Nightmare On Bellevue

It starts at four in the afternoon. The set is much the same each day. Its intrusiveness, its loudness may have something to do with wind direction. There are days when the thumping bass is incessant. Four hours of pool party each afternoon. Then, from eight until around half eleven, just before midnight, things are relatively peaceful. Before the crowds gather, that is. The coaches begin to arrive. Football chants, other singing, clapping, shouting, general hubbub. It ends around half two in the morning. The first coaches, returning from the club, come back around two hours later. It takes a further two hours for them to all return. Drunk, drunker than they were when they left - or stupefied - the shouting, the singing is ever louder. Bottles are smashed, pools are jumped into, fireworks are let off. The security, such as they are, mill around. Useless or helpless. Then, from eight in the morning, the crowds start to gather again. Many of them haven't slept, rather like everyone else. The coaches - as many as eight of them - stand with their engines running for up to an hour, no more than twenty metres away from residences, their fumes choking the morning air before they depart with their loads to take them to Palma so that they can return to Barcelona, whence they came. These are the ones who are leaving after their four or five nights. Others take their place.

This is the pattern for three weeks. Residents, other tourists (until they get moved) can sleep little, if at all. The noise can seem dangerously loud. Loud enough to be a health risk. Loud enough and, for several hours, constant. The bars may as well close. There is all-inclusive around as it is, but this is not a tourism from which they will derive any business other than from the handful of cents  commission from cigarettes bought from a machine. It is a tourism that hasn't gone unnoticed on Trip Advisor. "Rude" is putting it mildly. The behaviour is generally appalling and it is not just one or two. There are hundreds, well over a thousand at any one time. And they attract the dross: drug dealers (not the lookies; white boys) parked up by the road as they pass back from the beach.

This is the Mallorca Sin Profes (also dubbed Mallorca Island Festival) spring break vacation at Bellevue organised by Viajes Finalia, based in Barcelona. Sin Profes - without teachers. The students who come before, younger ones, are well-behaved: the teachers come with them. Yes they make some noise, but it's only to be expected and it isn't an issue. It also isn't health-threatening.

Among the "collaborators" for this vacation are the Generalitat de Catalunya, i.e. the government in Catalonia, the Balearic Government's ministry for tourism and, though it's hard to be certain from the logo, probably the Spanish Government's ministry for industry, energy and tourism. Does one suppose that these collaborators are aware of what they are collaborating with? The question needs asking of them.

At least Alcúdia town hall isn't mentioned as another collaborator (it looks as though the Council of Mallorca is though). The previous administration was aware of the situation, exactly the same, last summer. No response was ever received. The new mayor, Toni Mir, an impressive, businesslike guy, wasn't aware of the situation. He is now.

It is for he, for the town hall and for other agencies to draw their conclusions. I'm not making them for them. I'm simply informing them.

Spring Breaks: Where's the quality?

The history of the spring break vacation for university and high-school students can be traced back to a film made in 1960 with the same name as the novel "Where The Boys Are". Prior to this, Fort Lauderdale in Florida had been a destination for college students, but the influx was not huge and nor did it cause any problem. The release of the film changed this. It was a kind of promo for the spring break. The number of students heading for Fort Lauderdale doubled, and so the spring break became an established tradition. By the 1980s, the numbers had reached over a quarter of a million. Residents became distinctly hacked off with noise, damage and drunkenness. Within a short space of time, a change to Florida's drinking law, which raised the age to 21, had all but put an end to the spring break in Fort Lauderdale.

American students moved on to other places where the law was not as restrictive, but the spring break vacation, for all its popularity in the US, took years to cross the Atlantic. It is perhaps surprising that it took so long, but it is now firmly established, and its growth in recent years can probably be attributed to one thing - lower numbers of tourists in the non-peak months of the summer tourism season coinciding with the impact of economic crisis. Resorts and hotels needed different markets, and one that offered itself was the Spanish and European student spring break market.

This Easter in Magalluf, there is an offer for four nights of a "Spring Break Festival Mallorca". It is an offer aimed at Spanish kids and includes entrance to different clubs, drinks and pool parties. Here is just one example of the organised spring break holiday. There are others. Several others.

