Cut along to your local fiesta and the last thing you might expect is to be presented with a group of "lads" proudly waving their prosthetic erections around. Depends what type of fiesta you go to though, I suppose. If traditional Mallorcan, then the only big knobs would normally be the local dignitaries as they make their entrances for the fiesta climax. But then how many years count as traditional? In Bunyola, there is a modern fiesta tradition. Come in your underwear, as in attend in your smalls, unless you're the boys with a woody strap-on and you invite the double entendre.
For six years, the Saint Matt fiesta in the town has featured a parade of "ropa interior" - that's bras and pants to you and me. The flaunting of the nearly nude is lubricated by free beer. Bread and circuses. It's an old trick, one I learnt at university: anaethetise the college population with regular and copious, gratis Boddies and Thwaites and they'll be bound to return you at the next elections. Give 'em enough and they'll do anything, like the lads during Bunyola's Friday parade or the lasses concealing their modesty with multi-coloured bouncy baubles.
This is a splendid new tradition. Not for the fact of bare flesh - you can cop an eyeful enough of that on your nearest beach - but because it is not the same. Not the same as all the other fiestas. Want to know what's going to be happening at this year's fiesta? Easy. Look at last year's programme, or the one from the year before. All you need do is change the dates, and with some fiestas you don't even need to do that. Alternatively you can simply look at the fiesta schedule from a different town: pipers a-piping; giants a-dancing; balls-de-botting. Yep, they'll all be there.
There is much to be said for continuity and for the headlining fiesta events that drag in the crowds - be they Moors and Christians having a bundle, the Beata procession of Santa Margalida or the grape fight of Binissalem's Vermar. The year-on-year familiarity of the fiestas can be reassuring in the same way as it is if you go to a different type of party and find that you know everyone. The only trouble is that you end up telling the same jokes, having the same arguments and disappearing behind the shed with the same adulterous missus.
The formulaic introspection of fiesta and the maintenance of tradition are increasingly the source of anxiety as the forces of the generation gap square up to each other in the market or church square. Not completely. There remain the honour and pride of, for instance, being selected as La Beata or as "vermadors" and "vermadores", but the good burghers of the Mallorcan towns are shaking their heads at what they see as a threat to the fiesta tradition - one that comes from the very breaking with tradition.
The night parties of the fiestas are, in their current incarnation, relatively new traditions. But so much concern do they now arouse that you have a town hall such as Sa Pobla scrapping the Districte 54. Partly this was for financial reasons, or so they said; the more pressing reason was the mess and noise. Sa Pobla is not the only town hall which worries for the future of fiestas if the young treat them merely as excuses for massive piss-ups. In Pollensa, much as the town hall tried to limit alcohol in the fiesta centre for the Patrona parties and to ask kindly that the squares and streets weren't used as lavatories, the ambience was awash with less of the romanticism than the brochures might have you believe.
In Sa Pobla this year the fiesta programme was one that could be enjoyed by those of all ages. That was what the town hall reckoned. But was it? Having unleashed the genie of the night parties, it is hard for the town halls to put them back in the bottle without some resentment. Moreover, there must be the temptation to retrench further into the past and into long-established tradition, thus provoking a greater distance between the generations.
In Bunyola the undies parade is for all generations. It is an example of tradition invigoration that is positive in both its harmlessness and its profound silliness, one that is different and at the same time respectful of the population as a whole; well, maybe the mock stiffies might not be. Perhaps, though, too much is made of the night parties and the apparent rejection of tradition by the young. There is another tradition - quite a bit older than Bunyola's. It is the Fornalutx "correbou". If you had spent some time looking at images of the reaction to the recent protest in the village against the bull run, you might have been surprised, shocked even. The reactionaries were predominantly the young. It doesn't add up. The young are meant to reject tradition.
QUIZ -
In your best lascivious voice, who requested "and now your bra and panties"?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
A Gentle Touch Of Colic: Senses working overtime
"All I could hear was the strange hum that hovered behind every other sound throughout that summer."
Tim Pears, "In The Place Of Fallen Leaves".
What are the sounds of summer? The bass from a system pulsating across vast acres of Mallorcan land as the local fiesta turns its back on tradition and admits DJ Headcase and a legion of party-goers, tanked up from the botellón. The Canadair growling low as it transports its Mediterranean payload towards smoking finca land that some fire-starter has thoughtfully taken a cigarette end to. Joni Mitchell's hissing of summer lawns, gyrating tops and spikes of water thrown around erratically and splattering the persianas. The enthusiastic keep-fitter on morning reveille duty, bellowing across a hotel pool and coaxing lard buckets with hangovers into movements more suited to the Rocky Horror Show.
But there, in the background, is the hum. In summer you can only detect it when the general silence briefly descends, usually at eight minutes past five in the morning. Earlier or later, and you'll miss it, thanks to the almost constant whoosh and splutter of coaches, motos or autos on what is the most densely populated part of Europe when it comes to car ownership. The power station hum. It's always there, as ominous as the chimney that rises above the nature park of Albufera.
The sounds of Mallorca are part of the sensory overload that the island lovingly bestows. What are the smells of summer? A grill wafting succulently and charcoaled as evening evaporates into night, the unexpected fragrance like vanilla from an unidentified plant, the sulphuric combustion of marsh gas and the insidious stench of sewage. The latter is at its most extreme when Colis comes a-calling: the drain-unblocking people who can inspire a stomach-churning or cramping retch.
But strangely you become inured to malodorousness. You don't exactly crave it but you are reassured by its mysterious presence, the unseen force of a primeval chemical reaction, albeit one sometimes influenced artificially or orificially. The bad smells form a nasal entertainment; they are their own tribute acts to an ecological and semi-ecological world that created the island in the first place and its second, industrialised and urbanised life.
A bit of a pong is not to be sniffed at. It's a reminder that not everything is or should be sanitised. Mallorca doesn't deserve to be sterilised, scrubbed and sealed hermetically. Its very imperfections are what give rise to its perfections or near-perfections, those revealed through the other senses - the sight through the transparent light of Pollensa that inspired the local post-impressionists; the radiance of white, rose or russet-bracted bougainvillaea but with its duplicitous enticement to touch the shock of its thorns; the ambrosial taste of a fig during its all too brief harvesting period.
The sights, sounds and other senses of Mallorca are too easily defined in terms of the superficiality of brochure-style beautifulness, but they ignore what can be a natural or part-natural, maleficent intoxication - that of the Mallorca that isn't quite right, an environmental quirkiness that should be bottled, if only anyone could stomach the Colical, great smell of sewage. And then there's that hum. The power station's isn't actually the only one. From Albufera, if you listen carefully when the traffic abates, you can hear a regular murmur in the darkness beyond the puff monsters of pines silhouetted against the distant lights of Muro and Sa Pobla. It's always there, just as the smells are always there.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tim Pears, "In The Place Of Fallen Leaves".
What are the sounds of summer? The bass from a system pulsating across vast acres of Mallorcan land as the local fiesta turns its back on tradition and admits DJ Headcase and a legion of party-goers, tanked up from the botellón. The Canadair growling low as it transports its Mediterranean payload towards smoking finca land that some fire-starter has thoughtfully taken a cigarette end to. Joni Mitchell's hissing of summer lawns, gyrating tops and spikes of water thrown around erratically and splattering the persianas. The enthusiastic keep-fitter on morning reveille duty, bellowing across a hotel pool and coaxing lard buckets with hangovers into movements more suited to the Rocky Horror Show.
But there, in the background, is the hum. In summer you can only detect it when the general silence briefly descends, usually at eight minutes past five in the morning. Earlier or later, and you'll miss it, thanks to the almost constant whoosh and splutter of coaches, motos or autos on what is the most densely populated part of Europe when it comes to car ownership. The power station hum. It's always there, as ominous as the chimney that rises above the nature park of Albufera.
The sounds of Mallorca are part of the sensory overload that the island lovingly bestows. What are the smells of summer? A grill wafting succulently and charcoaled as evening evaporates into night, the unexpected fragrance like vanilla from an unidentified plant, the sulphuric combustion of marsh gas and the insidious stench of sewage. The latter is at its most extreme when Colis comes a-calling: the drain-unblocking people who can inspire a stomach-churning or cramping retch.
But strangely you become inured to malodorousness. You don't exactly crave it but you are reassured by its mysterious presence, the unseen force of a primeval chemical reaction, albeit one sometimes influenced artificially or orificially. The bad smells form a nasal entertainment; they are their own tribute acts to an ecological and semi-ecological world that created the island in the first place and its second, industrialised and urbanised life.
A bit of a pong is not to be sniffed at. It's a reminder that not everything is or should be sanitised. Mallorca doesn't deserve to be sterilised, scrubbed and sealed hermetically. Its very imperfections are what give rise to its perfections or near-perfections, those revealed through the other senses - the sight through the transparent light of Pollensa that inspired the local post-impressionists; the radiance of white, rose or russet-bracted bougainvillaea but with its duplicitous enticement to touch the shock of its thorns; the ambrosial taste of a fig during its all too brief harvesting period.
The sights, sounds and other senses of Mallorca are too easily defined in terms of the superficiality of brochure-style beautifulness, but they ignore what can be a natural or part-natural, maleficent intoxication - that of the Mallorca that isn't quite right, an environmental quirkiness that should be bottled, if only anyone could stomach the Colical, great smell of sewage. And then there's that hum. The power station's isn't actually the only one. From Albufera, if you listen carefully when the traffic abates, you can hear a regular murmur in the darkness beyond the puff monsters of pines silhouetted against the distant lights of Muro and Sa Pobla. It's always there, just as the smells are always there.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, September 17, 2010
It'll Be Lonely This Christmas Without Andy Murray
Sports commentators have developed a style of expressiveness which, at moments of triumph, combines a knowing tone of we-knew-it-would-happen-didn't-we with a precision of stating each word as though followed by an imaginary full stop. We might describe this inflection as "doing a Motson", after its earliest known exponent. Dan Maskell would never have intoned thus. The only way we knew Dan was still with us was when he would stir from his slumberous drone with a suddenly animated "ooh, I say" with which to startle awake his television audience. Sports commentary of the current day has, by contrast and thanks to Sky, Five Live and talkSPORT, added hypomania to the Motsonic glottal stop. And so it was the other day. On a whooping Five Live. "Rafael. Nadal. From. Manacor. In. Mallorca."
The words had a strange effect on me, one of a sense of territorial superiority. It was the specific mention of Manacor that emphasised it. I know that place, thought I, even if my acquaintance with the town is limited to sitting in a rush-hour traffic-jam. Nadal has gone from being from Spain, to being from Mallorca, to being from Manacor. It is no longer sufficient for commentators to refer just to the island. Nadal's celebrity has made him über-Mallorcan. The detail of his Mallorcan-ness grows with his every Open championship; at the Australian we can expect to learn the names of all his neighbours. Dan would never have stood for this. He wouldn't, for example, have let on that Roy Emerson came from Blackbutt, which was probably just as well.
Nadal is famous not just for coming from Mallorca but also for being the only famous Mallorcan ever. There are others who have had fame thrust upon them, but they are famous for not being famous, like the Catalan author and polymath Ramon Llull. No, Nadal is that famous that he has become Mallorca, or is it the other way round. And he is one of us. Which of course he isn't, if you happen to be British. But Nadal has been adopted because of the alternative - the Scottish Player, one forever cursed by monotonic moroseness and by slipping up in the third round, so it is best not to mention his name in order to avoid the bad luck that doing so would bring.
One of Nadal's virtues lies with his being perceived as "a nice boy", something to which the Scottish Player would find it hard to aspire. It is this, together with the fact that he is the only Mallorcan anyone has ever heard of, that secures him gigs as the face and chest of Mallorcan (Balearic) promotion. And Nadal has just won his first US Open. Now might be the time for a bit of Mallorcan marketing stateside. The only problem is that tourism chiefs are spending their time either about to go into prison or in China, enticing a breed of Chinese tourist with promises of cheap bazars on every Mallorcan high street. That's not the only problem.
Sadly, despite Nadal's celebrity, tourism promotion involving him has been a complete disaster. Admittedly, it doesn't help having an uncle/trainer who slags off Parisians as being "really stupid" when you've forked out 400 grands worth of promotional budget to target the French market - as was the case during last year's French Open. And it also doesn't help when the director of Spanish tourism in Paris agrees with Uncle Toni. A tourettic momentary lapse of diplomacy perhaps, but it was symptomatic of the Nadal nadir of Mallorcan tourism marketing.
What else, with hindsight though, could you have expected? We now know, courtesy of testimonies before the judge in the corruption case involving the tourism promotion agency (IBATUR), that there was such uncontrolled and unmanaged profligacy at the agency that it doubled the money for the French campaign in providing for a museum of tourism that never came about, while it is alleged that the agency was never subject to proper financial governance. If the agency was capable of playing fast and loose with public money, which it was, it was equally capable of being incompetent when it came to doing what it was meant to do - marketing. Nadal should seek to distance himself from any association, however indirect, with the agency's cowboys and their legacy.
But Bon Nadal, good old Mr. Christmas, will probably find himself still featuring in ads on some obscure channel at two in the morning, just after an equally obscure sports commentator has finished his Motson at the end of an under-19 handball event from the Ukraine. And come Christmas, as the holiday ads start to kick in, he'll still be there, floating somewhere in satellite land. But at least he will be there, unlike the Scottish Player; you wouldn't even get him as the face of a wet week in the Highlands and Islands. It'll be lonely this Christmas without ... Don't say it, just don't say it.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The words had a strange effect on me, one of a sense of territorial superiority. It was the specific mention of Manacor that emphasised it. I know that place, thought I, even if my acquaintance with the town is limited to sitting in a rush-hour traffic-jam. Nadal has gone from being from Spain, to being from Mallorca, to being from Manacor. It is no longer sufficient for commentators to refer just to the island. Nadal's celebrity has made him über-Mallorcan. The detail of his Mallorcan-ness grows with his every Open championship; at the Australian we can expect to learn the names of all his neighbours. Dan would never have stood for this. He wouldn't, for example, have let on that Roy Emerson came from Blackbutt, which was probably just as well.
Nadal is famous not just for coming from Mallorca but also for being the only famous Mallorcan ever. There are others who have had fame thrust upon them, but they are famous for not being famous, like the Catalan author and polymath Ramon Llull. No, Nadal is that famous that he has become Mallorca, or is it the other way round. And he is one of us. Which of course he isn't, if you happen to be British. But Nadal has been adopted because of the alternative - the Scottish Player, one forever cursed by monotonic moroseness and by slipping up in the third round, so it is best not to mention his name in order to avoid the bad luck that doing so would bring.
One of Nadal's virtues lies with his being perceived as "a nice boy", something to which the Scottish Player would find it hard to aspire. It is this, together with the fact that he is the only Mallorcan anyone has ever heard of, that secures him gigs as the face and chest of Mallorcan (Balearic) promotion. And Nadal has just won his first US Open. Now might be the time for a bit of Mallorcan marketing stateside. The only problem is that tourism chiefs are spending their time either about to go into prison or in China, enticing a breed of Chinese tourist with promises of cheap bazars on every Mallorcan high street. That's not the only problem.
Sadly, despite Nadal's celebrity, tourism promotion involving him has been a complete disaster. Admittedly, it doesn't help having an uncle/trainer who slags off Parisians as being "really stupid" when you've forked out 400 grands worth of promotional budget to target the French market - as was the case during last year's French Open. And it also doesn't help when the director of Spanish tourism in Paris agrees with Uncle Toni. A tourettic momentary lapse of diplomacy perhaps, but it was symptomatic of the Nadal nadir of Mallorcan tourism marketing.
What else, with hindsight though, could you have expected? We now know, courtesy of testimonies before the judge in the corruption case involving the tourism promotion agency (IBATUR), that there was such uncontrolled and unmanaged profligacy at the agency that it doubled the money for the French campaign in providing for a museum of tourism that never came about, while it is alleged that the agency was never subject to proper financial governance. If the agency was capable of playing fast and loose with public money, which it was, it was equally capable of being incompetent when it came to doing what it was meant to do - marketing. Nadal should seek to distance himself from any association, however indirect, with the agency's cowboys and their legacy.
But Bon Nadal, good old Mr. Christmas, will probably find himself still featuring in ads on some obscure channel at two in the morning, just after an equally obscure sports commentator has finished his Motson at the end of an under-19 handball event from the Ukraine. And come Christmas, as the holiday ads start to kick in, he'll still be there, floating somewhere in satellite land. But at least he will be there, unlike the Scottish Player; you wouldn't even get him as the face of a wet week in the Highlands and Islands. It'll be lonely this Christmas without ... Don't say it, just don't say it.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The Charm Offence: Sóller and resort development
When you're about to spend the best part of two and a half million euros on a construction project, you might hope that someone had first checked that the whole thing wouldn't collapse or be inundated with water. What am I saying? The recent history of great Mallorcan civil engineering success stories is awash with water. The Palma Metro for example.
