The Secrets of Mallorca's Streets

The streets of any of Mallorca's towns are at their best during the quiet of a summer's afternoon. It may be broiling hot but siesta, away from the bustle of main squares and their cafés and restaurants still alive with the clinking of plates and the chatter of locals and tourists, silences the streets of tall, old townhouses with their solid wooden doors and green shutters and the bougainvillaea that hang over walls.

Away from the bustle, at fiesta time all that can be heard is the rustle of the white bunting. Caught in the breeze, the bunting creates an afternoon lullaby that soothes you from the heat if only by the suggestion of a cooling breeze.

The house-lined streets of the towns are more than just places of residence. They are historical artefacts. They contain all manner of mystery and they reveal all manner of historical detail. They are repositories of the past and in the names of some of these streets, the past comes into the present day.

The streets are named for all sorts of reasons: the winds of the Mediterranean, the saints, the planets, the flowers, the birds. They are also named after people, yet most of these people are as mysterious to visitors as the streets themselves are mysterious in concealing their own mysteries.

Who are some of these people? In any town a street sign will offer the name of someone obscure, a total unknown, but they are of course not unknown.

It isn't only the streets it is also the squares and the various "paseos" that are sometimes not really walks or streets at all. These paseos just melt into the heat of other streets, roads or squares. No one knows where they go, where they start or finish, they are just there because a name has been given to something which doesn't seem to obviously exist. But the name, always assuming you can see a name on a sign, and this isn't always the case, tells its own story.

In Alcúdia town what approximates to the car parking area by the church and walls has a name. It is the Paseo Pedro Ventayol. In Castellano anyway. It is always referred to in Catalan, the Passeig Pere Ventayol. You can't see a sign which announces this name (or at least I don't think so, as I've never been aware of one), but this is the name nevertheless. But who was Pere Ventayol?

In one of the streets with fiesta time bunting, Església, is a small, boutique-style hotel. It is called Can Tem. Ventayol was born in Can Tem a long time before it became a hotel. In 1873 to be precise. He became the town's apothecary, Alcúdia's chemist. But as importantly if not more, Ventayol wrote one of the most important histories of Alcúdia, simply called "Historia de Alcúdia". Much of what informs, for example, today's background knowledge of the Roman town of Pollentia was contained in its first volume. Ventayol is an historical figure twice over. Someone from history who was a history man.

If you walk from Pere Ventayol's paseo, go behind the walls along Moll (port), turn into Cristofol Colom (Columbus) and then hang a right, you will find yourself in Antoni Qués. Or to give him his full name, Antoni Maria Qués Ventayol. Another one! So who was Qués?

He was one of the original shareholders in the shipping line Trasmediterránea, which still exists, but despite this business background, he was one of the founders (in 1934) of the Balearics Republican Left, one of the first political organisations to lay claim to Balearics nationalism. He was subsequently detained by Franco's forces and in 1937 on 24 February, he was shot along with the mayor of Palma.

By coincidence, 24 February is also often a street name, one that can relate to the quelling of the 1981 coup or, in Alcúdia terms, the date attributed to the miracle of Sant Crist. Or maybe to the execution of one of its own.

The streets don't always take their names from sons or daughters of their towns. Alcúdia has an Anglada Camarasa and a Tito Cittadini, but these two artists are more usually associated with Pollensa, as is the poet (Miquel) Costa i Llobera, while Pere Quart, and his street is out of the town and in Barcarès, was a poet from the town of Sabadell in Barcelona province.

But from wherever they came, the streets to which they have lent their names afford a rich history of towns such as Alcúdia. Always assuming, that is, they've bothered to put a street sign up.


