They're rather fond of "Q" in Mallorca. Not James Bond's "Q", but "Q" for quality or "qualitat", to use the Catalan. But here's a question for you. When is "Q" for quality not really a "Q"? Answer. When it's a "C". Quality in Spanish is "calidad". Confused? You're not the only one. "Q" is the mark of confusion as opposed to the mark of quality which it is meant to be.
Let me try and explain. Back in 2005 the Balearic Government instituted a campaign whereby all manner of businesses - anything from hotels and restaurants to golf courses, nautical clubs and discos - could be awarded a stamp of quality approval. The "Q" mark. Last summer, the government admitted defeat. Its "Q" campaign had been a complete and utter and expensive failure.
The cost of the Balearics' "Q" had risen to around half a million euros, most of it going on paying consultancies who assessed businesses' qualifications to get the "Q" mark. While at one time there had been three consultancies, the number was trimmed to one when the Unió Mallorquina party (yep, them again) got their hands on the tourism ministry. The company in question has since been caught up in one of the innumerable corruption investigations. No surprise there, then.
What made the "Q" campaign the fiasco it became, apart from the money, was that a number of hotels got to display the "Q" plaque without ever passing any form of control, while other businesses received the mark without having asked for it (but were later expected to pay for it). And then to compound the problem, the confusion of another "Q" came along - the mark of quality from the Instituto para la Calidad Turística Española (ICTE), the "Q" that should really be a "C" for "calidad". But "Q" it is, and this pretender "Q" just added to the necessity to scrap the Balearics' "Q" because any punter seeing the Balearics' "Q" might mistake it for the new "Q", assuming they took any notice of either of them.
This latest "Q" from ICTE, which was set up last year, has, unlike the Balearics' "Q", been such a success, it would appear, that it even gets its own gala occasion; the "Noche Q", which was held in Madrid on Wednesday evening. One trusts they didn't arrange for Ricky Gervais to come along and take the rip out of it.
Amongst the successes of the new "Q" is Alcudiamar in, you might have guessed, Alcúdia. At the gala it had bestowed on it the first "Q" for a "puerto deportivo" (marina) in the Balearics. It has been awarded this on account of its "excellent management and systems, environment, risk prevention and safety information". Which is all rather nice for it. Well done, Alcudiamar; well done, Alcúdia.
There are in fact a Heinz 57 of operations in the Balearics with the new "Q". In addition to Alcudiamar, there are 34 hotels, three beaches, one travel agency, one golf course (Alcanada) and 17 restaurants. Ah, restaurants. Gastronomy. The great alternative tourism of gastronomy. Important that this should be branded with a "Q". Want to know where to go for some typical and quality Mallorcan cuisine? Well, I'm afraid this won't help you. What are these restaurants? McDonald's. All 17 of them. Indeed, if you were in two regions of Spain with the highest numbers of restaurants of "Q", you would be able to enjoy out of, respectively, 83 and 97 restaurants with the "Q" mark, 53 McDonald's in Valencia and 68 in Andalusia.
Now, there's nothing wrong with McDonald's and as a company it is very good at getting its quality systems right, but is a McDonald's really what this should be all about? Perhaps the attendees at the gala were served Big Macs. It might have made more sense to have called it the "McDonald's Noche Q" or queuing for a McDonald's.
The new "Q" is compatible with the ISO9000 family of quality standards, so it is a respectable sign of quality. But although ISO has a lot going for it in terms of conformance with quality, reliability and so on, critics believe that it costs too much, that it can involve considerable management time for management that doesn't always understand what the standards mean, and that it places certification before actual quality. There are marketing benefits from having certification, but largely they tend to be for businesses working with other businesses. Does Joe or José Public appreciate them?
I can recall that when the Balearics' "Q" was introduced, several restaurant owners were dismissive of it. They saw it as just another way to get money off of them for no real benefit. You can still see the plaques around and about. Did those restaurants that weren't dismissive ever benefit? Questionable.
The new "Q" is a feather in Alcudiamar's cap, and more operations will doubtless go through the rigmarole in order to obtain the certification, but given the experiences with the Balearics' "Q" it must be open to doubt as to whether many will consider it to be worth the effort or worth the confusion of substituting an old "Q" with a new "Q".
