Might malaria make a return to Mallorca? There used to be malarial mosquitoes. Workers engaged in cultivation of and by Albufera in the later nineteenth century were not immune from it. In current-day Mallorca, victims of malaria have contracted it in countries where it remains a reality. The disease was all but eradicated in European countries where it had been indigenous by the 1960s. Nevertheless, it is still the single greatest health threat that humans have to contend with, and climate change might lead to its return in parts of the world where it was thought they had seen the back of it - and that includes Mallorca.
This possibility has been raised by a professor at IMEDEA (Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies). Interviewed in "The Diario", Carlos Duarte hypotheses that intense rains, the consequence of climate change, could see plagues of mosquitoes, a return of malaria or the creation of new diseases. Part of the background to this is that the storms in September did indeed bring a "plague" around Palma, and special dispensation for spraying had to be obtained in order to contend with the number of mosquitoes.
Duarte has much to say about the impact of climate change. Apart from mosquitoes, he comments on the effects on tourism of rising temperatures. He doesn't envisage tourists deserting Mallorca but preferring to holiday in the spring and autumn when the temperatures would be benign but higher than at present.
Interesting stuff, but nothing particularly new. It's a while since I did anything on climate change, but there was a period when it was a regular feature on the blog. The tourism impact was just one aspect. The effect of rising sea levels another. Some of the forecasts for both temperature and sea-level rises have been truly scary, but coincidental with what Duarte says comes a book that may go a long way to disputing much of the thinking behind climate change. In an extract from "Superfreakonomics" in the last "Sunday Times", Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner reported on the work of some extraordinary men from Intellectual Ventures (IV) in Seattle. And they are extraordinary - a close associate of Bill Gates (an investor in IV), an astrophysicist and a climate scientist who has challenged his own assumptions about climate change, ones that had led him to share a Nobel prize with Al Gore, but which now contradict much of the Gore-ist propaganda.
The nub of what these extraordinary men have been working on is that, while accepting the Earth's warming, they dispute many of the crude models upon which predictions have been based and also one of the central tenets of the climate change debate - the role of carbon. Their argument is that carbon dioxide is not, in itself, a bad thing, just that it is increasing too fast. There are numerous sacred cows that the article tackles, but the "big thing" that they have hit upon is to take the experience of a volcanic explosion in 1991 in the Philippines to conclude that small increases of sulphur dioxide, artificially pumped into the stratosphere, would be sufficient to cool the planet. Moreover, they propose how to do it, at very low cost. It would entail a system of very long, very thin hosepipes. It may sound bizarre, but the argument is compelling.
And there is one particular other thing they believe - and that is that the threat of sea levels rising has been blown out of proportion. The most authoritative estimate would have these levels, by the start of the next century, being no greater than many normal tidal variations that occur every day. The people of the Mallorcan coasts can rest easy in their beds.
The IV scientists have proposed something disarmingly simple and cheap. And cheapness can often be best, as it was with DDT to eliminate malaria before the mosquitoes started to fight back. It may be necessary that insecticides have to be used again in Mallorca - on a far more widespread basis than the special spraying last month - but were they to be it would not be costly. But even less costly, in the total scheme of things, would be the hosepipes in the sky. Extraordinary men and extraordinary thinking.
* I would give you a link to the article, but I'm damned if I can find it. Maybe not included on "The Times" site as it is a book extract and therefore copyrighted. Sorry about that. The book, published by Allen Lane, is released in the UK on 20 October. Its full title is "Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance".
QUIZ
Today's title - line from something, the title of which is the first word above; the group used to have its name changed by Steve Wright - weight was the substitute word.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Chris And Yasmin
The history of the Jewish people in Spain has largely reflected their treatment in many other countries. Though the Jews were generally accommodated by the Muslims during the period of the caliphate, persecutions in the form of pogroms emerged from the eleventh century, and in the fifteenth century Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism, to go into exile or be subjected to the inquisition. Spanish history, from mediaeval times, has partly been one of persecution of two peoples - the Jews and the Catalans. All the more ironic, therefore, that a new book should suggest that the iconic figure of Christopher Columbus was not only Catalan but that he also spoke Ladino, the Judaeo-Spanish language of the Sephardic Jews of Spain.
The Columbus angle I won't go into here; it is likely to be covered elsewhere - in "Talk Of The North". But if the book, by a Professor Irizarry of the University of Georgetown, has indeed resolved the mystery surrounding Columbus's origins, it will shatter a number of illusions.
While Catalan persecution was essentially one of proscription, and not just by Franco - Philip V banned Catalan under the "Nueva Planta" decrees of the early eighteenth century (this was in fact dramatised as part of Alcúdia's "Via Fora" programme during the summer) - Jewish persecution was more extreme. By the later nineteenth century, though there were few Jews left in Spain, they were still singled out as being responsible for the ruin of Spain during a period of newly assertive arch-Catholicism that was to endure and to find expression in Franco's nationalism. It is another irony, though, that Franco did not share Hitler's hatred of the Jews. Indeed Spain was something of a safe haven for Jews, which was just one of the reasons why Hitler mistrusted Franco.
Just as Catalan culture has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance, so also has the Sephardic Jewish tradition and its culture begun to flourish under a liberal democracy. It was perhaps no coincidence that during the summer the Sephardic music group Yardem performed in Pollensa, a town which bears its Catalan cultural credentials more strongly than most others in Mallorca. Within the new Catalan tradition, there is arguably more support of other cultures that had been threatened with extinction or had been banished.
Ladino and Sephardism have now also shot to prominence through the work of Yasmin Levy. The daughter of Isaac Levy, himself a hugely significant figure in Ladino culture, has released an astonishing album - "Sentir" - which takes Ladino and has combined it, to the annoyance of some purists, with elements of flamenco; it is produced by the influential Spanish flamenco artist and producer, Javier Limón.
It is a coincidence that, just as Levy is bringing back the music of a culture that was effectively kicked out of Spain in the late fifteenth century, so also is that culture being given additional exposure through, of all people, Christopher Columbus, whose discovery of the Americas on 12 October 1492 is celebrated annually as part of the "Día de la Hispanidad" (Spanish day) celebrations. How very, very ironic.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Saint Etienne, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UZyfEl4fF4.
LINK
No quiz today, but here is a documentary thing about Yasmin Levy. There are further links from this to songs from her album: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_HN5R6f5Uk.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The Columbus angle I won't go into here; it is likely to be covered elsewhere - in "Talk Of The North". But if the book, by a Professor Irizarry of the University of Georgetown, has indeed resolved the mystery surrounding Columbus's origins, it will shatter a number of illusions.
While Catalan persecution was essentially one of proscription, and not just by Franco - Philip V banned Catalan under the "Nueva Planta" decrees of the early eighteenth century (this was in fact dramatised as part of Alcúdia's "Via Fora" programme during the summer) - Jewish persecution was more extreme. By the later nineteenth century, though there were few Jews left in Spain, they were still singled out as being responsible for the ruin of Spain during a period of newly assertive arch-Catholicism that was to endure and to find expression in Franco's nationalism. It is another irony, though, that Franco did not share Hitler's hatred of the Jews. Indeed Spain was something of a safe haven for Jews, which was just one of the reasons why Hitler mistrusted Franco.
Just as Catalan culture has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance, so also has the Sephardic Jewish tradition and its culture begun to flourish under a liberal democracy. It was perhaps no coincidence that during the summer the Sephardic music group Yardem performed in Pollensa, a town which bears its Catalan cultural credentials more strongly than most others in Mallorca. Within the new Catalan tradition, there is arguably more support of other cultures that had been threatened with extinction or had been banished.
Ladino and Sephardism have now also shot to prominence through the work of Yasmin Levy. The daughter of Isaac Levy, himself a hugely significant figure in Ladino culture, has released an astonishing album - "Sentir" - which takes Ladino and has combined it, to the annoyance of some purists, with elements of flamenco; it is produced by the influential Spanish flamenco artist and producer, Javier Limón.
It is a coincidence that, just as Levy is bringing back the music of a culture that was effectively kicked out of Spain in the late fifteenth century, so also is that culture being given additional exposure through, of all people, Christopher Columbus, whose discovery of the Americas on 12 October 1492 is celebrated annually as part of the "Día de la Hispanidad" (Spanish day) celebrations. How very, very ironic.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Saint Etienne, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UZyfEl4fF4.
LINK
No quiz today, but here is a documentary thing about Yasmin Levy. There are further links from this to songs from her album: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_HN5R6f5Uk.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Let's Kiss And Make Up
Crisis, crisis, everywhere crisis. I am wondering if it would be possible for any news media to exist without the word "crisis". Were its usage to be banned, how on earth would they cope? At one point, until early yesterday morning, there was a time of high crisis, über-crisis possibly, in the ranks of the island's governments. One says "governments" because there were three involved - the regional government, the Mallorca Council and Palma town hall (itself a sort of mini-government all of its own given the relative size of the city's population to that of the rest of the island). This elevated state of crisis surrounded - still - the resignations of councillors belonging to the Unió Mallorquina (UM) party from the Mallorca Council, which had confined its crisis-state to the Council alone until the lesser-crisis stakes were suddenly cranked up and embraced the other two. There had been a move towards kissing and making up, but then there loomed, on the turbulent political horizon, a golf course. Yes, a golf course.
One needs to be reminded that the three governmental institutions are all run (if that's the word) through a coalition comprising the PSOE socialists, the UM and the left-wing Bloc. I think I have explained this before, but you might not have been listening or had given up the will to live. So it is necessary to state it once again. One might also be reminded of the story of the golf course, that will never be, on the Son Baco finca in the municipality of Campos. One has to go back almost a year to get something of a handle on this; to 17 November (Heart And Soul) in fact, when I argued that the planned golf project was an important story not to be ignored. I hadn't envisaged that it might be so important as to bring the three institutions to a state of virtual paralysis and of minority government with the PSOE ruling alone because of the fractious nature of the relationship between the UM and the Bloc.
The Campos development had been vetoed, much to the chagrin of the UM, a party which sometimes appears intent on converting Mallorca into one giant fairway. Nevertheless, there was a good argument for its going ahead in a town largely devoid of tourism. Undeterred, the UM had placed an amendment to the so-called "Decreto Nadal" (named after the tourism minister, himself a member of the UM and its former leader) that might have paved the greens of a golf construction. The Bloc insisted that this was withdrawn. If not, it would have thrown its clubs out of the golf buggy, thus breaking the coalitions. There was, indeed is, an alternative offer on the table for Campos, i.e. the development of two luxury hotels in Sa Ràpita, an alternative that the UM had appeared to accept, but which the Bloc seemed disinclined to.
Extraordinary though it may be to think that governments could tumble or be made all but unworkable by something as seemingly unimportant as a golf course (unimportant compared with graver issues such as the economy and the state of tourism), this is, I'm afraid, how things are in Mallorca. The golf course stand-off was a point of arch-politicking, making large the discontent between the various parties. It was irrelevant, but golf became a political football. Stupid.
And all the more stupid when, by coincidence, tourism minister Nadal had been meeting with the president of the international association of golf tour operators. First time I've heard of such a body, but exist it does and keen also to help in making Mallorca the leading golf tourism destination in Europe, a destination to which an additional 100,000 more places could be sold. At a time of über-crisis in the economy and tourism market, these are not to be sniffed at, but that president might be alarmed at the perfectly ridiculous inability of competing political parties to arrive at a consensus concerning what might have been a sensible addition to the golf stock of the island, one that is not going to happen.
But back at the crisis ... at the last moment, the clock ticking and politicos ready for their beds at two in the morning, they did indeed all kiss and make up. An agreement was reached, minus any golf course. The governments were saved. Long live the governments! Until next time.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Cliff, "Living Doll", and here he is with The Young Ones, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGOU0o9K89g. Today's title - old favourite of this blog, this was BS - Before Sarah.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
One needs to be reminded that the three governmental institutions are all run (if that's the word) through a coalition comprising the PSOE socialists, the UM and the left-wing Bloc. I think I have explained this before, but you might not have been listening or had given up the will to live. So it is necessary to state it once again. One might also be reminded of the story of the golf course, that will never be, on the Son Baco finca in the municipality of Campos. One has to go back almost a year to get something of a handle on this; to 17 November (Heart And Soul) in fact, when I argued that the planned golf project was an important story not to be ignored. I hadn't envisaged that it might be so important as to bring the three institutions to a state of virtual paralysis and of minority government with the PSOE ruling alone because of the fractious nature of the relationship between the UM and the Bloc.
The Campos development had been vetoed, much to the chagrin of the UM, a party which sometimes appears intent on converting Mallorca into one giant fairway. Nevertheless, there was a good argument for its going ahead in a town largely devoid of tourism. Undeterred, the UM had placed an amendment to the so-called "Decreto Nadal" (named after the tourism minister, himself a member of the UM and its former leader) that might have paved the greens of a golf construction. The Bloc insisted that this was withdrawn. If not, it would have thrown its clubs out of the golf buggy, thus breaking the coalitions. There was, indeed is, an alternative offer on the table for Campos, i.e. the development of two luxury hotels in Sa Ràpita, an alternative that the UM had appeared to accept, but which the Bloc seemed disinclined to.
Extraordinary though it may be to think that governments could tumble or be made all but unworkable by something as seemingly unimportant as a golf course (unimportant compared with graver issues such as the economy and the state of tourism), this is, I'm afraid, how things are in Mallorca. The golf course stand-off was a point of arch-politicking, making large the discontent between the various parties. It was irrelevant, but golf became a political football. Stupid.
And all the more stupid when, by coincidence, tourism minister Nadal had been meeting with the president of the international association of golf tour operators. First time I've heard of such a body, but exist it does and keen also to help in making Mallorca the leading golf tourism destination in Europe, a destination to which an additional 100,000 more places could be sold. At a time of über-crisis in the economy and tourism market, these are not to be sniffed at, but that president might be alarmed at the perfectly ridiculous inability of competing political parties to arrive at a consensus concerning what might have been a sensible addition to the golf stock of the island, one that is not going to happen.
But back at the crisis ... at the last moment, the clock ticking and politicos ready for their beds at two in the morning, they did indeed all kiss and make up. An agreement was reached, minus any golf course. The governments were saved. Long live the governments! Until next time.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Cliff, "Living Doll", and here he is with The Young Ones, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGOU0o9K89g. Today's title - old favourite of this blog, this was BS - Before Sarah.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Walking, Talking
They came, they took a butcher's and they used ladders to climb over the barrier. On Monday, 500 or so people took part in the so-called "re-claim walk" along the camino de Ternelles in Pollensa and to the Castell del Rei. This is the camino, across the Ternelles finca, owned by the March family, which has been closed to ramblers and which has been the subject of much huffing and puffing, and not all of it by less-than-fit walkers.
Pollensa town hall, which ostensibly is on the side of those who want to see unfettered access, had stipulated that only twenty people would be allowed to make the symbolic re-claim walk. As this was a local decree (backed by the regional government), the local plod were duly on hand to enforce it. They didn't. And so it was that the march of the great 500 did come to pass across the land of the March.
The walk (not the re-claim one but the actual one) is in fact promoted among the rambles of the local area, but for years it has been off-limits. The mayor has talked a good walk and has taken notice of the will of the 500 (or more) to open it up, but still it remains a case of "walk, don't walk". The action on Monday was all the more notable for the fact that, amongst the ranks of the 500, were the regional government's transport minister, the parliamentary spokesperson for the Mallorcan socialists, a nationalist deputy and the director for heritage at the Mallorca Council. Swelling the numbers were various ecologists, representatives of the two main trades unions, doubtless a few agitpropists and even some genuine ramblers. All that was missing was the gangling sight of Janet Street-Porter whom I once saw arm-in-arm (just about) with a short bloke walking along London's Tottenham Court Road. A world away from the rambling hinterland of England's fair dales - and indeed Mallorca's finca-land - but I know how much you like these celebrity stories. And if you don't get the Street-Porter connection, then you'll have to google her together with rambling; up to you.
But where was I? I was rambling. Oh yes, take a look at that list above. What exactly has all this got to do with the transport minister? Was he sizing it up as a potential site for a new motorway? Or maybe he's a mad keen hiker. Of course, there is the probably not insignificant matter that he is also a member of the Mallorcan socialists. As so often, these things seem to come down to a touch of political handbagging, or backpacking in this instance; the mayor of Pollensa is Unió Mallorquina. And the mayor is, as you might expect, outraged and is due to be writing to the regional government's president, Antich, to protest at the breaking of an order from the government itself (one covering the camino) by at least one member of his government, albeit that the transport minister is from a different party to both Antich and Mayor Cerdà. The environment ministry, whose agents had been positioned to prevent a previous re-claim walk, had in fact sanctioned this latest one, but with the limit of twenty hardy souls out for a hearty yomp on what was a public holiday.
