Winter At The Start Of Summer

George Sand, Chopin's cigar-smoking OH, bequeathed to Mallorca a title. "A Winter In Mallorca" isn't particularly original, but it is accurate enough. It wasn't a spring, a summer or an autumn; it was a winter. It could have been something else, something less neutral, such as "The Chopins In A Cell (whichever one it was)" or "How To Aggravate Your TB" or "Valldemossa: Our Three Months Of Hell". But no, Georgie Girl settled for the purely and informatively bland.

The title has, over the years, become quite useful. Any reference to a winter in Mallorca, whether intentionally a reference to Sand or not, can nevertheless be interpreted as evoking the odd-couple tourists from the first half of the nineteenth century. Winter in Mallorca will, therefore, forever be associated with Mr and Mrs C, not that they were a Mr and Mrs, but be that as it may. Because of who Chopin and Sand were, or more importantly, what they did, winter in Mallorca means culture. Piano and dull classical music, thanks to Chopin, and literature, even if it was mainly a work of slagging off Mallorcans and the island's health service (nothing different with that, therefore), thanks to Sand.

Winter in Mallorca has been extremely useful, because it has enabled an entire programme of events, primarily of a cultural nature, to be developed in winter. And this culture is of course appropriate because of the Chopins. I say enabled, but the programme has been disabled for a couple of winters. "Hivern a Mallorca", "Winter in Mallorca" has ceased to exist; there is no winter any longer.

To the rescue, however, comes the Fomento del Turismo (aka the Mallorca Tourist Board). Intimately involved with the original Winter in Mallorca programme (it was pretty much the board's idea), it is now asking the Balearics Tourism Agency to revive it this coming winter.

There wasn't a Winter in Mallorca programme last winter, and if there was one the previous winter, they were keeping it quiet. It fell victim to a lack of financing, confusion within the tourism ministry as to who was actually running it and to a consequently poor system of promotion; a PDF with monthly information was either not updated or updated late, while certain tourist offices, such as my own local one in Muro, never used to receive the leaflets. It wouldn't necessarily have fallen victim to a lack of interest among what tourists happened to be about, but the inadequacy of the promotion wouldn't have done anything to generate interest.

There was a further reason last winter why the programme was probably abandoned, and that was the lack of senior tourism that had been promised but fell through because the Balearic Government wouldn't pay to help subsidise it. Whether this tourism will reappear this coming winter must be doubtful, but the Mallorca Tourist Board still wants to press ahead and make the programme a feature of the Mallorcan scene that it had been since the 1990s.

As ever, one does have to ask what contribution has been made. The Winter in Mallorca programme had become a mix of guided walks, cultural excursions and music events. Of the latter, there were typically chamber orchestra concerts, the occasional organ recital, Mallorcan folk and every now and then a "spectacular". None of it really set the pulse racing, to be honest. Nevertheless, stage a Mallorcan folk evening or have a quintet play in a hotel (one which happens to be open), and it's still worth the effort, and it amounts to making an effort when precious little effort is normally made.

If the Winter in Mallorca programme is to be revived and to be revived properly, by all means have the guided walks and excursions and the concerts, but make it, from a promotional point of view, far more dynamic. Such dynamism does exist, as with for example the fiestas in January. Build the programme around these, make them the real attention-grabber, because they can grab attention and they can be worthy of strong promotion.

The problem has been that promotion for winter has been too passive, apologetic almost. The Winter in Mallorca programme has lived off the Sand title rather than being forward-thinking; it has been something of the past in its marketing. There is one hell of a lot that Mallorca has in winter, but one would think that it were confined to a few guided walks and a string quartet. It most certainly isn't.

My advice to the Mallorca Tourist Board is do it yourself. I know you have lost your grant, but don't leave it to the government. You are the private sector. Engage with the attractions association, engage directly with the towns with the spectacular fiestas, such as Sa Pobla for Sant Antoni, and make Winter in Mallorca a truly vibrant programme. George Sand, and Chopin come to that, were bloody miseries. Forget about the association and make winter a joy.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

November Rain

The first cold winds blow. Like the sudden leap in temperatures in spring can catch you by surprise, so the transformation from pretend late summer takes you unawares. But unlike the spring, the change makes you wince and you remember how houses' heat retention in summer gives way to the inadequacy of insulation and the chill of interiors. Storms have different consequences. In November, they bring a fast descent in temperature and what can even look like snow but is in fact hail.

