for this sort of thing). Socias is challenging not just the permanence of a political appointment but also the rule of language in that he would rather it were "estoy político" (as opposed to "estoy de político" as the "de" is used when a temporary assignment is referred to, as in, possibly, I'm working as a politician at the moment in Spain). English makes no such explicit a distinction, but the mere presence - in Spanish - of different meanings for the most fundamental of verbs creates a conflict between the static and the fluid; a conflict and therefore a nuance in the way of thinking and of being. Being Spanish, therefore, could be ser or estar. Perhaps it is the latter in some instances, and this might explain the elusiveness of being able to define this state of "being Spanish".
Highly philosophical, you'll no doubt agree, and probably complete bollocks, but I, for one, find it intriguing as to the way in which language can determine how different cultures perceive things.
Anyway, to matters less cerebral and to hoteliers in Palma who are hacked off with the tourist authorities and the town hall for not doing more to promote the city. Bookings are down, and so someone has to carry the can. It's an old and familiar theme, and could apply to other towns, but Palma is a special case because it is the capital, it is big and it does have a lot to commend it, except for the likes of its shopping hours. I am still to be convinced that people would make Palma a weekend-break destination for the purposes of doing some shopping, but it cannot help the city if everything pretty much closes down by Saturday lunchtime. It may not assist the rest of the island, certainly not the north, for a sizeable chunk of the tourism promotional budget to be spent on the capital, but one has to be realistic, especially when it comes to the winter. Palma is open (well until Saturday lunchtime) in a way that other places are not. At least, that is how it is argued. But it is inaccurate. Alcúdia and Pollensa may be quiet in winter, but they are far from closed down. Special case it may be, but winter promotion should be for the whole island and not just the capital. But on specific international promotion of Palma - and that for its excellent San Sebastian celebrations in January - I wonder what they are doing. After last January's event, there was an admission that more needed to be done to attract overseas visitors to something that is deserving of greater foreign interest. So, is it?
PUERTO POLLENSA - YET MORE PEDESTRIANISATION
And for the latest ... Now it's to be just the bit between the Calles Elcano (the road opposite the pier with restaurant Stay) and Temple Fielding (on the corner of which is Sail & Surf). Heavy traffic is going to all be diverted along the new road. Does this include coaches? Is Temple Fielding to be two-way traffic? Don't know. Meantime, the annual let's-rip-up-Puerto Pollensa scheme is to start in January, with the promenade (that part from the roundabout to the pinewalk which is of course pedestrianised) being dug up for drainage works. It will be finished by the middle of March. Oh no it won't. Oh yes it will. Oh no it won't. What a pantomime. But at least this may prevent that other annual event, namely the outpouring of sewage into the sea.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Fine Young Cannibals with Jimmy Somerville (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRyAD9dMQ64). Today's title - boy oh boy, does this bring back memories; one of the smoochiest and most romantic of all Motown songs. But I'm not telling.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Keep The Faith
BEING SPANISH - PART SIX (RESTAURANTS)
The impetus for this "being Spanish" series was mainly comments about Alcúdia's Mile, i.e. it doesn't look "that Spanish". No, it doesn't. Or it does, if you accept that being Spanish is an adaptation, a cultural inversion for the mass tourist who needs a spatial reassurance of a conformity that could be described as "being tourist". Take a wander along The Mile in Puerto Alcúdia and contemplate its restaurants. Where do you find "being Spanish"? No, I'm struggling, too. The occasional name, Olas for instance, but otherwise it is anytown, anytouristtown Spain; Spanish by location, but a Mediterranean-lite of grill, entertainment and pizza with a splash of the Orient. At the top of The Mile, there is S'Amfora, where there is the temptation of tapas, and a restaurant with a not undeserved reputation. Close by The Mile is La Traviata with its bullfighting paraphernalia. Here are semblances, but these aside, what is it that defines the restaurant as being Spanish?
Take, as ever, our hypothetical holidaymaker anticipating a fortnight of some ill-defined Spanish experience. What does he think a Spanish restaurant might be? He suffers from a lack of experience in his homeland. Where there is familiarity of French, Italian, Greek, Indian, Chinese, is there the same appreciation of Spanish? Not really. But even if there were, a certain look would be difficult to conjure up. Indian and Chinese restaurants may follow generally similar patterns - many of them as wallpaper - but their European counterparts do not. What, after all, is a French restaurant supposed to look like or be like? Some might expect it to have strings of onions hanging from the walls, waiters in berets, an accordion player getting pissed on Pernod, and bottles of Listerine to combat the garlic-induced halitosis, but it would be an idiotic stereotyping.
If there is a preconceived notion at all of the Spanish restaurant, then it is likely to be one formed out of what might be dubbed the country-cottaging of imagery. In this respect, the Brit falls back on his own cultural symbol and reconstructs it for a different environment. Accordingly, the Spanish restaurant becomes stone-walled and flower-terraced. It is the transportation of quaint and of ruralism, and in some respects it is correct, as physically there are such restaurants, although not along The Mile. To what extent they can then "be Spanish", however, is a factor of personality and of keeping faith with a tradition not only in terms of cuisine but also style. Restaurants may be run by Spaniards, but that doesn't mean to say that they are Spanish.
Yet one asks, well what is this style? At an extreme, it might be typified by slovenly service and a salacious waiter who wants to roger your 18-year-old daughter. Some might say that this is "being Spanish". But this would be to succumb to a sort of Queen Motherly xenophobia. However, that borrowing of one's own culture is not inappropriate. For rural in Britain, think rustic here. It's the same word in Catalan, albeit with an accent on the "u". Rustic, rústic. It is redolent of a by-gone era and of an artisanship that seems at odds with the chicness that informs much contemporary restaurant design, wherever it may be. In the same way that a proliferation, surprising perhaps to a British visitor, of dry-stone walls cuts across the local landscape, so ruralism is symbolic of a certain Spanishness of restaurant. There is something of a link perhaps to the country pub, albeit that ceilings tend to be much higher. If the Spanish bar is a thing of mundaneness and atmospheric coldness, the restaurant is not. It is the pub alternative if you like - one of cosiness, of beams, of stone, of wood, of artefact and adornment, and often of low and discreet lighting.
And it is in the keeping of a tradition and of personality that one finds a different type of reassurance, one of that tradition not having been betrayed by a newer generation. There are several examples, but one such is La Parra in Puerto Pollensa where the barrels of a bodega collide with something of the pub, a grandfather clock for example. Height and stone work are perhaps no more clearly expressed than in Eu Centro in the town of Pollensa. Beam, stone, wood and barrel can be made to transform the unlovely, as was the case with Sa Taverneta des Moll in Puerto Alcúdia when the insipid interior of the one-time bar was ripped out. The floral or garden terrace can be experienced in restaurants which can occasionally truly aspire to the overworked hype of "romantic" - L'Aup on the turning to Cala San Vicente or the elaborate, lush and aptly named Jardín in Puerto Alcúdia.
For all that these restaurants may be said to typify a being Spanish, there is still the question of context. Only L'Aup in its rural setting and Eu Centro overlooked by the church in Pollensa might be said to benefit from a contextual position that makes unquestionable that Spanishness. Jardín, for example, seems like a mistake: in staggering distance of The Mile and next to a "snack grill" that was once Molly Ryans Irish bar. Some struggle alongside the anytouristtownisation of the resorts. Brutalisation-by-Dakota, for instance, has brought a hard-nosed but home-grown internationalism to Puerto Pollensa but is perhaps also an unsentimental realisation that, though the tourist hankers after a seemingly hard-to-define restaurant being Spanish, he is also at ease with a culinary, design and thematic imperialism.
* Please do feel free to send me - to the email address below - any of your suggestions as to restaurants that you feel are particularly "Spanish".
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - John Waite (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUz9ZfegpIE). Today's title - American mega group.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The impetus for this "being Spanish" series was mainly comments about Alcúdia's Mile, i.e. it doesn't look "that Spanish". No, it doesn't. Or it does, if you accept that being Spanish is an adaptation, a cultural inversion for the mass tourist who needs a spatial reassurance of a conformity that could be described as "being tourist". Take a wander along The Mile in Puerto Alcúdia and contemplate its restaurants. Where do you find "being Spanish"? No, I'm struggling, too. The occasional name, Olas for instance, but otherwise it is anytown, anytouristtown Spain; Spanish by location, but a Mediterranean-lite of grill, entertainment and pizza with a splash of the Orient. At the top of The Mile, there is S'Amfora, where there is the temptation of tapas, and a restaurant with a not undeserved reputation. Close by The Mile is La Traviata with its bullfighting paraphernalia. Here are semblances, but these aside, what is it that defines the restaurant as being Spanish?