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MALLORCA TODAY - Criticism of government language law

Proposals by the Balearic Government to amend the language law have brought about criticisms, specifically to do with the removal of a requirement to be able to speak Catalan for workers in the public sector and with the introduction of Castilian names for towns, streets and highways. Criticism has come, for example, from Manacor where the Partido Popular mayor Antoni Pastor has defended the use of Catalan in the public sector. This is further evidence of the split within the PP in the Balearics, led by Pastor, whose criticisms of the government and of President Bauzá and tourism minister Carlos Delgado in particular have yet to receive a response from the government.

He's On The Phone: Dealing with Telefonica

The mobile rang three times. A four-figure number. Some sort of spam call, I thought. After the third time of calling and ignoring it, I thought again. Erm, maybe it was Telefonica. I had, after all, been asked to take a call from them.

The German neighbours. Needed to sort out a line and internet and all that. Could Telefonica call me so that I could pass on some info? Yes. But don't Telefonica have a German helpline? Yes. But it's not so easy. It never is, to be honest. Just having a German mobile probably doesn't make it any easier. Nor does Telefonica ringing Germany, to a relative, the one who had set this all in motion in the first place.

I do hope you're following all this, because I got lost with it well before the four-figure number started appearing on my mobile. When the number rang again, I relented, and answered. Half fearing not hearing anything - in good spam style - I was relieved when a voice started speaking - in German. Do I speak German, came the question. A bit, I responded, clearly unconvincingly. I can do German, but over a phone I would rather not. "English?" This was more like it. I didn't venture to suggest Spanish, and so waited to be transferred.

What I had thought they wanted to know, in order to get the neighbours kitted out in a Telefonica style, seemed straightforward enough. Confirmation of address, tax number, bank details. We never got past the address. Indeed, it took an inordinate length of time to do the first of these - the address.

"I can't find it," said the Telefonica-ist. The address, that is. So I repeated it. Twice more, once in Catalan. No, still couldn't find it. The street, it was suggested, was in Cala Ratjada. No, I responded, it is in Playa de Muro. There may be a street with the same name in Cala Ratjada, but there is definitely one in Playa de Muro. I am now standing on it, I explained, having walked for some distance while waving my arm around in good Spanish fashion while using a mobile. "This is your street?" asked the Telefonica-ist. "No, no, it's not my street. I just live next to it." "Next to it? Can you give me the number?" "A number? What of? A telephone, or a house?" "Which is your house?" "Sorry, what do you mean, which is my house?" "Your house is in the same street." "No, my house is in a different street." "It's next to the house where you want the phone line." "No, it's not next exactly. Near. And it's not me who wants the line. It's the neighbours, the ones you have the name for." "Oh. But can you give me your address?" "Why do you want my address? I'm not the one who wants the line." "It's not for you?" "No, no, it's for the neighbours. The ones you have the name for." "Ah yes. Can you give me the name of the street?" "I've given you the name of the street, but here it is again." "Sorry, I can't find the street." "You can't find it! It's been here for... for at least 40 years." "Can you spell it?" "Yes, I can spell it, thank you." "Oh, I still can't find it. Maybe if you tell me the name of the street in Catalan?" "I told you that before, but ok. Here it is." "Ah, ok, now I've found it." "Good. Do you want the other information? The bank details?" "No, we'll ring in a couple of days."

God forbid.

QUIZ -
Yep, it's back. "He's On The Phone"? If you don't know, then guess one of this blog's regulars, the very great ...


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I've Changed My Name

Who remembers that old TV film "The Knowledge"? It highlighted the lengths that London cabbies have to go to in order to learn the street names and routes of the capital. I knew some cabbies when I lived in London. They did indeed have to endure a test of that "knowledge". It was the case that if you took a mini-cab, rather than a London taxi, you might well have ended up telling the driver how to get to A or B. Very rarely would a cabbie not know.

London is very much bigger than Palma, but spare a thought for the Palma taxi driver. There is due to be a change to no less than 141 street names in the city. This is the consequence of linguistics, place-name usage and the law of "historic memory", for which, read Franco. Under this law, all symbols of the Franco era are to be dismantled. And that includes street names.