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Playground Of The Rich? Mallorca's luxury tourism
The rich get richer and the tourism of the rich offers ever greater riches. Airtours, TUI's luxury tourism division, will be increasing the number of wealthy German tourists that it brings to Mallorca by 25% this year. As with the luxury property market - Engel & Völkers having recently issued positive forecasts for its German sales in the 4 to 8 million bracket - so luxury tourism refuses to succumb to the savaging of economic crisis.
Mallorca, despite competition from the likes of Sardinia, continues to hold an appeal to wealthy tourists, Germans in particular. The island is also benefiting from an increase in the niche gay luxury tourism market. The company Mallorca Luxury Gay has added a further element to its offer to gay tourists, that of high-quality dental treatment, in a bid to increase its market on the island for a tourism group that typically spends more significant amounts than the "straight" market.
Positive though this may seem, the luxury market, assuming one can arrive at an exact definition as to what it means, remains small. In Spain as a whole, according to a report in 2008, the luxury tourist, said to spend some 450 euros a day, was catered for by five-star accommodation that amounted to a mere 6% of all hotels. The spend equated to just over 7% of total tourism outlay.
One of the difficulties with increasing this market lies with the costs of creating the right type of hotel and of maintaining it. The prices that can be charged, high though they may be, do not necessarily result in high returns. The profitability of the luxury hotel, compared with other destinations, such as the Caribbean, is weighed down because it is simply that much more expensive to run it. This is exactly the same equation that dogs hotels' abilities to provide superior-quality all-inclusives such as those in Turkey where there are four individual categories of all-inclusive - from "classic" to "ultra class".
It is this price-quality-return conundrum which puts into some perspective the desire of the Mallorcan hotel federation to upgrade hotel stock. The luxury market may have deep pockets, but the market itself isn't so large that it can compensate for the investment needed to attract it. And there is a further issue, one that has to do with where these hotels are located.
To take an example, in Playa de Muro there are 33 hotels, three of which are five star and several more of which are excellent four star. An up-market image of hotels is not, despite a fine beach, matched by what else the resort has to offer, namely parts of it in a state of virtual abandonment and, with the greatest of respect, a lack of genuinely quality restaurants. Rather, you have an almost uniform offer of the standard "grill" and pizzeria.
The restaurants are caught in a dilemma. They may wish to invest, may wish to change their cuisine, but to what end? They have come to realise full well that the image of all-inclusive being exclusively for the economy-class tourist is something of a myth. It only partially applies in Playa de Muro, and in a wider context it is applying less and less; demand for all-inclusive within the higher, 4-star end of the market has increased and is likely to go on increasing if what exists outside hotels is unable to match this market's more sophisticated tastes, assuming that the hotels can actually deliver the required service. But do the restaurants adapt to try and capture this market when they fear that such effort will be undermined by the all-inclusive offer?
What is on offer in restaurants is, though, an important ingredient when it comes to the luxury market. All the attention that is paid to some of the "alternative" tourism offers, notably gastronomy and golf, is understandable if this market is to grow significantly. Both these are cited as important aspects of attracting the luxury market. In Playa de Muro, the obstacles to the building of the golf course on the Son Bosc finca are seen as detrimental to the expansion of the market.
Crucially, however, the question is whether this luxury market will grow significantly and whether the investment to make it grow will be matched by results. There is, and has long been, an element of wishful thinking, some of which is now being turned towards the nouveau riche of Russia and eastern Europe. Nevertheless, if TUI is increasing the number of its minted Germans, then there is cause for some gentle optimism.
The issue will be whether Mallorca has the quality of hotel and, as importantly, quality of resort to make anything like a quantum leap. And, as has been seen with Playa de Palma, the hoteliers, pressing for upgrades and the removal of bureaucratic hoops that would facilitate them, contradict themselves by insisting (not unreasonably) that the bread and butter remains the 3-star mass tourist.