Take, as ever, our hypothetical holidaymaker anticipating a fortnight of some ill-defined Spanish experience. What does he think a Spanish restaurant might be? He suffers from a lack of experience in his homeland. Where there is familiarity of French, Italian, Greek, Indian, Chinese, is there the same appreciation of Spanish? Not really. But even if there were, a certain look would be difficult to conjure up. Indian and Chinese restaurants may follow generally similar patterns - many of them as wallpaper - but their European counterparts do not. What, after all, is a French restaurant supposed to look like or be like? Some might expect it to have strings of onions hanging from the walls, waiters in berets, an accordion player getting pissed on Pernod, and bottles of Listerine to combat the garlic-induced halitosis, but it would be an idiotic stereotyping.
If there is a preconceived notion at all of the Spanish restaurant, then it is likely to be one formed out of what might be dubbed the country-cottaging of imagery. In this respect, the Brit falls back on his own cultural symbol and reconstructs it for a different environment. Accordingly, the Spanish restaurant becomes stone-walled and flower-terraced. It is the transportation of quaint and of ruralism, and in some respects it is correct, as physically there are such restaurants, although not along The Mile. To what extent they can then "be Spanish", however, is a factor of personality and of keeping faith with a tradition not only in terms of cuisine but also style. Restaurants may be run by Spaniards, but that doesn't mean to say that they are Spanish.
Yet one asks, well what is this style? At an extreme, it might be typified by slovenly service and a salacious waiter who wants to roger your 18-year-old daughter. Some might say that this is "being Spanish". But this would be to succumb to a sort of Queen Motherly xenophobia. However, that borrowing of one's own culture is not inappropriate. For rural in Britain, think rustic here. It's the same word in Catalan, albeit with an accent on the "u". Rustic, rústic. It is redolent of a by-gone era and of an artisanship that seems at odds with the chicness that informs much contemporary restaurant design, wherever it may be. In the same way that a proliferation, surprising perhaps to a British visitor, of dry-stone walls cuts across the local landscape, so ruralism is symbolic of a certain Spanishness of restaurant. There is something of a link perhaps to the country pub, albeit that ceilings tend to be much higher. If the Spanish bar is a thing of mundaneness and atmospheric coldness, the restaurant is not. It is the pub alternative if you like - one of cosiness, of beams, of stone, of wood, of artefact and adornment, and often of low and discreet lighting.
And it is in the keeping of a tradition and of personality that one finds a different type of reassurance, one of that tradition not having been betrayed by a newer generation. There are several examples, but one such is La Parra in Puerto Pollensa where the barrels of a bodega collide with something of the pub, a grandfather clock for example. Height and stone work are perhaps no more clearly expressed than in Eu Centro in the town of Pollensa. Beam, stone, wood and barrel can be made to transform the unlovely, as was the case with Sa Taverneta des Moll in Puerto Alcúdia when the insipid interior of the one-time bar was ripped out. The floral or garden terrace can be experienced in restaurants which can occasionally truly aspire to the overworked hype of "romantic" - L'Aup on the turning to Cala San Vicente or the elaborate, lush and aptly named Jardín in Puerto Alcúdia.
For all that these restaurants may be said to typify a being Spanish, there is still the question of context. Only L'Aup in its rural setting and Eu Centro overlooked by the church in Pollensa might be said to benefit from a contextual position that makes unquestionable that Spanishness. Jardín, for example, seems like a mistake: in staggering distance of The Mile and next to a "snack grill" that was once Molly Ryans Irish bar. Some struggle alongside the anytouristtownisation of the resorts. Brutalisation-by-Dakota, for instance, has brought a hard-nosed but home-grown internationalism to Puerto Pollensa but is perhaps also an unsentimental realisation that, though the tourist hankers after a seemingly hard-to-define restaurant being Spanish, he is also at ease with a culinary, design and thematic imperialism.
* Please do feel free to send me - to the email address below - any of your suggestions as to restaurants that you feel are particularly "Spanish".
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - John Waite (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUz9ZfegpIE). Today's title - American mega group.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Many Rivers To Cross?
BEING SPANISH - PART FIVE (LANDSCAPES)
As you fly into Mallorca and look down to the ground, what do you see? A regular flight path into Palma Airport takes you along the north coast, and you can see the blue of the Med, the white caps of waves and the twists of the length of beach that is that of Alcúdia Bay. The plane makes a right turn over Playa de Muro and tracks down the centre of the island and into Palma. You may just glimpse mountains and be aware of the windmills shortly before landing. Otherwise, a general view is one of brownness and yellowness, patches of green and of no great order. Welcome to Mallorca and welcome to its topography.
If you were a first-time visitor to the island, what might you expect in terms of landscape? Indeed, might you expect anything? But we're back in "being Spanish" territory, and coming from a green and pleasant land, the tourist is unlikely to expect the same aerial perspective of hedged fields, woodlands and the alterations through colour of crop rotation of coming into, say, Gatwick. He probably expects a deal of barrenness; it would accord with sun and more sun. And for the most part, that is what he gets, or at least it is also a fertile barrenness of the clay colours of potato and vegetable market gardening. If England is overwhelmingly green, then Mallorca is overwhelmingly a study through a variety of ochres.
Ask a tourist what, having landed, he might anticipate as some sort of emblematic statement of the local landscape, and he may well choose the palm tree, the arboreal go-to of the picture postcard, fronds artistically intruding as a foreground in a top corner of the frame with the shimmering azure of sky and sea and a whiteness of sand filling its background. And of course he will find the palm tree in abundance. Spanish, he will think. Which is true, but unfortunately isn't. Palms are neither natives of Mallorca nor of Spain, with one exception, the palmito. The anticipation of an exotica of sub-tropical arboriculture is misguided. The discovery is one of apparent northern European migration, for it is the pine tree that lords itself over the tree kingdom of Mallorca. If this is a disappointment, there is a consolation in the fact of the pine species - the aleppo. But even this is not unique to Spain or Mallorca; it is the Mediterranean wing of the pine party.
Travelling from Palma to the north of the island, the initial sense is of normalcy, granted by motorway, the blue and white of road signs, the familiarity of make of car and the reassurance of a McDonald's arch. But the name Al Campo smacks of a different commercial landscape, and then to the left one begins to become aware of a chain of mountains and a perhaps unexpected natural landscape. Mention Spain, mention Mallorca, and the novice holidaymaker would be unlikely to conjure up an image of a mountain range; mountains, hills don't belong in the same set of picture postcards alongside that of the blissful beach idyll. Yet arrive in Pollensa or Alcúdia, and it is mountains that enclose you. Some are startling, most dramatically the Puig María that appears as an isolated aberration of monstrousness looming over the old town of Pollensa, or the grey peaks above Puerto Pollensa which lend the resort a chill of mystery. But how might these qualify as "Spanish"?
As you move around the area, to Alcúdia, to Pollensa, to Manresa or to Cala San Vicente, there is one word that starts to form - rugged. This is not a word from the being Spanish lexicon, or at least many would presume it not to be. Being Spanish, in landscape terms, is meant to be vibrant and exotic; it is a type of anthropomorphism for the natural world, the imagined transposition of the flame colours of the flamenco dance onto the land itself. But here is rugged. It is scrub, dust, scraps of forest, hill and artisan, the latter most evident in demarcation by dry-stone walls both in towns and in the country. It is semi-moor or Peak District. How can this be Spanish?
Yet there are of course colours that comfort you. On that same journey from Palma at different times of the year are the oleander that adorn the central reservation or the blossoms of almond trees. And then there are the bougainvillaeas of streets and gardens and the omnipresence of the orange tree. None of them uniquely Spanish, but they conform to the perception of vista by vibrancy, to a four-colour separation of the mind's eye rather than the black-and-white print of hill and wasteland.