Along now comes another rail fiasco which we can all rail against. "The tram now standing at platform ..." Sorry, there is no platform. As also there are no proper foundations, other than sand, or adequate drainage. As for the tram, well you can forget that anyway, as they've forgotten about the supports for the power cables. Oh, and that bike lane, the one that would have been vital because the tramline had been knackered ... .? Nope, they haven't remembered that either.
Work on the re-development of the paseo marítimo in Port de Sóller, tram and all, is due to start in October. Somewhat belatedly, the technical chaps have had a peek at the plans. What plans, you might ask. There are "deficiencies", they say. Just ever so slightly there are. One of the companies contracted to undertake the work states on its website: "development is a reality". As far as Sóller is concerned, that should read, "will be" - with any luck. When though is another matter.
The Sóller promenade development can be viewed in a wider context than just the apparent deficiencies with the project. Bar and restaurant owners in the resort are none too impressed with the scheme. Ditto the on-off and now maybe on again re-development of Puerto Pollensa's frontline. Pedestrianisation may seem like a way of beautifying Mallorca's resorts, but strange to report there are plenty of people who would disagree.
An editorial in "The Bulletin" referred to a loss of charm, the consequence of resort developments. One aspect of this charm is that some tourists quite enjoy the bustle that having a road right next to a bar or restaurant can create. So too the owners. It may seem odd to wish to breathe in the fumes of a bus that has mysteriously passed its MOT, but who am I to question what anyone finds charming?
Some years ago Puerto Alcúdia's prom was pedestrianised. What was created was a spacious strolling boulevard, wide enough to house the capricious folly of a bridge that goes nowhere, an Escher-like impossible reality. The development wasn't a reality in Alcúdia, it was surrealistic, while the spaciousness is not to everyone's liking; visitors still talk of that "bustle" and charm which existed previously. There will probably be those who reject the Playa de Palma re-development on the same grounds, though how somewhere lacking charm can lose it is a moot point.
Playa de Palma, though, is a specific case, one in which there is now a collision between civil engineers, town planners and architects like no other resort. This was where the architectural vandals once scaled the ramparts and sacked the place before anyone was any the wiser. What comes now is important. The New Turkey perhaps? A resort for today's competitive age? One of dome and semi-circular five-star opulence would be in keeping with a Moorish inheritance, and would be an appropriate artifice for an artificial resort, which is exactly what it is. Everything in its place.
But this is the problem. Not everything is in its place, especially building design. It's not just the resorts. The Can Ramis monstrosity in Alcúdia town is an example of how bad unsympathetic architecture can be. It was the misfortune of the little Ramis houses that they were situated only metres from the sanctuary of the town's walls, behind which is a heritage law that would have stopped their functionalist conversion in its tracks.
The argument goes, of course, that Mallorca has to upgrade to compete. It's a fair argument, but only up to a point. The pedestrianisation dogma is not the same as creating new four- or five-star hotels. In Puerto Alcúdia's case, has the paseo made any difference to tourism competitiveness? Doubtful. But over and above a prom in this or that resort is an orthodoxy of today's school of architecture which has, for example, succeeded in undermining the ramshackle appeal of Cala San Vicente.
Sóller, Pollensa, Andratx, you can name others. They have thrived on their individual, idiosyncratic charms. But they face the offence of the "new" charm. In Sóller, maybe a botched project wouldn't be such a bad thing.
QUIZ -
Yesterday: Fleetwood Mac, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE4HGlmtOcg
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Along now comes another rail fiasco which we can all rail against. "The tram now standing at platform ..." Sorry, there is no platform. As also there are no proper foundations, other than sand, or adequate drainage. As for the tram, well you can forget that anyway, as they've forgotten about the supports for the power cables. Oh, and that bike lane, the one that would have been vital because the tramline had been knackered ... .? Nope, they haven't remembered that either.
Work on the re-development of the paseo marítimo in Port de Sóller, tram and all, is due to start in October. Somewhat belatedly, the technical chaps have had a peek at the plans. What plans, you might ask. There are "deficiencies", they say. Just ever so slightly there are. One of the companies contracted to undertake the work states on its website: "development is a reality". As far as Sóller is concerned, that should read, "will be" - with any luck. When though is another matter.
The Sóller promenade development can be viewed in a wider context than just the apparent deficiencies with the project. Bar and restaurant owners in the resort are none too impressed with the scheme. Ditto the on-off and now maybe on again re-development of Puerto Pollensa's frontline. Pedestrianisation may seem like a way of beautifying Mallorca's resorts, but strange to report there are plenty of people who would disagree.
An editorial in "The Bulletin" referred to a loss of charm, the consequence of resort developments. One aspect of this charm is that some tourists quite enjoy the bustle that having a road right next to a bar or restaurant can create. So too the owners. It may seem odd to wish to breathe in the fumes of a bus that has mysteriously passed its MOT, but who am I to question what anyone finds charming?
Some years ago Puerto Alcúdia's prom was pedestrianised. What was created was a spacious strolling boulevard, wide enough to house the capricious folly of a bridge that goes nowhere, an Escher-like impossible reality. The development wasn't a reality in Alcúdia, it was surrealistic, while the spaciousness is not to everyone's liking; visitors still talk of that "bustle" and charm which existed previously. There will probably be those who reject the Playa de Palma re-development on the same grounds, though how somewhere lacking charm can lose it is a moot point.
Playa de Palma, though, is a specific case, one in which there is now a collision between civil engineers, town planners and architects like no other resort. This was where the architectural vandals once scaled the ramparts and sacked the place before anyone was any the wiser. What comes now is important. The New Turkey perhaps? A resort for today's competitive age? One of dome and semi-circular five-star opulence would be in keeping with a Moorish inheritance, and would be an appropriate artifice for an artificial resort, which is exactly what it is. Everything in its place.
But this is the problem. Not everything is in its place, especially building design. It's not just the resorts. The Can Ramis monstrosity in Alcúdia town is an example of how bad unsympathetic architecture can be. It was the misfortune of the little Ramis houses that they were situated only metres from the sanctuary of the town's walls, behind which is a heritage law that would have stopped their functionalist conversion in its tracks.
The argument goes, of course, that Mallorca has to upgrade to compete. It's a fair argument, but only up to a point. The pedestrianisation dogma is not the same as creating new four- or five-star hotels. In Puerto Alcúdia's case, has the paseo made any difference to tourism competitiveness? Doubtful. But over and above a prom in this or that resort is an orthodoxy of today's school of architecture which has, for example, succeeded in undermining the ramshackle appeal of Cala San Vicente.
Sóller, Pollensa, Andratx, you can name others. They have thrived on their individual, idiosyncratic charms. But they face the offence of the "new" charm. In Sóller, maybe a botched project wouldn't be such a bad thing.
QUIZ -
Yesterday: Fleetwood Mac, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE4HGlmtOcg
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Oh Well (Or Not): Bienestar Activo and Ironman
Three months are a long time in tourism promotion. 20 June - "All Being Well". Now - all's not so well. Strategies are meant to be long-term, but not if they don't even get off the ground.
"Bienestar Activo" is - was - the brand name for a four-year strategic plan unveiled back in June. The plan was for the municipalities of Alcúdia, Muro and Santa Margalida, together with the local hotel associations and the tourism ministries at both central and local government levels, to promote various sporting activities in the resorts as a means of bolstering off-season tourism. The plan envisaged the spending of a tad under 4.5 million euros over the next four years. Annually, the central ministry would have provided 371,000 euros, a sum matched by the local ministry and also by the three town halls between them. The scheme has collapsed.
Soon after the plan was announced, I contacted the Alcúdia-Can Picafort hotel association, looking for an interview. There was an email exchange, Alcúdia's tourism councillor was also contacted, a date provisionally established, and then nothing. At the time I found this slightly strange. As it turns out, maybe it wasn't.
What I wanted to know was the exact nature of the plan, given that the activities - cycling, Nordic walking, hiking, canoeing - were already established. What was the 4.5 million meant to be spent on? I guess that I - we - will never find out. There are no funds to be forthcoming from the ministries.
There was some inkling as to how the money would have been doled out - in general. There were four, vague elements - organisation, specialisation of the destination (whatever that meant), improvement of competitiveness and marketing. But at the presentation which "launched" the project, amongst those attending - mayors, councillors and those as ever hoping for some benefit without actually putting their hands in their pockets, i.e. hoteliers and restaurant owners - there were no representatives of the ministries. The absence of government may tell a story. Had the ministries actually signed up to the whole thing? Or maybe they were going to, and then thought, as I had done, well, what is this all about? Those four aims seemed ill-defined; they may well also have been ill-conceived.
Of course, another explanation is more straightforward, namely government cuts, both nationally and local. Three months in tourism promotion isn't a long time when it is already known that money is tight, so much so that the tourism ministries at regional and central levels have been merged with others as a way of saving money. Was this plan ever a goer or was it just some sort of PR stunt, and a poor one at that, given that it was unclear what it actually entailed?
The mayors, explaining the plan's abandonment, say that they will look at it differently in the hope of bringing it back, which is probably a euphemism for saying that it will be quietly forgotten about. Maybe it should be. And maybe it would have been better had they never gone public, because this is a further embarrassment, certainly where Alcúdia is concerned, in terms of grandish tourism promotional schemes. The estación náutica concept has been quietly forgotten about, despite the fanfare that was blown when it surfaced a year and a half ago.
Fortunately for Alcúdia, something rather more concrete has emerged. Some good news with which to hopefully bury the less good news of the bienestar debacle. Thomas Cook and the regional tourism ministry have announced that an Ironman 70.3 triathlon is to be staged in Alcúdia on 14 May next year and also in 2012. Apart from some 2,500 anticipated competitors, the tour operator reckons the event will attract 20,000 visitors. I'm sceptical, but I'll bow to the company's knowledge. Nevertheless, the triathlon could well prove to be positive, and perhaps its potential does have something to do with the bienestar falling by the wayside. If you want to attract sports tourism, then better to go with a flagship-style event, rather than the vagueness of what was on offer. Relief for Alcúdia then, but what Muro and Santa Margalida make of it, who knows.
QUIZ -
"Oh Well"?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
"Bienestar Activo" is - was - the brand name for a four-year strategic plan unveiled back in June. The plan was for the municipalities of Alcúdia, Muro and Santa Margalida, together with the local hotel associations and the tourism ministries at both central and local government levels, to promote various sporting activities in the resorts as a means of bolstering off-season tourism. The plan envisaged the spending of a tad under 4.5 million euros over the next four years. Annually, the central ministry would have provided 371,000 euros, a sum matched by the local ministry and also by the three town halls between them. The scheme has collapsed.
Soon after the plan was announced, I contacted the Alcúdia-Can Picafort hotel association, looking for an interview. There was an email exchange, Alcúdia's tourism councillor was also contacted, a date provisionally established, and then nothing. At the time I found this slightly strange. As it turns out, maybe it wasn't.
What I wanted to know was the exact nature of the plan, given that the activities - cycling, Nordic walking, hiking, canoeing - were already established. What was the 4.5 million meant to be spent on? I guess that I - we - will never find out. There are no funds to be forthcoming from the ministries.
There was some inkling as to how the money would have been doled out - in general. There were four, vague elements - organisation, specialisation of the destination (whatever that meant), improvement of competitiveness and marketing. But at the presentation which "launched" the project, amongst those attending - mayors, councillors and those as ever hoping for some benefit without actually putting their hands in their pockets, i.e. hoteliers and restaurant owners - there were no representatives of the ministries. The absence of government may tell a story. Had the ministries actually signed up to the whole thing? Or maybe they were going to, and then thought, as I had done, well, what is this all about? Those four aims seemed ill-defined; they may well also have been ill-conceived.
Of course, another explanation is more straightforward, namely government cuts, both nationally and local. Three months in tourism promotion isn't a long time when it is already known that money is tight, so much so that the tourism ministries at regional and central levels have been merged with others as a way of saving money. Was this plan ever a goer or was it just some sort of PR stunt, and a poor one at that, given that it was unclear what it actually entailed?
The mayors, explaining the plan's abandonment, say that they will look at it differently in the hope of bringing it back, which is probably a euphemism for saying that it will be quietly forgotten about. Maybe it should be. And maybe it would have been better had they never gone public, because this is a further embarrassment, certainly where Alcúdia is concerned, in terms of grandish tourism promotional schemes. The estación náutica concept has been quietly forgotten about, despite the fanfare that was blown when it surfaced a year and a half ago.
Fortunately for Alcúdia, something rather more concrete has emerged. Some good news with which to hopefully bury the less good news of the bienestar debacle. Thomas Cook and the regional tourism ministry have announced that an Ironman 70.3 triathlon is to be staged in Alcúdia on 14 May next year and also in 2012. Apart from some 2,500 anticipated competitors, the tour operator reckons the event will attract 20,000 visitors. I'm sceptical, but I'll bow to the company's knowledge. Nevertheless, the triathlon could well prove to be positive, and perhaps its potential does have something to do with the bienestar falling by the wayside. If you want to attract sports tourism, then better to go with a flagship-style event, rather than the vagueness of what was on offer. Relief for Alcúdia then, but what Muro and Santa Margalida make of it, who knows.
QUIZ -
"Oh Well"?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Not The Stupid Economy: Mallorca's elections and opinion polls
Local elections in Mallorca and the Balearics are to be held next spring. An opinion poll conducted on behalf of "Ultima Hora" suggests that the current main opposition party, the Partido Popular, will win with an overall majority, thus negating the need for a coalition pact.
Since regional autonomy in the early '80s, the PP has traditionally been the party of Balearics government, firstly as the Coalición Popular and then as the PP in its own right. It lost for the first time in 1999, to a pact headed by the current socialist (PSOE/PSIB*) president Francesc Antich, regained an overall majority in 2003, under the disgraced ex-president Jaume Matas, and then lost out again to an Antich coalition in 2007, despite receiving more votes than other parties. For the PP to now seemingly be heading towards electoral victory suggests a re-establishment of Mallorca and the islands' social and political norm - conservatism.
While one can nuance the poll as being an expression of dissatisfaction with socialist government and management of the economic crisis, both at the local and the national level, the poll also reveals that the PSOE is on target to gain more of a share of the vote. It is the nationalist party, the Unió Mallorquina, which stands to lose most at the next election; it faces virtual oblivion. This, therefore, begs a question as to the influence of political corruption on voter intention. The UM has been deeply mired in scandal over the past couple of years, but the PP has been similarly tainted by the anti-corruption cases that have gone right to the top of its last administration - to Jaume Matas. The socialists, on the other hand, have escaped the sleaze, just about.
So does the poll simply reflect a reversion to the status quo of the two dominant parties - the PP and PSOE - or is there also the influence of corruption?
The PP has been looking to clean up its act, but an almighty row has erupted within its ranks as a result. Its leader and presidential candidate, José Ramón Bauza, has stated that any politician implicated in a scandal will not stand in the coming elections, which might rule all of them out, you might think. Bauza has gone so far as to say that if any charge levelled at him from his time as mayor of Marratxi were to be forthcoming, then he would step aside.
The opposition to Bauza's stance stems from what could be unjust and unproven allegations. Not every politician implicated in a corruption case is necessarily guilty. But one has an equivocal situation, because in light of all the scandals, Antich drew up an ethical code under which investigations for any alleged wrongdoing were grounds for resignation. Yet, the president, whilst supporting the position of his main political opponent in asserting that this is not "unjust", has said that he would not apply the same principle to his own party. The current socialist tourism and employment minister, Joana Barceló, has faced her own local difficulties dating back to her time at the Council of Menorca. Her case has been "archived", i.e. nothing has been proven, but Antich could be accused of double standards.
Bauza's determination to clean up the PP is laudable enough, but he opens himself and his party up to potential mischief-making. One can already hear the whispers of dirty tricks being plotted in the election machines of other parties. Bauza has another problem. And that is that some in the party believe that he has moved close to his one-time rival for the leadership of the PP, Carlos Delgado, mayor of Calvia. Moreover, it is felt that Bauza is too Madrid-centric, a possible puppet of the party's national organisation and less inclined to stand up for local Mallorcan (Balearic) interests. While he has attempted to rebut the idea that Delgado has in some way been influencing him, it might be remembered that Delgado is antipathetic towards Catalanism; he has made a virtue of not speaking Catalan.
The poll could be seen as voter support for Bauza's clean-up, but the party's in-figthing threatens to undermine his good intentions and to place an obstacle in the way of its resuming its role as the, if you will, natural party of Balearics government. Bauza and his party may already have given the opponents an own goal because of the alleged closeness to Madrid; the UM and the socialists will exploit it for all its worth. Bauza, however, could respond by accusing Antich of hypocrisy. The elections should be about the key issue of the economy, but they're likely to be overshadowed by the smell of corruption and the parochialism of insular, nationalist interests.