May is a month when hotel occupancy is not at its highest. In Magalluf and Palmanova it might not even reach 50% of the total hotel places open. 1200 or so Swedish students will thus do nicely for the odd hotel that needs to bump up its occupancy rate and for the odd club owner who wishes to increase low summer season trade. These Swedish students, typically aged 17 and 18, have, so we are told, rather more money to spend than, say, their British counterparts, but it is not solely spend on alcohol. It probably isn't, but who's to say that a good chunk of it isn't. The Swedes as a whole have a reputation for being good tourists, well behaved, well mannered. But there is big attraction other than the sun when it comes to holidaying in Mallorca. Booze is significantly cheaper than back home. It is much more easily obtainable. Assiduous checking of ages is not quite the same as back home.

There is a German tour operator called PartyUrlaub Reisen. It says that Mallorca is more than just binge-drinking and parties. There are crystal-clear waters and picturesque landscapes, but it doesn't dwell on these alternatives. There are gorgeous bodies in skimpy bikinis, bars, clubs and discos to turn night into day. The word "party" in the name should say it all, and this is what is being sold to a German spring break market heading predominantly to Arenal.

Then there is Finalia, the Spanish company which offers later spring breaks. Resort Bellevue Club, Alcudia. 250,000 square metres of paradise beaches, nine pools ... open-air concerts for more than 2000 people etc. etc. This is the "Mallorca sin profes" package, something which, the company's website suggests, has collaborating organisations that include the regional governments of the Balearics and Catalonia. Do these governments know exactly what happens on these vacations? People in Alcudia can tell them. A few weeks of living hell.

To come back to the Swedish students, the organisers of their spring breaks, a company whose address is given as Punta Ballena, offer "four weeks of madness" in May. And where is this madness likely to take place? Well, let's look at the hotels. There is a selection. One of them is the BH Mallorca, the four-star makeover of what was Mallorca Rocks on behalf of the clubowners, Cursach.

No one can blame students wishing to come on holiday and enjoying themselves in a fashion that any of us who were once students ourselves will recognise and appreciate. No one can really blame hotels or tour operators in arranging such holidays. It’s business after all, and if business is quieter at times of the summer season then it has to be sought wherever it exists.

But it is this, the almost desperate need for hotel occupancy and for quieter-month business, which betrays the public relations exercises which would have us convinced that resorts like Magalluf, Arenal, Alcudia and Cala Ratjada are on an upward curve of quality tourist.

Students should not be categorised as “non-quality”, but as a tourist niche they do not fit the profile of the tourist of ever greater quality. And when they are raising merry hell in resorts, elements with the island’s tourism industry might question their own publicity of responsible tourism.


Index for March 2015

Ageism in tourism - 18 March 2015
Alcudia industrial estate - 28 March 2015
Andalusia election - 23 March 2015
Balearics Day - 1 March 2015
Beach exploitation - 11 March 2015
Berlin ITB fair - 6 March 2015
Biosphere and responsible tourism - 13 March 2015
Catalan rumba - 30 March 2015
Daevid Allen - 16 March 2015
Democratic regeneration - 3 March 2015
Eco-tax: Més - 9 March 2015
Goats in Mallorca - 29 March 2015
Irish and Mallorca - 14 March 2015
Love Island, Ses Salines - 17 March 2015
Loyalty and Mallorca branding - 10 March 2015
Palacio de Congresos - 12 March 2015,  21 March 2015
Palma - best place in the world? - 27 March 2015
Performance pay and online reviews - 24 March 2015
Picadors of Mallorca - 15 March 2015
President Bauzá: desperate for a pact with PSOE - 7 March 2015
Representation of the people - 26 March 2015
Saving campaigns: conservation/preservation - 2 March 2015
Sóller prawn fair - 8 March 2015
Son Ferriol - 22 March 2015
Spring breaks - 31 March 2015
Statistics obsession in tourism - 5 March 2015
Sustainable tourism - 19 March 2015
Tourism education - 25 March 2015
Tourism law - 20 March 2015
Working day - 4 March 2015

MALLORCA TODAY - Students occupy university building

As expected, students at the Universitat de les Illes Balears occupied yesterday the Guillem Cifre building (which houses the education faculty) in protest at education cuts. Today there is due to be a strike by students and a demonstration from midday in Palma.