Anyway, one could nuance the dispute over the camino as an important battle for the heart of countryside Mallorca and for the right to walk. And one would be correct, up to a point, perhaps about as far as the barrier that was erected. There are, though, plenty of people who do enjoy a stroll off the beaten Pollensa track, and some of them are tourists. But the problem would then be, were the camino to be totally opened up, that the same ecologists would turn round and say that this was harmful to the environment, to which the environment ministry would add its centimo's worth. So you would end up with a different argument. Despite the claims for the right to walk, this has descended into politicking. As such, it seems as nuts as the football trophies of yesterday.
Still, the walk re-claimers have made their point and have created a spot of media frenzy (erm, slight exaggeration). Be grateful that there weren't 600 of them, as you would then had to have put up with me doing a line about into the valley of Ternelles walked the 600. Come to think of it, you just have.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Carly Simon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO8FZJ_UIn4. Today's title - what?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Pollensa town hall, which ostensibly is on the side of those who want to see unfettered access, had stipulated that only twenty people would be allowed to make the symbolic re-claim walk. As this was a local decree (backed by the regional government), the local plod were duly on hand to enforce it. They didn't. And so it was that the march of the great 500 did come to pass across the land of the March.
The walk (not the re-claim one but the actual one) is in fact promoted among the rambles of the local area, but for years it has been off-limits. The mayor has talked a good walk and has taken notice of the will of the 500 (or more) to open it up, but still it remains a case of "walk, don't walk". The action on Monday was all the more notable for the fact that, amongst the ranks of the 500, were the regional government's transport minister, the parliamentary spokesperson for the Mallorcan socialists, a nationalist deputy and the director for heritage at the Mallorca Council. Swelling the numbers were various ecologists, representatives of the two main trades unions, doubtless a few agitpropists and even some genuine ramblers. All that was missing was the gangling sight of Janet Street-Porter whom I once saw arm-in-arm (just about) with a short bloke walking along London's Tottenham Court Road. A world away from the rambling hinterland of England's fair dales - and indeed Mallorca's finca-land - but I know how much you like these celebrity stories. And if you don't get the Street-Porter connection, then you'll have to google her together with rambling; up to you.
But where was I? I was rambling. Oh yes, take a look at that list above. What exactly has all this got to do with the transport minister? Was he sizing it up as a potential site for a new motorway? Or maybe he's a mad keen hiker. Of course, there is the probably not insignificant matter that he is also a member of the Mallorcan socialists. As so often, these things seem to come down to a touch of political handbagging, or backpacking in this instance; the mayor of Pollensa is Unió Mallorquina. And the mayor is, as you might expect, outraged and is due to be writing to the regional government's president, Antich, to protest at the breaking of an order from the government itself (one covering the camino) by at least one member of his government, albeit that the transport minister is from a different party to both Antich and Mayor Cerdà. The environment ministry, whose agents had been positioned to prevent a previous re-claim walk, had in fact sanctioned this latest one, but with the limit of twenty hardy souls out for a hearty yomp on what was a public holiday.
Anyway, one could nuance the dispute over the camino as an important battle for the heart of countryside Mallorca and for the right to walk. And one would be correct, up to a point, perhaps about as far as the barrier that was erected. There are, though, plenty of people who do enjoy a stroll off the beaten Pollensa track, and some of them are tourists. But the problem would then be, were the camino to be totally opened up, that the same ecologists would turn round and say that this was harmful to the environment, to which the environment ministry would add its centimo's worth. So you would end up with a different argument. Despite the claims for the right to walk, this has descended into politicking. As such, it seems as nuts as the football trophies of yesterday.
Still, the walk re-claimers have made their point and have created a spot of media frenzy (erm, slight exaggeration). Be grateful that there weren't 600 of them, as you would then had to have put up with me doing a line about into the valley of Ternelles walked the 600. Come to think of it, you just have.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Carly Simon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO8FZJ_UIn4. Today's title - what?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Nobody Does It Better
Of the local town halls, only Alcúdia might be said to function adequately, notwithstanding the Can Ramis fiasco. One can probably add Muro, now that the PP-CDM have carved up the mayoral office and put an end to the slight inconvenience of a rival party having that office. In Pollensa, the administration stumbles from debt-ridden crisis to another, assaulted from all political sides for creating, for instance, "science fiction" in respect of its latest attempt to draw up a budget; at least the local police no longer deem it necessary to work to rule, which they did last year. Sa Pobla gives us near acts of fisticuffs in the open session, but nowhere does it better - or worse - than Santa Margalida.
Santa Margalida town hall is the gift that has been giving and keeps on giving, though one might also say that it is the cup that regularly overflows. From the potty notion that Son Real might have been turned into a golf course (and unlike the Son Bosc finca in Muro, there were very strong reasons for it not to have been, such as the ancient burial sites) through the spats over contracts for works in Can Picafort and fiesta expenditure to the current lunacy surrounding cups for a football tournament. Yep, this is politics, local-style, in Can Pic and at the town hall some kilometres away. This is the town hall where the opposition groups have walked out of meetings - as happened with a dispute about invoices - and have even set up an alternative open session, protesting at a change to the time of the regular one. Over the past week, it emerged that there was a plan under which establishments currently operating on a commercial basis, such as restaurants, would no longer have been classified as being for commercial use. This was before it was admitted that there had been an error, one laid at the door of the previous administration and, naturally enough, batted back across the net and laid at the current one's door.
Then we come to this football tournament. This was part of a fiesta for immigrants in Can Picafort. Five seven-a-side teams made up of players from South America took part in this tournament, itself all in the name of the process of social integration. When it came to the giving out of trophies, however, the mayoral delegate in Can Picafort vetoed the handing over of two trophies donated by the Unió Mallorquina party, one of the parties in opposition to the Partido Popular, of which the mayor is a member.
Now this may all sound very petty, and it almost certainly is, but there's a bit more to it. On the previous day, the UM published the latest issue of its local news-sheet. On the front cover of this were mocked-up 500 euro notes bearing an image of the mayor; this was a protest at the alleged squandering of public money. On the back cover was the reproduction of an invoice said to support this allegation. So, come the day of the tournament, the PP would appear to have sought its retaliation - by not delivering the trophies to players completely uninvolved in the argument.
"The Diario" styled this as part of the "never-ending row" between the ruling body and the opposition. One can probably style it differently. Kindergartens, asylums, breweries, there must be some analogy, the problem is trying to choose between them all.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Ray Stevens, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDEre-zjPNg. Today's title - I've a feeling we've had this before; ho hum, still a good (Bond) song.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Santa Margalida town hall is the gift that has been giving and keeps on giving, though one might also say that it is the cup that regularly overflows. From the potty notion that Son Real might have been turned into a golf course (and unlike the Son Bosc finca in Muro, there were very strong reasons for it not to have been, such as the ancient burial sites) through the spats over contracts for works in Can Picafort and fiesta expenditure to the current lunacy surrounding cups for a football tournament. Yep, this is politics, local-style, in Can Pic and at the town hall some kilometres away. This is the town hall where the opposition groups have walked out of meetings - as happened with a dispute about invoices - and have even set up an alternative open session, protesting at a change to the time of the regular one. Over the past week, it emerged that there was a plan under which establishments currently operating on a commercial basis, such as restaurants, would no longer have been classified as being for commercial use. This was before it was admitted that there had been an error, one laid at the door of the previous administration and, naturally enough, batted back across the net and laid at the current one's door.
Then we come to this football tournament. This was part of a fiesta for immigrants in Can Picafort. Five seven-a-side teams made up of players from South America took part in this tournament, itself all in the name of the process of social integration. When it came to the giving out of trophies, however, the mayoral delegate in Can Picafort vetoed the handing over of two trophies donated by the Unió Mallorquina party, one of the parties in opposition to the Partido Popular, of which the mayor is a member.
Now this may all sound very petty, and it almost certainly is, but there's a bit more to it. On the previous day, the UM published the latest issue of its local news-sheet. On the front cover of this were mocked-up 500 euro notes bearing an image of the mayor; this was a protest at the alleged squandering of public money. On the back cover was the reproduction of an invoice said to support this allegation. So, come the day of the tournament, the PP would appear to have sought its retaliation - by not delivering the trophies to players completely uninvolved in the argument.
"The Diario" styled this as part of the "never-ending row" between the ruling body and the opposition. One can probably style it differently. Kindergartens, asylums, breweries, there must be some analogy, the problem is trying to choose between them all.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Ray Stevens, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDEre-zjPNg. Today's title - I've a feeling we've had this before; ho hum, still a good (Bond) song.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Monday, October 12, 2009
Everything Is Beautiful In Its Own Way
The letters page in yesterday's "The Bulletin" is likely to provoke a strong reaction. Stand back and wait for responses along the lines of "if things are so bad, then go back to the UK" (accompanied by examples of how bad things are in the UK). The letter, by a Mr. Stack, was a lengthy charge-sheet of the ills of Mallorca: the changed circumstances of the tourism industry; a lack of diversity in the economy; excess supply of bars and restaurants and of new buildings with units beneath that no-one needs; rents too high; dishonesty; political corruption. Those inclined to protest the "everything is beautiful" motif will be scandalised.
The letter is one-sided. But this is normally the way with letters. They are not exercises in journalistic balance. Nevertheless, the letter will, should, touch a nerve. It is not easy to disagree with the sentiments. Whenever such criticisms leap out from a page, a common reaction is to argue that nowhere is perfect, which is perfectly true - nowhere is. But where imperfection exists, a further reaction should be to try and eradicate the causes of imperfection. It is the inability to do so that is the real, nihilistic message of this letter, the writer stating at one point that "there is no solution". Moreover, it is a message of impotence combined with incompetence.
There is a certain familiarity in much of what the writer has to say. All his points have been dealt with on this blog, though I would hope that I do at least suggest some solutions. But while he is entreating readers to not bury their heads in the sand (for which one could also add another cliché - that of turning a blind eye), a few pages later is a double-page spread devoted to a party for some folk I have never heard of and have not the slightest interest in. At the end of that piece, there is even a quote that goes: "The island is so beautiful. It has so much to offer." Yes, it certainly does. Mr. Stack has pointed some of it out.
Let's be clear. Where dysfunction exists in Mallorca, and it is not difficult to be aware of its existence, it adds to the very dottiness of the island. Part of the charm, one could argue, lies in the fact that it is imperfect. And yes, one must appreciate and praise the landscapes and seascapes and all the rest that have contributed to the island's success. But to retreat to the stultifying superficiality of minor "cause celebrity" or to the wearisome repetitiousness of brochure talk is to indeed be blind or insensitive to the malodorous and the malignant. To do so is the Mallorcan modern day of Nero with his fiddle.
The letter, though I doubt many will perceive it as such, is one of the paper's more important contributions. It should provoke a debate, though even if it were to, such a debate would doubtless be mired in emotion. The writer may well be accused of imbalance, disproportion, lack of objectivity, and he may receive a recommendation that he buys a one-way ticket. Perhaps, though, it should be asked why it should need a letter-writer to inspire such a debate.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Crowded House, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIb6I8gtgtw. Today's title - from someone perhaps more known for his novelty songs.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The letter is one-sided. But this is normally the way with letters. They are not exercises in journalistic balance. Nevertheless, the letter will, should, touch a nerve. It is not easy to disagree with the sentiments. Whenever such criticisms leap out from a page, a common reaction is to argue that nowhere is perfect, which is perfectly true - nowhere is. But where imperfection exists, a further reaction should be to try and eradicate the causes of imperfection. It is the inability to do so that is the real, nihilistic message of this letter, the writer stating at one point that "there is no solution". Moreover, it is a message of impotence combined with incompetence.
There is a certain familiarity in much of what the writer has to say. All his points have been dealt with on this blog, though I would hope that I do at least suggest some solutions. But while he is entreating readers to not bury their heads in the sand (for which one could also add another cliché - that of turning a blind eye), a few pages later is a double-page spread devoted to a party for some folk I have never heard of and have not the slightest interest in. At the end of that piece, there is even a quote that goes: "The island is so beautiful. It has so much to offer." Yes, it certainly does. Mr. Stack has pointed some of it out.
Let's be clear. Where dysfunction exists in Mallorca, and it is not difficult to be aware of its existence, it adds to the very dottiness of the island. Part of the charm, one could argue, lies in the fact that it is imperfect. And yes, one must appreciate and praise the landscapes and seascapes and all the rest that have contributed to the island's success. But to retreat to the stultifying superficiality of minor "cause celebrity" or to the wearisome repetitiousness of brochure talk is to indeed be blind or insensitive to the malodorous and the malignant. To do so is the Mallorcan modern day of Nero with his fiddle.
The letter, though I doubt many will perceive it as such, is one of the paper's more important contributions. It should provoke a debate, though even if it were to, such a debate would doubtless be mired in emotion. The writer may well be accused of imbalance, disproportion, lack of objectivity, and he may receive a recommendation that he buys a one-way ticket. Perhaps, though, it should be asked why it should need a letter-writer to inspire such a debate.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Crowded House, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIb6I8gtgtw. Today's title - from someone perhaps more known for his novelty songs.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Always Take The Weather With You
Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-five, forty, forty-five. Take your pick. Choose a number and let it be the temperature. There is a colossal amount of old pony that gets trotted out in the name of the weather. Let's go back, shall we, to the summer. The highest temperature in the north of the island was 42.3 in Sa Pobla. There may have been somewhere else, Muro town for example, that was a fraction hotter, but Sa Pobla is the main weather station. It is not by the coast, as to be by the coast does give a different value; the temperatures are always lower, by a factor of at least three degrees. During the very hot summer, there was never a time when the temperature reached 48. But there were some who would have you believe it did. Had it, not only would it have been massive news locally, it would have registered across the world, so extreme would it have been. The 42 was, in itself, extreme - for Mallorca. And 42 was quite damn hot enough; don't wish for anything higher, for God's sake.
Let's now come to October. Notwithstanding the return of storms on Friday, the temperatures have been unseasonably high. But not that high. Not as high as thirty-four, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, all of which have been reported. The official highest has again been in Sa Pobla, in the interior, away from the coast where it is always cooler. That high was 32. By the coast, it would have been 29 at most, when the highest temperatures were registered midweek. But we still get the exaggerated reports, and, by now, one would have thought that the message might have got through that thermometers in direct sunlight and indeed many little thermometers hanging on the terrace are far from accurate. For those values that are cited are those that are given by either a dodgy thermometer or one in the sun; they are not the ones given out by the meteorologists. We may not always believe weather forecasts, but I, for one, cannot query the actual temperatures the met boys record.
There is, though, the question as to why some people feel moved to report what are exaggerated values. It is a curious psychology, one that varies between boastfulness and one-upmanship and a desire - at all costs - to big somewhere up and make it appear wonderful. It is especially curious as anything much over 27 or 28 degrees becomes less than pleasant for anything other than a trip to the beach. Who needs 36 or 37? No-one is the answer, so why exaggerate the temperature to make it so, when it isn't? It is doubly especially curious that one might take the weather with one as a means of some sort of self-aggrandizement, parading around with an imaginary t-shirt saying "I am 38 degrees" and then when back in freezing England, getting the same t-shirt out and sitting down in the centrally-heated warmth of the neighbour's house, showing the inevitable photos of when it was 38 or even 48. "It was 48 degrees when we were there." "Was it really?" "Ooh, yes, ever so hot."
The bigging-it-up psychology is part of the same "beautiful" motif. It (wherever it is) is "beautiful" because the temperature says so, even if the temperature is not as is reported. And one still has the question as to why a 33 should be more beautiful than 25. Much of this comes down to a sort of justification of existence, itself a facet of the self-aggrandizement-through-weather mentality. We live by the weather, we always takes the weather with us, and much as we may be prone to exaggerate almost anything, there is nothing more exaggerated than what is truly registered on a thermometer - one that works properly and in the right conditions.
QUIZ
Today's title - "Everywhere you go, ..."
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Let's now come to October. Notwithstanding the return of storms on Friday, the temperatures have been unseasonably high. But not that high. Not as high as thirty-four, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, all of which have been reported. The official highest has again been in Sa Pobla, in the interior, away from the coast where it is always cooler. That high was 32. By the coast, it would have been 29 at most, when the highest temperatures were registered midweek. But we still get the exaggerated reports, and, by now, one would have thought that the message might have got through that thermometers in direct sunlight and indeed many little thermometers hanging on the terrace are far from accurate. For those values that are cited are those that are given by either a dodgy thermometer or one in the sun; they are not the ones given out by the meteorologists. We may not always believe weather forecasts, but I, for one, cannot query the actual temperatures the met boys record.