* Note: The PSOE is the socialist party at national level; the PSIB is the Balearics version.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Since regional autonomy in the early '80s, the PP has traditionally been the party of Balearics government, firstly as the Coalición Popular and then as the PP in its own right. It lost for the first time in 1999, to a pact headed by the current socialist (PSOE/PSIB*) president Francesc Antich, regained an overall majority in 2003, under the disgraced ex-president Jaume Matas, and then lost out again to an Antich coalition in 2007, despite receiving more votes than other parties. For the PP to now seemingly be heading towards electoral victory suggests a re-establishment of Mallorca and the islands' social and political norm - conservatism.
While one can nuance the poll as being an expression of dissatisfaction with socialist government and management of the economic crisis, both at the local and the national level, the poll also reveals that the PSOE is on target to gain more of a share of the vote. It is the nationalist party, the Unió Mallorquina, which stands to lose most at the next election; it faces virtual oblivion. This, therefore, begs a question as to the influence of political corruption on voter intention. The UM has been deeply mired in scandal over the past couple of years, but the PP has been similarly tainted by the anti-corruption cases that have gone right to the top of its last administration - to Jaume Matas. The socialists, on the other hand, have escaped the sleaze, just about.
So does the poll simply reflect a reversion to the status quo of the two dominant parties - the PP and PSOE - or is there also the influence of corruption?
The PP has been looking to clean up its act, but an almighty row has erupted within its ranks as a result. Its leader and presidential candidate, José Ramón Bauza, has stated that any politician implicated in a scandal will not stand in the coming elections, which might rule all of them out, you might think. Bauza has gone so far as to say that if any charge levelled at him from his time as mayor of Marratxi were to be forthcoming, then he would step aside.
The opposition to Bauza's stance stems from what could be unjust and unproven allegations. Not every politician implicated in a corruption case is necessarily guilty. But one has an equivocal situation, because in light of all the scandals, Antich drew up an ethical code under which investigations for any alleged wrongdoing were grounds for resignation. Yet, the president, whilst supporting the position of his main political opponent in asserting that this is not "unjust", has said that he would not apply the same principle to his own party. The current socialist tourism and employment minister, Joana Barceló, has faced her own local difficulties dating back to her time at the Council of Menorca. Her case has been "archived", i.e. nothing has been proven, but Antich could be accused of double standards.
Bauza's determination to clean up the PP is laudable enough, but he opens himself and his party up to potential mischief-making. One can already hear the whispers of dirty tricks being plotted in the election machines of other parties. Bauza has another problem. And that is that some in the party believe that he has moved close to his one-time rival for the leadership of the PP, Carlos Delgado, mayor of Calvia. Moreover, it is felt that Bauza is too Madrid-centric, a possible puppet of the party's national organisation and less inclined to stand up for local Mallorcan (Balearic) interests. While he has attempted to rebut the idea that Delgado has in some way been influencing him, it might be remembered that Delgado is antipathetic towards Catalanism; he has made a virtue of not speaking Catalan.
The poll could be seen as voter support for Bauza's clean-up, but the party's in-figthing threatens to undermine his good intentions and to place an obstacle in the way of its resuming its role as the, if you will, natural party of Balearics government. Bauza and his party may already have given the opponents an own goal because of the alleged closeness to Madrid; the UM and the socialists will exploit it for all its worth. Bauza, however, could respond by accusing Antich of hypocrisy. The elections should be about the key issue of the economy, but they're likely to be overshadowed by the smell of corruption and the parochialism of insular, nationalist interests.
* Note: The PSOE is the socialist party at national level; the PSIB is the Balearics version.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, September 13, 2010
All That Noise: Back to school and beaches
Get a day of beach transcendence, such as yesterday, and you realise there is only one blemish. Other people. Sundays should be for highly vocalised church-going, leaving non-believers in sandy peace and quiet.
It was the last day of summer yesterday. Schools are back today. 12 September can normally be relied upon to unleash biblical weather. It did, but was an Araratian failure and a success of Eden, save for the great unwashed who came to take the waters.
September here and the British have largely fled, leaving the Mallorcans to attempt to stave off German sunbedsraum and for them to both compete in the sonorous league. Which is louder? A Mallorcan or a German? Teutonic volume should be a thing of research. There is no obvious explanation for it other than a direct correlation between size and loudness. The Mallorcan bellow, on the other hand, is easily understood; it has been genetically programmed in order to be heard over the thunderous growl of a "moto". Smaller families have not eliminated another form of conditioning, that of feeling the need to shout to be heard.
The Mallorcan child's noise does not seem to register with the Mallorcan child's parent. It is fair to say that the child is also indulged. Today, a communal song and dance will be made about the return to school, while the cacophony on the streets will be matched only by the sound of heavy boots ensuring a smooth first day of the new school year. So much is made of the "vuelta al cole" that the press report the number of police being pressed into action to supervise it. One can only attribute the number of column inches to the fact that the summer holiday occupies a quarter of the year; the return is an event. There is even a whole website devoted to it.
To coincide with the vuelta, a survey has been conducted regarding issues in local education. The greatest concern involves discipline. It doesn't come as a surprise. Kids are not out of control, but that parental indulgence translates itself into the classroom. More importantly, what one has is often the reverse of deprived conditions which lead to school indiscipline. The presence of a "class" of offspring of wealthy Mallorcans who come to appreciate that they need to do little but whose cups will still runneth over once they leave school, allied to that indulgence, creates its own lack of discipline. It's a phenomenon that has been explained to me more than once by local teachers.
Back to school though means that the beaches will be quieter, the late summer sun can be enjoyed, until the torment of the stormy "tormenta" arrives, which it will. And then you won't hear the shouts for the sound of the thunder.
QUIZ -
Yesterday: Dido, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HwXgVFS5rY
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
It was the last day of summer yesterday. Schools are back today. 12 September can normally be relied upon to unleash biblical weather. It did, but was an Araratian failure and a success of Eden, save for the great unwashed who came to take the waters.
September here and the British have largely fled, leaving the Mallorcans to attempt to stave off German sunbedsraum and for them to both compete in the sonorous league. Which is louder? A Mallorcan or a German? Teutonic volume should be a thing of research. There is no obvious explanation for it other than a direct correlation between size and loudness. The Mallorcan bellow, on the other hand, is easily understood; it has been genetically programmed in order to be heard over the thunderous growl of a "moto". Smaller families have not eliminated another form of conditioning, that of feeling the need to shout to be heard.
The Mallorcan child's noise does not seem to register with the Mallorcan child's parent. It is fair to say that the child is also indulged. Today, a communal song and dance will be made about the return to school, while the cacophony on the streets will be matched only by the sound of heavy boots ensuring a smooth first day of the new school year. So much is made of the "vuelta al cole" that the press report the number of police being pressed into action to supervise it. One can only attribute the number of column inches to the fact that the summer holiday occupies a quarter of the year; the return is an event. There is even a whole website devoted to it.
To coincide with the vuelta, a survey has been conducted regarding issues in local education. The greatest concern involves discipline. It doesn't come as a surprise. Kids are not out of control, but that parental indulgence translates itself into the classroom. More importantly, what one has is often the reverse of deprived conditions which lead to school indiscipline. The presence of a "class" of offspring of wealthy Mallorcans who come to appreciate that they need to do little but whose cups will still runneth over once they leave school, allied to that indulgence, creates its own lack of discipline. It's a phenomenon that has been explained to me more than once by local teachers.
Back to school though means that the beaches will be quieter, the late summer sun can be enjoyed, until the torment of the stormy "tormenta" arrives, which it will. And then you won't hear the shouts for the sound of the thunder.
QUIZ -
Yesterday: Dido, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HwXgVFS5rY
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Life For Rent
Tugging hard at the bottom-hugging short skirts of tart life Magalluf-style (27 August, "Pros and Cons") has come the police bust of a male-prostitution network in Palma. "The Boys From Brazil" was a documentary about Brazilian rent boys, produced by Trudie Styler, Mrs Sting. The latest generation has found its way to Mallorca, seduced by offers of work, only to discover that it wasn't quite what the brochure said.
Gay or straight, prostitution is flourishing. "The Guardian" yesterday ran a feature on the growth of sex for sale. It was in light of Potato Head's latest playing of an away fixture, but it dealt not just with Premier League footballers. There was, though, a footballing analogy. Free internet porn has created an appetite. "Like watching Match of the Day, and then being inspired to go out and play football, and try out something you've seen."
By coincidence, the day before there had been an interview in "The Diario" with a member of a group which studies prostitution in the Balearics. He was an organiser of a congress at the university in Palma which went under the seemingly alarming title of "good practices in prostitution". Chiming perhaps with what "The Guardian" discovered, he believes that attitudes towards prostitution among young adults (males) have not become more rejective; the opposite appears to be the case.
The Spanish Government has talked of banning sex advertising in newspapers, but it may well be shooting at the wrong target. The internet fuels much of the sex industry, be it in the UK or in Spain or Mallorca. And then you have the clubs.
Prostitution is not illegal, but nor is it sanctioned. The situation is a not untypical Spanish legal muddle. What is illegal, supposedly, is pimping or the existence of brothels. It is this that has caught the rent boys' controllers out, as it has been used to net others charged with exploitation. Yet there is a tolerance, allied to the grey area of the lap dancing or show girls' clubs. Everyone knows what their real purpose is, but they exist all the same. One of the clubs in Alcúdia has a large billboard by the horse roundabout. It's just up the road.
The tolerance is starting to erode, however. Recently, the police raided a well-known "establishment" on an industrial estate in Palma (see, these industrial estates have all sorts of entertainment, as I've mentioned previously). Whether this is a precursor to a more rigorous police approach elsewhere remains to be seen. But some might argue that to get tough with the clubs would be bad for business - tourism business; I once wrote here about the staggering level of sex tourism that Mallorca is meant to attract.
This can all be overplayed, though. While the clubs may hint at seediness, they don't have a negative impact on tourism in places like Alcúdia. They're not rammed down your throat, so to speak, despite the billboards. But the tourism angle isn't really the point. To talk of greater social acceptance of prostitution is probably wrong. The lessening of stigma is more accurate; in the UK at any rate. In Mallorca it is rather different. There hasn't been the same stigma associated with going to a girls' club, a situation that shows little sign of changing.
QUIZ -
"Life For Rent". Who?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Gay or straight, prostitution is flourishing. "The Guardian" yesterday ran a feature on the growth of sex for sale. It was in light of Potato Head's latest playing of an away fixture, but it dealt not just with Premier League footballers. There was, though, a footballing analogy. Free internet porn has created an appetite. "Like watching Match of the Day, and then being inspired to go out and play football, and try out something you've seen."
By coincidence, the day before there had been an interview in "The Diario" with a member of a group which studies prostitution in the Balearics. He was an organiser of a congress at the university in Palma which went under the seemingly alarming title of "good practices in prostitution". Chiming perhaps with what "The Guardian" discovered, he believes that attitudes towards prostitution among young adults (males) have not become more rejective; the opposite appears to be the case.
The Spanish Government has talked of banning sex advertising in newspapers, but it may well be shooting at the wrong target. The internet fuels much of the sex industry, be it in the UK or in Spain or Mallorca. And then you have the clubs.
Prostitution is not illegal, but nor is it sanctioned. The situation is a not untypical Spanish legal muddle. What is illegal, supposedly, is pimping or the existence of brothels. It is this that has caught the rent boys' controllers out, as it has been used to net others charged with exploitation. Yet there is a tolerance, allied to the grey area of the lap dancing or show girls' clubs. Everyone knows what their real purpose is, but they exist all the same. One of the clubs in Alcúdia has a large billboard by the horse roundabout. It's just up the road.
The tolerance is starting to erode, however. Recently, the police raided a well-known "establishment" on an industrial estate in Palma (see, these industrial estates have all sorts of entertainment, as I've mentioned previously). Whether this is a precursor to a more rigorous police approach elsewhere remains to be seen. But some might argue that to get tough with the clubs would be bad for business - tourism business; I once wrote here about the staggering level of sex tourism that Mallorca is meant to attract.
This can all be overplayed, though. While the clubs may hint at seediness, they don't have a negative impact on tourism in places like Alcúdia. They're not rammed down your throat, so to speak, despite the billboards. But the tourism angle isn't really the point. To talk of greater social acceptance of prostitution is probably wrong. The lessening of stigma is more accurate; in the UK at any rate. In Mallorca it is rather different. There hasn't been the same stigma associated with going to a girls' club, a situation that shows little sign of changing.
QUIZ -
"Life For Rent". Who?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
It Gets Knocked Down
Then it gets up again. Eventually. Maybe.
The re-development of Playa de Palma in the south of the island has been talked about for years. It has taken on a mythical dimension in that it is meant to hold the key to a prosperous Mallorcan tourist second life. A thing of beauty, unlike what grew up in the sixties and has been more the stuff of nightmares ever since.
Playa de Palma means not just Palma but also Can Pastilla (which is in Palma) and Arenal (which isn't). When I first came to Mallorca - in 1969 - it was to Arenal, in the days before it was colonised by Stein und Sauerkraut. Much of the area is a dump. It was then, but holidaymakers lacked the sophistication to realise it. They were in awe of the notion of the cheap and available "foreign" holiday. From the room in the hotel I could see a shanty town. It isn't there now, but as a young and idealistic teenager, it left a lasting impression - one of the obscene dichotomy between wealth and poverty that were the early years of island tourism, and one that has been, and is being repeated in other countries.
When mass tourism arrived on the back of the package deal, Clarkson and BEA, Playa de Palma was the Mallorcan Red Barrel to the Spanish mainland's Lloret, Benidorm and Torremolinos Luton Airport. It's where it all started. There is a mitigating factor to the grossness of what emerged. The Costas and Mallorca were first movers in mass tourism. Like any initiators of an "industrial" revolution, as with Britain and its industrialisation, there were no manuals to go by, no mistakes to learn from. Thus, the errors were made, and one has today's rotting corpse of the tourism progenitor.
They want to knock a lot of it down - residences and hotels - and erect what might be more a palace of Palma, one to compete with the oriental pleasure domes of Turkey or the pyramidal extravagance of Egyptian accommodation. Understandably, not everyone is too keen on the idea. The protests have caused them, the politicians, to backtrack. A new "definitive" plan is promised later this year, one that will replace the previous definitive plan. Even this may be delayed. There are elections next spring.
Without the re-development, so it is being said, Playa de Palma has no economic future. The architects are among those saying this, to which one might suggest that they would, wouldn't they. Wrapped up in all of this is the notion that the beautification of what is a generally unlovely stretch of coastline will bring benefits for out-of-season tourism - to Palma itself. This might be true, but as with any pronouncement regarding non-sun and beach tourism, there is more than a hint of the ill-defined blue sky, or blue waters if you prefer in the Playa's case. No one knows of course. Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be done. It should be. But lurking in the background are two things. One, as ever with Mallorca, is the suspicion that someone (or more than just someone) stands to "benefit". No project on the island can be viewed in any other way; history, much of it recent, is too littered with examples to suggest otherwise. Two, there is the what-about-me question. If there is seriousness as to the overall improvement to the coastal resorts, then Playa de Palma is, or should be, merely the first port of call. You can add on others - Magalluf, Can Picafort's front line, parts of Alcúdia, for example.
Yet amidst all the debate and the argument, there is another factor, and that is, as has been pointed out by one architect asked to voice an opinion about Playa de Palma, the influence of tour operators. TUI, for example, wants four-star hotels. Good for TUI. But what will they fill them with? Do you dismantle resorts and establish new, bright and shiny, all-inclusive hotels instead? Because this is what is likely to happen. And so a different type of obscenity, one for the twenty-first century's mass tourism, emerges. The result may be palatial, it may be architecturally more wonderful, it may fill new hotels, but it may also simply create division through what become little more than gated-community ghettoes lining the beaches.
Knock it down by all means, but be very aware that the Phoenix that rises from the burnt ashes of the old hotels may be a monster.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The re-development of Playa de Palma in the south of the island has been talked about for years. It has taken on a mythical dimension in that it is meant to hold the key to a prosperous Mallorcan tourist second life. A thing of beauty, unlike what grew up in the sixties and has been more the stuff of nightmares ever since.
Playa de Palma means not just Palma but also Can Pastilla (which is in Palma) and Arenal (which isn't). When I first came to Mallorca - in 1969 - it was to Arenal, in the days before it was colonised by Stein und Sauerkraut. Much of the area is a dump. It was then, but holidaymakers lacked the sophistication to realise it. They were in awe of the notion of the cheap and available "foreign" holiday. From the room in the hotel I could see a shanty town. It isn't there now, but as a young and idealistic teenager, it left a lasting impression - one of the obscene dichotomy between wealth and poverty that were the early years of island tourism, and one that has been, and is being repeated in other countries.
When mass tourism arrived on the back of the package deal, Clarkson and BEA, Playa de Palma was the Mallorcan Red Barrel to the Spanish mainland's Lloret, Benidorm and Torremolinos Luton Airport. It's where it all started. There is a mitigating factor to the grossness of what emerged. The Costas and Mallorca were first movers in mass tourism. Like any initiators of an "industrial" revolution, as with Britain and its industrialisation, there were no manuals to go by, no mistakes to learn from. Thus, the errors were made, and one has today's rotting corpse of the tourism progenitor.