Update: Some 2,500 students have protested in Palma. The demonstration and the occupation have passed without incident.

MALLORCA TODAY - Students prepare for strike

The planned strike for tomorrow (29 February) by university and secondary-school students looks set to go ahead, along with overnight sit-ins in at certain institutions. The protest is against education cuts (and also against cuts in other sectors). Against this background, the mood of students and parents, some of whom have, together with teachers, backed the protest, is likely to be darker following an announcement by the Balearic Government that the cost of buying educational materials will rise for both primary and secondary schools as from the next school year (which starts in September).

Unravelling: Protests and opportunism

On one day, events come together that forge the impression of an unravelling. The word unravelling, in its literal sense, means an undoing or an unknitting of fabric. In an abstract sense, and as the word is often applied, it is an undoing of a different type of fabric, that of society for example.

The one day in question was Monday. The events that came together were a protest against non-payments to ambulance workers, a threat of legal action against the Balearic Government over non-payments to public transport operators, an announcement of sit-ins and a strike by university and secondary education students, and news of alleged over-reaction by police against protesting students in Valencia.

Charges of disproportionate measures being adopted by police in Valencia are not new. They were also made in respect of efforts to clear "indignado" demonstrators last year. The protests staged in many Spanish cities by the indignados and the responses by some police forces were, though, against a political backdrop that had yet to be properly coloured in. It now has been. And this is how it begins. Protests of different types. An unravelling.

At the weekend, there had been another protest, that against the national government's labour reforms. To the fore was Lorenzo Bravo, secretary-general in the Balearics of the UGT union, a Dereck Chisora-David Haye of industrial relations trash talk, upping the ante in publicising the fight with the government by labelling President Bauzá a fascist.

The allusion to Spain's history is a dark colour to be added to the swatch with which the political backdrop is suffused, one embellished by a legal system that permits a tarnishing of Spain's reputation. The actions of a right-wing union with undeniable Francoist sympathies, in forcing the pursuit of Judge Baltasar Garzón and in also seeking the subpoena of Princess Cristina, were born out of democratic sophism; the targets - Garzón's brand of legalistic independence and the royal family - are integral to Spain's democracy and they are being hounded.

The events of Monday and at the weekend and the manipulation of the legal system are not coincidental. They are an opportunistic and inevitable collision within the unravelling framework. Yet, the inevitability of, for example, the public transport operators' federation seeking legal redress might not become reality. Nor is it inevitable that individual bus companies might actually stop services, as they are threatening to.

There is always brinkmanship, and suspension of bus services by companies responsible for places such as Pollensa and Can Picafort, just as the tourism season starts to get underway, would be unlikely to happen. It is not as though we haven't been here before. Pharmacies threatened to pull down their shutters in protest at not being paid by the IB-Salut health service, but the threat didn't materialise, or at least, it hasn't materialised yet.

Things have moved on, though. Pharmacies not being paid was an issue soon after the change of regional government last June. The strains are far greater than they were and the roll call of services being cut or finding themselves without funds grows longer.

At some point, one of the threats will be realised. If it were that of the bus companies, notwithstanding the government's pre-emption by declaring a suspension of services illegal, the ramifications would be significant; in terms of tourism reputation if nothing else. And while the ambulance workers are protesting and the pharmacies remain unpaid, what of another element of the health service - hospital emergency units?

These units have become overstretched as it is, leading to resignations, such as that of the director of Son Espases' emergency department. When the units start to fill up with tourists who have either chucked themselves off balconies, had too much to drink or suffered a severe reaction to a mosquito bite, the last thing the hospitals (or the government) would want would be a "Sun, Sea and A&E" film crew hovering in the background, showing them struggling to cope.

The unions and the students are playing their expected roles as usual suspects when it comes to protest. Their actions will be easier for governments, nationally and regionally, to handle in terms of PR. But these actions are only beginning. Valencia for now, but over the next months?