But there is one thing you might have expected to see. It's something lurking from the days of knowing smatterings of Spanish by Western. Wrong country admittedly, but still Spanish. Rio Grande. River. Take off from Palma and look once again at the island below. What you will not see are rivers. For in the limestone and porous fabric of the island, most of the water goes underground. It's not a comment on being Spanish, but it is on being Mallorcan - island with no rivers.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Beth Orton "Someone's Daughter" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIoC_Ya6WRo). Today's title - there was no question mark; it was covered by UB40 but who was it originally?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
As you fly into Mallorca and look down to the ground, what do you see? A regular flight path into Palma Airport takes you along the north coast, and you can see the blue of the Med, the white caps of waves and the twists of the length of beach that is that of Alcúdia Bay. The plane makes a right turn over Playa de Muro and tracks down the centre of the island and into Palma. You may just glimpse mountains and be aware of the windmills shortly before landing. Otherwise, a general view is one of brownness and yellowness, patches of green and of no great order. Welcome to Mallorca and welcome to its topography.
If you were a first-time visitor to the island, what might you expect in terms of landscape? Indeed, might you expect anything? But we're back in "being Spanish" territory, and coming from a green and pleasant land, the tourist is unlikely to expect the same aerial perspective of hedged fields, woodlands and the alterations through colour of crop rotation of coming into, say, Gatwick. He probably expects a deal of barrenness; it would accord with sun and more sun. And for the most part, that is what he gets, or at least it is also a fertile barrenness of the clay colours of potato and vegetable market gardening. If England is overwhelmingly green, then Mallorca is overwhelmingly a study through a variety of ochres.
Ask a tourist what, having landed, he might anticipate as some sort of emblematic statement of the local landscape, and he may well choose the palm tree, the arboreal go-to of the picture postcard, fronds artistically intruding as a foreground in a top corner of the frame with the shimmering azure of sky and sea and a whiteness of sand filling its background. And of course he will find the palm tree in abundance. Spanish, he will think. Which is true, but unfortunately isn't. Palms are neither natives of Mallorca nor of Spain, with one exception, the palmito. The anticipation of an exotica of sub-tropical arboriculture is misguided. The discovery is one of apparent northern European migration, for it is the pine tree that lords itself over the tree kingdom of Mallorca. If this is a disappointment, there is a consolation in the fact of the pine species - the aleppo. But even this is not unique to Spain or Mallorca; it is the Mediterranean wing of the pine party.
Travelling from Palma to the north of the island, the initial sense is of normalcy, granted by motorway, the blue and white of road signs, the familiarity of make of car and the reassurance of a McDonald's arch. But the name Al Campo smacks of a different commercial landscape, and then to the left one begins to become aware of a chain of mountains and a perhaps unexpected natural landscape. Mention Spain, mention Mallorca, and the novice holidaymaker would be unlikely to conjure up an image of a mountain range; mountains, hills don't belong in the same set of picture postcards alongside that of the blissful beach idyll. Yet arrive in Pollensa or Alcúdia, and it is mountains that enclose you. Some are startling, most dramatically the Puig María that appears as an isolated aberration of monstrousness looming over the old town of Pollensa, or the grey peaks above Puerto Pollensa which lend the resort a chill of mystery. But how might these qualify as "Spanish"?
As you move around the area, to Alcúdia, to Pollensa, to Manresa or to Cala San Vicente, there is one word that starts to form - rugged. This is not a word from the being Spanish lexicon, or at least many would presume it not to be. Being Spanish, in landscape terms, is meant to be vibrant and exotic; it is a type of anthropomorphism for the natural world, the imagined transposition of the flame colours of the flamenco dance onto the land itself. But here is rugged. It is scrub, dust, scraps of forest, hill and artisan, the latter most evident in demarcation by dry-stone walls both in towns and in the country. It is semi-moor or Peak District. How can this be Spanish?
Yet there are of course colours that comfort you. On that same journey from Palma at different times of the year are the oleander that adorn the central reservation or the blossoms of almond trees. And then there are the bougainvillaeas of streets and gardens and the omnipresence of the orange tree. None of them uniquely Spanish, but they conform to the perception of vista by vibrancy, to a four-colour separation of the mind's eye rather than the black-and-white print of hill and wasteland.
But there is one thing you might have expected to see. It's something lurking from the days of knowing smatterings of Spanish by Western. Wrong country admittedly, but still Spanish. Rio Grande. River. Take off from Palma and look once again at the island below. What you will not see are rivers. For in the limestone and porous fabric of the island, most of the water goes underground. It's not a comment on being Spanish, but it is on being Mallorcan - island with no rivers.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Beth Orton "Someone's Daughter" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIoC_Ya6WRo). Today's title - there was no question mark; it was covered by UB40 but who was it originally?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Looking For Clues
BEING SPANISH - PART FOUR (THE BAR)
The bar. When we talk of "being Spanish", it is the bar, perhaps more so than any other symbol of the tourist experience, that should typify - or not - what might be meant as being Spanish. It is to the bar to which the tourist feels drawn, as if by instinct. The bar defines holiday, and it is the bar within which the tourist can feel comfort, camaraderie and a collective expression of that holiday. But it is precisely for these reasons that the bar, the chosen bar (or bars), is rarely one that can be classified as being Spanish.
In Barcelona one time, I suggested to a friend of 30 years living there that we and some chums went for a "crawl". The idea was readily accepted, but not that of heading for the Ramblas and the likes of Michael Collins. I was being a tourist. My friend, who claims never to spend more than a euro on a beer, had his own route of bars, all of which would adhere to the description "Spanish". And these bars would be otherwise difficult to describe, except in terms of highly unremarkable, too bright, dull, smoky, and full of Spaniards. So it is here. If one dares to look around or even into a "Spanish" bar, what does one see or rather what does one not see? One does not see the sort of cosiness, the plushness, the intimacy of, say, a British pub (albeit one that is fast dying out). The Spanish bar is uniform in its graceless functionality. There are exceptions, but not many.
The only television programme in Spain worth watching is something called "Cuentame Como Pasó", a better class of soap set in the '70s. In one episode I happened to catch, there were scenes in a bar. I have no reason to assume that it was anything other than authentic. The only obvious difference to today was that the television was not plasma. Spanish bars are caught in a time-warp of Franco-era austerity. In a word, they are unattractive.
The local Spanish bar is, strictly speaking, Mallorcan Spanish, and being full of Mallorcans it is also very noisy because all Mallorcans shout. John, ex-Highlander, once sent me a story about a couple of customers who went to a locals bar and left because of what they perceived as unfriendly shouting. John subsequently rang the bar-owner who told him that there hadn't been a problem, they had just been discussing the weather!
The Spanish bar is intimidating in its sheer ordinariness and also in it actually being Spanish and being full of Spaniards, many of them shouting. The tourist is uncomfortable with such a clear expression of a different culture; it's why most avoid them and would never dream of setting foot in one. Colin, who has been providing me with some highly insightful thoughts on the notion of " being Spanish", refers to "cultural clues" that the tourist can gain. The cultural clues that are emitted from a Spanish bar are not difficult to appreciate, and if these clues suggest something with which the visitor might be uncomfortable, then he or she will not enter.
Of course, there is a difference between day and night, times of the year, days of the week and location. On a market day in summer in old-town Alcúdia, for example, people will of course go to a Spanish bar. They don't have much option. But they can sit outside, and there is security in numbers. Given a choice though, for the most part the tourist would head for the default bar that doesn't look too Spanish. There is another "of course", and that is that there are tourists and there are tourists. It would be quite wrong to suggest that everyone reacts negatively to the cultural clues, and, coincidentally, "culture" is a clue here. Take, for example, the square in Puerto Pollensa, Here, there are two bars diametrically opposite and pretty much diametrically opposed in the eyes of some tourists. Bar (café) Cultural is about as Spanish in the ways I describe above as it can get. Yet in its simplicity it is the counterpoint to Bony which, although also Spanish, is brash, comedic and almost Spanish parodic given José's "olés". It may also have something to do with prices, but that's perhaps by the by; the showy Spanishness of Bony is not to everyone's liking and, for some, they want their being Spanish understated.
But in general, the everyday tourist, your typical Brit, wlll defer to a style and to cultural clues that are more than just clues; they are strong statements. It is not just Britishness which attracts, it is also tribalism, for which there are bars - Canny Lad (Newcastle), Foxes (Leicester), Highlander (Scotland), for instance. There is a need for familiarity and for association. At the top of this piece I referred to those three "c's" - comfort, camaraderie and a collective expression. These are no more evident than in bars where the banter can centre on the football team, the towns or cities back home and also the folks back home. None of this can be obtained in a Spanish bar.