They want to knock a lot of it down - residences and hotels - and erect what might be more a palace of Palma, one to compete with the oriental pleasure domes of Turkey or the pyramidal extravagance of Egyptian accommodation. Understandably, not everyone is too keen on the idea. The protests have caused them, the politicians, to backtrack. A new "definitive" plan is promised later this year, one that will replace the previous definitive plan. Even this may be delayed. There are elections next spring.
Without the re-development, so it is being said, Playa de Palma has no economic future. The architects are among those saying this, to which one might suggest that they would, wouldn't they. Wrapped up in all of this is the notion that the beautification of what is a generally unlovely stretch of coastline will bring benefits for out-of-season tourism - to Palma itself. This might be true, but as with any pronouncement regarding non-sun and beach tourism, there is more than a hint of the ill-defined blue sky, or blue waters if you prefer in the Playa's case. No one knows of course. Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be done. It should be. But lurking in the background are two things. One, as ever with Mallorca, is the suspicion that someone (or more than just someone) stands to "benefit". No project on the island can be viewed in any other way; history, much of it recent, is too littered with examples to suggest otherwise. Two, there is the what-about-me question. If there is seriousness as to the overall improvement to the coastal resorts, then Playa de Palma is, or should be, merely the first port of call. You can add on others - Magalluf, Can Picafort's front line, parts of Alcúdia, for example.
Yet amidst all the debate and the argument, there is another factor, and that is, as has been pointed out by one architect asked to voice an opinion about Playa de Palma, the influence of tour operators. TUI, for example, wants four-star hotels. Good for TUI. But what will they fill them with? Do you dismantle resorts and establish new, bright and shiny, all-inclusive hotels instead? Because this is what is likely to happen. And so a different type of obscenity, one for the twenty-first century's mass tourism, emerges. The result may be palatial, it may be architecturally more wonderful, it may fill new hotels, but it may also simply create division through what become little more than gated-community ghettoes lining the beaches.
Knock it down by all means, but be very aware that the Phoenix that rises from the burnt ashes of the old hotels may be a monster.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Adopting Positions: Chopin should have played golf
Chopin is to be made an adoptive son of Mallorca. No doubt he'll be rubato-ing with contentment in his Parisian grave, well away from where his interred non-missus, Amandine Dupin (aka George Sand), will be cursing the fact of his joining her in adoption but rejoicing in her having secured the gig before him; she was made an adoptive daughter of Mallorca some years ago. Beat yer to it, Freddie, you sexual inadequate.
Chopin and Sand were simultaneously enchanted and appalled by Mallorca, and specifically Valldemossa. It's the enchantment that gets hyper-brochured, alongside mentions of Chopin's output while in his mountain retreat and of Sand's legacy to the island, commemorated in the annual Winter in Mallorca cultural programme, named after her book. The selective writing of the history of the Chopin-Sand stay in Mallorca disguises the brevity of that stay and the deterioration in Chopin's health during it, a consequence of a miserable and cold winter. How he actually managed to play the piano, rubato or otherwise, is a mystery. Or perhaps he was blessed with warm extremities. Well, a couple if not one other, if George is to be taken at her word.
Chopin was from Poland. It's a happy coincidence. Name some of the "new" markets from which Mallorca hopes to attract more tourists, and Poland will appear high on the list. Having an adoptive son to boast about doesn't presumably harm that objective: the tourism juan-ies should be frantically casting around for a few Russians or Chinese who might have some adoption credentials, other than members of the Russki Mafia or owners of shops in a Mallorcan McDonald's style - the Chinese bazar; one on every street.
While Chopin and the not-missus Chopin are invoked as part of the island's cultural and winter tourism, they might have greater contemporary impact had they played golf. Perhaps someone could conveniently unearth a 170-year-old pitch 'n' putt in Valldemossa; it would do wonders for the golf tourism project. Possibly. Golf, though, holds the key to greater off-season riches than piano playing. Or that's what they would have you believe.
It's doubtful that Chopin ever made it as far as Muro or the north of the island. But it is here that the battle for golf tourism is being waged - as if you weren't aware of this already. Muro's golf course development is going through yet another eighteen holes of it's on, then it's off; the promoters threatening to sue is the latest. Not, I imagine, that you care. No one much does any longer, except the main protagonists, one of which is the enviro doom merchants GOB.
The pressure group has been playing its own statistics game. What it has found, it reckons, are figures which "prove" that golf doesn't do anything to bolster tourism off-seasonality. I had hoped that the figures would be proof, as at least it would have been evidence of someone making a hard case one way or the other as to whether the Muro course, or indeed others, are of any significant tourism value.
The statistics show that in the lower months of the "summer" season, i.e. April and October, occupation in hotels in Muro and Santa Margalida (for which, read Playa de Muro and Can Picafort) is higher than those in Alcúdia and Pollensa. From this, GOB argues that golf does not benefit either of the latter two resorts, ones where there are golf courses extant, while it also argues that Muro and Can Picafort are already doing nicely thank you by comparison, and therefore, by dubious extrapolation, don't need a golf course (or courses). It then goes on to extol what are the highly limited business virtues of small niche tourism in the resorts, e.g. bird-watching.
What this argument overlooks is the fact that the early-season occupancy of hotels in Playa de Muro and Can Picafort can be explained by these resorts being centres of cycling tourism, more so than the other two resorts. By concentrating on hotel occupancy figures, it also neglects the fact that Pollensa has a far lower number of hotel places by comparison with the other resorts. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the fact that golfers might stay in other types of accommodation (and GOB doesn't take this into account), the findings do underline a point that I have made in the past, which is precisely the one that GOB is implying. Were there real tourist demand for golf in Alcúdia and Pollensa, then more hotels would open. Wouldn't they?
GOB's argument is persuasive up to a point, but there is one big hole in it - there are no figures for the months of November to March. The seasonality issue is a twelve-month affair. Winter tourism, or the lack of it, cannot be defined in terms of April and October. Which brings us back to Chopin and Sand. Has anyone ever attempted to prove a link between Winter in Mallorca and winter tourism? Maybe they have, and they're keeping schtum. GOB's claims are based on some science, but they seem post-hoc. However, they are not without a dash of merit. There ought to be more science, but one suspects that certain vested interests would rather there weren't.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Chopin and Sand were simultaneously enchanted and appalled by Mallorca, and specifically Valldemossa. It's the enchantment that gets hyper-brochured, alongside mentions of Chopin's output while in his mountain retreat and of Sand's legacy to the island, commemorated in the annual Winter in Mallorca cultural programme, named after her book. The selective writing of the history of the Chopin-Sand stay in Mallorca disguises the brevity of that stay and the deterioration in Chopin's health during it, a consequence of a miserable and cold winter. How he actually managed to play the piano, rubato or otherwise, is a mystery. Or perhaps he was blessed with warm extremities. Well, a couple if not one other, if George is to be taken at her word.
Chopin was from Poland. It's a happy coincidence. Name some of the "new" markets from which Mallorca hopes to attract more tourists, and Poland will appear high on the list. Having an adoptive son to boast about doesn't presumably harm that objective: the tourism juan-ies should be frantically casting around for a few Russians or Chinese who might have some adoption credentials, other than members of the Russki Mafia or owners of shops in a Mallorcan McDonald's style - the Chinese bazar; one on every street.
While Chopin and the not-missus Chopin are invoked as part of the island's cultural and winter tourism, they might have greater contemporary impact had they played golf. Perhaps someone could conveniently unearth a 170-year-old pitch 'n' putt in Valldemossa; it would do wonders for the golf tourism project. Possibly. Golf, though, holds the key to greater off-season riches than piano playing. Or that's what they would have you believe.
It's doubtful that Chopin ever made it as far as Muro or the north of the island. But it is here that the battle for golf tourism is being waged - as if you weren't aware of this already. Muro's golf course development is going through yet another eighteen holes of it's on, then it's off; the promoters threatening to sue is the latest. Not, I imagine, that you care. No one much does any longer, except the main protagonists, one of which is the enviro doom merchants GOB.
The pressure group has been playing its own statistics game. What it has found, it reckons, are figures which "prove" that golf doesn't do anything to bolster tourism off-seasonality. I had hoped that the figures would be proof, as at least it would have been evidence of someone making a hard case one way or the other as to whether the Muro course, or indeed others, are of any significant tourism value.
The statistics show that in the lower months of the "summer" season, i.e. April and October, occupation in hotels in Muro and Santa Margalida (for which, read Playa de Muro and Can Picafort) is higher than those in Alcúdia and Pollensa. From this, GOB argues that golf does not benefit either of the latter two resorts, ones where there are golf courses extant, while it also argues that Muro and Can Picafort are already doing nicely thank you by comparison, and therefore, by dubious extrapolation, don't need a golf course (or courses). It then goes on to extol what are the highly limited business virtues of small niche tourism in the resorts, e.g. bird-watching.
What this argument overlooks is the fact that the early-season occupancy of hotels in Playa de Muro and Can Picafort can be explained by these resorts being centres of cycling tourism, more so than the other two resorts. By concentrating on hotel occupancy figures, it also neglects the fact that Pollensa has a far lower number of hotel places by comparison with the other resorts. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the fact that golfers might stay in other types of accommodation (and GOB doesn't take this into account), the findings do underline a point that I have made in the past, which is precisely the one that GOB is implying. Were there real tourist demand for golf in Alcúdia and Pollensa, then more hotels would open. Wouldn't they?
GOB's argument is persuasive up to a point, but there is one big hole in it - there are no figures for the months of November to March. The seasonality issue is a twelve-month affair. Winter tourism, or the lack of it, cannot be defined in terms of April and October. Which brings us back to Chopin and Sand. Has anyone ever attempted to prove a link between Winter in Mallorca and winter tourism? Maybe they have, and they're keeping schtum. GOB's claims are based on some science, but they seem post-hoc. However, they are not without a dash of merit. There ought to be more science, but one suspects that certain vested interests would rather there weren't.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, September 09, 2010
White Stripes: Why did the tourist cross the road?
Sledging in cricket has produced some fine moments of insult. One of the most famous exchanges went along these lines ... Bowler inciting batsman who was not hitting the ball: "it's red, round, in case you were wondering"; batsman responding, having hit the next ball out of the ground: "you know what it looks like, now go and find it". The true origins of sledges have tended to become confused. This one is sometimes attributed to South Africa's Shaun Pollock and Australia's Ricky Ponting, which is almost certainly wrong. More commonly, it is attributed to Greg Thomas of Glamorgan and the West Indies' Viv Richards. Not that it really matters. This is not an article on sledging.
The sledge has, though, occurred to me when driving along the local main roads. It would be something like: "it's white, striped, now walk on it."
The re-modelling of the main road (Carretera Arta) through Puerto Alcúdia and Playa de Muro and ever eastwards is to enter its third phase in October when the grotty thoroughfare in Can Picafort is given a similar makeover. The whole scheme has been about giving priority to pedestrians, and to a large extent it has been successful in this aim. What has not been wholly successful has been convincing pedestrians to use the white stripes and the non-striped islands as the means of crossing the road.
Bone idleness, especially while on holiday, is pretty much a given, but the planners have failed to comprehend this. True, it might bring traffic to a complete halt were there to be crossings every ten metres - you can have only so many of them, and doubtless they'd still be ignored anyway - but there are some points along the road where the non-crossing is glaring and potentially dangerous. One of the most striking is near to the Palma roundabout on the Playa de Muro-Alcúdia boundary. The Marítimo hotel is just before this roundabout. There is an island a few metres to the left where one comes out of the hotel to cross the road. Who uses it? No one. It's in the wrong place, assuming one accepts the bone idleness theory, and I am who subscribes to it. I don't use the crossing either. Another example is given by the hordes who head out of the Delfin Azul and Port d'Alcudia hotels. The straight line to the beach is halfway between two islands. Consequently, they are also unused.
Why did they undertake the road remodelling in the first place? It was to make the road safer. But how can it be described thus, when there are pedestrians, centre road, waving damn great lilos around and attached to the ubiquitous baby-buggy? The buggy has become that de rigueur that one wonders whether it is used solely for the transporting of infants or whether it houses all the other paraphernalia without which no day on the beach would be complete. Whatever. I am uneasy as I pass a family or several in mid road whilst a truck or coach approaches in the opposite direction. And woe betide if you stop to allow them to cross. Inevitably it takes an age for them to appreciate the fact that you have stopped for that purpose, and meanwhile matey-boy behind is getting into a strop.
When they re-do the road in Can Picafort, they'll probably make the same mistakes, such as the beautification of the Playa de Muro stretch with its crossings where emerging pedestrians are obscured from drivers' vision by parked cars, hedges and palm trees and the failure to prevent the inner roads parallel to the carretera from being used as rapid rat runs. One can but hope, though. The current system of Can Picafort crossings and side roads into which or out of which you can neither enter nor exit is confusing enough as it is, without having to contend with the lilo-flapping jaywalkers. Least they can do is get a new walk, don't walk system: it's white, it's striped, now use it.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The sledge has, though, occurred to me when driving along the local main roads. It would be something like: "it's white, striped, now walk on it."
The re-modelling of the main road (Carretera Arta) through Puerto Alcúdia and Playa de Muro and ever eastwards is to enter its third phase in October when the grotty thoroughfare in Can Picafort is given a similar makeover. The whole scheme has been about giving priority to pedestrians, and to a large extent it has been successful in this aim. What has not been wholly successful has been convincing pedestrians to use the white stripes and the non-striped islands as the means of crossing the road.
Bone idleness, especially while on holiday, is pretty much a given, but the planners have failed to comprehend this. True, it might bring traffic to a complete halt were there to be crossings every ten metres - you can have only so many of them, and doubtless they'd still be ignored anyway - but there are some points along the road where the non-crossing is glaring and potentially dangerous. One of the most striking is near to the Palma roundabout on the Playa de Muro-Alcúdia boundary. The Marítimo hotel is just before this roundabout. There is an island a few metres to the left where one comes out of the hotel to cross the road. Who uses it? No one. It's in the wrong place, assuming one accepts the bone idleness theory, and I am who subscribes to it. I don't use the crossing either. Another example is given by the hordes who head out of the Delfin Azul and Port d'Alcudia hotels. The straight line to the beach is halfway between two islands. Consequently, they are also unused.
Why did they undertake the road remodelling in the first place? It was to make the road safer. But how can it be described thus, when there are pedestrians, centre road, waving damn great lilos around and attached to the ubiquitous baby-buggy? The buggy has become that de rigueur that one wonders whether it is used solely for the transporting of infants or whether it houses all the other paraphernalia without which no day on the beach would be complete. Whatever. I am uneasy as I pass a family or several in mid road whilst a truck or coach approaches in the opposite direction. And woe betide if you stop to allow them to cross. Inevitably it takes an age for them to appreciate the fact that you have stopped for that purpose, and meanwhile matey-boy behind is getting into a strop.
When they re-do the road in Can Picafort, they'll probably make the same mistakes, such as the beautification of the Playa de Muro stretch with its crossings where emerging pedestrians are obscured from drivers' vision by parked cars, hedges and palm trees and the failure to prevent the inner roads parallel to the carretera from being used as rapid rat runs. One can but hope, though. The current system of Can Picafort crossings and side roads into which or out of which you can neither enter nor exit is confusing enough as it is, without having to contend with the lilo-flapping jaywalkers. Least they can do is get a new walk, don't walk system: it's white, it's striped, now use it.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
The Secret: Art and graffiti in Mallorca
Mallorca is an island of artists. It must be something to do with having so much time on their hands.
The great tradition of art, in the north of the island at any rate, grew out of the creation of the Pollensa "school" in the early years of the last century. As with much of the island's alleged culture, the impetus for this came not from locals but from mainland Spain and Argentina, while the best known pieces of the sculpture branch line of art, such as those on the roundabouts, are the work of an Italian and a Hungarian - the hideous horse of Alcúdia and the knotty conundrum of the Magic area.
It's hard to avoid art, be it in galleries in Pollensa town or in its port, or in restaurants which, through their own exhibitions, acquire for themselves the canvas of sophistication. The Bennassar gallery in Pollensa is its own white background, grafted onto which is an interior design of minimalism and a rotation of splashes of the abstract or the Fauvist post-impressionism with which Pollensa is sometimes associated. The Llompart gallery in the Seglars square at the foot of the Calvari is a wooden abundance of every bit of space being competed for by prints. It's a gallery in which you feel you can blow your nose, unlike Bennassar's where you would fear being quarantined in its starkly pristine clean-room laboratory.
Not a fiesta passes without the programme being brushed with an opening of an exhibition here, another one there, all the work of artists you have never heard of. The fiesta posters are their own works of art, grandly announced in advance of the release of the fiesta schedule itself, like the single promoting a new album. Art is everywhere. In the towns you may stumble across some German ancients on folding camping-chair canvas (of a different variety), sketch pads in hand and an earnestly inquisitive expression as they commit to paper a town house with its green persianas, a tumble of bougainvillaea and a balcony flowerpot or two. The owners should sell image rights or if not, then engage in some surreptitious mooning.