And there is lurking perhaps an additional issue, a social one. Mention of Sardinia as a competitor to Mallorca in the luxury market is a reminder of what surfaced there back in 2008. Wealthy and celebrity tourists being greeted with barrages of wet sand and cries of "louts, go home" as their motorised dinghies came ashore.
Wealth is very welcome, but in times of deprivation, more of it, ostentatiously on show, does not guarantee a welcome.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Mallorca, despite competition from the likes of Sardinia, continues to hold an appeal to wealthy tourists, Germans in particular. The island is also benefiting from an increase in the niche gay luxury tourism market. The company Mallorca Luxury Gay has added a further element to its offer to gay tourists, that of high-quality dental treatment, in a bid to increase its market on the island for a tourism group that typically spends more significant amounts than the "straight" market.
Positive though this may seem, the luxury market, assuming one can arrive at an exact definition as to what it means, remains small. In Spain as a whole, according to a report in 2008, the luxury tourist, said to spend some 450 euros a day, was catered for by five-star accommodation that amounted to a mere 6% of all hotels. The spend equated to just over 7% of total tourism outlay.
One of the difficulties with increasing this market lies with the costs of creating the right type of hotel and of maintaining it. The prices that can be charged, high though they may be, do not necessarily result in high returns. The profitability of the luxury hotel, compared with other destinations, such as the Caribbean, is weighed down because it is simply that much more expensive to run it. This is exactly the same equation that dogs hotels' abilities to provide superior-quality all-inclusives such as those in Turkey where there are four individual categories of all-inclusive - from "classic" to "ultra class".
It is this price-quality-return conundrum which puts into some perspective the desire of the Mallorcan hotel federation to upgrade hotel stock. The luxury market may have deep pockets, but the market itself isn't so large that it can compensate for the investment needed to attract it. And there is a further issue, one that has to do with where these hotels are located.
To take an example, in Playa de Muro there are 33 hotels, three of which are five star and several more of which are excellent four star. An up-market image of hotels is not, despite a fine beach, matched by what else the resort has to offer, namely parts of it in a state of virtual abandonment and, with the greatest of respect, a lack of genuinely quality restaurants. Rather, you have an almost uniform offer of the standard "grill" and pizzeria.
The restaurants are caught in a dilemma. They may wish to invest, may wish to change their cuisine, but to what end? They have come to realise full well that the image of all-inclusive being exclusively for the economy-class tourist is something of a myth. It only partially applies in Playa de Muro, and in a wider context it is applying less and less; demand for all-inclusive within the higher, 4-star end of the market has increased and is likely to go on increasing if what exists outside hotels is unable to match this market's more sophisticated tastes, assuming that the hotels can actually deliver the required service. But do the restaurants adapt to try and capture this market when they fear that such effort will be undermined by the all-inclusive offer?
What is on offer in restaurants is, though, an important ingredient when it comes to the luxury market. All the attention that is paid to some of the "alternative" tourism offers, notably gastronomy and golf, is understandable if this market is to grow significantly. Both these are cited as important aspects of attracting the luxury market. In Playa de Muro, the obstacles to the building of the golf course on the Son Bosc finca are seen as detrimental to the expansion of the market.
Crucially, however, the question is whether this luxury market will grow significantly and whether the investment to make it grow will be matched by results. There is, and has long been, an element of wishful thinking, some of which is now being turned towards the nouveau riche of Russia and eastern Europe. Nevertheless, if TUI is increasing the number of its minted Germans, then there is cause for some gentle optimism.
The issue will be whether Mallorca has the quality of hotel and, as importantly, quality of resort to make anything like a quantum leap. And, as has been seen with Playa de Palma, the hoteliers, pressing for upgrades and the removal of bureaucratic hoops that would facilitate them, contradict themselves by insisting (not unreasonably) that the bread and butter remains the 3-star mass tourist.
And there is lurking perhaps an additional issue, a social one. Mention of Sardinia as a competitor to Mallorca in the luxury market is a reminder of what surfaced there back in 2008. Wealthy and celebrity tourists being greeted with barrages of wet sand and cries of "louts, go home" as their motorised dinghies came ashore.