A further dimension in the search for the bar is that of internationalisation. The tourist, as with those who live locally, have, in many cases, bought into a bar transnationalism. How else can one explain the proliferation of Irish bars which, with one or two exceptions, are not Irish? A French neighbour of mine loves O'Hara's in Puerto Pollensa for example. One might expect her to opt for the Spanish bar, but no she revels in the garish opportunism of Grupo Boulevard who have taken this to an extreme state with its Australian Boulevard. But, once again, we come back to those cultural clues, and Irish, even Australian, are familiar statements, more so, one suspects, than Spanishness.
My whole thinking behind this series of features is that elusive concept of "being Spanish" and the fact that one hears an admonishment that things are not Spanish enough. Yet the tourist, overwhelmingly it seems, opts for the familiarity of the non-Spanish. There is an apparent contradiction in all this, but the explanation may lie with something that Colin has offered, and I finish with his observation:
"They (tourists of a mass variety) don’t actually want to see another culture - it is different and as such they don’t feel comfortable with it. They avoid places that feel too foreign, although at the same time bemoaning the fact that the tourist centres as not foreign enough. I don’t think that they are blind to it - they see it all too well, but view it with innate suspicion."
REAL MALLORCA - COMMENT
As most of you will know, I much prefer comments to be posted directly to me. However, an "anonymous" one for yesterday's piece, posted for the comments box, offered the opinion that the press failed to challenge Paul Davidson's claims and to also enquire as to whether he actually had the money to make the bid in the first place. To be fair, I think the Spanish press did at least raise this line of enquiry. How diligently they may have delved into Mr. Davidson's affairs is another matter, but certainly doubts had been circulating in the local media as to his financial capability. However, it should be noted that the press, in the UK at any rate, had said that Mr. Davidson had received 42 million pounds in return for the sale of shares in his company. I think it fair to say, though, that the local press lack the forensic journalistic abilities or resources for an examination of the financial situation.
The comment also suggests that Mr. Davidson was either fronting the whole exercise on behalf of someone else or was engaged in a "charade intended to get him publicity". As to the former, he had always insisted that he, and he alone, would be purchasing the club, and as for the latter, if the publicity was designed to raise his profile in Mallorca or Spain - for whatever reason - then it was an expensive way of going about it, while I reiterate the point - why would he have gone to the lengths he did, including appointing Keith Wyness as a non-exec, just for publicity?
I have yet to be convinced that he was anything other than sincere in his intentions, even if some of the thinking behind the failed takeover seemed somewhat odd.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Pink Floyd. Today's title - Yorkshire-born, sadly passed away, soul and blues singer.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The bar. When we talk of "being Spanish", it is the bar, perhaps more so than any other symbol of the tourist experience, that should typify - or not - what might be meant as being Spanish. It is to the bar to which the tourist feels drawn, as if by instinct. The bar defines holiday, and it is the bar within which the tourist can feel comfort, camaraderie and a collective expression of that holiday. But it is precisely for these reasons that the bar, the chosen bar (or bars), is rarely one that can be classified as being Spanish.
In Barcelona one time, I suggested to a friend of 30 years living there that we and some chums went for a "crawl". The idea was readily accepted, but not that of heading for the Ramblas and the likes of Michael Collins. I was being a tourist. My friend, who claims never to spend more than a euro on a beer, had his own route of bars, all of which would adhere to the description "Spanish". And these bars would be otherwise difficult to describe, except in terms of highly unremarkable, too bright, dull, smoky, and full of Spaniards. So it is here. If one dares to look around or even into a "Spanish" bar, what does one see or rather what does one not see? One does not see the sort of cosiness, the plushness, the intimacy of, say, a British pub (albeit one that is fast dying out). The Spanish bar is uniform in its graceless functionality. There are exceptions, but not many.
The only television programme in Spain worth watching is something called "Cuentame Como Pasó", a better class of soap set in the '70s. In one episode I happened to catch, there were scenes in a bar. I have no reason to assume that it was anything other than authentic. The only obvious difference to today was that the television was not plasma. Spanish bars are caught in a time-warp of Franco-era austerity. In a word, they are unattractive.
The local Spanish bar is, strictly speaking, Mallorcan Spanish, and being full of Mallorcans it is also very noisy because all Mallorcans shout. John, ex-Highlander, once sent me a story about a couple of customers who went to a locals bar and left because of what they perceived as unfriendly shouting. John subsequently rang the bar-owner who told him that there hadn't been a problem, they had just been discussing the weather!
The Spanish bar is intimidating in its sheer ordinariness and also in it actually being Spanish and being full of Spaniards, many of them shouting. The tourist is uncomfortable with such a clear expression of a different culture; it's why most avoid them and would never dream of setting foot in one. Colin, who has been providing me with some highly insightful thoughts on the notion of " being Spanish", refers to "cultural clues" that the tourist can gain. The cultural clues that are emitted from a Spanish bar are not difficult to appreciate, and if these clues suggest something with which the visitor might be uncomfortable, then he or she will not enter.
Of course, there is a difference between day and night, times of the year, days of the week and location. On a market day in summer in old-town Alcúdia, for example, people will of course go to a Spanish bar. They don't have much option. But they can sit outside, and there is security in numbers. Given a choice though, for the most part the tourist would head for the default bar that doesn't look too Spanish. There is another "of course", and that is that there are tourists and there are tourists. It would be quite wrong to suggest that everyone reacts negatively to the cultural clues, and, coincidentally, "culture" is a clue here. Take, for example, the square in Puerto Pollensa, Here, there are two bars diametrically opposite and pretty much diametrically opposed in the eyes of some tourists. Bar (café) Cultural is about as Spanish in the ways I describe above as it can get. Yet in its simplicity it is the counterpoint to Bony which, although also Spanish, is brash, comedic and almost Spanish parodic given José's "olés". It may also have something to do with prices, but that's perhaps by the by; the showy Spanishness of Bony is not to everyone's liking and, for some, they want their being Spanish understated.
But in general, the everyday tourist, your typical Brit, wlll defer to a style and to cultural clues that are more than just clues; they are strong statements. It is not just Britishness which attracts, it is also tribalism, for which there are bars - Canny Lad (Newcastle), Foxes (Leicester), Highlander (Scotland), for instance. There is a need for familiarity and for association. At the top of this piece I referred to those three "c's" - comfort, camaraderie and a collective expression. These are no more evident than in bars where the banter can centre on the football team, the towns or cities back home and also the folks back home. None of this can be obtained in a Spanish bar.
A further dimension in the search for the bar is that of internationalisation. The tourist, as with those who live locally, have, in many cases, bought into a bar transnationalism. How else can one explain the proliferation of Irish bars which, with one or two exceptions, are not Irish? A French neighbour of mine loves O'Hara's in Puerto Pollensa for example. One might expect her to opt for the Spanish bar, but no she revels in the garish opportunism of Grupo Boulevard who have taken this to an extreme state with its Australian Boulevard. But, once again, we come back to those cultural clues, and Irish, even Australian, are familiar statements, more so, one suspects, than Spanishness.
My whole thinking behind this series of features is that elusive concept of "being Spanish" and the fact that one hears an admonishment that things are not Spanish enough. Yet the tourist, overwhelmingly it seems, opts for the familiarity of the non-Spanish. There is an apparent contradiction in all this, but the explanation may lie with something that Colin has offered, and I finish with his observation:
"They (tourists of a mass variety) don’t actually want to see another culture - it is different and as such they don’t feel comfortable with it. They avoid places that feel too foreign, although at the same time bemoaning the fact that the tourist centres as not foreign enough. I don’t think that they are blind to it - they see it all too well, but view it with innate suspicion."
REAL MALLORCA - COMMENT
As most of you will know, I much prefer comments to be posted directly to me. However, an "anonymous" one for yesterday's piece, posted for the comments box, offered the opinion that the press failed to challenge Paul Davidson's claims and to also enquire as to whether he actually had the money to make the bid in the first place. To be fair, I think the Spanish press did at least raise this line of enquiry. How diligently they may have delved into Mr. Davidson's affairs is another matter, but certainly doubts had been circulating in the local media as to his financial capability. However, it should be noted that the press, in the UK at any rate, had said that Mr. Davidson had received 42 million pounds in return for the sale of shares in his company. I think it fair to say, though, that the local press lack the forensic journalistic abilities or resources for an examination of the financial situation.