Mallorca has not escaped the artistic vandalism of the modern day, be it the pictorial ramblings of a scrambled abstract creator or the urbanism of street art - graffiti, to you and me. The deceit of street art lies in a connivance by an ultra-liberal, social services movement of expression of one's inner caveman. Normally I would approve, but when it comes to uninvited decoration of walls or shop shutters, I am less inclined to, irrespective of the merits of what are often astonishing statements. One can at least appreciate the creativity of the Mallorcan Banksys, though quite how citizen dismay at street art squares with another aspect of the fiesta programme - the street art workshop - is a question only the connivers can really answer.
But then there is the graffiti scrawl. It may often have its own signature style, but it ain't art, except perversely as some kind of Dadaist artistic anarchy. The scrawl is vandalism impure and simple, but occasionally, when it is intelligible as words, an enigma arises. And we have one. Mallorca has a secret. Look around, and you will see that it does. The secret's out, as in that it's all over the place; on this wall, on that pillar or utility's control-box housing. In Puerto Alcúdia one such pillar poses the question "Secreto?" on one side, and answers on the other - "El secreto es sexy Nena". What is this secret? I have no idea. Maybe there is no secret. Perhaps it is just a conceit. Whatever it is, it's intriguing. It may have no merit, it may be vandalistic, but it does make you think, which is, after all, a purpose of art. If you can call it that.
* Thanks to Ben Grimley for drawing my attention to the "Secreto" graffiti.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
The German Air Force: Tourist and air taxes
The Germans are creating a stink. From next year there will be an air tax applied to all tickets for outgoing flights from German airports; the levy will amount to eight euros for a flight to Mallorca. German airlines are none too impressed with the Merkel government's decision, Lufthansa saying that it will have to pass on the tax, the director general of Air Berlin in Spain and Portugal, the former head of the Mallorca Tourism Board (Fomento del Turismo), describing it as totally absurd, and Balearics president Antich also condemning the measure.
This is not exactly the first time that a major market for Mallorca has introduced such a tax. Who else? The UK, for one. The air passenger duty is set to rise to twelve pounds in November this year. Has it had a negative impact? Well, has it?
The Dutch are ones who would argue that this type of tax can be harmful. They abandoned theirs a year or so after it had been introduced. One drawback to the Dutch scheme was that passengers nipped over the border to Germany where there was no tax. Then. Or at least that's what they said. Add on the costs of getting to a German airport, and the saving was probably marginal at best. Nevertheless, the Dutch did apparently experience an overall loss on the deal.
Air taxes, tourist taxes, call them as you will, are easily justified - by governments and the environment lobby - as ways of saving the planet, a justification that has more than the hint of dissemblance, to say nothing of hypocrisy. Build another runway here or there, crank the number of flights up, haul in the tax cash. The environment is served better by improved aircraft efficiency, which is why the British government toys with the idea of a levy on older, less-efficient planes.
The taxes are a system of revenue generation, why not come clean? The airlines believe this to be so and that they are viewed as cash cows to be milked by bankrupt governments.
Into this argument, locally, comes a comparison being drawn between the German decision and the abandoned eco-tax. If you don't recall the fuss that caused ... the plan was to levy a tax of one euro per night on tourists. It was a crap scheme, not because there wasn't some sense behind it, but because it was highly discriminatory: the tax was to be gathered by hotels and other providers of accommodation. It took no account of other types of visitor.
The then socialist-led government, presided over by the current president, was quite clear as to the purpose of the tax; it was to be used, in effect, to clear up the mess years of tourism had created. Whether the money would ever have been used wisely, who can tell? And we were to never find out because the Partido Popular came into power a year after its introduction and scrapped it, the tourism minister of the time claiming that it had caused a reduction in tourism, something which the UK travel industry, for one, didn't necessarily agree with. His predecessor, who is now the head of the dreaded Costas authority, said in 2001 that the tax was a consequence of the Balearics "tiring of cheap, destructive tourism".
Things have changed since 2001, one change being the more rapid growth in low-cost airlines: from the UK and from Germany. As "The Bulletin" has asked, it is legitimate to question how President Antich squares his opposition to the German tax with the abandoned eco-tax. Does Mallorca now wish to carry on with "cheap and destructive tourism", contrary to the view nine years ago, keeping flights from Germany as cheap as possible?
Another thing that has changed of course is the increase in competition to Mallorca, hence, one supposes, Antich's opposition. But the tax would be universal in terms of destination; it wouldn't just be Mallorca. So where, really, is the problem? The British have lived with it, the Germans, generally more eco-conscious than the British anyway, would probably stomach it, and German treasury coffers would swell. Where a problem would lie, potentially, would be if the eco-tax were to be revisited. There is support for such a thing. For example, there is a group calling itself "Mallorca Goes Green". This advocates a ten euro tax on any visitor coming into the island via ports or the airport. A double-whammy tax might just make people think twice about flying to Mallorca. Or it might not. And even were it to, as I pointed out a couple of days ago, Mallorca can afford to lose tourists - cheap and destructive ones, if you like.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
This is not exactly the first time that a major market for Mallorca has introduced such a tax. Who else? The UK, for one. The air passenger duty is set to rise to twelve pounds in November this year. Has it had a negative impact? Well, has it?
The Dutch are ones who would argue that this type of tax can be harmful. They abandoned theirs a year or so after it had been introduced. One drawback to the Dutch scheme was that passengers nipped over the border to Germany where there was no tax. Then. Or at least that's what they said. Add on the costs of getting to a German airport, and the saving was probably marginal at best. Nevertheless, the Dutch did apparently experience an overall loss on the deal.
Air taxes, tourist taxes, call them as you will, are easily justified - by governments and the environment lobby - as ways of saving the planet, a justification that has more than the hint of dissemblance, to say nothing of hypocrisy. Build another runway here or there, crank the number of flights up, haul in the tax cash. The environment is served better by improved aircraft efficiency, which is why the British government toys with the idea of a levy on older, less-efficient planes.
The taxes are a system of revenue generation, why not come clean? The airlines believe this to be so and that they are viewed as cash cows to be milked by bankrupt governments.
Into this argument, locally, comes a comparison being drawn between the German decision and the abandoned eco-tax. If you don't recall the fuss that caused ... the plan was to levy a tax of one euro per night on tourists. It was a crap scheme, not because there wasn't some sense behind it, but because it was highly discriminatory: the tax was to be gathered by hotels and other providers of accommodation. It took no account of other types of visitor.
The then socialist-led government, presided over by the current president, was quite clear as to the purpose of the tax; it was to be used, in effect, to clear up the mess years of tourism had created. Whether the money would ever have been used wisely, who can tell? And we were to never find out because the Partido Popular came into power a year after its introduction and scrapped it, the tourism minister of the time claiming that it had caused a reduction in tourism, something which the UK travel industry, for one, didn't necessarily agree with. His predecessor, who is now the head of the dreaded Costas authority, said in 2001 that the tax was a consequence of the Balearics "tiring of cheap, destructive tourism".
Things have changed since 2001, one change being the more rapid growth in low-cost airlines: from the UK and from Germany. As "The Bulletin" has asked, it is legitimate to question how President Antich squares his opposition to the German tax with the abandoned eco-tax. Does Mallorca now wish to carry on with "cheap and destructive tourism", contrary to the view nine years ago, keeping flights from Germany as cheap as possible?
Another thing that has changed of course is the increase in competition to Mallorca, hence, one supposes, Antich's opposition. But the tax would be universal in terms of destination; it wouldn't just be Mallorca. So where, really, is the problem? The British have lived with it, the Germans, generally more eco-conscious than the British anyway, would probably stomach it, and German treasury coffers would swell. Where a problem would lie, potentially, would be if the eco-tax were to be revisited. There is support for such a thing. For example, there is a group calling itself "Mallorca Goes Green". This advocates a ten euro tax on any visitor coming into the island via ports or the airport. A double-whammy tax might just make people think twice about flying to Mallorca. Or it might not. And even were it to, as I pointed out a couple of days ago, Mallorca can afford to lose tourists - cheap and destructive ones, if you like.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, September 06, 2010
The Work Ethic: September's return
Almost a week may have passed, but today is when September really starts. A weekend creates a pleasant intervention in delaying the inevitable. Work.
August is a month of blissful indolence. One can excuse one's own inertia on account of that of everyone else's and the closed signs which go up, if only metaphorically. Come September and some time snatched on the beach seems vaguely fraudulent. It is said of the Mallorcans that they cease going to the beach in September because 26 or so degrees are the equivalent of a grey January day in Worthing. Or maybe they stop because they reckon they should, as though commanded by an unwritten labour law, even if a compulsion to work is the last thing you would normally associate with the Mallorcans.
There remains something of the school holidays in all of us. What seemed like months of the back garden, the estate streets, the woods and sometimes the beach came to a highly unwelcome halt at the start of September. The discomfort of a tie around a new shirt collar, stiff from the outfitters (and one shop used to have a bizarre monopoly for my schools' kits) and the retching over the morning milk that had been left out in the still warm sun. It always tasted sour, and never more so than when the sourness of the new school year curdled a dreadful realisation that Christmas was light years away.
School, through its routine of day and term, may be designed to teach us as to the horrors to come, but it also teaches us that it, school, is there against our will. Much as it might make us collude in the conspiracy that life isn't one long game on PlayStation, it fails miserably in making us want to do what it tells us. Like going back to work. Furthermore, it teaches us that September is a month to resent: for the loss of summer and because of the gradual fading of summer through the September days until it becomes a distant memory and because also of the gloom of the workplace with only that memory to convince us that it will return and we can start the whole process over again.
Mallorca is back to work today. In "The Diario" yesterday there was a four-cornered interview which took this return as the springboard for discussing some of the island's problems. I had hoped for a revelation or two; headings such as "Change of mentality?" suggested there might be. There weren't. But I know what they were driving at. While there's the sun and the beach and the summer it can be easy to switch off from what is to come. Mallorca creates its own sense of unreality, and it lasts from at least the middle of June when the schools shut up, climaxing in the other-world surrealism of lazy August. September comes with a jolt. The article should have been titled "Trepidation", because that's where we're at. Despite the promising statistics, this has been a rotten summer for many, and it will soon finish completely. Then what?
Unfortunately, though we rather might like the idea, we can't all go back to school. Oh, that we could.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
August is a month of blissful indolence. One can excuse one's own inertia on account of that of everyone else's and the closed signs which go up, if only metaphorically. Come September and some time snatched on the beach seems vaguely fraudulent. It is said of the Mallorcans that they cease going to the beach in September because 26 or so degrees are the equivalent of a grey January day in Worthing. Or maybe they stop because they reckon they should, as though commanded by an unwritten labour law, even if a compulsion to work is the last thing you would normally associate with the Mallorcans.
There remains something of the school holidays in all of us. What seemed like months of the back garden, the estate streets, the woods and sometimes the beach came to a highly unwelcome halt at the start of September. The discomfort of a tie around a new shirt collar, stiff from the outfitters (and one shop used to have a bizarre monopoly for my schools' kits) and the retching over the morning milk that had been left out in the still warm sun. It always tasted sour, and never more so than when the sourness of the new school year curdled a dreadful realisation that Christmas was light years away.
School, through its routine of day and term, may be designed to teach us as to the horrors to come, but it also teaches us that it, school, is there against our will. Much as it might make us collude in the conspiracy that life isn't one long game on PlayStation, it fails miserably in making us want to do what it tells us. Like going back to work. Furthermore, it teaches us that September is a month to resent: for the loss of summer and because of the gradual fading of summer through the September days until it becomes a distant memory and because also of the gloom of the workplace with only that memory to convince us that it will return and we can start the whole process over again.
Mallorca is back to work today. In "The Diario" yesterday there was a four-cornered interview which took this return as the springboard for discussing some of the island's problems. I had hoped for a revelation or two; headings such as "Change of mentality?" suggested there might be. There weren't. But I know what they were driving at. While there's the sun and the beach and the summer it can be easy to switch off from what is to come. Mallorca creates its own sense of unreality, and it lasts from at least the middle of June when the schools shut up, climaxing in the other-world surrealism of lazy August. September comes with a jolt. The article should have been titled "Trepidation", because that's where we're at. Despite the promising statistics, this has been a rotten summer for many, and it will soon finish completely. Then what?
Unfortunately, though we rather might like the idea, we can't all go back to school. Oh, that we could.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, September 05, 2010
Of No Value: Tourism that doesn't count
If you were a business chief executive and you sanctioned the payment of a "lagola" to an MBA-toting consultant, you might find yourself on gardening leave and to later be in receipt of your own lagola as compensation for your profligacy. A lagola, incidentally, is a pejorative term for eight hundred thousand euros or so (La Gola, the cost of converting a stagnant wetland and vandalised scrubland into a stagnant wetland and vandalised scrubland with a car park, OED).
You might remain in your post were it not for the fact that the consultant had cut and paste research from the internet dating back twenty years to comply with his commission - namely a cost-benefit analysis of your least valuable customers. The saving grace might be what he had discovered, assuming you had taken any notice.
I've made this up. There is no chief executive and there is no consultant. But there is a tourism minister (in fact there have been any number just recently) and any number of advisors and organisations. The tourism minister is probably only on a tenth-lagola, if that, but if she is worth the money then she might do her own bit of cutting and pasting.
In 1990 a researcher at Palma university published a paper on income from tourism. In it he showed, via cost-benefit analysis, that ten per cent of tourists spent very little, so little that they caused a "negative addition to the net social benefit of tourist activity". In other words, it cost the Balearics more to have them on the islands than was taken as a benefit.
This was twenty years ago, in the days before all-inclusives. Ten years later, the same researcher published another document in which he and a colleague pointed out that "the average expenditure per tourist ... diminished in the '80s and the beginning of the '90s". The worries about tourism spend are nothing new; they've been around for a generation or more.
In 2006 other researchers at the university presented a paper which examined the impact of all-inclusives. They revealed that over a three-year period from 2002 to 2004, the percentage of tourists opting for all-inclusive had risen from 9.58% to 16.32%. They also showed the average spend of tourists in different types of accommodation in 2004, figures taken from the same research organisation which recently released numbers showing an increase in tourism spend in July this year. This, in terms of euros per day, was 23.20, over a third less than that of the next lowest-spending group (those on half board) and under a half of the highest-spending sectors - those purchasing transport only to the islands and those opting for bed and breakfast.
We've moved on since then. Given the increase in all-inclusives, especially those at the economy end of the market, and also given a highly conservative estimation of a 0.5 percentage point increase year on year, 20% of tourists are now of no value. It's almost certainly higher. The increase in all-inclusive since 2004 has been marked. No one is exactly sure because of the numbers who upgrade to all-inclusive on arrival, but it is at least double.
You come back to that chief executive, for which read the tourism minister. It is her responsibility, as with a CEO, to form strategy. To be fair, there has been a lot of talk about tourism strategy over the years, which is part of the problem. Much of it has been talk only. We are no nearer a strategy than we have ever been. If that 10% is indeed now 20% or higher, then why bother with them? Design a strategy that excludes them.
There are reasons why not. One is a form of altruism. Just as higher education has been deemed a "right", then so also is a holiday, a foreign holiday, a right, in the sense that a right equates to being a necessity, which is how the foreign holiday is now defined. Low income should not debar people from taking a holiday; of course it shouldn't. But how far can any destination or country be expected to take this notion of social responsibility when the generosity is not being reciprocated? Come to our island, use our resources, and spend nothing. Ingrates.
The other reasons revolve around the same numbers game as that which gives rise to the tourism spend statistics - the volume of tourists and, in particular, the volume of tourists passing through the airport in Palma. Cut that 20% out and the total numbers would slip under the nine million mark (those coming to Mallorca on an annual basis). Psychologically and politically, it would be hard to accept. The airport needs as many passengers as possible: a) to justify the costs of its development and expansion and b) in order to meet traffic numbers that will guarantee that local politicians can get their hands on managing the airport. Then there are the strategies of others - airlines and tour operators, neither of which are unduly concerned so long as they stay profitable.
You can't arrive at a sensible strategy when you have competing needs. But that research needs to be revisited and revised. If it means a slimmed-down tourism market, then so be it, so long as the rump market does make a positive rather than a negative contribution. The problem, as ever, is what the all-inclusives will bring. You can spend all the lagolas you like, but if no one bothers to even go take a look, then what's the point.
Eugeni Aguiló Perez, "An Estimation Of the Social Income of Tourism", Papers of the Spanish Economy, 1990.
Catalina Juaneda Sampol and Eugeni Aguiló Perez, "Tourist Expenditure Determinants in a Cross-Section Data Model", Annals of Tourism Research, Vol 27, No 3, 2000.