Wealth is very welcome, but in times of deprivation, more of it, ostentatiously on show, does not guarantee a welcome.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Down In The Sewer: The rubbish corruption case
Here we go again. When I suggested that you shouldn't bet against the president of the Council of Mallorca offering a message about corruption at the end of 2011, I hadn't expected that a case would arise quite so quickly to support such a message. But it has.
Operación Cloaca. A cloaca is Latin for a sewer. Appropriate, you might think. "Cases of corruption keep coming to the surface with the regularity with which malodour filters out of a sewer cover." Hmm. This was what I said in "The Year Of Living Corruptly" (30 December).
The case involves allegations of false accounting in respect of waste-collection services across Mallorca. Implicated are businesspeople operating such services, the former director of waste management at the environment department of the Council of Mallorca and an economist and an engineer from the council.
The amount of money that is being said to have been "diverted" is staggering, anything up to 3.5 million euros, and the whole thing centres on what was going on at the waste-management division within the environment department at the council. The former councillor for environment was Catalina Julve, now the spokesperson for the Unió Mallorquina (UM) party.
There is an unfortunate familiarity about all this. The UM. One of those implicated, Simón Galmés, said to have charged a monthly 9,000 euros for work not undertaken, is a member of the Alianza Libre de Manacor-UM. It is also being said that, thanks to a friendship with Miguel Riera, the former mayor of Manacor and himself in the ALM-UM, Galmés's firm got the gig to be contracted to perform the inspection of waste. Riera, now no longer with us, was also the boss of the environment department before Julve. False invoices stopped being raised, it is further alleged, only once the UM was kicked out of governmental posts by the president of the regional government following the various corruption cases the party faced.
Of the various scandals that have erupted over the past couple of years, this one has the feeling of something different. It is less familiar in one respect. Though these scandals have involved the diversion of public funds, they have been at arm's length, away from ordinary householders and businesses.
This one is different because those ordinary householders and businesses pay taxes for waste collection and treatment. These taxes, that have risen significantly, are, not unnaturally, unpopular. And now we have a corruption case which suggests that a portion of the taxpayer's burden has gone directly into certain people's pockets. It brings it home - literally in this instance - the level of corruption and the extent to which it can affect any aspect of day-to-day living.
No one has been found guilty yet. But mud, or rubbish if you prefer, sticks. And as ever it is sticking to the UM. Here is a party that, following its expulsion, looked to try and re-invent itself and have done with the scandals that had attached themselves to it. However, it now has its spokesperson, in effect the number three in the party's current hierarchy, right in the firing-line.
It seemed inconceivable that the UM, discredited as it had been, could undergo a revival that might see it return to a position of power. Yet this has been happening. The doors had been opened once more to possible coalition government with Antich's socialists after this spring's elections. Had been. Perhaps it's time for them to be firmly shut.
And what of the electorate? Taxes, be they for rubbish or anything else, are an issue that plays with voters. They have a right to see that politicians don't play with their money, and if it is being played with, then those doing the playing need teaching a lesson. The elections are going to be difficult for the UM. And so they should be. They deserve nothing less. In fact, they deserve binning in the nearest container and waiting for the electoral rubbish collectors to come and dump them.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Operación Cloaca. A cloaca is Latin for a sewer. Appropriate, you might think. "Cases of corruption keep coming to the surface with the regularity with which malodour filters out of a sewer cover." Hmm. This was what I said in "The Year Of Living Corruptly" (30 December).
The case involves allegations of false accounting in respect of waste-collection services across Mallorca. Implicated are businesspeople operating such services, the former director of waste management at the environment department of the Council of Mallorca and an economist and an engineer from the council.
The amount of money that is being said to have been "diverted" is staggering, anything up to 3.5 million euros, and the whole thing centres on what was going on at the waste-management division within the environment department at the council. The former councillor for environment was Catalina Julve, now the spokesperson for the Unió Mallorquina (UM) party.