The comment also suggests that Mr. Davidson was either fronting the whole exercise on behalf of someone else or was engaged in a "charade intended to get him publicity". As to the former, he had always insisted that he, and he alone, would be purchasing the club, and as for the latter, if the publicity was designed to raise his profile in Mallorca or Spain - for whatever reason - then it was an expensive way of going about it, while I reiterate the point - why would he have gone to the lengths he did, including appointing Keith Wyness as a non-exec, just for publicity?
I have yet to be convinced that he was anything other than sincere in his intentions, even if some of the thinking behind the failed takeover seemed somewhat odd.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Pink Floyd. Today's title - Yorkshire-born, sadly passed away, soul and blues singer.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Am I Ever Gonna See My Wedding Day?
BEING SPANISH - PART THREE
Take a look along a street or at a row of houses or other buildings, and one - it might be hoped - would gain an appreciation as to one's location, albeit a very general location. It might be a good idea for some form of general knowledge quiz. Show the contestants photos of representative streets, and get them to name the country or the area. I wonder how many might get Spanish if they were to be shown some of the streets or buildings around here.
When the tourist is first deposited in one of the tourism centres, let's take The Mile as an example, what does he or she see? That expectation that some may have had of being Spanish would soon dissipate. What being Spanish is there? Only the Spanish word - nada - nothing. Tourism centres are built with one thing in mind and that's the first word of this sentence - tourism - and these centres tend to a conformity of the non-descript. They are, in some respects, comforting, as in their architectural barrenness they aspire to nothing more than a neutrality; the tourist feels no sense of dislocation by being jettisoned into a habitat of non-architecture. They are mass architecture for a mass tourism. Yet some centres could even be described as anti-architecture; they have elevated the art of a miserabilist prefabrication, combined with naked and unsympathetic commerce, into a state of anti-being Spanish which means that verification as to location can only be made through the consultation of a map or the airline ticket that confirms that one is indeed no longer in one's country of origin. Such anti-architecture exists all around, and it is not unique to one resort: Can Picafort has it in abundance; Playa de Muro boasts its hideous strip from the municipal office to the Banca March roundabout: the stretch going into the port of Alcúdia is also unit-upon-unit of unintelligent design as is that part of the frontline of Puerto Pollensa from the nautical club to Sail & Surf. Nowhere is immune to the appetite of anti-architecture.
But in truth, what does one really expect? These tourism centres are, for the most part, creations with only one thing in mind, and they are manifestations of a modernity that went largely unplanned. Moreover, these are not historic or heritage centres where conformity to a style is the first item on the planning application. Consequently, the tourism centre's sense of "being Spanish" can be said to be indeed Spanish because of its essentially ad-hoc nature. It may not be what some vague romantic image, conjured up in the mind of the tourist, may have anticipated, but it is a form of being Spanish nevertheless, albeit an equivocal one.
One looks, however, to the old towns and to the port areas for hints of something more exact. Yet what does one find? It is all too easy to overlook the fact that both the ports and both the old towns of Alcúdia and Pollensa are places not just of tourism but also of residence and business. This trinity of needs has not been well reconciled, and nowhere is evidence of this more startling than in Puerto Pollensa. There is a curious tag that gets attached to Puerto Pollensa which is that it is unspoilt or relatively unspoilt. There is no such thing as unspoilt unless there is no habitation; there is only degree of having been spoiled. But the unspoilt tag is perhaps illuminating; it is being Spanish euphemism. And so one casts one eye around Puerto Pollensa and what is revealed is a largely arbitrary set of apartments with no commonality, among which is the chic white and grey blandness of Taylor Woodrow's construction on the former Garbi hole. Where is this "being Spanish"? There is elegance, for sure; the marina has it, but not as much as Alcúdia's does. But neither marina can be defined as Spanish. If elegance is a facet of being Spanish, ironically the Taylor Woodrow building is arguably, despite its having been built without any sense of context, one of the few in Puerto Pollensa that can be said to possess it. The quaintness of old hotels in the centre of the port, unlike Alcúdia in this respect, smacks of a past, but it does not suggest Spanish as such. It is only when one gets to the square that one feels the stirrings of this vague concept, and it is the church that does it. Squares, in themselves, are not redolent of a uniquely Spanish style. Nor are churches especially, but the imposing style of Catholic churches and their positions in the centres of urban areas are a move in that direction. Puerto Pollensa does this much better than Puerto Alcúdia where there is no square and a church that one could be forgiven for ignoring. I used to. Indeed when I was first there and was told that such and such was near to the church, my reaction was what church. It was only when one day in its vicinity I heard the bells that I realised that the building which could pass for a community hall in a British council estate was indeed a church.
Amongst the non- and anti-architecture, it is the grand statements of religion that cause one to pause and recognise a being Spanish. Of course, such churches exist elsewhere in the Mediterranean as do the narrow streets of tightly built townhouses with shuttered windows, but it is they, and they alone, which impress with their strength and scale and argue the case for a being Spanish. And Pollensa old town does this with brilliance. The connections between the churches, along those narrow streets and from one square to another transport one into a clearly different place. In an architectural antiquity fashion, nowhere tries being Spanish better than Pollensa.
GETTING MARRIED IN THE MORNING
And talking of churches ... . This past weekend has seen the fifteenth annual wedding fair in Palma. Here is a strange old thing, not weddings, but the degree of interest there is in having a wedding in Mallorca; it is one of the things I get asked about from time to time, i.e. in terms of those from the UK who wish to have their wedding here. And the problem is, I don't really have a clue. I thought that one had to be a resident to have a church wedding, and this may be the case, but there is a whole industry here that arranges weddings in whatever setting. Also, there are restaurants that promote themselves as wedding breakfast locations, the splendid Jardin in Puerto Alcúdia for example. The "boda" is a massive deal here, as it is anywhere.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Bill Withers (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x28wpt_bill-withers-lovely-day-live_music). Today's title - a line from a cheesy but still great song. Who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Take a look along a street or at a row of houses or other buildings, and one - it might be hoped - would gain an appreciation as to one's location, albeit a very general location. It might be a good idea for some form of general knowledge quiz. Show the contestants photos of representative streets, and get them to name the country or the area. I wonder how many might get Spanish if they were to be shown some of the streets or buildings around here.
When the tourist is first deposited in one of the tourism centres, let's take The Mile as an example, what does he or she see? That expectation that some may have had of being Spanish would soon dissipate. What being Spanish is there? Only the Spanish word - nada - nothing. Tourism centres are built with one thing in mind and that's the first word of this sentence - tourism - and these centres tend to a conformity of the non-descript. They are, in some respects, comforting, as in their architectural barrenness they aspire to nothing more than a neutrality; the tourist feels no sense of dislocation by being jettisoned into a habitat of non-architecture. They are mass architecture for a mass tourism. Yet some centres could even be described as anti-architecture; they have elevated the art of a miserabilist prefabrication, combined with naked and unsympathetic commerce, into a state of anti-being Spanish which means that verification as to location can only be made through the consultation of a map or the airline ticket that confirms that one is indeed no longer in one's country of origin. Such anti-architecture exists all around, and it is not unique to one resort: Can Picafort has it in abundance; Playa de Muro boasts its hideous strip from the municipal office to the Banca March roundabout: the stretch going into the port of Alcúdia is also unit-upon-unit of unintelligent design as is that part of the frontline of Puerto Pollensa from the nautical club to Sail & Surf. Nowhere is immune to the appetite of anti-architecture.
But in truth, what does one really expect? These tourism centres are, for the most part, creations with only one thing in mind, and they are manifestations of a modernity that went largely unplanned. Moreover, these are not historic or heritage centres where conformity to a style is the first item on the planning application. Consequently, the tourism centre's sense of "being Spanish" can be said to be indeed Spanish because of its essentially ad-hoc nature. It may not be what some vague romantic image, conjured up in the mind of the tourist, may have anticipated, but it is a form of being Spanish nevertheless, albeit an equivocal one.