There is, though, the question as to why some people feel moved to report what are exaggerated values. It is a curious psychology, one that varies between boastfulness and one-upmanship and a desire - at all costs - to big somewhere up and make it appear wonderful. It is especially curious as anything much over 27 or 28 degrees becomes less than pleasant for anything other than a trip to the beach. Who needs 36 or 37? No-one is the answer, so why exaggerate the temperature to make it so, when it isn't? It is doubly especially curious that one might take the weather with one as a means of some sort of self-aggrandizement, parading around with an imaginary t-shirt saying "I am 38 degrees" and then when back in freezing England, getting the same t-shirt out and sitting down in the centrally-heated warmth of the neighbour's house, showing the inevitable photos of when it was 38 or even 48. "It was 48 degrees when we were there." "Was it really?" "Ooh, yes, ever so hot."
The bigging-it-up psychology is part of the same "beautiful" motif. It (wherever it is) is "beautiful" because the temperature says so, even if the temperature is not as is reported. And one still has the question as to why a 33 should be more beautiful than 25. Much of this comes down to a sort of justification of existence, itself a facet of the self-aggrandizement-through-weather mentality. We live by the weather, we always takes the weather with us, and much as we may be prone to exaggerate almost anything, there is nothing more exaggerated than what is truly registered on a thermometer - one that works properly and in the right conditions.
QUIZ
Today's title - "Everywhere you go, ..."
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Saturday, October 10, 2009
A Season Of Extremes
This is the piece that has appeared in the latest "Talk Of The North", the one about the season that was.
So that was the season. It may be a little premature to be looking back with October not yet past, but to all intents and purposes the season has gone, some places counting their losses and shutting up shop early. That was the season that was. A season of extremes. Over four months of almost unbroken sunshine peaked with a 15-year temperature high (in Sa Pobla) of a touch over 42 degrees in July. And then the weather duly and predictably collapsed in mid-September, making the month the wettest in the last 30 years. The abrupt and grey end to summer only added to a sense of despondency as late-season bookings took a tumble along with the thermometer.
There were the extremes as experienced in the pocket, of health - swine flu - and on the streets and in the bars of Palmanova and Palma. Bombs. Despite the paranoia that made a few imagine that every shopping bag carried Semtex or a black ball with a wire sticking out of it, ETA's actions were seen for what they were: desperate and isolated. This also despite an outrageous claim by the travel editor of "The Sun" (the travel editor, mind) that the bombs could mark the end of tourism in Spain and that tourists would avoid Mallorca. I trust she's been reallocated to something less contentious or less intellectually challenging - like making the tea. The German tabloid press was not to be outdone. "Bild" claimed that Mallorca was some sort of hot spot for swine flu. The numbers who succumbed to the virus on the island remained low.
The price story, though, was the recurring theme of the season. Mallorca is so expensive. For some reason, Puerto Pollensa seemed to get it in the price neck more than anywhere else. Emotion and hyperbole intervened in an unseemly scramble to prove that one anecdote of high prices was better than another. The most crass was the example of paracetamol costing five euros. Chances are that it was being sold in a supermarket, and there was at least one supermarket in Playa de Muro doing just that - at a fiver a pop. The real story was that the supermarket had no right to be selling it. Amidst all the complaints as to costly this and costly that, the most legitimate complaint concerned hire cars. But even here, the charges were not universally high, while the fact that some agencies may indeed have been demanding what were excessive amounts should have come as no great surprise. In April, it had been announced that there would be a shortage of vehicles and that the lack of credit had limited agencies' abilities to renew their fleets. Moreover, the credit squeeze for hire cars was experienced in other countries.
Yet all of this led to the inevitable "the authorities must do something" and the gross exaggerations of the "demise" of tourism based on little more than one person's say-so and experience of a plate of steak and chips costing more than that person had bargained for. Emotiveness was no more apparent than in the default use of "beautiful" - as in our "beautiful island/resort" (delete as applicable) being "ruined" or "going to the dogs" (literally in the case of the ongoing doggy-doo tedium) because of high prices.
There was evidence also of a more extreme position being adopted by the hotels and tour operators in advancing the offer of all-inclusive places. Alcúdia's Bellevue was but one example. From zero five years ago to over 50% now - and growing in all likelihood. Just wait for next year when the hotels take on the bars in the World Cup war. A hotel room or lounge may lack the communal experience or atmosphere of a bar, but the hotels will be looking to try and ensure that watching Wayne Rooney getting himself sent off is done within their walls. TUI, meanwhile, was launching its first specifically all-inclusive brochures, in readiness for 2010.
And as the season's sun sets, so attention will shift to the lack of winter tourism. Amidst all the navel-gazing and angst caused by lower tourism spend and a fall of up to 20% in the British market (in some instances), those authorities - the ones who must always do something - were saying that the summer tourism model was working fine and that attention had to be paid to the off-season. They were wrong. More than anything, recession and the pound's slide have highlighted the extent that the summer model is subject to capricious economics and also to the tourist's priority in terms of cost. And if the summer model was so right, then why undertake exercises such as the Mallorca events held in Manchester in May or lavish a significant wedge on Rafa Nadal so that he'll unbutton his shirt and hang around on a yacht? If the summer model isn't working, then you can forget the rest. And how can it be said to be working if 50% or more places are all-inclusive and if the wider economy suffers as a consequence of these places whilst also being caught in the vice of recession and a basket-case pound? Only in terms of announcing numbers of tourists overall and in particular the numbers passing through Palma airport can it be said to be working. And in the case of the airport, the greater the numbers the better as the regional government seeks to get its hands on running it once the numbers reach the required level. One then also has the absurdity of the consistent attempts to undermine the private, holiday-let sector, one that offers the potential of high-value tourism which the authorities, apparently, crave.
Those authorities who must do something consistently miss the point. Nadal fronts up promotion for a corporate Balearics, yet it is the individual islands that are the "brands". No-one goes on holiday to the Balearics. At a time when spending on internet advertising in Britain has overtaken that on television, it is here - the internet - where the real battle is being fought. And it is one involving increasingly canny tourists on the hunt for a bargain. The real promotion for the island and the resorts is coming from the likes of Travel Republic and Alpharooms. Those authorities who must do something should accept the lesson of 2009, not the extremes of weather, not the flu, not the bombs, but - I'm sorry to have to say - all that price stuff. It's easy to be dismissive of those anecdotes, but in the same way as the tourist seeks his bargain so he takes note of an allegedly price-inflated pizza. They would do worse than to offer everyone a bribe, sorry, price incentive. Here, have a fiver and come to Mallorca. So long as you don't spend it on paracetamol.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Shangri-Las, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FxSM88H-G4.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
So that was the season. It may be a little premature to be looking back with October not yet past, but to all intents and purposes the season has gone, some places counting their losses and shutting up shop early. That was the season that was. A season of extremes. Over four months of almost unbroken sunshine peaked with a 15-year temperature high (in Sa Pobla) of a touch over 42 degrees in July. And then the weather duly and predictably collapsed in mid-September, making the month the wettest in the last 30 years. The abrupt and grey end to summer only added to a sense of despondency as late-season bookings took a tumble along with the thermometer.
There were the extremes as experienced in the pocket, of health - swine flu - and on the streets and in the bars of Palmanova and Palma. Bombs. Despite the paranoia that made a few imagine that every shopping bag carried Semtex or a black ball with a wire sticking out of it, ETA's actions were seen for what they were: desperate and isolated. This also despite an outrageous claim by the travel editor of "The Sun" (the travel editor, mind) that the bombs could mark the end of tourism in Spain and that tourists would avoid Mallorca. I trust she's been reallocated to something less contentious or less intellectually challenging - like making the tea. The German tabloid press was not to be outdone. "Bild" claimed that Mallorca was some sort of hot spot for swine flu. The numbers who succumbed to the virus on the island remained low.
The price story, though, was the recurring theme of the season. Mallorca is so expensive. For some reason, Puerto Pollensa seemed to get it in the price neck more than anywhere else. Emotion and hyperbole intervened in an unseemly scramble to prove that one anecdote of high prices was better than another. The most crass was the example of paracetamol costing five euros. Chances are that it was being sold in a supermarket, and there was at least one supermarket in Playa de Muro doing just that - at a fiver a pop. The real story was that the supermarket had no right to be selling it. Amidst all the complaints as to costly this and costly that, the most legitimate complaint concerned hire cars. But even here, the charges were not universally high, while the fact that some agencies may indeed have been demanding what were excessive amounts should have come as no great surprise. In April, it had been announced that there would be a shortage of vehicles and that the lack of credit had limited agencies' abilities to renew their fleets. Moreover, the credit squeeze for hire cars was experienced in other countries.
Yet all of this led to the inevitable "the authorities must do something" and the gross exaggerations of the "demise" of tourism based on little more than one person's say-so and experience of a plate of steak and chips costing more than that person had bargained for. Emotiveness was no more apparent than in the default use of "beautiful" - as in our "beautiful island/resort" (delete as applicable) being "ruined" or "going to the dogs" (literally in the case of the ongoing doggy-doo tedium) because of high prices.
There was evidence also of a more extreme position being adopted by the hotels and tour operators in advancing the offer of all-inclusive places. Alcúdia's Bellevue was but one example. From zero five years ago to over 50% now - and growing in all likelihood. Just wait for next year when the hotels take on the bars in the World Cup war. A hotel room or lounge may lack the communal experience or atmosphere of a bar, but the hotels will be looking to try and ensure that watching Wayne Rooney getting himself sent off is done within their walls. TUI, meanwhile, was launching its first specifically all-inclusive brochures, in readiness for 2010.
And as the season's sun sets, so attention will shift to the lack of winter tourism. Amidst all the navel-gazing and angst caused by lower tourism spend and a fall of up to 20% in the British market (in some instances), those authorities - the ones who must always do something - were saying that the summer tourism model was working fine and that attention had to be paid to the off-season. They were wrong. More than anything, recession and the pound's slide have highlighted the extent that the summer model is subject to capricious economics and also to the tourist's priority in terms of cost. And if the summer model was so right, then why undertake exercises such as the Mallorca events held in Manchester in May or lavish a significant wedge on Rafa Nadal so that he'll unbutton his shirt and hang around on a yacht? If the summer model isn't working, then you can forget the rest. And how can it be said to be working if 50% or more places are all-inclusive and if the wider economy suffers as a consequence of these places whilst also being caught in the vice of recession and a basket-case pound? Only in terms of announcing numbers of tourists overall and in particular the numbers passing through Palma airport can it be said to be working. And in the case of the airport, the greater the numbers the better as the regional government seeks to get its hands on running it once the numbers reach the required level. One then also has the absurdity of the consistent attempts to undermine the private, holiday-let sector, one that offers the potential of high-value tourism which the authorities, apparently, crave.
Those authorities who must do something consistently miss the point. Nadal fronts up promotion for a corporate Balearics, yet it is the individual islands that are the "brands". No-one goes on holiday to the Balearics. At a time when spending on internet advertising in Britain has overtaken that on television, it is here - the internet - where the real battle is being fought. And it is one involving increasingly canny tourists on the hunt for a bargain. The real promotion for the island and the resorts is coming from the likes of Travel Republic and Alpharooms. Those authorities who must do something should accept the lesson of 2009, not the extremes of weather, not the flu, not the bombs, but - I'm sorry to have to say - all that price stuff. It's easy to be dismissive of those anecdotes, but in the same way as the tourist seeks his bargain so he takes note of an allegedly price-inflated pizza. They would do worse than to offer everyone a bribe, sorry, price incentive. Here, have a fiver and come to Mallorca. So long as you don't spend it on paracetamol.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Shangri-Las, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FxSM88H-G4.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Friday, October 09, 2009
Leader Of The Pack
And continuing what is likely to be theme of the month, the hotels and others have called upon President Antich to form an alliance with the heads of other regional governments across Spain, for which tourism is a vital part of their economies, in leading a lobby to get the central government to back track on the planned rise in IVA. In the report from the "Diario", the head of the hoteliers' federation in Mallorca is quoted as arguing that the IVA rise will be a worse move than the so-called eco-tax of some years ago, which was aborted almost as soon as it was introduced.
The strength of the opposition should not be underestimated and the argument against a rise is valid. However, it is also a case of special pleading. What about everyone else who is set to be affected by a two per cent rise on the top rate? Take away the one per cent for the tourism sector, and what might happen? Three per cent on the top rate?
The central government has to find money from somewhere. The alternative of course is cut public spending, but how? New funding is already in place for, for example, that investment finance for the hotels and additional assistance for those in need over the winter. A constant in the economic development of Spain during the boom years has been the role of public spending, especially for construction and civil engineering projects, and therefore for the construction industry, an industry neutered by the current lack of private finance from the banks. Without public spending in some parts of Spain, Mallorca for example, the economy would all but grind to a halt, save for tourism being bashed about by recession and now a possible tax increase.
The crisis, more than anything, has emphasised the underlying weakness of the Mallorcan economy and the short-sightedness of a model based on two key industries without a diversity to act as a safety net. There is an inevitability that taxes will need to rise, despite my assertion that a lowering might actually lead to increased revenues, and if not in the tourism sector then in the wider economy, resulting in shackles placed on consumer spending and thus a further limit to the capacity to come out of recession. In economics, recessions are often referred to with the aid of letters - a U is a fall, bumping along the bottom for a while and then coming up, a V is a sharp fall and then a sharp rise. Then there is a third - a W, two V's in other words. And that may indeed be the consequence of tax rises, a short-term recovery followed by another slump as consumers put their wallets away.
To other things, well, one other thing - the weather. The fortnight of storms that seemingly brought summer crashing to an end gave way, bang on 1 October, to a return to sun. It is extraordinary the number of times changes to the weather do seem to coincide with the first day of a new month. And the late summer weather has been remarkable. A temperature of 32 degrees has been registered in Sa Pobla, the weather station commonly used as the benchmark in the north, and meaning around 29 on the coast. Next week is forecast to see a drop to more normal temperatures of 22 to 23, and after that ... ? Hold on to your hats when November arrives.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Daft Punk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH-0s0pRleg. Today's title - iconic song, iconic group from the '60s.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The strength of the opposition should not be underestimated and the argument against a rise is valid. However, it is also a case of special pleading. What about everyone else who is set to be affected by a two per cent rise on the top rate? Take away the one per cent for the tourism sector, and what might happen? Three per cent on the top rate?
The central government has to find money from somewhere. The alternative of course is cut public spending, but how? New funding is already in place for, for example, that investment finance for the hotels and additional assistance for those in need over the winter. A constant in the economic development of Spain during the boom years has been the role of public spending, especially for construction and civil engineering projects, and therefore for the construction industry, an industry neutered by the current lack of private finance from the banks. Without public spending in some parts of Spain, Mallorca for example, the economy would all but grind to a halt, save for tourism being bashed about by recession and now a possible tax increase.
The crisis, more than anything, has emphasised the underlying weakness of the Mallorcan economy and the short-sightedness of a model based on two key industries without a diversity to act as a safety net. There is an inevitability that taxes will need to rise, despite my assertion that a lowering might actually lead to increased revenues, and if not in the tourism sector then in the wider economy, resulting in shackles placed on consumer spending and thus a further limit to the capacity to come out of recession. In economics, recessions are often referred to with the aid of letters - a U is a fall, bumping along the bottom for a while and then coming up, a V is a sharp fall and then a sharp rise. Then there is a third - a W, two V's in other words. And that may indeed be the consequence of tax rises, a short-term recovery followed by another slump as consumers put their wallets away.
To other things, well, one other thing - the weather. The fortnight of storms that seemingly brought summer crashing to an end gave way, bang on 1 October, to a return to sun. It is extraordinary the number of times changes to the weather do seem to coincide with the first day of a new month. And the late summer weather has been remarkable. A temperature of 32 degrees has been registered in Sa Pobla, the weather station commonly used as the benchmark in the north, and meaning around 29 on the coast. Next week is forecast to see a drop to more normal temperatures of 22 to 23, and after that ... ? Hold on to your hats when November arrives.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Daft Punk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH-0s0pRleg. Today's title - iconic song, iconic group from the '60s.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Thursday, October 08, 2009
One More Time
Following on from yesterday ... . The central government's tourism ministry reckons that an increase in IVA (VAT) of one per cent (to 8%) for certain tourism-related activities (accommodation, transport and bars/restaurants) will have no effect on the number of tourists. It also reckons, as noted in "The Diario", that the average price of a hotel stay (one night presumably) will rise by a mere 50 centimos as a consequence. The secretary of state for tourism believes that the fact that the rise will not be implemented until 1 July next year (as would be the case for all categories of IVA, including the general rate) will act as an incentive for bookings prior to this date. While true, it's also a tad disingenuous, a case of looking for a benefit from something essentially negative. The government is possibly on firmer ground when it points out that the hotel sector has been the beneficiary of a vast amount of investment finance, though to what extent this is actually being exploited one doesn't really know.