The air that in summer engulfs and smothers now just hangs, damp and rheumatic. Though the sun and warmth will return during the winter, the dampness is now a constant, insinuating into bones and brickwork. The floods of storms leave the streets and roads mud patches of piled sand turned a constituent of cement. Yet, the storms wash away and clean the sky of the last haze of summer; it becomes bright and transparent, late-afternoon sun wrapping the peaks of the Artà mountains in a fire glow, beacons across the bay where in the other direction the Tramuntana tops, in their barrenness, look to hold snow but is just light on grey that can make them seem snowy even in summer.

There is a smell of wood-burning. It competes with the shifting sulphurous scents of the wetlands, drifting into cracks and lying on the liquid atmosphere, awaiting a further smack of thunder and an avalanche of cleansing rain. Winter comes now. It makes moss and algae the flagstones and walls, a sign, though, of the purity of the air. The first cold winds of winter. And you think of spring and that first assault of heat and wonder how it can ever be winter.


TUI price reductions
TUI may not have had anything to add to the reprimand issued by Thomas Cook to the Spanish Government over the rise in IVA, but the company has reacted to the uncertain economic circumstances by announcing that prices for holidays to Mallorca will fall by some 5.5% next year. In Menorca, where the tourism market is considerably less favourable, prices will go down by 10%. Good news you might think, and it is, but the boss of TUI Germany, making this announcement (he was the one, you will recall, who helped to plant the first pine in the TUI forest) admits that there will be more tourists coming on an all-inclusive basis in 2010. But not all is lost as there won't be anything like the numbers travelling all-inclusive as there are to Turkey.

While there is all the angst about all-inclusives in Mallorca, one does wonder at the impact of such a style of offer across Europe and into Turkey. Greece, for example, has been hard hit by the increase in AI. Consumers may be demanding this undoubtedly cost-effective way of holidaying, but what type of tourism will this all lead to? It is becoming increasingly clear that holidays are being sourced less on the basis of resort or country but from the point of view of the best AI deal. The actual destination is becoming less relevant. It is often said, in criticism of AI, that the holidaymaker who stays largely within the confines of his or her AI complex, could be anywhere. And so it would seem. Mallorca, Greece, Turkey - it's all the same, just varies in how hot it is and what brands of booze can be obtained. Is this really what tourism should be? Destinations as dumping grounds for northern Europeans who hand over most of the holiday cost to tour operators and airlines? Most of Mediterranean Europe becomes a collection of resorts, polarised by those who live there and the wristband brigade who pay no attention to their surroundings. I'm not sure that this was how it was meant to be.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Rupert Brooke was the poet. And the band was Pink Floyd, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV9AwB-DnoI. Today's title - hard rock goes orchestral.

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Sometimes In Winter

Right now you’d be forgiven for thinking that it is not winter here. Of course, it isn’t; it’s autumn. But as I’ve said before, come the end of October, it’s winter where the tourist seasons are concerned. There again - clear blue skies, warm sun. This can’t be winter. The virtual absence of tourists confirms that it is, as does the activity around the unemployment offices. Queues of people. At least they make for a certain life about the place.

These queues. All these people going to claim their “paro”. It looks kind of humbling, but it’s not. And it is all sorts of people. There is no stigma. Indeed quite the contrary. The paro is almost like work. Do your months in summer and then cut along for the winter months of government benefit. It’s routine, it’s normal, it’s part of the work pattern. There is almost a professionalism to getting the paro. You see folk with nicely prepared files and document holders as though they were going to make some sort of marketing presentation.

What is there to do though? Once the season ends, it takes a few days to adjust to the sheer nothingness. But this isn’t actually the case. Over the next few days and weeks in November are the Pollensa, Muro and Sa Pobla fairs. There is the series of “Hivern a Mallorca” (winter in Mallorca) events - guided tours of the likes of the Roman town, to the beaches of Barcares and to mountains; concerts and theatre. In December there are the fiestas in the first week and then Christmas and new year. January has Three Kings and Sant Antoni, and come February things are starting to get in gear a bit. Winter - not so long. (Note: I have started to enter Hivern a Mallorca events on the WHAT’S ON BLOG again.)


Just further to yesterday. Why are they wanting to relocate the power station? What does this have to do with the coastline? The answer is I don’t know. What I do know is if you put it anywhere else and if it relies on coal as it currently does, you will continue to get the environmental damage from the filthy trucks that move the coal around. And what’s with this more than five-square-metres business? How do they figure that out? What are they going to do - mark out lots on the beach of a sufficient area, and when they get filled up turn people away? So much for access to all that public area.


QUIZ
Yesterday - Dido. Today’s title? The one I’m after is from which American horns-based jazz-rock act of yonks ago.

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