One looks, however, to the old towns and to the port areas for hints of something more exact. Yet what does one find? It is all too easy to overlook the fact that both the ports and both the old towns of Alcúdia and Pollensa are places not just of tourism but also of residence and business. This trinity of needs has not been well reconciled, and nowhere is evidence of this more startling than in Puerto Pollensa. There is a curious tag that gets attached to Puerto Pollensa which is that it is unspoilt or relatively unspoilt. There is no such thing as unspoilt unless there is no habitation; there is only degree of having been spoiled. But the unspoilt tag is perhaps illuminating; it is being Spanish euphemism. And so one casts one eye around Puerto Pollensa and what is revealed is a largely arbitrary set of apartments with no commonality, among which is the chic white and grey blandness of Taylor Woodrow's construction on the former Garbi hole. Where is this "being Spanish"? There is elegance, for sure; the marina has it, but not as much as Alcúdia's does. But neither marina can be defined as Spanish. If elegance is a facet of being Spanish, ironically the Taylor Woodrow building is arguably, despite its having been built without any sense of context, one of the few in Puerto Pollensa that can be said to possess it. The quaintness of old hotels in the centre of the port, unlike Alcúdia in this respect, smacks of a past, but it does not suggest Spanish as such. It is only when one gets to the square that one feels the stirrings of this vague concept, and it is the church that does it. Squares, in themselves, are not redolent of a uniquely Spanish style. Nor are churches especially, but the imposing style of Catholic churches and their positions in the centres of urban areas are a move in that direction. Puerto Pollensa does this much better than Puerto Alcúdia where there is no square and a church that one could be forgiven for ignoring. I used to. Indeed when I was first there and was told that such and such was near to the church, my reaction was what church. It was only when one day in its vicinity I heard the bells that I realised that the building which could pass for a community hall in a British council estate was indeed a church.
Amongst the non- and anti-architecture, it is the grand statements of religion that cause one to pause and recognise a being Spanish. Of course, such churches exist elsewhere in the Mediterranean as do the narrow streets of tightly built townhouses with shuttered windows, but it is they, and they alone, which impress with their strength and scale and argue the case for a being Spanish. And Pollensa old town does this with brilliance. The connections between the churches, along those narrow streets and from one square to another transport one into a clearly different place. In an architectural antiquity fashion, nowhere tries being Spanish better than Pollensa.
GETTING MARRIED IN THE MORNING
And talking of churches ... . This past weekend has seen the fifteenth annual wedding fair in Palma. Here is a strange old thing, not weddings, but the degree of interest there is in having a wedding in Mallorca; it is one of the things I get asked about from time to time, i.e. in terms of those from the UK who wish to have their wedding here. And the problem is, I don't really have a clue. I thought that one had to be a resident to have a church wedding, and this may be the case, but there is a whole industry here that arranges weddings in whatever setting. Also, there are restaurants that promote themselves as wedding breakfast locations, the splendid Jardin in Puerto Alcúdia for example. The "boda" is a massive deal here, as it is anywhere.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Bill Withers (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x28wpt_bill-withers-lovely-day-live_music). Today's title - a line from a cheesy but still great song. Who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Just What I've Always Wanted
BEING SPANISH - PART TWO
"It's not very Spanish." "We were wanting something a bit more Spanish." "It was more Spanish than elsewhere; just what we wanted."
Three not untypical statements, all part of the same peseta as it were, as to use euro in a metaphorical sense would hardly equate to an expression of something "Spanish". There again, perhaps the arrival of the euro has created a uniformity not just in currency but also in appearance and even atmosphere.
What is Spanish? I started the discussion on Thursday, and here is the second part.
Let us put ourselves in the trainers, sandals or Crocs of the tourist checking-in at Luton or East Midlands. What are they expecting to find? Insofar as any of them have a perception of or expectation of "being Spanish", what might it be? Colin, in responding to the piece of 6 November, suggests that this equates predominantly to "the Costas and the Balearics", and this, in turn, leads to a specific notion - that of the typical tourism image of sun, sea, sand and sangria. Only one of these - sangria - can be classified as being in any way identifiably Spanish. The rest of that perception is probably that of bar, pool, beer, meat, chips and a hotel room.
A while back I asked a local British bar-owner, Jamie at Foxes, what he thought was Spanish. There were some more s-words: sombreros and straw donkeys. It was an hilarious and far from inaccurate summation. Add the bullfight and matadors, and you arrive at a sort-of common denominator Spanishness, that of certain imagery and, in some cases, parody, something that extends to the language. For those unfamiliar with Spanish, their few words might well have been culled from Westerns or they will be the "qué" of Manuel or the Spanglish "scorchio" of Paul Whitehouse.
Yet not everyone has the same impression. There will be those who hold to an image moulded by architecture and art, streets and squares, landscapes, music, food and eating-out, nature, language, history, traditions and people. It is really in all of these that one has to search for being Spanish; all these and then a certain abstractness of difference, one founded on a Spanish or Mallorcan character and culture - a way of doings things if you like.
The other day I painted a picture of one place - Can Picafort - in which it is difficult to discern an identifiable Spanishness. Yet there is a mitigating factor, and it is one of modernity. Can Picafort is new town resort. Even down to its grid road system, it is a Milton Keynes of Mediterranean homogeneity; its location in Mallorca is a mere geographical convenience. But it is far from the only part of the island that is non-specific. Travel the few kilometres along the main road to Alcúdia, and one comes across The Mile. It is precisely the holiday ghettoes of The Mile and Can Picafort that form the holiday experience for most. These are the chosen resorts; the ones chosen by the planners and the tour operators, the ones cloned and internationalised from a template named mass tourism and the package holiday. Despite the person who found Can Picafort to be "Spanish", the chances of stumbling across Spanishness are remote, whatever that intangible pre-conceived notion might be.
However, perhaps one is going down the wrong line in excluding these resorts from a being-Spanish taxonomy. They are the product of the import of culture and the standardisation of hotel edifice, and through their permanence and prevalence they become Spanish. Being there begets being Spanish. One can witness the globalisation of architecture and commerce not just in Mallorca but in almost anywhere one chooses. That the hotel companies of Can Picafort and The Mile may be Mallorcan and Spanish is neither here nor there. They, together with the non-Spanish tour operators, have moulded a being Spanish for today, a one size fits all tourism with the odd local token. And the tourist, for the most part, has bought into this as well, the most extreme expression of this being the all-inclusive - a concentration camp of geographical indeterminacy. It could be anywhere and so could the tourist for all that he or she is aware of the outside world.
It is with this in mind perhaps that the tourist authorities place an increasing emphasis on a Mallorcan culture, heritage and landscape. Is there an admission of guilt in now wishing to promote this? These same tourist authorities have permitted the uniform internationalisation of being Spanish and being Mallorcan. Now they want a lost and being lost Spain and Mallorca to be rediscovered. They are not wrong in wanting to do so. Even if one categorises tourism as some form of take it or leave it indifference for a lumpenproletariat, people still crave an authenticity, a being Spanish of greater romantic presence. There are those who find a being Spanish that is what they always wanted. And it is that which I shall try and locate in subsequent pieces.
For the meantime, any more feedback as to your notions of being Spanish will be most welcome and will always receive a personal response. Thanks to those who have done so.
As a sort of aside, the other day in the local Eroski supermarket, I became aware of the music being played. Spanish? No. It was The Manic Street Preachers. How does that all work do you suppose? Why would you have the Manics accompanying you on a trip around a Spanish supermarket? Anyone any clues? Or are there some extreme examples of strange Spanish supermarket music? Mark E. Smith and The Fall perhaps? Captain Beefheart at his Trout Mask most oddball maybe?
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The fabs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaNQjhXhfVs). Today's title - beehive, some fifteen years before Amy made it fab gear.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
"It's not very Spanish." "We were wanting something a bit more Spanish." "It was more Spanish than elsewhere; just what we wanted."
Three not untypical statements, all part of the same peseta as it were, as to use euro in a metaphorical sense would hardly equate to an expression of something "Spanish". There again, perhaps the arrival of the euro has created a uniformity not just in currency but also in appearance and even atmosphere.
What is Spanish? I started the discussion on Thursday, and here is the second part.
Let us put ourselves in the trainers, sandals or Crocs of the tourist checking-in at Luton or East Midlands. What are they expecting to find? Insofar as any of them have a perception of or expectation of "being Spanish", what might it be? Colin, in responding to the piece of 6 November, suggests that this equates predominantly to "the Costas and the Balearics", and this, in turn, leads to a specific notion - that of the typical tourism image of sun, sea, sand and sangria. Only one of these - sangria - can be classified as being in any way identifiably Spanish. The rest of that perception is probably that of bar, pool, beer, meat, chips and a hotel room.