The date for the rise in IVA is probably not coincidental. It will kick in at the start of the third financial quarter in Spain - IVA inputs and outputs are calculated each quarter and payments or credits issued accordingly. The third quarter covers, of course, the peak months of July and August.
The wider point, though, is the drip-drip effect of a tax rise. With complaints about prices having been given a good old airing everywhere this summer, you can bet your life that once it becomes known that there is to be an increase, the forums and all the rest will be full of even more damning Mallorca's so expensive propaganda. One per cent, in the scheme of things, does not amount to much, but it does add to a cumulative perceptual impression of price rises. The tourism ministry, not least the local one in Mallorca, should be paying heed to those complaints. Indeed, the president of the regional government has expressed his concern about the planned rise.
The response by the central government to the criticisms of the tax rise from the boss of Thomas Cook suggests, at least in part, that it has been stung into making a statement, with its tourism ministry, headed by Joan Mesquida, himself a former director general of the Guardia Civil and National Police (interesting career progression, but there you go), to the fore in issuing this response. The suggestion that he, Mesquida, was actually seeking to keep the 7% rate - one that came from the Spanish tourism promotion organisation, Turespaña - has been rebutted. The party line, so to speak, is being held. But it speaks volumes that the intervention by the head of the second largest tour operator should provoke a response. The true power in the tourism market resides with the tour operators. The tourism ministry, as the frontline contact with the tour operators, should be seeking to distance itself from the argument and looking to keep the operators sweet, but of course it can't and is so backed into a corner, even if officials might actually agree with Thomas Cook. It will be interesting to hear what TUI, as the leading operator, might have to say about all this.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The splendidly-named chap from Thomas Cook made me think of Fontella Bass and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Yes, I know I should get a life. Today's title - simply great; French house.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The date for the rise in IVA is probably not coincidental. It will kick in at the start of the third financial quarter in Spain - IVA inputs and outputs are calculated each quarter and payments or credits issued accordingly. The third quarter covers, of course, the peak months of July and August.
The wider point, though, is the drip-drip effect of a tax rise. With complaints about prices having been given a good old airing everywhere this summer, you can bet your life that once it becomes known that there is to be an increase, the forums and all the rest will be full of even more damning Mallorca's so expensive propaganda. One per cent, in the scheme of things, does not amount to much, but it does add to a cumulative perceptual impression of price rises. The tourism ministry, not least the local one in Mallorca, should be paying heed to those complaints. Indeed, the president of the regional government has expressed his concern about the planned rise.
The response by the central government to the criticisms of the tax rise from the boss of Thomas Cook suggests, at least in part, that it has been stung into making a statement, with its tourism ministry, headed by Joan Mesquida, himself a former director general of the Guardia Civil and National Police (interesting career progression, but there you go), to the fore in issuing this response. The suggestion that he, Mesquida, was actually seeking to keep the 7% rate - one that came from the Spanish tourism promotion organisation, Turespaña - has been rebutted. The party line, so to speak, is being held. But it speaks volumes that the intervention by the head of the second largest tour operator should provoke a response. The true power in the tourism market resides with the tour operators. The tourism ministry, as the frontline contact with the tour operators, should be seeking to distance itself from the argument and looking to keep the operators sweet, but of course it can't and is so backed into a corner, even if officials might actually agree with Thomas Cook. It will be interesting to hear what TUI, as the leading operator, might have to say about all this.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The splendidly-named chap from Thomas Cook made me think of Fontella Bass and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Yes, I know I should get a life. Today's title - simply great; French house.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Here Comes A Fontella-Super Nova
When a bigwig from the world's second largest tour operator makes a pronouncement, the Mallorcan tourist authorities, hoteliers, town halls should all take note, and in the case of the tourism minister, it looked as though he had been made to - with some force. Manny Fontenla-Novoa, chief executive of Thomas Cook came, spoke and put a dirty great VAT cat among the pigeons of the regional and national governments. In addressing hoteliers in Palma, he was clear that proposals for rises in IVA (VAT) were, shall we say, less than advisable. Damn right they are.
Governmental coffers are less than flush at present. Spain has been one of the countries worst affected by recession, and will - in all likelihood - be one of the last to limp out of it. To remedy the deficits the government is running, they have come up with increasing indirect taxation (IVA/VAT) as the solution. Badly though revenue may be needed, this could well be counterproductive. As far as the tourism industry is concerned - bearing in mind that in other countries, such as France, there has been a reduction in VAT as it is specifically applied to tourism - any increase is bound to push up prices. These are not necessarily the prices of holidays, but those that would be charged in the bars and restaurants and so on. At a time when spending is falling and when one hears all those stories about high or higher prices, a VAT increase is the last thing that's needed. To add to this picture of woe, Thomas Cook are saying that the level of all-inclusive packages is set to rise next year, by a factor of 20%. That's a perfectly believable increase. Furthermore, as noted in "The Bulletin", Fontenla-Novoa has reserved some criticism for the promotional spend by the Balearics authorities. It is around 30 per cent of what Egypt, for example, dishes out. The comparison is not entirely fair as Egypt is a country; the Balearics are not, you may have noticed. But we get his point, even if also Egypt is diverting massive resources to establishing its place as a tourist destination. Yet of course in this regard there is a pretty fundamental issue. If tourism is so important not only to the Balearics and to Spain as a whole, why is not more promotion undertaken and why are measures adopted that positively have a negative effect on tourism, to which we must now add an increase in IVA?
From today in "Talk Of The North", you will be able to read a thing I have written about the season. One point I make is to question the tourism authorities' belief that the summer tourism model - the bread and butter of tourism - is working ok. It clearly is not, and recession and the pound are not the only factors. Thomas Cook would seem to agree, and rather pertinent, I felt, was a probably unintentional photo that "The Bulletin" had of those at this meeting in Palma. But it was terrific - in the centre, Fontenla-Novoa, a tall man with an easy smile and one suggesting just a hint of superiority or of having made his point, to one side of him the head of Iberostar looking ever more fabulously like a long grey-haired Red Indian, and to the other, shorter than the Thomas Cook boss, Miquel Nadal, tourism minister, with an expression as though he's just been given a severe ticking-off in the head's study but is required to pose for the school photo.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Police, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXU8kCrRHJY. Today's title - why and therefore who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Governmental coffers are less than flush at present. Spain has been one of the countries worst affected by recession, and will - in all likelihood - be one of the last to limp out of it. To remedy the deficits the government is running, they have come up with increasing indirect taxation (IVA/VAT) as the solution. Badly though revenue may be needed, this could well be counterproductive. As far as the tourism industry is concerned - bearing in mind that in other countries, such as France, there has been a reduction in VAT as it is specifically applied to tourism - any increase is bound to push up prices. These are not necessarily the prices of holidays, but those that would be charged in the bars and restaurants and so on. At a time when spending is falling and when one hears all those stories about high or higher prices, a VAT increase is the last thing that's needed. To add to this picture of woe, Thomas Cook are saying that the level of all-inclusive packages is set to rise next year, by a factor of 20%. That's a perfectly believable increase. Furthermore, as noted in "The Bulletin", Fontenla-Novoa has reserved some criticism for the promotional spend by the Balearics authorities. It is around 30 per cent of what Egypt, for example, dishes out. The comparison is not entirely fair as Egypt is a country; the Balearics are not, you may have noticed. But we get his point, even if also Egypt is diverting massive resources to establishing its place as a tourist destination. Yet of course in this regard there is a pretty fundamental issue. If tourism is so important not only to the Balearics and to Spain as a whole, why is not more promotion undertaken and why are measures adopted that positively have a negative effect on tourism, to which we must now add an increase in IVA?
From today in "Talk Of The North", you will be able to read a thing I have written about the season. One point I make is to question the tourism authorities' belief that the summer tourism model - the bread and butter of tourism - is working ok. It clearly is not, and recession and the pound are not the only factors. Thomas Cook would seem to agree, and rather pertinent, I felt, was a probably unintentional photo that "The Bulletin" had of those at this meeting in Palma. But it was terrific - in the centre, Fontenla-Novoa, a tall man with an easy smile and one suggesting just a hint of superiority or of having made his point, to one side of him the head of Iberostar looking ever more fabulously like a long grey-haired Red Indian, and to the other, shorter than the Thomas Cook boss, Miquel Nadal, tourism minister, with an expression as though he's just been given a severe ticking-off in the head's study but is required to pose for the school photo.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Police, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXU8kCrRHJY. Today's title - why and therefore who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Don't Stand So Close To Me
There is this thing about Mitchell and Webb in this week's "Sunday Times". It deals, among other things, with what constitutes an "annoyed" type of person. There are any number of annoyed people, many of whom you are likely to be confronted with in a local bar. More than anything else, the bar is the sanctity-from-home lounge of the annoyed and also of what one might call the betrayed by caveat or conditional type, and of the nauseatingly boastful who doesn't even try not to be sort.
But to explain the Mitchell and Webb angle. A sure sign of an annoyed type is one who starts off: "If there's one thing I can't stand ...". The natural corollary to this is that this type can't stand most things. I know a number of annoyed people in this case. One in particular can't stand Americans, women, Jonathan Ross and of course the Welsh, yet when proclaiming his lack of standing there will always be a "one" inserted. It's a truism. Try it yourself next time you're in a bar, and the chances are that you will strike lucky and find a mutually annoyed fellow drinker who will be unable to stand more things than you can't stand.
There are any number of these conditionals and caveats that should alert all of us who might be tempted to hang around in bars to be extremely wary. Unlikely though it is that Tony Blair would sidle up to you in a bar on Alcúdia's Mile, were he or anyone else to do so and to declare himself a "regular kind of a guy", then be prepared for an avalanche of lies and a dissertation nicked from the internet that would follow. But the caveat is no more apparent than with the "I'm not a (insert as appropriate) but ...". This is the domain of what we should call the "caveat emptier", the one who empties a bar as quickly as you can say "I'm not a racist but". And the list of other possible inserts after the "I'm not a" is long and varied. Holocaust-denier, mass-murderer, member of the local English-speaking association are but three common ones that should make you extremely worried and drink up rapidly and seek safe haven in an alternative bar where you can announce that if there's one thing you can't stand it's having David Irving necking a pint next to you.
Then one comes to the boastful sort. "I used to be" or indeed "I am". As in "I used to be the head of MI5" or "I am Simon Cowell's best mate". The worst thing about this type is that there is no caveat. He is genuinely so far up his rear end that his pint glass has accompanied him. There is a variant on this theme, and one you would be very wise to accept is bollocks, and that is, in a Mallorca context, "no-one cares about what other people have or don't have". It is such transparent bollocks that it is both remarkable that anyone can even come out with it and that the one uttering it does not have two glass egg shapes concealed under his Björn Borg bathers. Be prepared to find it hard to hear over the jangling and to be blinded by the bling around this one's neck and on his wrists. And then make your apologies and effect an escape, just as he produces a laptop in order to show you photos of the Porsche he was running during his time in the City, fleecing millions thanks to dodgy hedge fund activities.
There are other examples. I'll leave you with a simple one. "Trust me." On no accounts, therefore, trust him, as he will be totally untrustworthy, especially if he's trying to sell you his bar.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Jim Morrison, can't petition the Lord. Today's title - if any of you can't get this, then a week of bad bar types is your booby prize.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
But to explain the Mitchell and Webb angle. A sure sign of an annoyed type is one who starts off: "If there's one thing I can't stand ...". The natural corollary to this is that this type can't stand most things. I know a number of annoyed people in this case. One in particular can't stand Americans, women, Jonathan Ross and of course the Welsh, yet when proclaiming his lack of standing there will always be a "one" inserted. It's a truism. Try it yourself next time you're in a bar, and the chances are that you will strike lucky and find a mutually annoyed fellow drinker who will be unable to stand more things than you can't stand.
There are any number of these conditionals and caveats that should alert all of us who might be tempted to hang around in bars to be extremely wary. Unlikely though it is that Tony Blair would sidle up to you in a bar on Alcúdia's Mile, were he or anyone else to do so and to declare himself a "regular kind of a guy", then be prepared for an avalanche of lies and a dissertation nicked from the internet that would follow. But the caveat is no more apparent than with the "I'm not a (insert as appropriate) but ...". This is the domain of what we should call the "caveat emptier", the one who empties a bar as quickly as you can say "I'm not a racist but". And the list of other possible inserts after the "I'm not a" is long and varied. Holocaust-denier, mass-murderer, member of the local English-speaking association are but three common ones that should make you extremely worried and drink up rapidly and seek safe haven in an alternative bar where you can announce that if there's one thing you can't stand it's having David Irving necking a pint next to you.
Then one comes to the boastful sort. "I used to be" or indeed "I am". As in "I used to be the head of MI5" or "I am Simon Cowell's best mate". The worst thing about this type is that there is no caveat. He is genuinely so far up his rear end that his pint glass has accompanied him. There is a variant on this theme, and one you would be very wise to accept is bollocks, and that is, in a Mallorca context, "no-one cares about what other people have or don't have". It is such transparent bollocks that it is both remarkable that anyone can even come out with it and that the one uttering it does not have two glass egg shapes concealed under his Björn Borg bathers. Be prepared to find it hard to hear over the jangling and to be blinded by the bling around this one's neck and on his wrists. And then make your apologies and effect an escape, just as he produces a laptop in order to show you photos of the Porsche he was running during his time in the City, fleecing millions thanks to dodgy hedge fund activities.
There are other examples. I'll leave you with a simple one. "Trust me." On no accounts, therefore, trust him, as he will be totally untrustworthy, especially if he's trying to sell you his bar.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Jim Morrison, can't petition the Lord. Today's title - if any of you can't get this, then a week of bad bar types is your booby prize.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Monday, October 05, 2009
You Cannot Petition
You might have thought that the decision to take no decision in respect of the rail extension to Alcúdia during the remaining period of the current governmental administration would have been the end of the matter. You would of course have been wrong. One of the more glaring omissions following the no-decision decision was any word from Alcúdia's mayor, he who was so committed to not allowing the northern route. Finally, he has broken his silence and has announced the results of the petition that the town hall launched against the proposed route. There were 1300 signatures against. The mayor believes that these represent a significant expression of local views. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he. The numbers registering their opposition amount to some way short of 10% of the town's population. What of the 90% who didn't sign the petition? (And I know, I know, you have to take account of minors and all that, but you get the point.)
See any photos of the so-called mass protests against the route and it will invariably involve a tractor with a sign strung to the front bearing the legend "Per Son Fé" (and indeed there was such a photo in "The Bulletin" yesterday). It was the area of Son Fé, as one enters Alcúdia along the road from the motorway, that was most affected by the proposed route; the area of the tractor boys. Small wonder that it should create the most vocal opposition. Of those who signed, one could well imagine that the majority had some connection with Son Fé and with the immediate area in the old town where a terminus might have been sited. The rest were probably Luddite fanatics opposed to anything that smacks of a period after around the early twentieth century and political fellow-travellers, ones who are not, though, going to be travelling on a train any time soon; well not one starting from Alcúdia. What about those on the other side of Alcúdia, in the port, in Mal Pas and so on? What also of people in Puerto Pollensa, Playa de Muro and maybe also Can Picafort who might have liked a say? The rail extension was never the sole preserve of Alcúdia, much as the town hall has acted as though it were.
The extension is not a complete dead duck. Of those who placed their signatures against the northern route, 85% were happy for there to be an alternative route, i.e. the southern one favoured by the town hall. No great surprise there. All that NIMBY stuff, as ever, and stuff the fact that the southern route may genuinely not be an environmental plus and that the odd dead duck in Albufera may be the result. The petition is part of a process of objections to be presented to the regional government, despite its decision to take no decision, other than the decision to not go ahead during the current legislature. The railway could still happen, but whether central funds would still be forthcoming, given the debacle this time round, is quite a different matter.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Rio", Mike Nesmith, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNwj-Z6ig-M. Today's title - well of course you can, and they do. Who was this and who couldn't you petition?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
See any photos of the so-called mass protests against the route and it will invariably involve a tractor with a sign strung to the front bearing the legend "Per Son Fé" (and indeed there was such a photo in "The Bulletin" yesterday). It was the area of Son Fé, as one enters Alcúdia along the road from the motorway, that was most affected by the proposed route; the area of the tractor boys. Small wonder that it should create the most vocal opposition. Of those who signed, one could well imagine that the majority had some connection with Son Fé and with the immediate area in the old town where a terminus might have been sited. The rest were probably Luddite fanatics opposed to anything that smacks of a period after around the early twentieth century and political fellow-travellers, ones who are not, though, going to be travelling on a train any time soon; well not one starting from Alcúdia. What about those on the other side of Alcúdia, in the port, in Mal Pas and so on? What also of people in Puerto Pollensa, Playa de Muro and maybe also Can Picafort who might have liked a say? The rail extension was never the sole preserve of Alcúdia, much as the town hall has acted as though it were.