Joaquín Alegre and Llorenç Pou, "The All-Inclusive Tourism Package: An analysis of its economic implications in the case of the Balearic Islands", University of the Balearic Islands, March 2006.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
You might remain in your post were it not for the fact that the consultant had cut and paste research from the internet dating back twenty years to comply with his commission - namely a cost-benefit analysis of your least valuable customers. The saving grace might be what he had discovered, assuming you had taken any notice.
I've made this up. There is no chief executive and there is no consultant. But there is a tourism minister (in fact there have been any number just recently) and any number of advisors and organisations. The tourism minister is probably only on a tenth-lagola, if that, but if she is worth the money then she might do her own bit of cutting and pasting.
In 1990 a researcher at Palma university published a paper on income from tourism. In it he showed, via cost-benefit analysis, that ten per cent of tourists spent very little, so little that they caused a "negative addition to the net social benefit of tourist activity". In other words, it cost the Balearics more to have them on the islands than was taken as a benefit.
This was twenty years ago, in the days before all-inclusives. Ten years later, the same researcher published another document in which he and a colleague pointed out that "the average expenditure per tourist ... diminished in the '80s and the beginning of the '90s". The worries about tourism spend are nothing new; they've been around for a generation or more.
In 2006 other researchers at the university presented a paper which examined the impact of all-inclusives. They revealed that over a three-year period from 2002 to 2004, the percentage of tourists opting for all-inclusive had risen from 9.58% to 16.32%. They also showed the average spend of tourists in different types of accommodation in 2004, figures taken from the same research organisation which recently released numbers showing an increase in tourism spend in July this year. This, in terms of euros per day, was 23.20, over a third less than that of the next lowest-spending group (those on half board) and under a half of the highest-spending sectors - those purchasing transport only to the islands and those opting for bed and breakfast.
We've moved on since then. Given the increase in all-inclusives, especially those at the economy end of the market, and also given a highly conservative estimation of a 0.5 percentage point increase year on year, 20% of tourists are now of no value. It's almost certainly higher. The increase in all-inclusive since 2004 has been marked. No one is exactly sure because of the numbers who upgrade to all-inclusive on arrival, but it is at least double.
You come back to that chief executive, for which read the tourism minister. It is her responsibility, as with a CEO, to form strategy. To be fair, there has been a lot of talk about tourism strategy over the years, which is part of the problem. Much of it has been talk only. We are no nearer a strategy than we have ever been. If that 10% is indeed now 20% or higher, then why bother with them? Design a strategy that excludes them.
There are reasons why not. One is a form of altruism. Just as higher education has been deemed a "right", then so also is a holiday, a foreign holiday, a right, in the sense that a right equates to being a necessity, which is how the foreign holiday is now defined. Low income should not debar people from taking a holiday; of course it shouldn't. But how far can any destination or country be expected to take this notion of social responsibility when the generosity is not being reciprocated? Come to our island, use our resources, and spend nothing. Ingrates.
The other reasons revolve around the same numbers game as that which gives rise to the tourism spend statistics - the volume of tourists and, in particular, the volume of tourists passing through the airport in Palma. Cut that 20% out and the total numbers would slip under the nine million mark (those coming to Mallorca on an annual basis). Psychologically and politically, it would be hard to accept. The airport needs as many passengers as possible: a) to justify the costs of its development and expansion and b) in order to meet traffic numbers that will guarantee that local politicians can get their hands on managing the airport. Then there are the strategies of others - airlines and tour operators, neither of which are unduly concerned so long as they stay profitable.
You can't arrive at a sensible strategy when you have competing needs. But that research needs to be revisited and revised. If it means a slimmed-down tourism market, then so be it, so long as the rump market does make a positive rather than a negative contribution. The problem, as ever, is what the all-inclusives will bring. You can spend all the lagolas you like, but if no one bothers to even go take a look, then what's the point.
Eugeni Aguiló Perez, "An Estimation Of the Social Income of Tourism", Papers of the Spanish Economy, 1990.
Catalina Juaneda Sampol and Eugeni Aguiló Perez, "Tourist Expenditure Determinants in a Cross-Section Data Model", Annals of Tourism Research, Vol 27, No 3, 2000.
Joaquín Alegre and Llorenç Pou, "The All-Inclusive Tourism Package: An analysis of its economic implications in the case of the Balearic Islands", University of the Balearic Islands, March 2006.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, September 04, 2010
The Road To Damascus: Banning bullfighting
We all change our opinions. Sometimes this change is as a consequence of persuasive argument. How fully we might believe this new opinion though is debatable. Previously held convictions rarely suddenly evaporate into a dissipated ether of memory, for the simple reason that memory is the coalescence of a battleground for competing beliefs and values - old and new. And rather than an ether, defined if you will as a "clear sky", the memory is thick with clouds. To undo an opinion takes time.
In psychology there is the concept of dissonance - how one reconciles competing ideas, values or opinions. Aesop gave us a fable about dissonance - the fox wanted the grapes, but couldn't get at them, and so came to the conclusion that it didn't want them. Sour grapes.
Dissonance theory is but one basis of organisational behaviour, be it in business, politics, religion, sport, whatever. An inability to overcome dissonance might lead to adopting more extreme positions or, for instance, to resigning from a job because one cannot accept a policy decision. So it is with an argument. One side's point of view conflicts with your own. In heated arguments, the dissonance grows wider, less rational often. It demands a change in a belief to restore the tail to the head of the dissonance coin, otherwise known as consonance.
In a sense, it's like compromise, but this implies the finding of some middle ground. Reducing or eliminating dissonance requires the supplanting of an old opinion with a new one, someone else's. One might argue that Nick Clegg is a good example of a politician who has had to contend with dissonance. He has arrived at certain opinions, not through compromise, but because he is faced with little alternative but to adopt an opinion that is contrary to what he may long have felt.
Crucial to this casting-out of dissonance is the rationalisation as to the newly held opinion. The fox reasoned that the grapes were sour, but it would have still eaten them had it been able to. A true change in belief or opinion is a drawn-out process. Even for those undergoing religious conversion, the establishment of new, deeply held principles is hardly ever the result of a Road to Damascus moment.
Which leads us to the exception that was Paul. It took him three days of blindness (whilst en route to Damascus for a bit of persecution), the laying on of hands and a swiftly arranged baptism to cease being a Pharisee and to become an apostle. Three days seem apposite. But they are highly unusual. Chances are that they are a convenience, a contrivance even.
Let's say, for example, you are the editor of a newspaper, and you express an opinion on a Tuesday. Let's assume, if we will, that this opinion has to do with bullfighting. You are equivocal on the matter. You don't like it, but you wouldn't ban it. Nothing wrong with this. There are plenty of others who hold this opinion. I am one of them, even if my rejection of a ban has less to do with the emotiveness of animal rights and more to do with a libertarian streak that makes me wary of "the ban" as a generic solution to perceived ills. However, three days later, a Damascene intervention has occurred, resulting in a new opinion being expressed on Friday. You now believe in a ban on bullfighting.
Without being party to your mental processes, neither I nor anyone else can say with certainty how this opinion change has come about. But let us further assume that your readership has expressed opposition to what was your original argument. What you have, potentially, is dissonance. How do you react? Does the need for consonance kick in? Quite possibly. And what might the rationalisation be? The bullfighting issue has been politicised.
Of course, all this theory might just be bollocks. Who can say? Or is it bullocks?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
In psychology there is the concept of dissonance - how one reconciles competing ideas, values or opinions. Aesop gave us a fable about dissonance - the fox wanted the grapes, but couldn't get at them, and so came to the conclusion that it didn't want them. Sour grapes.
Dissonance theory is but one basis of organisational behaviour, be it in business, politics, religion, sport, whatever. An inability to overcome dissonance might lead to adopting more extreme positions or, for instance, to resigning from a job because one cannot accept a policy decision. So it is with an argument. One side's point of view conflicts with your own. In heated arguments, the dissonance grows wider, less rational often. It demands a change in a belief to restore the tail to the head of the dissonance coin, otherwise known as consonance.
In a sense, it's like compromise, but this implies the finding of some middle ground. Reducing or eliminating dissonance requires the supplanting of an old opinion with a new one, someone else's. One might argue that Nick Clegg is a good example of a politician who has had to contend with dissonance. He has arrived at certain opinions, not through compromise, but because he is faced with little alternative but to adopt an opinion that is contrary to what he may long have felt.
Crucial to this casting-out of dissonance is the rationalisation as to the newly held opinion. The fox reasoned that the grapes were sour, but it would have still eaten them had it been able to. A true change in belief or opinion is a drawn-out process. Even for those undergoing religious conversion, the establishment of new, deeply held principles is hardly ever the result of a Road to Damascus moment.
Which leads us to the exception that was Paul. It took him three days of blindness (whilst en route to Damascus for a bit of persecution), the laying on of hands and a swiftly arranged baptism to cease being a Pharisee and to become an apostle. Three days seem apposite. But they are highly unusual. Chances are that they are a convenience, a contrivance even.
Let's say, for example, you are the editor of a newspaper, and you express an opinion on a Tuesday. Let's assume, if we will, that this opinion has to do with bullfighting. You are equivocal on the matter. You don't like it, but you wouldn't ban it. Nothing wrong with this. There are plenty of others who hold this opinion. I am one of them, even if my rejection of a ban has less to do with the emotiveness of animal rights and more to do with a libertarian streak that makes me wary of "the ban" as a generic solution to perceived ills. However, three days later, a Damascene intervention has occurred, resulting in a new opinion being expressed on Friday. You now believe in a ban on bullfighting.
Without being party to your mental processes, neither I nor anyone else can say with certainty how this opinion change has come about. But let us further assume that your readership has expressed opposition to what was your original argument. What you have, potentially, is dissonance. How do you react? Does the need for consonance kick in? Quite possibly. And what might the rationalisation be? The bullfighting issue has been politicised.
Of course, all this theory might just be bollocks. Who can say? Or is it bullocks?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, September 03, 2010
Madman Crosses The Water
The things you find out.
Bite-sized sucking pig with pomegranate sauce; white flowers and Scandinavian air; red roses and roses without petals; Macià Batle wine from Santa Maria del Cami; 23 metres high and 50 metres wide; 25 lorries from the UK and mainland Spain.
Want to hazard a guess?
The answers - in order - are: part of the menu for the VIPs; the design of a VIP area; the star's choice of flowers (forgive me, but what are roses without petals?); the same star's supposed choice of plonk; the size of the stage; the number of lorries transporting kit.
Come on, you must know now.
Over the past weeks we have been able to read interviews with three stars (well, two stars and a starlet). During this week we have been able to see photos of a man with a mobile phone (the promoter), a lorry, some stage being built, some more stage being built, and, yes, even more stage being built.
What we have also found out, we think, is that there will be 34,000 people, or maybe 20,000, or perhaps 25,000, assuming all the seats are sold. As of yesterday afternoon, at least 3,000 were unsold out of whatever the total number actually is. No one seems to quite know, or they do, and the press is just offering a multiple choice.
We have also discovered that the two main stars will bring "synergy". Ah yes, a word beloved by management consultants and by managers brainwashed by the consultants into believing such a state can be achieved. At least the consultants would argue that there should be a certain similarity between entities in order to bring about synergetic benefits. When the two stars are from diverse fields, one does have to wonder. But let's not quibble. Synergy there surely will be. Just don't tell those who may be going only for one or the other and who might have paid less had there not been any synergy.
What we have yet to find out is whether it will be a success. But we can predict that it will be, even if it isn't. As we can predict that we will read gushing editorials, see photos of the occasion and, if we're lucky, yet more photos of stage, but this time being dismantled. The editorial will be along the lines of it just goes to prove that Mallorca can put on a "great", "spectacular", "amazing", "remarkable" (select as you will) concert.
When the media is so in lunatic thrall to the appearance of two stars, then what else can you expect, other than pages devoted, on a daily basis, to the minutiae and drivel surrounding that appearance. This manic fascination does, it must be said, appear to have something to do with sponsors' names. Go to the "Diario de Mallorca", for example, and you will find only the occasional, discreet mention. No prizes for guessing where the pages are being filled.
I've got a lot of time for Elton John. He may have been through his own drug-induced nuclear winter, but he has come out of it articulate and sane: unlike the barely intelligible half human Keefronnieryders from the Planet McGowan of the sort Kirk and Spock might have encountered. It's as well that before tomorrow's concert he will never have previously set foot or piano hands in Mallorca, and that afterwards he'll be swiftly away. Sane? He soon wouldn't be.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Bite-sized sucking pig with pomegranate sauce; white flowers and Scandinavian air; red roses and roses without petals; Macià Batle wine from Santa Maria del Cami; 23 metres high and 50 metres wide; 25 lorries from the UK and mainland Spain.
Want to hazard a guess?
The answers - in order - are: part of the menu for the VIPs; the design of a VIP area; the star's choice of flowers (forgive me, but what are roses without petals?); the same star's supposed choice of plonk; the size of the stage; the number of lorries transporting kit.
Come on, you must know now.
Over the past weeks we have been able to read interviews with three stars (well, two stars and a starlet). During this week we have been able to see photos of a man with a mobile phone (the promoter), a lorry, some stage being built, some more stage being built, and, yes, even more stage being built.
What we have also found out, we think, is that there will be 34,000 people, or maybe 20,000, or perhaps 25,000, assuming all the seats are sold. As of yesterday afternoon, at least 3,000 were unsold out of whatever the total number actually is. No one seems to quite know, or they do, and the press is just offering a multiple choice.
We have also discovered that the two main stars will bring "synergy". Ah yes, a word beloved by management consultants and by managers brainwashed by the consultants into believing such a state can be achieved. At least the consultants would argue that there should be a certain similarity between entities in order to bring about synergetic benefits. When the two stars are from diverse fields, one does have to wonder. But let's not quibble. Synergy there surely will be. Just don't tell those who may be going only for one or the other and who might have paid less had there not been any synergy.
What we have yet to find out is whether it will be a success. But we can predict that it will be, even if it isn't. As we can predict that we will read gushing editorials, see photos of the occasion and, if we're lucky, yet more photos of stage, but this time being dismantled. The editorial will be along the lines of it just goes to prove that Mallorca can put on a "great", "spectacular", "amazing", "remarkable" (select as you will) concert.
When the media is so in lunatic thrall to the appearance of two stars, then what else can you expect, other than pages devoted, on a daily basis, to the minutiae and drivel surrounding that appearance. This manic fascination does, it must be said, appear to have something to do with sponsors' names. Go to the "Diario de Mallorca", for example, and you will find only the occasional, discreet mention. No prizes for guessing where the pages are being filled.
I've got a lot of time for Elton John. He may have been through his own drug-induced nuclear winter, but he has come out of it articulate and sane: unlike the barely intelligible half human Keefronnieryders from the Planet McGowan of the sort Kirk and Spock might have encountered. It's as well that before tomorrow's concert he will never have previously set foot or piano hands in Mallorca, and that afterwards he'll be swiftly away. Sane? He soon wouldn't be.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, September 02, 2010
The Horn Of A Dilemma: Correbou and animal traditions
The animal right-ists have been getting into a right old tizz again. There was a barney in Fornalutx on Sunday when the Anima Naturalis group protested against the annual "correbou" in this village near Soller. Locals, in favour of the event, reckoned that the group, all twenty or so of them, acted "provocatively". There was a scrap, the boys in green got involved, a car window was smashed, and insults were hurled.
Anima Naturalis flew solo on Sunday. Other animal-rights groups had condemned the protest, as they believed they were edging towards an agreement with the village mayor to introduce changes to the correbou. That process may have been harmed by the protest. Amenable the mayor may be to changes, but this didn't stop town (village?) hall representatives siding with the pro-correbou-ists.
The correbou involves a bull being hauled, cajoled, run - describe it as you will - through the streets on the end of ropes. In Fornalutx they don't apply fire to the horns, as is the case with similar events in Catalonia, but the animal is taunted before being dragged off to the slaughterhouse, cut up and nosebagged by carnivorous locals. The correbou is primitive, with none of the spectacular and ceremony of the "corrida". There is no pretence of dignity, honour even, being afforded to the bull, as is the case with the bullfight. The animal is, essentially, the object of derision, and there is simply no comparison with other animal events, such as the innately potty duck tossing in Can Picafort.
A letter-writer to yesterday's "Bulletin" took the editor to task for defending both the bullfight and the correbou and for calling for a "compromise" that would satisfy those in favour and those against these events. This compromise was not enunciated; it's an empty call when you don't explain what this might entail. I was more taken aback by the editor's admission that he had never attended a bullfight. One can hold opinions as to bullfights without witnessing them first hand, but without experiencing them one fails to get a complete understanding. Such journalistic incuriosity is staggering.
Nevertheless, some sort of a compromise might yet occur in Fornalutx. The mayor has apparently been talking about shortening the "run" itself, holding it on a working day when fewer would attend and not having the bull crowned with a laurel wreath. None of this will sound like a better deal to the bull if it is still subjected to the taunts and ends up between two chunks of bread. Besides which, it is the kill or the angering of the bull that most spectators of a bullfight or correbou expect, a point the letter-writer makes.