A while back I asked a local British bar-owner, Jamie at Foxes, what he thought was Spanish. There were some more s-words: sombreros and straw donkeys. It was an hilarious and far from inaccurate summation. Add the bullfight and matadors, and you arrive at a sort-of common denominator Spanishness, that of certain imagery and, in some cases, parody, something that extends to the language. For those unfamiliar with Spanish, their few words might well have been culled from Westerns or they will be the "qué" of Manuel or the Spanglish "scorchio" of Paul Whitehouse.
Yet not everyone has the same impression. There will be those who hold to an image moulded by architecture and art, streets and squares, landscapes, music, food and eating-out, nature, language, history, traditions and people. It is really in all of these that one has to search for being Spanish; all these and then a certain abstractness of difference, one founded on a Spanish or Mallorcan character and culture - a way of doings things if you like.
The other day I painted a picture of one place - Can Picafort - in which it is difficult to discern an identifiable Spanishness. Yet there is a mitigating factor, and it is one of modernity. Can Picafort is new town resort. Even down to its grid road system, it is a Milton Keynes of Mediterranean homogeneity; its location in Mallorca is a mere geographical convenience. But it is far from the only part of the island that is non-specific. Travel the few kilometres along the main road to Alcúdia, and one comes across The Mile. It is precisely the holiday ghettoes of The Mile and Can Picafort that form the holiday experience for most. These are the chosen resorts; the ones chosen by the planners and the tour operators, the ones cloned and internationalised from a template named mass tourism and the package holiday. Despite the person who found Can Picafort to be "Spanish", the chances of stumbling across Spanishness are remote, whatever that intangible pre-conceived notion might be.
However, perhaps one is going down the wrong line in excluding these resorts from a being-Spanish taxonomy. They are the product of the import of culture and the standardisation of hotel edifice, and through their permanence and prevalence they become Spanish. Being there begets being Spanish. One can witness the globalisation of architecture and commerce not just in Mallorca but in almost anywhere one chooses. That the hotel companies of Can Picafort and The Mile may be Mallorcan and Spanish is neither here nor there. They, together with the non-Spanish tour operators, have moulded a being Spanish for today, a one size fits all tourism with the odd local token. And the tourist, for the most part, has bought into this as well, the most extreme expression of this being the all-inclusive - a concentration camp of geographical indeterminacy. It could be anywhere and so could the tourist for all that he or she is aware of the outside world.
It is with this in mind perhaps that the tourist authorities place an increasing emphasis on a Mallorcan culture, heritage and landscape. Is there an admission of guilt in now wishing to promote this? These same tourist authorities have permitted the uniform internationalisation of being Spanish and being Mallorcan. Now they want a lost and being lost Spain and Mallorca to be rediscovered. They are not wrong in wanting to do so. Even if one categorises tourism as some form of take it or leave it indifference for a lumpenproletariat, people still crave an authenticity, a being Spanish of greater romantic presence. There are those who find a being Spanish that is what they always wanted. And it is that which I shall try and locate in subsequent pieces.
For the meantime, any more feedback as to your notions of being Spanish will be most welcome and will always receive a personal response. Thanks to those who have done so.
As a sort of aside, the other day in the local Eroski supermarket, I became aware of the music being played. Spanish? No. It was The Manic Street Preachers. How does that all work do you suppose? Why would you have the Manics accompanying you on a trip around a Spanish supermarket? Anyone any clues? Or are there some extreme examples of strange Spanish supermarket music? Mark E. Smith and The Fall perhaps? Captain Beefheart at his Trout Mask most oddball maybe?
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The fabs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaNQjhXhfVs). Today's title - beehive, some fifteen years before Amy made it fab gear.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Reasons To Be Cheerful - Part One
Despite the prospect of Spain entering into recession in 2009, there are reasons to believe that the Balearics will not be joining the rest of the country. Surprising though this might sound, latest figures and prognostications indicate that the islands will have experienced growth of just under 3 per cent this year, with an anticipated growth next year of just under 1 per cent. It wouldn't be much, but equally it would not represent recession. Moreover, the situation is not felt to be anything quite as bad as the last great crisis - between 1991 and 1993. The major casualty of the economic downturn has been, as we all know, construction, but it is tourism which is holding things together. It may also come as a surprise to learn that this year has witnessed an increase in hotel takings and in tourism spend. At least that is what the government is saying. There are probably many who would disagree. Although instinct suggests that the coming year could be problematic for tourism, and could blow apart that forecast for slight growth, indications are that things could be better than might have been anticipated. It does all remain to be seen, especially if recession bites as deep as it is expected to in the UK and, to a lesser extent, in Spain itself, thus harming UK and Spanish tourism. But for the moment, there is some reason to be cautiously optimistic. And that's no bad thing, rather than constantly talking ourselves into recession and sheer pessimism.
BEING SPANISH - PART ONE
For quite some time I have been mulling over the meaning of "being Spanish" in the sense of what constitutes being Spanish - be it bar, restaurant, resort, architecture, landscape and quite probably more besides. This was all inspired by comments one finds - from tourists - that such-and-such a restaurant or so-and-so a place is either Spanish, a bit Spanish or not Spanish at all. I'd love to know what they mean, because, hard though I try, I'm damned if I know what constitutes "being Spanish". Not of course that it will stop me from having a go.
One of those comments referred to Can Picafort. For those of you unfamiliar with the resort, let me give you an impression. It is everyman resort. Largely without character, it is chock-full of hotels and, in the main part of the resort, laid out according to a grid system of roads. It is the criss-cross resort. The Son Bauló part, on the other hand, is mainly a circle. Looked at on a map, Son Bauló is like a football being kicked by the long leg of Can Picafort - a sort of Italy and Sicily turned horizontal. The two parts are joined by a section of non-descript streets with similarly non-descript houses, while the leg and football are held in place by a long, straight stick which is the main road from Alcúdia to Artà, to either side of which are more hotels, supermarkets and petrol stations. The promenade is populated with repetitious barns of restaurants. The sand in winter encroaches onto the promenade, and the impression is of a seafront not totally unlike something one might find in Britain. The marina, compared with the more luxury end of the market in Alcúdia, is a disappointment of semi-neglect. To one side of it, there is a watchtower which stands in the midst of green seaweed, deposited by the occasional turbulent waves. The whole resort was basically built from scratch. There is little that remains of a Can Picafort heritage, not in truth that it ever had one as the place itself has a history far shorter than the nearby ports of Alcúdia or Pollensa.
It was a surprise, therefore, when I read someone who described Can Picafort as being Spanish. By what criteria could it possibly be so, especially its frontline with the tired appearance of a British seaside resort? It is in Spain, but otherwise? There is but one part that hints at this elusive concept of Spanishness, and that is the Santa Eulália avenue that runs along the back of the town. It houses the two Viva hotel complexes which, unlike the obtrusive hotels dotted all over the centre of the resort, are set back in an attractive residential area that combines the shades of Mallorcan architecture - the terracottas and the yellows - with a quasi-Arabic style of handed-down Spanish house-building. But even this is phoney because of its modernity; a developer's dream of recaptured Spain which can descend into a parody akin to mock Tudor facades in England that aspire to historical context but are too often design by naffness. Drive along the avenue and it is pleasant enough until one turns back down to the main road and is assaulted by what appears to be the local housing project of apartment block with the washing out. It isn't a project, just the white tower of the back of the Tonga Sol with towels draped from every balcony. And as one leaves Can Picafort, heading towards Alcúdia, there is the bizarre enclave of Ses Casetes des Capellans with its vacation homes little more than beach huts which I have previously compared with Jaywick Sands. These huts reach into the forest and dunes of Playa de Muro, a forest of pines, themselves a feature of a natural world to be discovered all over Europe. One searches for the essence of Spanishness in Can Pic, only because someone has said that it has it, but the search is fruitless. And so one must look elsewhere. Till next time ...
PLEASE - What are your notions of "being Spanish"? It can be anything you like. Email me, as below. I'd be delighted to hear your views and perhaps use them in follow-up features. As always, any email correspondence is treated with respect, so your details are never reproduced here. Thanks.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Kylie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0G-4HBYihU). Today's title - well it was actually part three; who was it?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
BEING SPANISH - PART ONE
For quite some time I have been mulling over the meaning of "being Spanish" in the sense of what constitutes being Spanish - be it bar, restaurant, resort, architecture, landscape and quite probably more besides. This was all inspired by comments one finds - from tourists - that such-and-such a restaurant or so-and-so a place is either Spanish, a bit Spanish or not Spanish at all. I'd love to know what they mean, because, hard though I try, I'm damned if I know what constitutes "being Spanish". Not of course that it will stop me from having a go.