The extension is not a complete dead duck. Of those who placed their signatures against the northern route, 85% were happy for there to be an alternative route, i.e. the southern one favoured by the town hall. No great surprise there. All that NIMBY stuff, as ever, and stuff the fact that the southern route may genuinely not be an environmental plus and that the odd dead duck in Albufera may be the result. The petition is part of a process of objections to be presented to the regional government, despite its decision to take no decision, other than the decision to not go ahead during the current legislature. The railway could still happen, but whether central funds would still be forthcoming, given the debacle this time round, is quite a different matter.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Rio", Mike Nesmith, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNwj-Z6ig-M. Today's title - well of course you can, and they do. Who was this and who couldn't you petition?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Sunday, October 04, 2009
I Will Travel To Rio
There were no parties in Madrid. The samba danced on till the wee smalls in Rio instead. The Olympics. Some years from now. There were presumably a few Brazilians in Mallorca who were dancing the night away as well. Or make that more than a few. The numbers of Brazilians on the island are strangely high given that the great world carve-up of the late fifteenth century denied Spain the largest of South America's countries.
The awarding to Rio of the 2016 games was the fairest result. To have continued to deny South America a piece of Olympic action would have seemed miserly. If South Africa can have the World Cup, then Brazil can have the Olympics, and indeed, given the national team's pre-eminence for so many competitions, it is curious that it has not been granted another World Cup since 1950 whereas an under-performer like Mexico can have had two, albeit that the second was a late change when Colombia fessed up to not being able to stump up the financ and also that Brazil will host the 2014 competition.
Disappointment there may be that Madrid has lost out - again - but it may have been for the best. Now, in all truth, is not the time to be taking on the sort of financial commitment that an Olympics demands. The games may be seven years down the line, but the work starts now, as does the handing around of the cap. The Spanish Government would have been insane to have started chucking money that it doesn't have at a Madrid Olympics. And it might only have fuelled more regional resentment. The Catalans have not exactly been supportive of any Madrid bid, which is a tad churlish as Madrid lent Barcelona its backing in 1992. It might be noted, though, that Juan Antonio Samaranch, who made the emotional plea in favour of Madrid, was born in Barcelona.
But of course, as we keep being told, the Olympics are about more than just a huge tax burden, they are about legacies, promotion of sport and healthy lifestyles and all the usual twaddle. They are also about politics (as in Beijing) and tourism (as in all of them). Though one felt pride at London being chosen for 2012, there must be many now, given the economic circumstances, who would have preferred not having put one over the French or indeed Madrid. Only one city in recent times has truly benefited from the games, and that was Barcelona - all that money that was lavished on bringing it up by the boot- and athletics shoe laces from the sand-pit it had been allowed to become during Franco's time and turning it, once again, into one of Europe's great cities. But there is the pride angle, always assuming the organisers don't completely cock-up and turn a host city into a laughing-stock (Atlanta was never that but it wasn't far short). London Pride, let's hope to God there will be grounds for it and indeed grounds fully developed.
The Olympics are the not the only vehicle for a bit of civic tourism promotion and legacy-building, whatever this latter is. There is the rather more down-scale city of culture malarkey. Palma is up for some of this, as it had been for riding the crest of the wave of the America's Cup before Valencia hoisted its victorious sail. At least no-one's suggested that Palma should have the Olympics - yet. A city of culture, though, seems fair enough. It would make all that cultural tourism stuff seem worthwhile, and who knows, were Palma to be the culture capital - in 2016 by coincidence - maybe all the new tourists that this would create (one hopes) might also contemplate visiting other parts of the island. The actual candidacy is in fact for Palma and the Balearics, which sounds like stretching the city angle a bit. More likely, the tourists who come to those other parts would be shuttled off on excursions to Palma in order to get a bit of cultural action. And action, moreover, that will probably include bands of Brazilians beating drums and dancing sambas, resplendent in yellow and green t-shirts with legends declaring Rio 2016.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Morning Glory", Oasis, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr7MSSPNH9o. Today's title - he was the one with the woolly hat.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The awarding to Rio of the 2016 games was the fairest result. To have continued to deny South America a piece of Olympic action would have seemed miserly. If South Africa can have the World Cup, then Brazil can have the Olympics, and indeed, given the national team's pre-eminence for so many competitions, it is curious that it has not been granted another World Cup since 1950 whereas an under-performer like Mexico can have had two, albeit that the second was a late change when Colombia fessed up to not being able to stump up the financ and also that Brazil will host the 2014 competition.
Disappointment there may be that Madrid has lost out - again - but it may have been for the best. Now, in all truth, is not the time to be taking on the sort of financial commitment that an Olympics demands. The games may be seven years down the line, but the work starts now, as does the handing around of the cap. The Spanish Government would have been insane to have started chucking money that it doesn't have at a Madrid Olympics. And it might only have fuelled more regional resentment. The Catalans have not exactly been supportive of any Madrid bid, which is a tad churlish as Madrid lent Barcelona its backing in 1992. It might be noted, though, that Juan Antonio Samaranch, who made the emotional plea in favour of Madrid, was born in Barcelona.
But of course, as we keep being told, the Olympics are about more than just a huge tax burden, they are about legacies, promotion of sport and healthy lifestyles and all the usual twaddle. They are also about politics (as in Beijing) and tourism (as in all of them). Though one felt pride at London being chosen for 2012, there must be many now, given the economic circumstances, who would have preferred not having put one over the French or indeed Madrid. Only one city in recent times has truly benefited from the games, and that was Barcelona - all that money that was lavished on bringing it up by the boot- and athletics shoe laces from the sand-pit it had been allowed to become during Franco's time and turning it, once again, into one of Europe's great cities. But there is the pride angle, always assuming the organisers don't completely cock-up and turn a host city into a laughing-stock (Atlanta was never that but it wasn't far short). London Pride, let's hope to God there will be grounds for it and indeed grounds fully developed.
The Olympics are the not the only vehicle for a bit of civic tourism promotion and legacy-building, whatever this latter is. There is the rather more down-scale city of culture malarkey. Palma is up for some of this, as it had been for riding the crest of the wave of the America's Cup before Valencia hoisted its victorious sail. At least no-one's suggested that Palma should have the Olympics - yet. A city of culture, though, seems fair enough. It would make all that cultural tourism stuff seem worthwhile, and who knows, were Palma to be the culture capital - in 2016 by coincidence - maybe all the new tourists that this would create (one hopes) might also contemplate visiting other parts of the island. The actual candidacy is in fact for Palma and the Balearics, which sounds like stretching the city angle a bit. More likely, the tourists who come to those other parts would be shuttled off on excursions to Palma in order to get a bit of cultural action. And action, moreover, that will probably include bands of Brazilians beating drums and dancing sambas, resplendent in yellow and green t-shirts with legends declaring Rio 2016.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Morning Glory", Oasis, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr7MSSPNH9o. Today's title - he was the one with the woolly hat.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Saturday, October 03, 2009
What's The Story?
At one time when I lived in London, before they closed the station, I used occasionally to get a sudden urge to travel to the far end of the Central Line. Ongar. Like many place names in England, it was one with no immediately obvious connection to any other. The beauty of English towns and villages lies as much in their obscure nomenclature as any picture-postcard green, millpond or church. Ongar. Was it on guard or "en garde", was it on the gar, in which case what was a "gar", might it have once been one gar (same question)? What tribal and linguistic back story gave Ongar its handle? Celtic, Roman, Germanic, Danish, Norman? Perhaps it had been invented, or there had been a Mr. Ongar. If so, how had he come by his name? I never did make the journey, that urge being quelled by an all too rationally opposing view that it was a bit of a waste of time. Such rationality should never be allowed to intrude in the pursuit of pointlessness. For there is no pointlessness in wanting to head onward to Ongar, or indeed anywhere else. If it simply comes down to the fact of its being there, this should be reason enough. And then there is the name.
Everywhere has a story. No place exists without one. And within each place, every house, street, wood, shop, pub has a story. Maps are the factual and cartographic frontispiece to the stories which lie behind those place names and places themselves. In Mallorca there are hundreds of places. How many of them do any of us really know? For many, outside of their immediate area, there is little or no knowledge. There is often little knowledge of the places they inhabit. There is an incuriosity that denies someone in Alcúdia a visit to Cala San Vicente, or someone in Pollensa to investigate Coll Baix. The names themselves should be sufficient to spark curiosity. The very fact of their being there. But no. In which case there has to be a more compelling reason. And this is often just a restaurant recommendation, a friend living there, or a day out at a different beach. The stories of the places are neglected, largely because there are none, or rather none that are made manifest.
All the places in Mallorca. Take one - Esporles. I know nothing of it. There is the annual sweet fair this weekend. Why is there a sweet fair? Indeed where is Esporles? Why is it there? What's the story about its name, its people? The answers are not simple records of historical fact. The factual approach is sterile, it is the dating of kings and queens approach that led much history teaching into irrelevant disrepute before teachers, and indeed historians, had the good sense to realise that stories held as much if not more relevance. This shift in emphasis is one that has given rise to the quasi-story historiography of Peter Ackroyd or to Gilda O'Neill's anecdote collection from London's East End.
Take a look at a map of Mallorca. Punxuat, Biniali, Ariany, Moscari, Galilea. Where are they? What do any of us know of them? What knowledge there is tends to be confined to what local tourist boards pump out. Superficial, matters of historical record, but lacking personality or insight. The same applies to better-known places. The Roman Cecilio Metelo may have been important in the BC history of Alcúdia, but so what? The more interesting story is why poor old Cecilio has lent his name to such an uncharming street as he has. The unlovely and the derelict are every bit if not more interesting than some grand manor house or the revisionist history regarding Chopin and Valldemossa. He hated the place, the winter dampness and cold, and was damning of the local medics who couldn't treat his tuberculosis. That's not what you normally hear. The small town of Maria de la Salut is, on the face of it, unremarkable. For many, it will be the place in which is located a rather splendid restaurant - Cas Metge Monjo - but behind the otherwise unremarkable facade is (or maybe was as I haven't been there for some years) the semi-dilapidated state of the church. Here is a story worth knowing as well as a photographic opportunity more striking than the terrace at Cas Metge. In Playa de Muro there is a villa by the beach that has been a ruin for years. Why? What's the story? And then there's Es Foguero in Alcúdia. The giant fun-palace ruin abutting the nature park of Albufera and the unused industrial estate - three stories in one.
Mallorca is not big. Its very compactness, allied to its combination of great antiquity, modernity but also recent backwardness, grinding poverty, agrarianism and semi-isolation enrich it with thousands of stories, and stories that are manageable in their relating because of that compactness. Tourism, for the most part, is the pursuit of the anodyne, and indeed one of the alternative takes on tourism - the cultural one - elevates itself little higher than this state of being mentally uninspiring. Yet tourism should, in its purest form, be about inspiration, and about discovery of the different, the strange, the disconnection with the normalcy of back home.
The stories of Mallorca. This should be the real alternative tourism. But of course it isn't, because the stories of Mallorca are Mallorca. Alternative tourism is in fact sun and beach, bucket and spade. There are stories surrounding the resorts as well, thousands upon thousands of them, but their stories are of recent origin, they are the alternative. In the whole story of the stories of Mallorca the resorts are but the epilogue.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Laurel and Hardy. Today's title - not the actual title, though it was in brackets for the album title.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Everywhere has a story. No place exists without one. And within each place, every house, street, wood, shop, pub has a story. Maps are the factual and cartographic frontispiece to the stories which lie behind those place names and places themselves. In Mallorca there are hundreds of places. How many of them do any of us really know? For many, outside of their immediate area, there is little or no knowledge. There is often little knowledge of the places they inhabit. There is an incuriosity that denies someone in Alcúdia a visit to Cala San Vicente, or someone in Pollensa to investigate Coll Baix. The names themselves should be sufficient to spark curiosity. The very fact of their being there. But no. In which case there has to be a more compelling reason. And this is often just a restaurant recommendation, a friend living there, or a day out at a different beach. The stories of the places are neglected, largely because there are none, or rather none that are made manifest.
All the places in Mallorca. Take one - Esporles. I know nothing of it. There is the annual sweet fair this weekend. Why is there a sweet fair? Indeed where is Esporles? Why is it there? What's the story about its name, its people? The answers are not simple records of historical fact. The factual approach is sterile, it is the dating of kings and queens approach that led much history teaching into irrelevant disrepute before teachers, and indeed historians, had the good sense to realise that stories held as much if not more relevance. This shift in emphasis is one that has given rise to the quasi-story historiography of Peter Ackroyd or to Gilda O'Neill's anecdote collection from London's East End.
Take a look at a map of Mallorca. Punxuat, Biniali, Ariany, Moscari, Galilea. Where are they? What do any of us know of them? What knowledge there is tends to be confined to what local tourist boards pump out. Superficial, matters of historical record, but lacking personality or insight. The same applies to better-known places. The Roman Cecilio Metelo may have been important in the BC history of Alcúdia, but so what? The more interesting story is why poor old Cecilio has lent his name to such an uncharming street as he has. The unlovely and the derelict are every bit if not more interesting than some grand manor house or the revisionist history regarding Chopin and Valldemossa. He hated the place, the winter dampness and cold, and was damning of the local medics who couldn't treat his tuberculosis. That's not what you normally hear. The small town of Maria de la Salut is, on the face of it, unremarkable. For many, it will be the place in which is located a rather splendid restaurant - Cas Metge Monjo - but behind the otherwise unremarkable facade is (or maybe was as I haven't been there for some years) the semi-dilapidated state of the church. Here is a story worth knowing as well as a photographic opportunity more striking than the terrace at Cas Metge. In Playa de Muro there is a villa by the beach that has been a ruin for years. Why? What's the story? And then there's Es Foguero in Alcúdia. The giant fun-palace ruin abutting the nature park of Albufera and the unused industrial estate - three stories in one.
Mallorca is not big. Its very compactness, allied to its combination of great antiquity, modernity but also recent backwardness, grinding poverty, agrarianism and semi-isolation enrich it with thousands of stories, and stories that are manageable in their relating because of that compactness. Tourism, for the most part, is the pursuit of the anodyne, and indeed one of the alternative takes on tourism - the cultural one - elevates itself little higher than this state of being mentally uninspiring. Yet tourism should, in its purest form, be about inspiration, and about discovery of the different, the strange, the disconnection with the normalcy of back home.
The stories of Mallorca. This should be the real alternative tourism. But of course it isn't, because the stories of Mallorca are Mallorca. Alternative tourism is in fact sun and beach, bucket and spade. There are stories surrounding the resorts as well, thousands upon thousands of them, but their stories are of recent origin, they are the alternative. In the whole story of the stories of Mallorca the resorts are but the epilogue.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Laurel and Hardy. Today's title - not the actual title, though it was in brackets for the album title.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Friday, October 02, 2009
Bloc-Heads
Politics in Mallorca are never exactly dull. Scandal, crisis, division, these are the almost daily staples of political fare served with a Mallorcan flavour. We now have the situation in which members of the ruling coalition at the Mallorca Council have resigned; they are all from the Unió Mallorquina (UM) nationalist party. It, the UM, forms (or should that be, formed) a pact with the socialists, the PSOE (that of the national president, Zapatero), and the so-called Bloc, comprising the Mallorcan socialists - PSM - and others to the left of centre. This coalition is mirrored at regional government level, i.e. the Balearics Government. Its president, Francesc Antich (PSOE), has looked to try and smooth over the problems at the Council, created, so it would seem, by differences with its own president, Francina Armengol (also PSOE). I trust, by the way, that you're following all this, as I'll be testing you later.
The consequence of the resignations at the Council is that what remains of the coalition now forms a minority. Chief among the accusations coming from the UM is that the Council has become a "dead institution" and a vehicle of "false marketing" (whatever that refers to). It should, the UM maintain, revert to what it is meant to do, namely undertake projects and investment. It's handy that the UM should make this point. There must be many who have no idea what the point of the Council actually is, set, as it is, betwixt the regional government and the town halls.