Now just think about this. Suppose you lived in a city in the UK of similar size to Palma, say Bristol, and one morning woke up to find that, following some political or politically correct decision, you now lived in Gordon Brown Way or Archbishop Tutu Close. Don't expect the postman to necessarily deliver to you that morning. Changing a street name here or there is not that problematic, but to do it wholesale ... Maps, post-office records, land-registry records, one's own registration with the town halls, business addresses, advertising and of course the poor old cabby.

A few days ago, I mentioned that Muro town hall is being pressed to change names of roads associated with Franco. I daresay this applies to other municipalities locally. I really wouldn't know. Presumably, local Mallorcan people do know; possibly. And if they do know, perhaps some take exception, or perhaps they don't. The linguistics aspect of street names applies, I would guess, to those in Castilian; Catalan is the PC in a land where PC generally counts for very little.

Palma may be different, simply because of its sheer spread and size, but in small towns, such as Alcúdia or Pollensa, the street name, if not irrelevant, holds very much less significance purely in terms of locating a place. Very few people use street names; very few could tell you the names of streets in their immediate area. Like time is a vague concept here, so too is location from the point of view of street naming. Perhaps it all has to do with the fact that names have changed in the past. Whatever the reason, street names are not often referred to.

The British don't operate in such a vague fashion, until, that is, they have lived here for some time. You will get a new incomer here who fastidiously uses a road name, only to be greeted with a blank expression or a correction. "Pere Mas i Reus." "Oh, you mean the Mile." Alternative names become the norm, even to the point of inaccuracy. In Puerto Pollensa, the pinewalk is often used to describe the whole of the current pedestrian promenade, i.e. from the roundabout along what is the Paseo Anglada Camarasa. This isn't the case; the pinewalk is the Paseo Voramar. But, importantly, no one would ever use either name, so pinewalk it is, however you define it.

Changes to or new street names are nothing new. Competing and changing political parties have seen to this, with their preferences for Castilian or Catalan. But there are names that suffer from almost complete lack of recognition, despite their being attached to relatively important bits of road. The Carretera Artà, which runs from the port of Alcúdia to Can Picafort and beyond (to Artà rather obviously), is, for the whole of its length as far as the forest in Playa de Muro, a series of sub-avenues. Not that many would know this. The avenidas Reina Sofia, Juan Carlos, Albufera and Playas de Muro are the side roads of the carretera, but again, no one refers to them as such, or very few do. Moreover, they don't always appear on maps. And with pressure for de-Francoisation, cartography faces a confused immediate future and no doubt many a confused tourist working from yet-to-be-updated maps. Even one or two isolated street-name changes take time to filter into the public domain of street plans. For a time, a few years back, I could lay claim to having designed the only accurate street map of Can Picafort, and I only found out by walking around one afternoon. On some maps you can still find a Carrer Dunes; you won't if you go looking for it. Then there are street names that confuse as a consequence of recent duplication. In Puerto Pollensa the Carretera Formentor is the road that runs parallel to the front line (of the pinewalk). It was the old road to Formentor, but not any longer since they built the bypass, which is - possibly - the Carretera Formentor.

It all makes you wonder why we bother with street names and indeed why they ever came about in the first place. It's probably all the fault of the Romans, but, apart from names that lead somewhere, as in Carretera Artà, why not just use numbers. Street One, Two, Three. The only problem is that someone would find a Francoist association or they would argue the toss over whether they should be Castilian or Catalan numbers. Just leave them alone.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Strawberry Fields Forever" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywg-PdeGVL0). Today's title - "... but no one wants you when you lose."

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Where The Streets Have No Shame

The street name is emblematic. It is a tarmacadamed tribute, a remembrance in rows of houses or offices. It is rarely appropriate. The street name is a convenience of geography, town hall bureaucracy or post office identification.