What is clear, though, is that there is a growing movement against alleged animal cruelty during fiestas, be it the bullfight (as in Alcúdia and Muro for example), the correbou, the duck throwing of Can Picafort or the cock on a soapy tree in Pollensa. What is also clear is that emotions are being heightened and, in certain instances, the law being flouted. The traditions are so ingrained, though, that it is difficult to see how they can be undone. There are calls for there to be no animals involved in any fiesta events, but even where the law intervenes, it is obeyed reluctantly (as by Santa Margalida town hall in the case of the ducks). And what happens when and if the law does step in? We now have Tony Blair, who had made a fox-hunting ban an electoral pledge, admitting he got that wrong. And British traditions are nothing like as strong as Mallorcan or Spanish ones. But a question about the law, which is a bit of an ass and a load of bull. How can the ducks of Can Picafort be subject to law on animal protection and the bulls of Fornalutx not? It's hypocritical, and as I have suggested before, the ducks are a far easier target.
Here are photos of the aggro in Fornalutx. The chap who is daubed in black was meant to portray the bull. Some locals reckoned it was racist, thus completely (and probably deliberately) missing the point. What you mostly see in these photos are shots of the Guardia contending with the locals who support the correbou. What seems evident is that this support comes from all age groups, but especially younger ones; something which you might not have expected.
http://comunidad.diariodemallorca.es/galeria-multimedia/Mallorca/Batalla-campal-Fornalutx/17508/1.html
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Anima Naturalis flew solo on Sunday. Other animal-rights groups had condemned the protest, as they believed they were edging towards an agreement with the village mayor to introduce changes to the correbou. That process may have been harmed by the protest. Amenable the mayor may be to changes, but this didn't stop town (village?) hall representatives siding with the pro-correbou-ists.
The correbou involves a bull being hauled, cajoled, run - describe it as you will - through the streets on the end of ropes. In Fornalutx they don't apply fire to the horns, as is the case with similar events in Catalonia, but the animal is taunted before being dragged off to the slaughterhouse, cut up and nosebagged by carnivorous locals. The correbou is primitive, with none of the spectacular and ceremony of the "corrida". There is no pretence of dignity, honour even, being afforded to the bull, as is the case with the bullfight. The animal is, essentially, the object of derision, and there is simply no comparison with other animal events, such as the innately potty duck tossing in Can Picafort.
A letter-writer to yesterday's "Bulletin" took the editor to task for defending both the bullfight and the correbou and for calling for a "compromise" that would satisfy those in favour and those against these events. This compromise was not enunciated; it's an empty call when you don't explain what this might entail. I was more taken aback by the editor's admission that he had never attended a bullfight. One can hold opinions as to bullfights without witnessing them first hand, but without experiencing them one fails to get a complete understanding. Such journalistic incuriosity is staggering.
Nevertheless, some sort of a compromise might yet occur in Fornalutx. The mayor has apparently been talking about shortening the "run" itself, holding it on a working day when fewer would attend and not having the bull crowned with a laurel wreath. None of this will sound like a better deal to the bull if it is still subjected to the taunts and ends up between two chunks of bread. Besides which, it is the kill or the angering of the bull that most spectators of a bullfight or correbou expect, a point the letter-writer makes.
What is clear, though, is that there is a growing movement against alleged animal cruelty during fiestas, be it the bullfight (as in Alcúdia and Muro for example), the correbou, the duck throwing of Can Picafort or the cock on a soapy tree in Pollensa. What is also clear is that emotions are being heightened and, in certain instances, the law being flouted. The traditions are so ingrained, though, that it is difficult to see how they can be undone. There are calls for there to be no animals involved in any fiesta events, but even where the law intervenes, it is obeyed reluctantly (as by Santa Margalida town hall in the case of the ducks). And what happens when and if the law does step in? We now have Tony Blair, who had made a fox-hunting ban an electoral pledge, admitting he got that wrong. And British traditions are nothing like as strong as Mallorcan or Spanish ones. But a question about the law, which is a bit of an ass and a load of bull. How can the ducks of Can Picafort be subject to law on animal protection and the bulls of Fornalutx not? It's hypocritical, and as I have suggested before, the ducks are a far easier target.
Here are photos of the aggro in Fornalutx. The chap who is daubed in black was meant to portray the bull. Some locals reckoned it was racist, thus completely (and probably deliberately) missing the point. What you mostly see in these photos are shots of the Guardia contending with the locals who support the correbou. What seems evident is that this support comes from all age groups, but especially younger ones; something which you might not have expected.
http://comunidad.diariodemallorca.es/galeria-multimedia/Mallorca/Batalla-campal-Fornalutx/17508/1.html
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Nightswimming: September's Here
What a difference a day makes.
While still in August we feel as though we can look forward to endless summer, and then suddenly September arrives and we look back at a summer disappearing below the sunset horizon of a shortening day. As night arrives earlier, so summer starts to wind down and enters its own twilight. We look forward, but without enthusiasm, to the inevitable storms, the infuriation of the autumn flies, the enclosure of the terraces with their wind-beaten plastic drapes. One day may seem much like the previous one, but we know that it isn't; summer's coming to a close again, and we wonder, as we wonder each year, where on earth it went.
Rarely is September a month of uninterrupted bliss. The mid-month malevolence of the "gota fría" can be forecast without the advice of the meteorologists. We know it's coming, coinciding with the "vuelta al cole" (back to school) of 12 September. The ferocity of the September storms is the evil witch of weather who mocks our desire for a lingering summer and simultaneously kidnaps the vitality and shouts of children which, though we might have cursed them in high summer, become the muted manoeuvres and idleness of beaches, as summer passes into old age. And at times, in September, a sea fret encloses the beach with a chill blanket for the rheumatic, fooled into the fading warmth of summer.
September's coming soon. We announced it as though it were a distant omen. Now September is here. It arrived when we weren't looking. Be damned its apparition. Cock a snook at the ghostly and life-sucking presumptuousness of its shore mists. The sea's still warm. Very warm. The recklessness of water. We assume, if only briefly, the recklessness of childhood. If not now, then not again. Nightswimming.
REM.-.Nightswimming.
Cargado por carlitos117. - Descubre más videos creativos.
QUIZ:
Yesterday - Prince of course: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rTvG2jVteA
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
While still in August we feel as though we can look forward to endless summer, and then suddenly September arrives and we look back at a summer disappearing below the sunset horizon of a shortening day. As night arrives earlier, so summer starts to wind down and enters its own twilight. We look forward, but without enthusiasm, to the inevitable storms, the infuriation of the autumn flies, the enclosure of the terraces with their wind-beaten plastic drapes. One day may seem much like the previous one, but we know that it isn't; summer's coming to a close again, and we wonder, as we wonder each year, where on earth it went.
Rarely is September a month of uninterrupted bliss. The mid-month malevolence of the "gota fría" can be forecast without the advice of the meteorologists. We know it's coming, coinciding with the "vuelta al cole" (back to school) of 12 September. The ferocity of the September storms is the evil witch of weather who mocks our desire for a lingering summer and simultaneously kidnaps the vitality and shouts of children which, though we might have cursed them in high summer, become the muted manoeuvres and idleness of beaches, as summer passes into old age. And at times, in September, a sea fret encloses the beach with a chill blanket for the rheumatic, fooled into the fading warmth of summer.
September's coming soon. We announced it as though it were a distant omen. Now September is here. It arrived when we weren't looking. Be damned its apparition. Cock a snook at the ghostly and life-sucking presumptuousness of its shore mists. The sea's still warm. Very warm. The recklessness of water. We assume, if only briefly, the recklessness of childhood. If not now, then not again. Nightswimming.
REM.-.Nightswimming.
Cargado por carlitos117. - Descubre más videos creativos.
QUIZ:
Yesterday - Prince of course: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rTvG2jVteA
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Diamonds And Pearls: Losing Mallorca's industrial treasures
The good news about the tourism industry continues. In August, hotel occupancy in Mallorca has risen by seven per cent, compared with 2009, while September is expected to witness a two per cent increase. It's just as well that the industry is giving some reasons to be cheerful. Other industries make you want to weep.
Economic diversity in Mallorca is essential, but the contraction in sectors other than tourism is alarming. Over a period of five years, industrial activity has declined by just under 30%, a far greater fall than anywhere else in Spain. This reduction has affected more or less all the island's smaller industries, ones traditionally associated with the island - pearls, marine, footwear - as well as those that are less traditional, such as chemicals. You name it, it's on the way out.
It's those stats chaps again. The national statistics office has recorded the fall in the production index and has shown that Mallorca's island geography is not totally to blame for the slump. The Canaries haven't suffered anything like the same scale of decline.
Isolation is a factor, though. It is estimated that because of transport costs alone, it can be 30% more expensive to produce locally, and then you have the costs of going the other way. The call has gone out for help in boosting exports, but it is not clear how this might be done, other than through local management of ports and the airport, as is being suggested. Quite how this might benefit in cost reduction, I'm unsure, as there are also the higher costs of local production associated with land. If you have ambitions of being a light manufacturer in Mallorca, then you probably need your head examining, or you should at least consider an alternative location. Industrial land costs almost twice as much as the Canaries and six times as much as in Aragon, a mainland province within shipping distance of the island.
This high, prohibitive almost, cost of land is attributed in part to speculative developments and property acquisition. Go around Mallorca and you will find industrial estates in most towns. Some, such as in Pollensa and Can Picafort, are under-occupied. The Alcúdia one is completely unoccupied, but that's because they haven't sorted out the electricity supply. In Inca, they are planning to build a third industrial estate, this for a town of under 30,000 people. On the larger estates in Palma, units are being abandoned because the costs are simply too great.
Why are all these industrial estates needed? The answer is that they're not. But built they nevertheless are, with a suspicion that someone might have profited illicitly. And they all come with a mix of usage. The new Inca estate has provision for a percentage of land for entertainment purposes; you might recall the talk of a theme park there. It is this sort of provision, as well as that for large car showrooms and banks (which can afford the higher rents) that is one reason for driving up the cost of what is then limited land for industrial purposes. This is not the whole story, however. Over supply would suggest that costs would be lower, but they're not. It's a familiar tale where Mallorca land for residential purposes is concerned. Greed is probably one element, and the Mallorcans are renowned for it, on top of which is the fact that units and land on industrial estates are bought by speculators who have no intention of renting them out at what might be affordable levels for smaller businesses.
Clearly if industrial activity slumps to the degree that it has and may continue to, and if nothing comes along to replace the old factories, then there is an employment problem. Decline of manufacturing may be compensated by an increase in services, but the question then is, which ones. Mallorca needs an economic strategic plan, one that has been necessary for years. But it is no nearer getting one, and all the while the traditional industries and small businesses fold or shift out of industrial units with their inflated price tags.
QUIZ:
"Diamonds and Pearls". His finest moment?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Index for August 2010
Air-conditioning - 5 August 2010
Air-traffic controllers' strike - 4 August 2010
Albufera information centre closed - 18 August 2010
Alcúdia corruption accusation - 17 August 2010
Alcúdia power station - 19 August 2010
AlcudiaPollensa.blogspot.com - 29 August 2010
All-inclusives in Puerto Pollensa - 3 August 2010
Balcony diving - 22 August 2010
Beach and sea, calm - 28 August 2010
British market, promotion aimed at declining - 6 August 2010
Can Ramis building, Alcúdia - 10 August 2010
Carl Cox, event tourism and - 7 August 2010
Climate change - 23 August 2010
Ducks tradition, Can Picafort's - 8 August 2010, 17 August 2010, 19 August 2010
Fires - 25 August 2010
Football replica shirts, British bars and - 11 August 2010
Industry, rapid decline in Mallorcan - 31 August 2010
Land development and policy - 13 August 2010
Lilos - 24 August 2010
Literature, Mallorca and - 26 August 2010
Majorca Daily Bulletin - 9 August 2010
Muro golf course - 13 August 2010
Petrol stations - 20 August 2010
Porto Cristo: the correct name - 2 August 2010
Prostitution in Magalluf - 27 August 2010
Puerto Pollensa's swimming pool - 16 August 2010
Statistics in July, tourism occupancy and spend - 30 August 2010
Theme park, Inca - 15 August 2010
Topless sunbathing - 1 August 2010, 2 August 2010
Tour operators' profits - 12 August 2010
Town halls have to repay - 21 August 2010
Traffic police - 14 August 2010
Weather, unusual summer - 18 August 2010
Economic diversity in Mallorca is essential, but the contraction in sectors other than tourism is alarming. Over a period of five years, industrial activity has declined by just under 30%, a far greater fall than anywhere else in Spain. This reduction has affected more or less all the island's smaller industries, ones traditionally associated with the island - pearls, marine, footwear - as well as those that are less traditional, such as chemicals. You name it, it's on the way out.
It's those stats chaps again. The national statistics office has recorded the fall in the production index and has shown that Mallorca's island geography is not totally to blame for the slump. The Canaries haven't suffered anything like the same scale of decline.
Isolation is a factor, though. It is estimated that because of transport costs alone, it can be 30% more expensive to produce locally, and then you have the costs of going the other way. The call has gone out for help in boosting exports, but it is not clear how this might be done, other than through local management of ports and the airport, as is being suggested. Quite how this might benefit in cost reduction, I'm unsure, as there are also the higher costs of local production associated with land. If you have ambitions of being a light manufacturer in Mallorca, then you probably need your head examining, or you should at least consider an alternative location. Industrial land costs almost twice as much as the Canaries and six times as much as in Aragon, a mainland province within shipping distance of the island.
This high, prohibitive almost, cost of land is attributed in part to speculative developments and property acquisition. Go around Mallorca and you will find industrial estates in most towns. Some, such as in Pollensa and Can Picafort, are under-occupied. The Alcúdia one is completely unoccupied, but that's because they haven't sorted out the electricity supply. In Inca, they are planning to build a third industrial estate, this for a town of under 30,000 people. On the larger estates in Palma, units are being abandoned because the costs are simply too great.
Why are all these industrial estates needed? The answer is that they're not. But built they nevertheless are, with a suspicion that someone might have profited illicitly. And they all come with a mix of usage. The new Inca estate has provision for a percentage of land for entertainment purposes; you might recall the talk of a theme park there. It is this sort of provision, as well as that for large car showrooms and banks (which can afford the higher rents) that is one reason for driving up the cost of what is then limited land for industrial purposes. This is not the whole story, however. Over supply would suggest that costs would be lower, but they're not. It's a familiar tale where Mallorca land for residential purposes is concerned. Greed is probably one element, and the Mallorcans are renowned for it, on top of which is the fact that units and land on industrial estates are bought by speculators who have no intention of renting them out at what might be affordable levels for smaller businesses.
Clearly if industrial activity slumps to the degree that it has and may continue to, and if nothing comes along to replace the old factories, then there is an employment problem. Decline of manufacturing may be compensated by an increase in services, but the question then is, which ones. Mallorca needs an economic strategic plan, one that has been necessary for years. But it is no nearer getting one, and all the while the traditional industries and small businesses fold or shift out of industrial units with their inflated price tags.
QUIZ:
"Diamonds and Pearls". His finest moment?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Index for August 2010
Air-conditioning - 5 August 2010
Air-traffic controllers' strike - 4 August 2010
Albufera information centre closed - 18 August 2010
Alcúdia corruption accusation - 17 August 2010
Alcúdia power station - 19 August 2010
AlcudiaPollensa.blogspot.com - 29 August 2010
All-inclusives in Puerto Pollensa - 3 August 2010
Balcony diving - 22 August 2010
Beach and sea, calm - 28 August 2010
British market, promotion aimed at declining - 6 August 2010
Can Ramis building, Alcúdia - 10 August 2010
Carl Cox, event tourism and - 7 August 2010
Climate change - 23 August 2010
Ducks tradition, Can Picafort's - 8 August 2010, 17 August 2010, 19 August 2010
Fires - 25 August 2010
Football replica shirts, British bars and - 11 August 2010
Industry, rapid decline in Mallorcan - 31 August 2010
Land development and policy - 13 August 2010
Lilos - 24 August 2010
Literature, Mallorca and - 26 August 2010
Majorca Daily Bulletin - 9 August 2010
Muro golf course - 13 August 2010
Petrol stations - 20 August 2010
Porto Cristo: the correct name - 2 August 2010
Prostitution in Magalluf - 27 August 2010
Puerto Pollensa's swimming pool - 16 August 2010
Statistics in July, tourism occupancy and spend - 30 August 2010
Theme park, Inca - 15 August 2010
Topless sunbathing - 1 August 2010, 2 August 2010
Tour operators' profits - 12 August 2010
Town halls have to repay - 21 August 2010
Traffic police - 14 August 2010
Weather, unusual summer - 18 August 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Probability And Logic: Tourism occupancy and spend
A good friend of mine from university days went on to become a government statistician. I once spent an afternoon lounging in a villa pool, having him explain to me the meaning of certain mathematical symbols. I can't say I was significantly the wiser as a result, but I had at least tried to attain some understanding.