Setting aside the relevance or not of the Council (though this is a legitimate subject for debate in its own right), the fractiousness is an indictment not only of an inability of those of different political persuasions to work together in the name of the common good but also of the very nature of coalition politics. The UM is a centre-right party; it is not a naturally sympathetic partner for either the PSOE or the Bloc. But partner it is, or has been, as a means of getting some hold on the reigns of power and of making up the numbers to actually form a government. The UM says that it is not planning a rival pact with the conservative Partido Popular (PP), one that might be able to take over the running of the Council for the remainder of the current legislature. Yet, the PP would be a more natural ally. Both have similar political philosophies, apart from the obvious nationalist dimension of the UM and therefore also the language question.
Into all of this strides "The Bulletin" with a call to Antich to declare an election; an election, that is, at regional government level. Why? The Council is an entirely different body. Moreover, it is, as the name makes clear, a body for Mallorca and not the Balearics. It is, however, true to say that the regional government has stumbled into its own crises, in which the UM often appears to be the common factor. There was, for instance, an issue with the former tourism minister (UM) who had to be jettisoned and replaced by the current incumbent, Miquel Nadal (also UM), himself implicated in a scandal.
Were there to be an election, who is to say that the status quo would not be the result? That the same partners would not have to coalesce? Where would this get anyone? Perhaps the problems at the Council are at least in part due to a certain atrophy, that "dead institution", brought about by the horse-trading of a coalition of differing political colours. It is not that coalition politics cannot work. They do in Germany, for example, albeit that consensus politics there leads to a lack of radicalism the country has long needed. Germany now has a more natural coalition of the conservatives and the free-market liberals, one that may well provide the stimulus for change. But the philosophy of seeking consensus is one that seems to be lacking in Mallorca, one that places political party power above a desire to act in tandem for the common good. It is the maturity of the political mindset, or the lack thereof, that creates the problems for sound government in Mallorca. Not the system per se.
A mid-term election would serve no real purpose, unless the problems at the Council do repeat themselves at regional government level, though the feeling is that they do not exist there. Perhaps so; perhaps not. Either way, a solution lies in a greater humility and maturity. Or maybe there's another one - if it is indeed moribund, then scrap the Council altogether.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - U2, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590ljQM08H0. Today's title - one letter's missing of course; this is not an Ian Dury thing, but a film question. Who were they?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The consequence of the resignations at the Council is that what remains of the coalition now forms a minority. Chief among the accusations coming from the UM is that the Council has become a "dead institution" and a vehicle of "false marketing" (whatever that refers to). It should, the UM maintain, revert to what it is meant to do, namely undertake projects and investment. It's handy that the UM should make this point. There must be many who have no idea what the point of the Council actually is, set, as it is, betwixt the regional government and the town halls.
Setting aside the relevance or not of the Council (though this is a legitimate subject for debate in its own right), the fractiousness is an indictment not only of an inability of those of different political persuasions to work together in the name of the common good but also of the very nature of coalition politics. The UM is a centre-right party; it is not a naturally sympathetic partner for either the PSOE or the Bloc. But partner it is, or has been, as a means of getting some hold on the reigns of power and of making up the numbers to actually form a government. The UM says that it is not planning a rival pact with the conservative Partido Popular (PP), one that might be able to take over the running of the Council for the remainder of the current legislature. Yet, the PP would be a more natural ally. Both have similar political philosophies, apart from the obvious nationalist dimension of the UM and therefore also the language question.
Into all of this strides "The Bulletin" with a call to Antich to declare an election; an election, that is, at regional government level. Why? The Council is an entirely different body. Moreover, it is, as the name makes clear, a body for Mallorca and not the Balearics. It is, however, true to say that the regional government has stumbled into its own crises, in which the UM often appears to be the common factor. There was, for instance, an issue with the former tourism minister (UM) who had to be jettisoned and replaced by the current incumbent, Miquel Nadal (also UM), himself implicated in a scandal.
Were there to be an election, who is to say that the status quo would not be the result? That the same partners would not have to coalesce? Where would this get anyone? Perhaps the problems at the Council are at least in part due to a certain atrophy, that "dead institution", brought about by the horse-trading of a coalition of differing political colours. It is not that coalition politics cannot work. They do in Germany, for example, albeit that consensus politics there leads to a lack of radicalism the country has long needed. Germany now has a more natural coalition of the conservatives and the free-market liberals, one that may well provide the stimulus for change. But the philosophy of seeking consensus is one that seems to be lacking in Mallorca, one that places political party power above a desire to act in tandem for the common good. It is the maturity of the political mindset, or the lack thereof, that creates the problems for sound government in Mallorca. Not the system per se.
A mid-term election would serve no real purpose, unless the problems at the Council do repeat themselves at regional government level, though the feeling is that they do not exist there. Perhaps so; perhaps not. Either way, a solution lies in a greater humility and maturity. Or maybe there's another one - if it is indeed moribund, then scrap the Council altogether.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - U2, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590ljQM08H0. Today's title - one letter's missing of course; this is not an Ian Dury thing, but a film question. Who were they?(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Thursday, October 01, 2009
October
October. A month with a misleading name. It sounds as if it should be eight (which indeed is what it once was in calendar terms), but it is ten. It's pretend month, pretending it is still summer when it isn't. It is depression month, the month of realising that it has all gone again - the summer that is. However much some will protest that it is their favourite month - for reasons of relative quietness, often fairly pleasant weather, and the prospect of rest after the slog of the season - they doth protest too much, methinks. Take the summer out of Mallorca and one is left with a void of anti-life. Mallorca, despite the claims for all-year tourism, is summer. Mallorca is summer. It is not October, nor any month from now till May. If Mallorca is not summer, then what is the point of it? Despite the mildness and calmness (save when a typhoon lifts roofs), we hanker after the disappearing heat and the vitality of summer because these are purposeful. It, summer, has meaning, which the off-months do not. October, a month that can be blessed by the unoppressive mid-20s, is also the month of retreating daylight, of preparation for winter heating, wood gathering for some, butane-bottle accumulation for others. It is, nevertheless, a month of resurgence, of a peculiar re-birth, of greenness returning to lawns, the consequence of reappeared green shoots, heavy dews, rain and the onset of the damp humidity which is the constant of the winter months. But within these shoots grows also moss and lurk mosquitoes and flies, waken from the slumber of the heat months and themselves invigorated by the storm time.
October is also the month of assessment and appraisal, of how it all was and of how it will all be, and in the latter category there will not be, for a number one fears, any "all be". Not anymore. The hotels have not been subject to the mass early closures that were being predicted. That some will close at the start of the month is earlier than normal, but to close towards the middle of the month is not unusual. Those that stagger on to the going back of the clocks do so in the hope of the last burst of tourism energy, the British half-term. But the hotels and the bars and the rest lay off those without the heat months of employment record and so the incapacity to claim the dole. October is panic month, of wondering about survival, of anxiety and worse.
October is the month of moving, of uprooting, of seeking opportunities on the mainland and in the Canaries, of following the employment afforded by phoney summers that exist in the Costa del Sol and Gran Canaria, but at least phoney summers exist there. Not in Mallorca. From October. The great bacon-frying and terrace-touting diaspora collect their belongings in a suitcase and cause an unseasonal rise in the figures passing through Palma airport. But they are going, not coming.
October is the month of whitewash, newspaper and bin-liner stockpiling. At some point, the glass fronts will be obscured, papered over, washed out, the movable and vulnerable signs and lights secured within bulges of taped-up black plastic, the pick-up will be loaded with chairs and tables, the mattresses will be left outside the entry to reception. And on All Saints, the final rites of pretend summer will be read and it really will be gone again.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Simply Red, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izOdvBmTDh0. Today's title - Irish, as if you didn't know.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
October is also the month of assessment and appraisal, of how it all was and of how it will all be, and in the latter category there will not be, for a number one fears, any "all be". Not anymore. The hotels have not been subject to the mass early closures that were being predicted. That some will close at the start of the month is earlier than normal, but to close towards the middle of the month is not unusual. Those that stagger on to the going back of the clocks do so in the hope of the last burst of tourism energy, the British half-term. But the hotels and the bars and the rest lay off those without the heat months of employment record and so the incapacity to claim the dole. October is panic month, of wondering about survival, of anxiety and worse.
October is the month of moving, of uprooting, of seeking opportunities on the mainland and in the Canaries, of following the employment afforded by phoney summers that exist in the Costa del Sol and Gran Canaria, but at least phoney summers exist there. Not in Mallorca. From October. The great bacon-frying and terrace-touting diaspora collect their belongings in a suitcase and cause an unseasonal rise in the figures passing through Palma airport. But they are going, not coming.
October is the month of whitewash, newspaper and bin-liner stockpiling. At some point, the glass fronts will be obscured, papered over, washed out, the movable and vulnerable signs and lights secured within bulges of taped-up black plastic, the pick-up will be loaded with chairs and tables, the mattresses will be left outside the entry to reception. And on All Saints, the final rites of pretend summer will be read and it really will be gone again.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Simply Red, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izOdvBmTDh0. Today's title - Irish, as if you didn't know.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Stars
Awards ceremonies. You know the sort of thing. Oscars, BAFTAs and the like: Gwyneth squirting tears and dear, dear David Niven sending his fridge. And then there are the annual awards given out by the "Travel Trade Gazette" (TTG). Is any awards ceremony not glittering? That of the TTG was, because they said so. All the worthies of the travel industry and Austin Healey, to boot. But hopefully he didn't boot anyone. He was there, it seems, more because he was a "star" of "Strictly Come Dancing". Was he really. Be careful with the star turn. I once attended a do where a well-known, former BBC weatherman went down like a lead weather balloon when he littered his after-dinner ents with so-called jokes of questionable racial content. At least it wasn't the Central Synagogue's annual get-together. And with that connection ... I have previously mentioned my Henry Kissinger story, but not the fact that when he made his speech in New Orleans he had to stop and ask what audience he was actually addressing. Speech-making by cut and paste, and a fat cheque, to boot. Not only if you're Austin Healey.
Be all this as it may. The TTG's annual awards, and the list is long enough to take up a weekend break, were held last week. The nominations were ... ? Among those for "trade-facing website of the year" and "travel gives back" - whatever they are - were those for hotel chain of the year. Six nominees, three of them Mallorcan. And the winner was ... ? Iberostar. Riu and Sol Melia were the two other Mallorca-based chains.
Clearly, this accolade was bestowed not solely because of Iberostar's hotels on the island - it is an international player and an important one - but the hotels in the area (six of them in Alcúdia and Playa de Muro) exude a class and distinction that is well worthy of the company being awarded the top honour. While there is some navel-gazing in respect of some of the island's hotel stock in comparison with the newer holiday destinations of Turkey and Egypt and so on, Iberostar impresses with its commitment to constant improvement. A winter does not pass without major renovation in at least one of its establishments; renovation, moreover, which has created a certain differentiation, such as the high-tech styling of the Playa de Muro Village reception, within the context of a strong and visible brand image and corporate identity: the Iberostar "star" is one of the iconic symbols of local hospitality.
The Iberostar hotels of Alcúdia bay are new by comparison with some others. The Club Macs are now almost forty years old, Bellevue not far behind. It is perhaps understandable that concerns are expressed about the general quality of the island's hotel stock - compared with that in competitor destinations - if one takes into account the fact that Mallorca (and Spain) was at the vanguard of mass tourism. Rather like Britain suffered from being the first European country to undergo an industrial revolution and thereby created an infrastructure destined for obsolescence because of the lack of a formula to apply, so Mallorca had no template to go by when it gave itself over to hotels. Those who followed could learn from the mistakes. The Iberostars, though, rather than the pack-em-in, sell-em-cheap philosophy, opted for one of built-in quality supported by that strong brand image to reflect and to convey this quality. This is not to be critical, especially given the sheer scale of some of the older stock. The investment required for the sort of improvements that might bring them up to the levels of the competitor destinations would be enormous. But having said that, the investment Iberostar puts in is far from insignificant. Witness, if you had, the total gutting and then refurbishment of the likes of the Albufera Playa.
Iberostar deserves its award and deserves to be recognised as a company which demonstrates how good Mallorca can be if it really tries. Stars? Several.
Just on travel, you might be interested in knowing some websites to visit which offer savings for a variety of travel needs. "The Times" has listed 33 such sites. Go here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/news/article6849547.ece
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Kinks, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaojZhoeE5s. Today's title - ginger bloke and his group.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Index for September 2009
Alcúdia day of the tourist - 9 September 2009, 11 September 2009
Alcúdia Fair 2009 - 26 September 2009
Alcúdia old town shops - 1 September 2009
Balearic Government rationalisation - 5 September 2009, 6 September 2009
Barcarès - 4 September 2009, 10 September 2009, 16 September 2009
Binissalem Vermar 2009 - 22 September 2009
Catalan v. Castilian - 27 September 2009
Celebrities - 20 September 2009, 28 September 2009
Christian names - 14 September 2009, 23 September 2009
Diario de Mallorca - 29 September 2009
Fiestas - 22 September 2009
Guardia Civil - 27 September 2009
Hacienda scam - 4 September 2009
Holiday rentals - 18 September 2009
Hospital General de Muro - 28 September 2009
Hotels closing early - 17 September 2009
Iberostar - 30 September 2009
IKEA - 21 September 2009
Illegal street selling, Alcúdia - 7 September 2009
Internet and newspapers - 29 September 2009
Jamón serrano circuit, Alcúdia - 25 September 2009
Market value, invoice - 3 September 2009
Natural and butane gas - 24 September 2009
Obra Cultural Balear - 27 September 2009
Plastic bags - 11 September 2009
Posters - 8 September 2009
Puerto Alcudia's new terminal - 16 September 2009
Sa Pobla-Alcúdia railway - 12 September 2009, 13 September 2009, 16 September 2009
Social conflict - 19 September 2009
Status Quo - 2 September 2009
Storms - 14 September 2009, 17 September 2009
Sun, Sea and A&E - 28 September 2009
Tourism promotion - 6 September 2009
Travel awards - 30 September 2009
Travel writing - 15 September 2009
Be all this as it may. The TTG's annual awards, and the list is long enough to take up a weekend break, were held last week. The nominations were ... ? Among those for "trade-facing website of the year" and "travel gives back" - whatever they are - were those for hotel chain of the year. Six nominees, three of them Mallorcan. And the winner was ... ? Iberostar. Riu and Sol Melia were the two other Mallorca-based chains.
Clearly, this accolade was bestowed not solely because of Iberostar's hotels on the island - it is an international player and an important one - but the hotels in the area (six of them in Alcúdia and Playa de Muro) exude a class and distinction that is well worthy of the company being awarded the top honour. While there is some navel-gazing in respect of some of the island's hotel stock in comparison with the newer holiday destinations of Turkey and Egypt and so on, Iberostar impresses with its commitment to constant improvement. A winter does not pass without major renovation in at least one of its establishments; renovation, moreover, which has created a certain differentiation, such as the high-tech styling of the Playa de Muro Village reception, within the context of a strong and visible brand image and corporate identity: the Iberostar "star" is one of the iconic symbols of local hospitality.
The Iberostar hotels of Alcúdia bay are new by comparison with some others. The Club Macs are now almost forty years old, Bellevue not far behind. It is perhaps understandable that concerns are expressed about the general quality of the island's hotel stock - compared with that in competitor destinations - if one takes into account the fact that Mallorca (and Spain) was at the vanguard of mass tourism. Rather like Britain suffered from being the first European country to undergo an industrial revolution and thereby created an infrastructure destined for obsolescence because of the lack of a formula to apply, so Mallorca had no template to go by when it gave itself over to hotels. Those who followed could learn from the mistakes. The Iberostars, though, rather than the pack-em-in, sell-em-cheap philosophy, opted for one of built-in quality supported by that strong brand image to reflect and to convey this quality. This is not to be critical, especially given the sheer scale of some of the older stock. The investment required for the sort of improvements that might bring them up to the levels of the competitor destinations would be enormous. But having said that, the investment Iberostar puts in is far from insignificant. Witness, if you had, the total gutting and then refurbishment of the likes of the Albufera Playa.
Iberostar deserves its award and deserves to be recognised as a company which demonstrates how good Mallorca can be if it really tries. Stars? Several.