The Mallorcan street name is part-historical, part-meteorological, part-maritime, part-astronomical, part-botanical, part-religious, part-geographical. It is street name in any other place, distinguished by its local relevancies. It is street name, occasionally, that is non-constant. Depending on past fluctuations between the competing bodies politic, the Mallorcan street name has Castilian or Catalan (Mallorquín) nomenclature.

In Pollensa, one of the roads by the Plaça ca les Munnares that leads into Jonquet has two different “names” barely 20 metres apart - Pio and Pius - popes by any other name, or names, or languages. Occasionally, the street name disappears. Up to a couple of years ago, there used to be a road in Can Picafort, Dunes, that was misrepresented in that maps showed it to be a different road. The road name was subsequently eliminated completely.

Roads can be two names in one. The Carretera Artà, which stretches from the Paseo Marítimo in Puerto Alcúdia along the coast, is - at different points - the Avenida Reina Sofia, the Avenida Juan Carlos, the Avenida de S’Albufera, the Avenida Platges de Muro. Or is it? No-one quite knows if these “avenues” refer to the main road (the Carretera) or the side roads that run parallel, or both.

Where the streets have no name might be a better idea. Rarely here is a location defined in terms of its street name. Direction is made by reference to “next to so-and-so hotel”, “near-to-such-and-such” restaurant. Landmarks are used liberally - just by the Magic roundabout, near to the Caprabo supermarket. Rarely, if ever, is a street name used. Ask someone the name of the next street from where they are living, and they will not know.

The Mallorcan street name has its cachet, especially that with an historical connotation. But the streets to which these names are attached rarely do honour to history. Important figures of the Spanish empire are to be found on the streets here. Reis Catòlics remembers Fernando and Isabel, dubbed the Catholic Kings by the Borgia pope Alexander. The deluded discoverer of what he believed to be the western passage to Asia, Cristofol Colom (Columbus) is a frequent beneficiary. But Reis Catòlics in Pollensa is an unremarkable road, Cristofol Colom in Alcúdia just a short lane off the constitution square.

One of the most celebrated Mallorcans is/was Ramón Llull. Born in Palma in the thirteenth century, Llull was variously an author (in Catalan), mystic and - most intriguingly - an early dabbler in what might be described as a form of computing. He was not involved with air-conditioning or refrigeration, yet his side street in Pollensa is home to one such a business. He might be more pleased to learn that this same street houses the Trencadora restaurant, itself a part of the Peter Maffay foundation.

Roger de Lluria was not Mallorcan. He wasn’t even (like Columbus despite the ongoing claims to the contrary) from Spain. He was in fact from Naples, but was an admiral in the Aragonese fleet of the late thirteenth century. Roger’s street, notable (if that’s the word) only for an estate agency at one end, joins the Calle Joan XXIII and the bypass in Puerto Pollensa.

Francesc de Borja Moll is of more recent fame, having died in 1991. He was actually from Menorca, but was a notable figure in Catalan linguistics, having written widely in the language and having compiled a dictionary of the various strands of Catalan (on which he collaborated with Antoni Maria Alcover). Borja Moll’s street in Puerto Alcúdia is pot-holed, has a Guardia Civil office at one end and nothing else. Antoni Maria Alcover runs parallel next to a petrol station. The presence of a school between Borja Moll and Alcover hints at a meaningful monument, though the roads themselves are without note.

And stretching back into antiquity, there was Quinto Cecilio Metelo (deprived of all his o’s in Catalan) who founded the Roman town of Pollentia in 123BC. His street in Alcúdia, vaguely at least close to the site of Pollentia, is a back street of zero consequence or charm. Often littered with broken vehicles, it is more reminiscent of a sink estate.

Where the streets have no name. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, it is so everywhere, and no-one uses the names anyway, but it is a shame where the streets also have no shame.


QUIZ
Yesterday - The Jam “That’s Entertainment”. Today’s title (or rather the original from which it is adapted)? We have had them only quite recently.

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