All mathematicians, like chess players, are mad. This stems from having a world view determined by logic or equations and having to deal with the rest of us who are determinedly illogical. Even the act of getting up in the morning is an equation, where E equals the effort of shifting yourself from under the duvet, T is the time it takes to have a shave and eat a bowl of muesli and x (or maybe x-squared) is the probability of being hit by a meteorite when you step out the front door.
So when statisticians present us with their figures, we are inclined to believe it is all the work of crackpots. (And, yes, I know there is a difference between maths and stats, but you'll just have to accept they're the same for now.) Equally, because none of us have the faintest idea how they ever arrive at the figures, we dismiss them as mathematical mumbo-jumbo.
There have been some good statistics lately. For this July, by comparison with the same month last year, hotel occupancy rates in the Balearics have risen by 10.1% and tourism spend has also increased - by 12.5%. We might dispute the former, but at least we can appreciate that the calculation shouldn't be that difficult. The latter, though ... well of course we say it's crap because we saw a restaurant with hardly a soul in it the other day. We resort to our anecdotes and subjectivity, because we have no other way of questioning the men with wild, staring eyes and electric grey hair who inhabit the statistical other world.
And so it was also with the editorial in "The Bulletin". Who was spending all the money, it asked. "I don't really know and nor do the people who have complied the report," came its own answer. It's not for the paper to try and find out; it is only a newspaper after all. The answer, one of them, lies with the mysteries of the statistician's science, such as regression modelling, which for the paper would mean ever more of a regression into a Janet and John mode of journalism or a stock photo of Naomi Campbell.
One thing Mallorca does quite well, along with beaches, cold lager and pouring oil on bread, is the study of tourism. The university in Palma is world class when it comes to research into the economics and statistics of the industry. It's this academic rigour which translates itself into governmental research and statistics. We might not believe the figures, and governments are not unknown to massage figures, but the science, be it academic or governmental, is generally robust. Academics, for example, can't just pluck numbers out of thin air, as their published work is subject to independent peer review.
In Palma they have found out who spends the money. There is research there into the use of statistical modelling to ascertain - by age, by nationality, by professional grouping - who spends what. What you get with statistics is the attempt to give as realistic a snapshot as possible within the parameters of the probability models applied. They are never completely accurate, but nor are they fiction. Were they, and some might say the latest occupancy and spend figures are made-up propaganda to give a feel-good lift to the tourism and wider economy, then why have previous figures been negative? But because we don't understand the methods, and because academics and governments are generally lousy at explaining them in simple terms, if at all, we fall back on our anecdotes and consider these to be the truth, when they are nothing of the sort.
There is a problem, though, with the figures in that they are too general; they don't, for example, distinguish between different resorts, hence the not unreasonable scepticism we may feel. One is reluctant to say that July's figures indicate a real recovery - and the predictions before the weather in the UK went belly up was that August's wouldn't be as good - but they are cause for some hope.
There is another, simpler way of looking at the July figures. 10.1% rise in occupancy; 12.5% rise in spend. The two may not match, but they are not so far apart. Logic might suggest that one would lead to the other, though for the statistician the 2.4% difference would - in all probability - not be logical.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
All mathematicians, like chess players, are mad. This stems from having a world view determined by logic or equations and having to deal with the rest of us who are determinedly illogical. Even the act of getting up in the morning is an equation, where E equals the effort of shifting yourself from under the duvet, T is the time it takes to have a shave and eat a bowl of muesli and x (or maybe x-squared) is the probability of being hit by a meteorite when you step out the front door.
So when statisticians present us with their figures, we are inclined to believe it is all the work of crackpots. (And, yes, I know there is a difference between maths and stats, but you'll just have to accept they're the same for now.) Equally, because none of us have the faintest idea how they ever arrive at the figures, we dismiss them as mathematical mumbo-jumbo.
There have been some good statistics lately. For this July, by comparison with the same month last year, hotel occupancy rates in the Balearics have risen by 10.1% and tourism spend has also increased - by 12.5%. We might dispute the former, but at least we can appreciate that the calculation shouldn't be that difficult. The latter, though ... well of course we say it's crap because we saw a restaurant with hardly a soul in it the other day. We resort to our anecdotes and subjectivity, because we have no other way of questioning the men with wild, staring eyes and electric grey hair who inhabit the statistical other world.
And so it was also with the editorial in "The Bulletin". Who was spending all the money, it asked. "I don't really know and nor do the people who have complied the report," came its own answer. It's not for the paper to try and find out; it is only a newspaper after all. The answer, one of them, lies with the mysteries of the statistician's science, such as regression modelling, which for the paper would mean ever more of a regression into a Janet and John mode of journalism or a stock photo of Naomi Campbell.
One thing Mallorca does quite well, along with beaches, cold lager and pouring oil on bread, is the study of tourism. The university in Palma is world class when it comes to research into the economics and statistics of the industry. It's this academic rigour which translates itself into governmental research and statistics. We might not believe the figures, and governments are not unknown to massage figures, but the science, be it academic or governmental, is generally robust. Academics, for example, can't just pluck numbers out of thin air, as their published work is subject to independent peer review.
In Palma they have found out who spends the money. There is research there into the use of statistical modelling to ascertain - by age, by nationality, by professional grouping - who spends what. What you get with statistics is the attempt to give as realistic a snapshot as possible within the parameters of the probability models applied. They are never completely accurate, but nor are they fiction. Were they, and some might say the latest occupancy and spend figures are made-up propaganda to give a feel-good lift to the tourism and wider economy, then why have previous figures been negative? But because we don't understand the methods, and because academics and governments are generally lousy at explaining them in simple terms, if at all, we fall back on our anecdotes and consider these to be the truth, when they are nothing of the sort.
There is a problem, though, with the figures in that they are too general; they don't, for example, distinguish between different resorts, hence the not unreasonable scepticism we may feel. One is reluctant to say that July's figures indicate a real recovery - and the predictions before the weather in the UK went belly up was that August's wouldn't be as good - but they are cause for some hope.
There is another, simpler way of looking at the July figures. 10.1% rise in occupancy; 12.5% rise in spend. The two may not match, but they are not so far apart. Logic might suggest that one would lead to the other, though for the statistician the 2.4% difference would - in all probability - not be logical.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
This Expat Life: AlcudiaPollensa.blogspot and perceptual gaps
"I'm surprised anyone talks to you." Eh? What?
It's a perception thing, you know. It's what people think you write or think what you might write. I wouldn't talk to me if I did write what people thought I wrote or might write. But the above was said to me the other day, if joshingly, by a local bar-owner.
This blog will be five years old in a couple of months. There have been over 1500 entries. I'm struggling to think of any occasion when I have slagged off a local individual or business, except obliquely; or any occasion when I have broken a confidence. There are things I know, but they won't appear here.
No. One moment. There has been the odd occasion, like with the "Sun, Sea and A&E" lady, but there was that perception thing again, as in had it been read carefully it would have been clear that it was a piss-take, hardly for the first time, of "The Bulletin". I have no reticence in rubbishing something which affronts me with its Palmacalvia-centricity, mistakes and rotten English. And it's the media. Like politicians, political parties and town halls, it's there to be shot at.
I've known this perception thing before. When I was at university I became the one who was most closely associated with a scurrilous publication that was eventually banned when the local police threatened an obscenity charge (and this was just a few years after the "Oz" trial). The only reason why I was thus associated, and I was neither a member of the particular college from which the magazine emanated nor one of its editors, had to do with a higher profile on campus than others. I was personally responsible for only one of the many controversies that the magazine spawned.
The perception thing was also evident when this blog was commended in "PC Advisor". "Thoughtful and witty descriptions of the expat life." The quote needs to be seen in context, but I don't know that the blog has ever been about expat life, other than occasionally specific pieces. And the perception thing blends into the profile thing. You might take that quote, you might take that surprise at anyone talking to me as evidence of high profile, of hanging around bars and hanging on all the gossip and then churning it out - here. Both the perception and the profile are inaccurate. What can also surprise is when I say that I am an habitué of very few bars, and certainly not for the evening piss-artisting, have never been inside many and have never met or had anything to do with so-and-so expat who does, on the contrary, have a high profile.
The perception thing is wrong because the blog is detached. It is this very distance that creates a diversity of subject and an absence of pressure to somehow act as reportage of this "expat life". It is, essentially, observational. A part of but also separate. It is the observation and the diversity which, despite times when I have wondered about stopping, keep the blog going. There simply is no end to what you can write about. Were it about "expat life", were it about the local who's doing this, who's doing that, then it wouldn't have legs, not long-running ones. People would not only not talk, they would also, in all likelihood, be somewhat aggressive. But more fundamentally, I have, despite that perception thing, no interest in being a conveyor of tittle-tattle, a slagger-off of who's been slagging with whom. That said, there is a file of what I presumptuously call the blog's basement tapes: stuff that has been written but which has never appeared. Even these pieces don't name (though it might be possible to assign a name), but they are very much darker or more off-the-wall.
There have been recently, as there have been in the past, some highly satisfying compliments both of the blog and of HOT!. I even received a letter, remember them, from someone who had enjoyed the newspaper. Sometimes, though, I wonder if I don't become self-indulgent, such as with yesterday's piece. I had thought of consigning that to the basement tapes. And then I got a compliment about it (Glen's), as similarly I had one a couple of weeks back from Derek who referred to the more poetic stuff being inspiring. But the danger is I end up taking myself seriously, which would never do. And I might end up understanding who the hell it is I'm writing for.
It's this very unknown, among all the thousands of you who come to this blog, that make it as worthwhile as the compliments. The unknown also as to which pieces might interest more than others. The unknown as to who will be in the inbox on a given day, saying they have been following the blog for this or that length of time. The blog is self-indulgent. By definition, I suppose, most blogs are. But as to people not talking to me, I don't think so, because I guess most don't know what the blog is about, other than by some fault of perception. And I couldn't help. Because neither do I.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
It's a perception thing, you know. It's what people think you write or think what you might write. I wouldn't talk to me if I did write what people thought I wrote or might write. But the above was said to me the other day, if joshingly, by a local bar-owner.
This blog will be five years old in a couple of months. There have been over 1500 entries. I'm struggling to think of any occasion when I have slagged off a local individual or business, except obliquely; or any occasion when I have broken a confidence. There are things I know, but they won't appear here.
No. One moment. There has been the odd occasion, like with the "Sun, Sea and A&E" lady, but there was that perception thing again, as in had it been read carefully it would have been clear that it was a piss-take, hardly for the first time, of "The Bulletin". I have no reticence in rubbishing something which affronts me with its Palmacalvia-centricity, mistakes and rotten English. And it's the media. Like politicians, political parties and town halls, it's there to be shot at.
I've known this perception thing before. When I was at university I became the one who was most closely associated with a scurrilous publication that was eventually banned when the local police threatened an obscenity charge (and this was just a few years after the "Oz" trial). The only reason why I was thus associated, and I was neither a member of the particular college from which the magazine emanated nor one of its editors, had to do with a higher profile on campus than others. I was personally responsible for only one of the many controversies that the magazine spawned.
The perception thing was also evident when this blog was commended in "PC Advisor". "Thoughtful and witty descriptions of the expat life." The quote needs to be seen in context, but I don't know that the blog has ever been about expat life, other than occasionally specific pieces. And the perception thing blends into the profile thing. You might take that quote, you might take that surprise at anyone talking to me as evidence of high profile, of hanging around bars and hanging on all the gossip and then churning it out - here. Both the perception and the profile are inaccurate. What can also surprise is when I say that I am an habitué of very few bars, and certainly not for the evening piss-artisting, have never been inside many and have never met or had anything to do with so-and-so expat who does, on the contrary, have a high profile.
The perception thing is wrong because the blog is detached. It is this very distance that creates a diversity of subject and an absence of pressure to somehow act as reportage of this "expat life". It is, essentially, observational. A part of but also separate. It is the observation and the diversity which, despite times when I have wondered about stopping, keep the blog going. There simply is no end to what you can write about. Were it about "expat life", were it about the local who's doing this, who's doing that, then it wouldn't have legs, not long-running ones. People would not only not talk, they would also, in all likelihood, be somewhat aggressive. But more fundamentally, I have, despite that perception thing, no interest in being a conveyor of tittle-tattle, a slagger-off of who's been slagging with whom. That said, there is a file of what I presumptuously call the blog's basement tapes: stuff that has been written but which has never appeared. Even these pieces don't name (though it might be possible to assign a name), but they are very much darker or more off-the-wall.
There have been recently, as there have been in the past, some highly satisfying compliments both of the blog and of HOT!. I even received a letter, remember them, from someone who had enjoyed the newspaper. Sometimes, though, I wonder if I don't become self-indulgent, such as with yesterday's piece. I had thought of consigning that to the basement tapes. And then I got a compliment about it (Glen's), as similarly I had one a couple of weeks back from Derek who referred to the more poetic stuff being inspiring. But the danger is I end up taking myself seriously, which would never do. And I might end up understanding who the hell it is I'm writing for.
It's this very unknown, among all the thousands of you who come to this blog, that make it as worthwhile as the compliments. The unknown also as to which pieces might interest more than others. The unknown as to who will be in the inbox on a given day, saying they have been following the blog for this or that length of time. The blog is self-indulgent. By definition, I suppose, most blogs are. But as to people not talking to me, I don't think so, because I guess most don't know what the blog is about, other than by some fault of perception. And I couldn't help. Because neither do I.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Still Waters: The beach and great heat
When Africa blows northwards. It's not the sort of scirocco or "xaloc" that can whip up gales, but a sharp and engulfing Saharan electric blanket of wind that lashes the interior and which, mysteriously, leaves the beach and sea serene and becalmed. When Africa blows northwards, the hundred mark is nudged and sometimes tipped over.
Serene. When Africa blows northwards, the beach and sea are an s-word of the sublime, the soporific, the sensational, the sensuous and sensorial. Contrast this with when elsewhere blows, and the sea is all of a "t", turbulent, tumbling and troubling. Our moods are determined by the senses, and the beach and sea play games with us. Surf is up, and it leaves us agitated, buffeted by movement into fretfulness or a pressure towards activity. Waves bring noise and turmoil. The "ventus" of marine energetics creates a hyperventilation of both mind and soul. We cannot rest or relax.
Serene and still. Much as we might pit ourselves against force, much as we might even enjoy doing so, when the sea ceases to move we are consumed by the dream-world consciousness it creates, a sensorial state of being heightened by the sensuousness of the sensational drifts from blues to greens, of the sheer statics, of the caress of discreetly lapping water on the sand. Of all colour combinations, no others hold greater symbolism than the conjoining of the largely imagined blue and yellow of sea and beach. They are imagined, because they aren't quite that simple. And only when all is serene and still - on the beach - do we really begin to appreciate the complexity of colour that gives rise to this imagination.
There are times, as there will have been times these past couple of days, when Africa has blown northwards, when the chatter and babble of the beach evaporate. It is a soporiferous and collective will of quiet, one induced by the barely audible lullaby of waves and the mass hypnosis of observing a sea without movement.
Wrapped in this colossal heat, but soothed by the maternal and gentle strokes of breeze, we are aware as to how perfect, or rather perfection, came to be a word, and if it's the case that it is one we strive to attain or at least be party to, then when Africa blows northwards and the beach and sea play a quiet game of somnolence, we might just have realised it.
Playa de Muro, late August.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Serene. When Africa blows northwards, the beach and sea are an s-word of the sublime, the soporific, the sensational, the sensuous and sensorial. Contrast this with when elsewhere blows, and the sea is all of a "t", turbulent, tumbling and troubling. Our moods are determined by the senses, and the beach and sea play games with us. Surf is up, and it leaves us agitated, buffeted by movement into fretfulness or a pressure towards activity. Waves bring noise and turmoil. The "ventus" of marine energetics creates a hyperventilation of both mind and soul. We cannot rest or relax.
Serene and still. Much as we might pit ourselves against force, much as we might even enjoy doing so, when the sea ceases to move we are consumed by the dream-world consciousness it creates, a sensorial state of being heightened by the sensuousness of the sensational drifts from blues to greens, of the sheer statics, of the caress of discreetly lapping water on the sand. Of all colour combinations, no others hold greater symbolism than the conjoining of the largely imagined blue and yellow of sea and beach. They are imagined, because they aren't quite that simple. And only when all is serene and still - on the beach - do we really begin to appreciate the complexity of colour that gives rise to this imagination.
There are times, as there will have been times these past couple of days, when Africa has blown northwards, when the chatter and babble of the beach evaporate. It is a soporiferous and collective will of quiet, one induced by the barely audible lullaby of waves and the mass hypnosis of observing a sea without movement.
Wrapped in this colossal heat, but soothed by the maternal and gentle strokes of breeze, we are aware as to how perfect, or rather perfection, came to be a word, and if it's the case that it is one we strive to attain or at least be party to, then when Africa blows northwards and the beach and sea play a quiet game of somnolence, we might just have realised it.
Playa de Muro, late August.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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