When hospital directors, pharmacies, bus companies, ambulance workers - to name but a few - add their voices to those who might simply be dismissed as regular agitators, protest is less easy to handle. And all the while, lurking somewhere, is the opportunism of the non-governmental right and further right. On one day, events come together that forge the impression of an unravelling. How about 23 February? Do you know what anniversary this marks?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Students plan sit-ins over cuts

From Thursday a series of protests are to be organised by university and secondary school students over cuts in education (and also in health plus the rise in transport prices and labour reforms) which will culminate in sit-ins over the night of 28 February and a strike on 29 February to coincide with protests across Spain and Europe.

Meanwhile, action by students in Valencia against education cuts there which has been ongoing since last week has become the focal point for protests, with accusations of violence and disproportionate measures being adopted by police.

Tourism Without Tourists

If you were Mallorcan and were of an age to be going to university, you might fancy a few years at the Universitat de les Illes Balears studying tourism. The university has a strong reputation for tourism, Mallorca's main industry is tourism, so a degree should set you up nicely. Or so you might think.

There is a fair old debate going on as to the value of the tourism degree. It has been criticised for not being orientated to the tourism market itself, while obtaining a degree appears to be no guarantee of getting a job any grander than that of receptionist, assuming a job can be got at all.

It's a familiar story of course, and one not solely confined to a tourism degree or to university studies in Mallorca. But tourism is after all what Mallorca does, and the number of places on the degree course is not that high (400), so you would indeed think that something decent, career-wise, might come at the end of it.

Picking over the bones of the debate, however, another criticism emerges, and it is one of the choice of the course in the first place. Tourism, a bit like teaching (or certainly how teaching once was in the UK), is a career to get into mainly because it's there. It is a default choice. But it would seem that students embark on the degree not really appreciating what it entails.

I'm not surprised they aren't aware what the course involves. The document which sets it out runs to an excruciating 247 pages of tables, flowcharts and verbiage. Students, either before or during their studies, are not generally inclined to read what they are meant to; I can say this with some authority, as I certainly never did.

Even assuming they do read it, what do they expect to get from the course? The simple answer is a good job. But what job? This is the nub of the problem, or one of the nubs.

One can draw a comparison between tourism and publishing. I have been asked in the past for advice about "getting into publishing", to which the response has always been - what do you mean by publishing? It's the same with tourism; what is meant by it and what is meant by jobs within the industry?

Were students to read the entire prospectus for the course, they might get an inkling. Without detailing the whole course, some of its key modules cover marketing, management, finance, law and languages. English and either French or German are mandatory, but previous reports on the English-speaking abilities of students leaving the university suggest that two-thirds of them struggle with the language to the point of not understanding it.

But this isn't necessarily surprising. A multi-disciplinary tourism course makes its students Jacos of several trades and maestros of none, other than tourism, or so they might believe.

Yet, amidst the law and the management of the course, there is something which is glaring by its omission. Nowhere does there appear to be anything about the tourist himself. You can learn about some mechanics and operations of tourism but nothing about what it's like to be a tourist. Arguably, this is what the course should be about. Students in Mallorca may have some idea of what it's like to be a tourist, if they have been one, but can have no appreciation of what it's like to be a tourist in Mallorca or little appreciation of the cultures and backgrounds of the people they would hope to be make a living off.

Where are, for example, cultural studies in the tourism course? Cultural studies of the British, the Germans, the Russians or whoever. You come back, therefore, to the criticism that the course is not orientated to the market and therefore the people - the tourists - who make up the market.

Tourism is ultimately about people and understanding their needs and demands. I can think of managers in hotels in Mallorca who certainly didn't study tourism in their home countries, if they studied at university at all. They came to Mallorca and got jobs in the likes of entertainment. And because they were any good, they rose a managerial ladder. Crucially, though, they know about tourists and tourists from different cultures.

I can sympathise, however, with the students. The course seems like a reflection of much of what passes for a general debate about Mallorca's tourism. It is one in which tourism is somehow remote from its raw material, the tourists themselves. It's extraordinary, as though there is tourism but without tourists.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.