Just on travel, you might be interested in knowing some websites to visit which offer savings for a variety of travel needs. "The Times" has listed 33 such sites. Go here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/news/article6849547.ece
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Kinks, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaojZhoeE5s. Today's title - ginger bloke and his group.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Index for September 2009
Alcúdia day of the tourist - 9 September 2009, 11 September 2009
Alcúdia Fair 2009 - 26 September 2009
Alcúdia old town shops - 1 September 2009
Balearic Government rationalisation - 5 September 2009, 6 September 2009
Barcarès - 4 September 2009, 10 September 2009, 16 September 2009
Binissalem Vermar 2009 - 22 September 2009
Catalan v. Castilian - 27 September 2009
Celebrities - 20 September 2009, 28 September 2009
Christian names - 14 September 2009, 23 September 2009
Diario de Mallorca - 29 September 2009
Fiestas - 22 September 2009
Guardia Civil - 27 September 2009
Hacienda scam - 4 September 2009
Holiday rentals - 18 September 2009
Hospital General de Muro - 28 September 2009
Hotels closing early - 17 September 2009
Iberostar - 30 September 2009
IKEA - 21 September 2009
Illegal street selling, Alcúdia - 7 September 2009
Internet and newspapers - 29 September 2009
Jamón serrano circuit, Alcúdia - 25 September 2009
Market value, invoice - 3 September 2009
Natural and butane gas - 24 September 2009
Obra Cultural Balear - 27 September 2009
Plastic bags - 11 September 2009
Posters - 8 September 2009
Puerto Alcudia's new terminal - 16 September 2009
Sa Pobla-Alcúdia railway - 12 September 2009, 13 September 2009, 16 September 2009
Social conflict - 19 September 2009
Status Quo - 2 September 2009
Storms - 14 September 2009, 17 September 2009
Sun, Sea and A&E - 28 September 2009
Tourism promotion - 6 September 2009
Travel awards - 30 September 2009
Travel writing - 15 September 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Set Me Free
Astute observers amongst you might have noticed that I do, from time to time, make reference to the "Diario de Mallorca". To be more accurate, it is to the paper's website, a well-designed, well-archived facility, the only irritant of which is an occasional tendency towards intrusive adverts for the likes of SEAT. The "Diario" has been blowing its own internet trumpet, revealing traffic figures which would seem to establish the newspaper's site as the premier (Spanish) news site on the island, itself not a hugely difficult task, given the small number of competitors, but an achievement nonetheless. The paper would appear to have made the announcement at least in part as a response to a claim - "fictitious", it says - by the Balearics part of the "El Mundo" site that it was the leader in terms of visits etc., a claim rebutted by OJDinteractiva, the online tracking version of the OJD press circulation audit body.
The figures show, for instance, that the "Diario" claimed over 350,000 unique visitors in August, a number boosted to some extent by those following the news of the bombs. The degree, of course, to which anyone much of a non-Spanish background uses the site I wouldn't know, and nor presumably do they, except by geographical location, which, in itself, wouldn't mean a lot.
One of the things the "Diario" has going for it, in its internet incarnation, is a pleasing enough design and appearance. Compare this with, for example, the site for "Ultima Hora" and also "The Bulletin" (the same stable as "Ultima Hora"), and there isn't really a comparison. The "Diario" is the premier site, not just in terms of appearance but also content, far outstripping "El Mundo" for local news.
Good though the site is, it is, like most newspapers' websites, just a digital version of the actual paper. The site clearly comes into its own at times of breaking news, such as with the bombs (as do other media sites), but the volume of traffic is not, in itself, necessarily a cause for massive celebration. As with other newspapers, the "Diario" faces the same challenge of generating revenues from something that is free-to-air, so to speak. Of the 350,000 unique visitors in a month (the average daily circulation of the paper is around 22,500 - OJD audit), a question is, how many of those visitors also see the newspaper or only go to the site, and as importantly how many of them take any notice of the ads. You can't always avoid them, but click them away as quickly as you can physically move the cursor. There are ways and means of evaluating effectiveness of advertising via the internet, which are far more robust than many for print, but quoting numbers of visitors demonstrates potential and little more. This said, it is evident that advertisers with the budgets to do so are investing increasing amounts in techniques to evaluate internet advertising effectiveness, diverting these budgets from more traditional channels, be they print, radio, television or direct.
The good news for the newspapers should be that advertisers are willing to make such investments, but a further question is - and has been since the internet really took off - how to be viable financially and to offer excellent copy if there is no cover charge. They have made a rod for their own back by being free in the expectation that ad revenues would roll in. With the exception of mixed-model sites like the "Financial Times", newspapers are free and where they are slimmed-down versions of the actual paper - as with "The Bulletin" - they are barely worth the effort. Newspapers cannot avoid the internet, but once the free genie was let out of the lamp can it be put back in again? News International, for one, believes that it can be, but will others follow? Only perhaps by differentiating the content of the print and online versions can such a policy succeed.
The internet has the power to subvert, in many ways, and one is to disrupt the normal business process of customer purchasing. The democracy of the internet has largely demanded that stuff be free. It's a lousy model if it undermines, for example, journalistic integrity and investigation for which there is a resultant insufficient funding. In the same way as file-sharing has attacked the returns of record companies and artists, so free-to-air newspapers threaten to attack good journalism and therefore good newspapers. The analogy, though, is not strong. The newspapers have sanctioned the free use.
I see no reason why one shouldn't pay. To cite another example - the BBC. Overseas, notwithstanding streaming for sport that cannot always be obtained, the BBC is free. No licence fee. Why don't they charge? Yet even here, it would be a case of charging for something that already exists, despite innovation that makes it one of the best of all websites. And it is in innovation that the future lies, as does the possibility for generating new or additional revenue streams. But this comes back to those figures - the ones for visitors and so on. As soon as a charge is made and therefore a password needed, Google cannot set its robots to work. Bingo, the rankings optimisation goes to pot, or even to bot. A challenge is to work around the Google tyranny and the misguided notion that numbers of visitors is the be all and end all. It isn't. Content is. It so happens that the "Diario" wins on both counts. But so long as the branding is strong, and most newspapers benefit from this, then the opportunity exists to create niches of content and therefore readerships within the framework of the newspaper and its website. And to charge, regardless of what Google might have to say in its rankings.
I could go on. It's a huge subject, and one that I am involved with in working up something new - of which more at some point in the future no doubt. Meantime, I shall continue to visit the "Diario" and add to its traffic numbers. Also meantime, I will pay not a centimo for the privilege and nor will I take any notice of the adverts.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Bros, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szWkAaD00j0. Today's title - presses are set and people want everything for free; who was this?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The figures show, for instance, that the "Diario" claimed over 350,000 unique visitors in August, a number boosted to some extent by those following the news of the bombs. The degree, of course, to which anyone much of a non-Spanish background uses the site I wouldn't know, and nor presumably do they, except by geographical location, which, in itself, wouldn't mean a lot.
One of the things the "Diario" has going for it, in its internet incarnation, is a pleasing enough design and appearance. Compare this with, for example, the site for "Ultima Hora" and also "The Bulletin" (the same stable as "Ultima Hora"), and there isn't really a comparison. The "Diario" is the premier site, not just in terms of appearance but also content, far outstripping "El Mundo" for local news.
Good though the site is, it is, like most newspapers' websites, just a digital version of the actual paper. The site clearly comes into its own at times of breaking news, such as with the bombs (as do other media sites), but the volume of traffic is not, in itself, necessarily a cause for massive celebration. As with other newspapers, the "Diario" faces the same challenge of generating revenues from something that is free-to-air, so to speak. Of the 350,000 unique visitors in a month (the average daily circulation of the paper is around 22,500 - OJD audit), a question is, how many of those visitors also see the newspaper or only go to the site, and as importantly how many of them take any notice of the ads. You can't always avoid them, but click them away as quickly as you can physically move the cursor. There are ways and means of evaluating effectiveness of advertising via the internet, which are far more robust than many for print, but quoting numbers of visitors demonstrates potential and little more. This said, it is evident that advertisers with the budgets to do so are investing increasing amounts in techniques to evaluate internet advertising effectiveness, diverting these budgets from more traditional channels, be they print, radio, television or direct.
The good news for the newspapers should be that advertisers are willing to make such investments, but a further question is - and has been since the internet really took off - how to be viable financially and to offer excellent copy if there is no cover charge. They have made a rod for their own back by being free in the expectation that ad revenues would roll in. With the exception of mixed-model sites like the "Financial Times", newspapers are free and where they are slimmed-down versions of the actual paper - as with "The Bulletin" - they are barely worth the effort. Newspapers cannot avoid the internet, but once the free genie was let out of the lamp can it be put back in again? News International, for one, believes that it can be, but will others follow? Only perhaps by differentiating the content of the print and online versions can such a policy succeed.
The internet has the power to subvert, in many ways, and one is to disrupt the normal business process of customer purchasing. The democracy of the internet has largely demanded that stuff be free. It's a lousy model if it undermines, for example, journalistic integrity and investigation for which there is a resultant insufficient funding. In the same way as file-sharing has attacked the returns of record companies and artists, so free-to-air newspapers threaten to attack good journalism and therefore good newspapers. The analogy, though, is not strong. The newspapers have sanctioned the free use.
I see no reason why one shouldn't pay. To cite another example - the BBC. Overseas, notwithstanding streaming for sport that cannot always be obtained, the BBC is free. No licence fee. Why don't they charge? Yet even here, it would be a case of charging for something that already exists, despite innovation that makes it one of the best of all websites. And it is in innovation that the future lies, as does the possibility for generating new or additional revenue streams. But this comes back to those figures - the ones for visitors and so on. As soon as a charge is made and therefore a password needed, Google cannot set its robots to work. Bingo, the rankings optimisation goes to pot, or even to bot. A challenge is to work around the Google tyranny and the misguided notion that numbers of visitors is the be all and end all. It isn't. Content is. It so happens that the "Diario" wins on both counts. But so long as the branding is strong, and most newspapers benefit from this, then the opportunity exists to create niches of content and therefore readerships within the framework of the newspaper and its website. And to charge, regardless of what Google might have to say in its rankings.
I could go on. It's a huge subject, and one that I am involved with in working up something new - of which more at some point in the future no doubt. Meantime, I shall continue to visit the "Diario" and add to its traffic numbers. Also meantime, I will pay not a centimo for the privilege and nor will I take any notice of the adverts.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Bros, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szWkAaD00j0. Today's title - presses are set and people want everything for free; who was this?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Captain, I Said What
Let's say you are Welsh. At Cardiff airport two policemen come up to you and ask you, in English, to produce your papers. You comply with the demand, but reply in Welsh. One of the policemen insists that you speak English. You do so, but the policeman then says that you must speak in a clearer fashion, to which you ask what he said. The police then, behind closed doors, attack you, hitting you on the head, in the mouth and the stomach and then charge you.
This, in essence, but substituting Catalan for Welsh and Castilian for English, is what is alleged to have happened to one Iván Cortés at Palma airport on 7 August. The police were Guardia Civil officers. The case has been taken up by the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB), an organisation that defends and promotes the use of Catalan. It has obtained a meeting with the director general of the island's Guardia to ask that "aggression" towards Catalan speakers ceases, the Cortés incident being the springboard for this request.
Cortés was allowed to make his journey, to London as it happens, where he was seen by a doctor whose report would appear to confirm injuries. The OCB adds that security cameras at Palma airport could also confirm what is alleged to have taken place.
This incident first came to light at the start of this month. A report in "The Diario" (3 September) listed what I have above. It also carried a photo from a press conference of Cortés, together with Tomeu Martí, the co-ordinator for the OCB. Cortés would probably be in his twenties. He has long dark hair and a beard with a longish, thin goatie. He has a dark complexion, suggesting mixed race or possibly one particular race.
Accusations against police happen everywhere, not always with justification. One has to bear in mind that the incident took place a few days after the Palmanova bombing. The police would have been on high alert, though one thing one can probably say is that Cortés does not look like how one might expect an ETA terrorist to appear. A question might be, however, why the officers demanded to see his papers in the first place. They are within their rights to do so, but the question might still be raised.
Guardia officers speak Castilian. Only Castilian. It is not the first time that one has heard of an incident, assuming the Cortés one to be accurate, in which there has been something of an issue with someone speaking Catalan. Guardia officers speak Castilian because it is the language of the state. And the Guardia is very closely associated with the state, the Spanish state. It is a defender of the state. Whether that means that it should be a defender of one language is another matter. In Mallorca, Catalan and Castilian enjoy joint official status.
One does not of course have the other side of the story. Nevertheless, an alleged attack on a defenceless man, whose only apparent "crime" was to speak Catalan and to seek clarification of what was being asked of him, is deserving of investigation, especially as it involves the schism of language and regionalism. There is, though, more to all this. Go back a bit. That other name. Tomeu Martí. Remember him? Probably not. Remember the "Acampallengua", the pro-Catalan gathering in Sa Pobla in late May? Remember that a senior figure in the OCB was arrested for "disobedience" by the Guardia? That was Martí. He was recently fined for refusing a request to show his papers, the cause of his arrest. Why he was asked to do so, I am unsure. But asked he was.
The OCB is not a party, but it has links to the political establishment locally. You may recall that back in December there was the campaign to speak Catalan over a coffee in the local bar. The OCB was behind that. It followed hard on the heels of the campaign to promote wider use of Catalan in bars and restaurants, one funded at a not insignificant cost by the Council of Mallorca. Both campaigns were innocent enough, but the "Acampallengua" did have an undercurrent of youth radicalisation, and then there was the demonstration in Palma during the summer in favour of Catalan (and indeed another in support of Castilian).
The Cortés case cannot be seen just as an isolated incident of possible police aggression. It has to be seen in a wider political and social context. At a press conference held two days ago to announce that request for a meeting with the Guardia, a representative of the republican left in the Balearics shared the platform with Martí, and a link was made to the fact that José Bono, president of the national congress of deputies, had been prohibited from speaking Catalan in the congress. Moreover, Martí has accused the Balearics delegate to the central government, Ramón Socias, of a failure to respond to "acts of discrimination against Catalan".
If it hasn't already been, the Guardia risks being dragged into some murky political waters, some, given its past reputation, it would do well to avoid. As a defender of the state, the whole state, it should not become the clarion call for political opportunism and polarisation in Mallorca, which this has the danger of becoming, and with the forces of the law set against elements of the political establishment, themselves supported by elements of a spot of "agitprop".
* To see the original "Diario" article and photo, go here: http://www.diariodemallorca.es/mallorca/2009/09/03/joven-afirma-agentes-guardia-civil-le-agredieron-hablar-catalan/499821.html
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Talk Talk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V6CdsAMGYk. Today's title - to explain: captain is a rank in the Guardia; the rest follows. Who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
This, in essence, but substituting Catalan for Welsh and Castilian for English, is what is alleged to have happened to one Iván Cortés at Palma airport on 7 August. The police were Guardia Civil officers. The case has been taken up by the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB), an organisation that defends and promotes the use of Catalan. It has obtained a meeting with the director general of the island's Guardia to ask that "aggression" towards Catalan speakers ceases, the Cortés incident being the springboard for this request.
Cortés was allowed to make his journey, to London as it happens, where he was seen by a doctor whose report would appear to confirm injuries. The OCB adds that security cameras at Palma airport could also confirm what is alleged to have taken place.
This incident first came to light at the start of this month. A report in "The Diario" (3 September) listed what I have above. It also carried a photo from a press conference of Cortés, together with Tomeu Martí, the co-ordinator for the OCB. Cortés would probably be in his twenties. He has long dark hair and a beard with a longish, thin goatie. He has a dark complexion, suggesting mixed race or possibly one particular race.
Accusations against police happen everywhere, not always with justification. One has to bear in mind that the incident took place a few days after the Palmanova bombing. The police would have been on high alert, though one thing one can probably say is that Cortés does not look like how one might expect an ETA terrorist to appear. A question might be, however, why the officers demanded to see his papers in the first place. They are within their rights to do so, but the question might still be raised.
Guardia officers speak Castilian. Only Castilian. It is not the first time that one has heard of an incident, assuming the Cortés one to be accurate, in which there has been something of an issue with someone speaking Catalan. Guardia officers speak Castilian because it is the language of the state. And the Guardia is very closely associated with the state, the Spanish state. It is a defender of the state. Whether that means that it should be a defender of one language is another matter. In Mallorca, Catalan and Castilian enjoy joint official status.
One does not of course have the other side of the story. Nevertheless, an alleged attack on a defenceless man, whose only apparent "crime" was to speak Catalan and to seek clarification of what was being asked of him, is deserving of investigation, especially as it involves the schism of language and regionalism. There is, though, more to all this. Go back a bit. That other name. Tomeu Martí. Remember him? Probably not. Remember the "Acampallengua", the pro-Catalan gathering in Sa Pobla in late May? Remember that a senior figure in the OCB was arrested for "disobedience" by the Guardia? That was Martí. He was recently fined for refusing a request to show his papers, the cause of his arrest. Why he was asked to do so, I am unsure. But asked he was.