One of those comments referred to Can Picafort. For those of you unfamiliar with the resort, let me give you an impression. It is everyman resort. Largely without character, it is chock-full of hotels and, in the main part of the resort, laid out according to a grid system of roads. It is the criss-cross resort. The Son Bauló part, on the other hand, is mainly a circle. Looked at on a map, Son Bauló is like a football being kicked by the long leg of Can Picafort - a sort of Italy and Sicily turned horizontal. The two parts are joined by a section of non-descript streets with similarly non-descript houses, while the leg and football are held in place by a long, straight stick which is the main road from Alcúdia to Artà, to either side of which are more hotels, supermarkets and petrol stations. The promenade is populated with repetitious barns of restaurants. The sand in winter encroaches onto the promenade, and the impression is of a seafront not totally unlike something one might find in Britain. The marina, compared with the more luxury end of the market in Alcúdia, is a disappointment of semi-neglect. To one side of it, there is a watchtower which stands in the midst of green seaweed, deposited by the occasional turbulent waves. The whole resort was basically built from scratch. There is little that remains of a Can Picafort heritage, not in truth that it ever had one as the place itself has a history far shorter than the nearby ports of Alcúdia or Pollensa.
It was a surprise, therefore, when I read someone who described Can Picafort as being Spanish. By what criteria could it possibly be so, especially its frontline with the tired appearance of a British seaside resort? It is in Spain, but otherwise? There is but one part that hints at this elusive concept of Spanishness, and that is the Santa Eulália avenue that runs along the back of the town. It houses the two Viva hotel complexes which, unlike the obtrusive hotels dotted all over the centre of the resort, are set back in an attractive residential area that combines the shades of Mallorcan architecture - the terracottas and the yellows - with a quasi-Arabic style of handed-down Spanish house-building. But even this is phoney because of its modernity; a developer's dream of recaptured Spain which can descend into a parody akin to mock Tudor facades in England that aspire to historical context but are too often design by naffness. Drive along the avenue and it is pleasant enough until one turns back down to the main road and is assaulted by what appears to be the local housing project of apartment block with the washing out. It isn't a project, just the white tower of the back of the Tonga Sol with towels draped from every balcony. And as one leaves Can Picafort, heading towards Alcúdia, there is the bizarre enclave of Ses Casetes des Capellans with its vacation homes little more than beach huts which I have previously compared with Jaywick Sands. These huts reach into the forest and dunes of Playa de Muro, a forest of pines, themselves a feature of a natural world to be discovered all over Europe. One searches for the essence of Spanishness in Can Pic, only because someone has said that it has it, but the search is fruitless. And so one must look elsewhere. Till next time ...
PLEASE - What are your notions of "being Spanish"? It can be anything you like. Email me, as below. I'd be delighted to hear your views and perhaps use them in follow-up features. As always, any email correspondence is treated with respect, so your details are never reproduced here. Thanks.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Kylie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0G-4HBYihU). Today's title - well it was actually part three; who was it?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Saturday, October 13, 2007
One Nation Under A Groove
This Spanishness thing of yesterday.
What is Spanishness? There is a curiosity in celebrating an abstract nationalism. It can be variously interpreted as a statement of a confident state, as a statement of a lack of confidence or as a statement of nostalgia. It is perhaps all these things, though currently one senses it is less a statement of confidence. There are frictions in the nation of Spain, as I have noted before: the ETA-Basque issue has flared up badly again; the monarchy is under attack; the Catalonians are constantly seeking greater autonomy.
In historical terms, Spanishness, represented by the unified entity that is Spain, is centuries old, a creation of the Catholic Kings in the fifteenth century. It was the various disruptions of the mid to late nineteenth century and then on into the Franco period that saw the erosion of Spanishness, or at least a unifying totem of Spain. The unravelling of the empire in the late nineteenth century also saw the if not elimination of Spanishness internationally then certainly its diminution.
The face of Spanishness that yesterday’s celebrations would have been designed to show would be a democratic, economically and politically stable state with a greater voice in the international arena. That would be the statement of confidence. But it is also the statement of lack of confidence. Spanishness, in a democratic guise, is still a child. The hundred years or so prior to the restoration of the monarchy (Juan-Carlos) and the establishment of democracy after Franco’s death were years of turmoil. Twice the monarchy was replaced by short-lived republics, the second of which was a response to the monarch of the time (Alfonso XIII) and his accommodation of the dictator Primo de Rivera and which ended with Franco. The voice in the international arena has been dumb for many, many years, or rather had been. The Spanishness of empire was replaced by isolationism - two world wars of non-participation - and economic basket-case-ness that was relieved by becoming a European player. The rare occasion that Spanishness spoke on the international arena was when Aznar held the coat-tails of George Bush and Tony Blair; a Spanishness that did not play well in Madrid, Barcelona or the Balearics, even less so after the bombings.
One senses an unease. The monarchy, and specifically King Juan-Carlos, is totemic in current-day Spanishness. Yet this also raises that idea of lack of confidence as well as the nostalgia. The lack of confidence stems from the possibility - remote perhaps - that there could be another collapse of this totem and another period of factionalism that might be described as the Spanishness of much of the hundred years before 1975. The nostalgia is that of the Golden Age and empire; a nostalgia and a struggle for confidence that is the burden shared with those who cannot yet define Britishness in anything other than pre-1939 terms.
Spanishness. One nation under a groove? Smoothly performing or spinning off? Basque-ness, Catalonian-ness. Separation? Whither Spanishness?
QUIZ
Yesterday - Madonna, “Holiday”. Today’s title ...?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
What is Spanishness? There is a curiosity in celebrating an abstract nationalism. It can be variously interpreted as a statement of a confident state, as a statement of a lack of confidence or as a statement of nostalgia. It is perhaps all these things, though currently one senses it is less a statement of confidence. There are frictions in the nation of Spain, as I have noted before: the ETA-Basque issue has flared up badly again; the monarchy is under attack; the Catalonians are constantly seeking greater autonomy.
In historical terms, Spanishness, represented by the unified entity that is Spain, is centuries old, a creation of the Catholic Kings in the fifteenth century. It was the various disruptions of the mid to late nineteenth century and then on into the Franco period that saw the erosion of Spanishness, or at least a unifying totem of Spain. The unravelling of the empire in the late nineteenth century also saw the if not elimination of Spanishness internationally then certainly its diminution.
The face of Spanishness that yesterday’s celebrations would have been designed to show would be a democratic, economically and politically stable state with a greater voice in the international arena. That would be the statement of confidence. But it is also the statement of lack of confidence. Spanishness, in a democratic guise, is still a child. The hundred years or so prior to the restoration of the monarchy (Juan-Carlos) and the establishment of democracy after Franco’s death were years of turmoil. Twice the monarchy was replaced by short-lived republics, the second of which was a response to the monarch of the time (Alfonso XIII) and his accommodation of the dictator Primo de Rivera and which ended with Franco. The voice in the international arena has been dumb for many, many years, or rather had been. The Spanishness of empire was replaced by isolationism - two world wars of non-participation - and economic basket-case-ness that was relieved by becoming a European player. The rare occasion that Spanishness spoke on the international arena was when Aznar held the coat-tails of George Bush and Tony Blair; a Spanishness that did not play well in Madrid, Barcelona or the Balearics, even less so after the bombings.
One senses an unease. The monarchy, and specifically King Juan-Carlos, is totemic in current-day Spanishness. Yet this also raises that idea of lack of confidence as well as the nostalgia. The lack of confidence stems from the possibility - remote perhaps - that there could be another collapse of this totem and another period of factionalism that might be described as the Spanishness of much of the hundred years before 1975. The nostalgia is that of the Golden Age and empire; a nostalgia and a struggle for confidence that is the burden shared with those who cannot yet define Britishness in anything other than pre-1939 terms.
Spanishness. One nation under a groove? Smoothly performing or spinning off? Basque-ness, Catalonian-ness. Separation? Whither Spanishness?
QUIZ
Yesterday - Madonna, “Holiday”. Today’s title ...?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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