The OCB is not a party, but it has links to the political establishment locally. You may recall that back in December there was the campaign to speak Catalan over a coffee in the local bar. The OCB was behind that. It followed hard on the heels of the campaign to promote wider use of Catalan in bars and restaurants, one funded at a not insignificant cost by the Council of Mallorca. Both campaigns were innocent enough, but the "Acampallengua" did have an undercurrent of youth radicalisation, and then there was the demonstration in Palma during the summer in favour of Catalan (and indeed another in support of Castilian).
The Cortés case cannot be seen just as an isolated incident of possible police aggression. It has to be seen in a wider political and social context. At a press conference held two days ago to announce that request for a meeting with the Guardia, a representative of the republican left in the Balearics shared the platform with Martí, and a link was made to the fact that José Bono, president of the national congress of deputies, had been prohibited from speaking Catalan in the congress. Moreover, Martí has accused the Balearics delegate to the central government, Ramón Socias, of a failure to respond to "acts of discrimination against Catalan".
If it hasn't already been, the Guardia risks being dragged into some murky political waters, some, given its past reputation, it would do well to avoid. As a defender of the state, the whole state, it should not become the clarion call for political opportunism and polarisation in Mallorca, which this has the danger of becoming, and with the forces of the law set against elements of the political establishment, themselves supported by elements of a spot of "agitprop".
* To see the original "Diario" article and photo, go here: http://www.diariodemallorca.es/mallorca/2009/09/03/joven-afirma-agentes-guardia-civil-le-agredieron-hablar-catalan/499821.html
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Talk Talk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V6CdsAMGYk. Today's title - to explain: captain is a rank in the Guardia; the rest follows. Who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Saturday, September 26, 2009
In Another World
All the fun of the fair. Candy-floss, woven sugar sticking to the hair; no bumping, but there always was, and the sound of The Kinks from a tinny speaker at one end of the dodgems track; a rare exotic fruit, the coconut, knocked down in the shy and smashed open at home to provide a slug of its sweet milk. There was also something dark and sinister about the fair. Not just the ghoulish apparitions of the ghost train and the screams as a luminous skeleton with a lascivious smile sprung up from the floor. Not just the crossing of the palm with silver, Gypsy Rose and her powers of the afterlife and future. Not just the itinerant lowlife, the travelling bands travelling at the edges of conformist society. It was the otherworldiness of the fair. The annual transformation of the local rec or park. When the fair came to town, the promise of all the fun hinted at something unseen and mysterious. It was an alteration, a disturbance to the normalcy of suburban living. The arrival of a certain brutishness. It was also long before health and safety, zealous revenue inspectors and the Benefits Agency. Gypsy Rose probably has to register for VAT nowadays. And issue a receipt. It was also before "love" and "mate". It was a time of "missus" and "squire" and "young man", the latter intoned as if by a bleating sheep. The fair, the circus and the panto. These were our altered states, and they had all been passed down along a time continuum dating back decades. The fair was partly the bastard child of the Victorian freak show, yet it was also the distant descendant of the fairs of both rural and urban life. It was the very intangibility of the past that lent the fair its air of otherworldiness.
At some point the fair had diverged, had taken different turnings, and one was given the Jack the Lads from sarf London with their carousel transporters and the real squires, the squirarchy that presided over the country fair, an altogether more genteel affair of fairy cakes, the local Roundtable, horsemanship and agricultural workers shovelling the droppings into bags of manure.
The fair in Mallorca never underwent such a divergence. It is a collision of fairground and trade fair. All the fun and all the commerce of the fair. Dodgems there are, trampolined into contemporary proximity to the bouncy inflatable. And a bit away, the stands for farm machinery rubbing shoulders with wine and herb drinks and local ministries issuing recycling propaganda. And so it will be next weekend when the fair comes to town in Alcúdia. It is the season of the fair - all over again. And the programme betrays a familiarity. A possible concession to economic hard times lies in the absence of a full-on thrash on the Saturday night, replaced by a karaoke "show time" for local amateurs. As with reality TV, reality party nights cut the costs of production, even taking into account that a winner can hope to trouser 300 euros.
There is not the same sense of unseen darkness about the local fairs. They have their past, as will Alcúdia, in the form of the "caparrots" (the giant heads), the giants themselves and the pipers. As ever, tradition outs, even among the shiny agro-technology. But the tradition, this past, can be seen. It exists. It moves along the streets of the town, the giants lumbering from the town hall while the bag-pipes screech. The figures themselves may have an appearance of mystery, of the bizarre and surreal, but they are real enough, depriving the fair of that unknown menace, that untouchable otherworldliness. All the fun of the fair. It was what you could never see that made it so.
(The programme for this year's fair is now available on the WHAT'S ON BLOG - http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com.)
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The League Of Gentlemen. Today's title - one word missing; great song, great group from the '80s.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
At some point the fair had diverged, had taken different turnings, and one was given the Jack the Lads from sarf London with their carousel transporters and the real squires, the squirarchy that presided over the country fair, an altogether more genteel affair of fairy cakes, the local Roundtable, horsemanship and agricultural workers shovelling the droppings into bags of manure.
The fair in Mallorca never underwent such a divergence. It is a collision of fairground and trade fair. All the fun and all the commerce of the fair. Dodgems there are, trampolined into contemporary proximity to the bouncy inflatable. And a bit away, the stands for farm machinery rubbing shoulders with wine and herb drinks and local ministries issuing recycling propaganda. And so it will be next weekend when the fair comes to town in Alcúdia. It is the season of the fair - all over again. And the programme betrays a familiarity. A possible concession to economic hard times lies in the absence of a full-on thrash on the Saturday night, replaced by a karaoke "show time" for local amateurs. As with reality TV, reality party nights cut the costs of production, even taking into account that a winner can hope to trouser 300 euros.
There is not the same sense of unseen darkness about the local fairs. They have their past, as will Alcúdia, in the form of the "caparrots" (the giant heads), the giants themselves and the pipers. As ever, tradition outs, even among the shiny agro-technology. But the tradition, this past, can be seen. It exists. It moves along the streets of the town, the giants lumbering from the town hall while the bag-pipes screech. The figures themselves may have an appearance of mystery, of the bizarre and surreal, but they are real enough, depriving the fair of that unknown menace, that untouchable otherworldliness. All the fun of the fair. It was what you could never see that made it so.
(The programme for this year's fair is now available on the WHAT'S ON BLOG - http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com.)
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The League Of Gentlemen. Today's title - one word missing; great song, great group from the '80s.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Friday, September 25, 2009
Pig In A Poke
Pig in a poke. Strange expression. Any ideas what a poke is? It is in fact a sack or bag. The whole expression is to buy a pig in a poke, which translates as buying something without seeing it or knowing its value, especially a pig presumably. The current-day version might be to buy a bar in Mallorca - ok, it might have been seen (sometimes) but whether the true value is known is an entirely different matter. (Incidentally, the Spanish equivalent is buying a cat instead of a hare, apparently.)
But be that as it may. Bars are not the theme of the day. Pigs are. Or rather buying a pig in a bar. Or slices of the pig. It's that time of year again, one to which everyone looks forward with negligible anticipation. The ham circuit, "circuito jamón serrano". Alcúdia's annual pig in a bar traipse across the breadth of the municipality, sampling pieces of serrano in whichever bar or restaurant it happens to be on that day. It all starts today in Sa Vall in Bonaire. I know you can hardly wait.
Yet of course jamón serrano is actually pretty damn fine stuff. Whether it quite justifies its own circuit is another matter. But this ham is not the pink plastic variety also available in Mallorca and more obviously in British supermarkets. It is of superior quality, so much so that it is controlled in a way akin to wine. I don't as a rule take great chunks of archive pieces, but I'll make an exception just this once. This was how I put it two years ago:
"Whereas the British palate and visual eating sense are generally programmed to ham that is pink and often shrink-wrapped, there is a diversity of local ham in terms of its visual presentation, taste and colour. The British visitor will often retreat to the security of pinkness that comes as jamón york, but the more revered Spanish hams are jamón serrano or jamón ibérico which possess a more exotic depth of colour. The purpleness of these hams hints at a wilder taste, curing and preservation. And wilder is an apt description, jamón serrano literally meaning mountain ham."
The purpose of the "circuit" is not just to promote the ham but also to give a leg up to participating local restaurants, the thinking being that one cuts along for some free nosebag in the form of some ham and then moves onto a main course. More ham probably, but for which one pays. Given a local tendency to freeload, I do wonder if this laudable enough aim is actually achieved. Moreover, it's not as if jamón serrano is a rarity. It's hanging around all over the place - restaurants, delis, supermarkets - very often indeed hanging from the walls or ceilings. The consequence of the freebie ham is that, however unintentionally, you do end up with something of a pig in a poke. Yes you can see what you're eating but because it's free you don't know its real value. There again, go and buy a whole ham and you will soon find out.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Lisa Stansfield, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAW17gtSvak. Today's title - with which comedy sketch series is pig in a poke associated?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
But be that as it may. Bars are not the theme of the day. Pigs are. Or rather buying a pig in a bar. Or slices of the pig. It's that time of year again, one to which everyone looks forward with negligible anticipation. The ham circuit, "circuito jamón serrano". Alcúdia's annual pig in a bar traipse across the breadth of the municipality, sampling pieces of serrano in whichever bar or restaurant it happens to be on that day. It all starts today in Sa Vall in Bonaire. I know you can hardly wait.
Yet of course jamón serrano is actually pretty damn fine stuff. Whether it quite justifies its own circuit is another matter. But this ham is not the pink plastic variety also available in Mallorca and more obviously in British supermarkets. It is of superior quality, so much so that it is controlled in a way akin to wine. I don't as a rule take great chunks of archive pieces, but I'll make an exception just this once. This was how I put it two years ago:
"Whereas the British palate and visual eating sense are generally programmed to ham that is pink and often shrink-wrapped, there is a diversity of local ham in terms of its visual presentation, taste and colour. The British visitor will often retreat to the security of pinkness that comes as jamón york, but the more revered Spanish hams are jamón serrano or jamón ibérico which possess a more exotic depth of colour. The purpleness of these hams hints at a wilder taste, curing and preservation. And wilder is an apt description, jamón serrano literally meaning mountain ham."
The purpose of the "circuit" is not just to promote the ham but also to give a leg up to participating local restaurants, the thinking being that one cuts along for some free nosebag in the form of some ham and then moves onto a main course. More ham probably, but for which one pays. Given a local tendency to freeload, I do wonder if this laudable enough aim is actually achieved. Moreover, it's not as if jamón serrano is a rarity. It's hanging around all over the place - restaurants, delis, supermarkets - very often indeed hanging from the walls or ceilings. The consequence of the freebie ham is that, however unintentionally, you do end up with something of a pig in a poke. Yes you can see what you're eating but because it's free you don't know its real value. There again, go and buy a whole ham and you will soon find out.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Lisa Stansfield, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAW17gtSvak. Today's title - with which comedy sketch series is pig in a poke associated?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Thursday, September 24, 2009
So Natural
You may have missed the news, but something momentous occurred in Mallorca two days ago. No, it wasn't yet another letter about prices, nor was it a story about the litres per square metre of rain that have swamped the island. It was about some cubic metres - those of natural gas supply.
Work on a pipeline from Dènia on the mainland started at the end of 2008. The first gas is now flowing into Mallorca. Initially, it will serve Palma and the immediate area. One day, you never know, it might be available across the island. There are infrastructure issues to be factored in, not least those to do with domestic supply, but the resultant advantages are clear - lower bills, cleaner air and greater safety. It is a significant development, yet one wonders why news of the arrival of the gas was not given greater prominence.
Gas supply in Mallorca is largely confined to butane and propane. This is about to change. And not before time. Butane can be dangerous - explosions are not unheard of. There is a danger with any gas supply, but with butane the risks are greater. Poorly maintained connections and installations; out-of-date tubing and heaters; ill-fitting mountings. Moreover, the reliance on butane makes domestic life akin to living in a permanent camp-site. There are the bottles, and there is the constant likelihood of the gas giving out during the cooking of a roast chicken, followed - nearly always it seems - by the hunting of a torch to go and disconnect the empty container while someone holds an umbrella over you or the wind batters the gas house door shut. There is also the sheer effort involved. Butane bottles are heavy. Expect the incidence of hernia operations to decline as a result of natural gas. The chiropractors of Mallorca must be cursing its arrival. Pity the poor bastards who live on the fifth floor and don't have a lift. It's like camping, but it's also energy by Heath Robinson and from the manual of poor back health.
Butane is neither much cop when it comes to general health nor for the state of domestic walls. There is little less suited to Mallorca's winter climate of dampness and humidity than butane, given the watery vapours that appliances pump out. The use of natural gas to also generate electricity will see a lowering in demand for that electricity as the dehumidifiers can be turned down to their minimum settings.
The remoteness of Mallorca has been an issue, but the fact that it has taken until 2009 to get a pipeline functioning is a reminder of what, only relatively recently, was the inadequacy of infrastructure. Spain is still playing catch-up after the years of economic and civil engineering neglect. It is easy, though, to be critical of this johnny gas-come-lately. Britain has enjoyed natural gas for years. I can, however, still recall the strangely cosy, stale smell of my great aunt's house with its boiler, fired by Calor.
The arrival of the gas also signals what will eventually be the demise of the "butanero", the gas man. And signal the end of the truck clanging its load and hooting its horn to announce its weekly appearance. Mallorca still has its quaint deliveries and domestic services - the whistling tin dustbin on wheels of the bloke who sharpens knives and garden tools is one, the wine-dispensing vendors of towns like Sineu another. In Britain, there used to be the knife-sharpener with his stone, the Corona man, the fish man, the laundry man, the paraffin man. Maybe there was also a butane man. Not that I remember one. But they have all been consigned to a history dump caused by shopping centres and supermarkets, efficient domestic appliances and central heating. That's progress. And the butane man is likely to be looking for a new job.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Megadeth, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_awouQcIOo. Today's title - boy, was she good. Think Rochdale.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Work on a pipeline from Dènia on the mainland started at the end of 2008. The first gas is now flowing into Mallorca. Initially, it will serve Palma and the immediate area. One day, you never know, it might be available across the island. There are infrastructure issues to be factored in, not least those to do with domestic supply, but the resultant advantages are clear - lower bills, cleaner air and greater safety. It is a significant development, yet one wonders why news of the arrival of the gas was not given greater prominence.
Gas supply in Mallorca is largely confined to butane and propane. This is about to change. And not before time. Butane can be dangerous - explosions are not unheard of. There is a danger with any gas supply, but with butane the risks are greater. Poorly maintained connections and installations; out-of-date tubing and heaters; ill-fitting mountings. Moreover, the reliance on butane makes domestic life akin to living in a permanent camp-site. There are the bottles, and there is the constant likelihood of the gas giving out during the cooking of a roast chicken, followed - nearly always it seems - by the hunting of a torch to go and disconnect the empty container while someone holds an umbrella over you or the wind batters the gas house door shut. There is also the sheer effort involved. Butane bottles are heavy. Expect the incidence of hernia operations to decline as a result of natural gas. The chiropractors of Mallorca must be cursing its arrival. Pity the poor bastards who live on the fifth floor and don't have a lift. It's like camping, but it's also energy by Heath Robinson and from the manual of poor back health.
Butane is neither much cop when it comes to general health nor for the state of domestic walls. There is little less suited to Mallorca's winter climate of dampness and humidity than butane, given the watery vapours that appliances pump out. The use of natural gas to also generate electricity will see a lowering in demand for that electricity as the dehumidifiers can be turned down to their minimum settings.
The remoteness of Mallorca has been an issue, but the fact that it has taken until 2009 to get a pipeline functioning is a reminder of what, only relatively recently, was the inadequacy of infrastructure. Spain is still playing catch-up after the years of economic and civil engineering neglect. It is easy, though, to be critical of this johnny gas-come-lately. Britain has enjoyed natural gas for years. I can, however, still recall the strangely cosy, stale smell of my great aunt's house with its boiler, fired by Calor.
The arrival of the gas also signals what will eventually be the demise of the "butanero", the gas man. And signal the end of the truck clanging its load and hooting its horn to announce its weekly appearance. Mallorca still has its quaint deliveries and domestic services - the whistling tin dustbin on wheels of the bloke who sharpens knives and garden tools is one, the wine-dispensing vendors of towns like Sineu another. In Britain, there used to be the knife-sharpener with his stone, the Corona man, the fish man, the laundry man, the paraffin man. Maybe there was also a butane man. Not that I remember one. But they have all been consigned to a history dump caused by shopping centres and supermarkets, efficient domestic appliances and central heating. That's progress. And the butane man is likely to be looking for a new job.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Megadeth, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_awouQcIOo. Today's title - boy, was she good. Think Rochdale.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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