There is an unfortunate familiarity about all this. The UM. One of those implicated, Simón Galmés, said to have charged a monthly 9,000 euros for work not undertaken, is a member of the Alianza Libre de Manacor-UM. It is also being said that, thanks to a friendship with Miguel Riera, the former mayor of Manacor and himself in the ALM-UM, Galmés's firm got the gig to be contracted to perform the inspection of waste. Riera, now no longer with us, was also the boss of the environment department before Julve. False invoices stopped being raised, it is further alleged, only once the UM was kicked out of governmental posts by the president of the regional government following the various corruption cases the party faced.
Of the various scandals that have erupted over the past couple of years, this one has the feeling of something different. It is less familiar in one respect. Though these scandals have involved the diversion of public funds, they have been at arm's length, away from ordinary householders and businesses.
This one is different because those ordinary householders and businesses pay taxes for waste collection and treatment. These taxes, that have risen significantly, are, not unnaturally, unpopular. And now we have a corruption case which suggests that a portion of the taxpayer's burden has gone directly into certain people's pockets. It brings it home - literally in this instance - the level of corruption and the extent to which it can affect any aspect of day-to-day living.
No one has been found guilty yet. But mud, or rubbish if you prefer, sticks. And as ever it is sticking to the UM. Here is a party that, following its expulsion, looked to try and re-invent itself and have done with the scandals that had attached themselves to it. However, it now has its spokesperson, in effect the number three in the party's current hierarchy, right in the firing-line.
It seemed inconceivable that the UM, discredited as it had been, could undergo a revival that might see it return to a position of power. Yet this has been happening. The doors had been opened once more to possible coalition government with Antich's socialists after this spring's elections. Had been. Perhaps it's time for them to be firmly shut.
And what of the electorate? Taxes, be they for rubbish or anything else, are an issue that plays with voters. They have a right to see that politicians don't play with their money, and if it is being played with, then those doing the playing need teaching a lesson. The elections are going to be difficult for the UM. And so they should be. They deserve nothing less. In fact, they deserve binning in the nearest container and waiting for the electoral rubbish collectors to come and dump them.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Making Peace With The Devil: Sant Antoni
The lights dim. The theatre is about to begin.
Trays of flames and pots of fire hanging from palm trees play shadows onto the brooding enormity of the church. Organ music, a phantom of the opera, a Hammer house of horrors, throbs menacingly. A disconnected voice, deep, sombre and threatening, a Vincent Price of Catalan, warns of "foc" and "dimonis" that await the "mureres". Then a sybil-like lullaby from within an aura of bright white and silver seeks to calm fears before ...
The fires crack into life, lit by spears of tridents. They explode, whizz and bang. Now it is the demons' time. The fire time. The spooks and ghouls are roaming, racing, pressing their grotesque faces into those of the innocent, the witnesses to this ritual, this paganism. They brandish their tridents, whirl them like hammer throwers in this Hammer horror, spitting burning rain.
Primal screams and spirits, awakened from a permanent living death, collide in this maelstrom caused by the most basic element, this hell of fire. Their horrid masks that glare unseeingly into the awed expressions of the innocent are looking nevertheless. They seek the innocents and find them, spiriting them away into their purgatorial, incendiary orgy.
The beating of drums. Incessant. Rhythmic. Calling out to the living to pass over into the world of the satanic majesty of the profane acolytes of the devil, calling them to jump, writhe and be blessed with the showers of accursed droplets of flame. An innocent is grabbed, he is taken, then another. And then others, entranced by the pulsation and the offers of fiery temptation, come forward and leap and dance under firefalls.
The children have been taken! They have become one with the demons. But have they? Some taunt the devils, mocking their horns, stabbing towards them, making them dance ever more and chase with their burning prongs. We are witnesses to this, but suddenly we look elsewhere. For the church is aflame.
From its towers tumble hailstones of white flamelets. As Muro church falls, so falls Muro church in sheets of sheer pureness, a purging and exorcism of the devilry below. The drums cease, the demons are still. It is over.
This was Muro on the eve of Sant Antoni, an intimate spectacular of Mallorcan tradition at its most extreme, its most bestial and its finest. There is more than just a slight sense of the macabre about Sant Antoni, a feeling of "The Wicker Man", of folkloric degeneracy. And Muro does it well, better perhaps than its neighbour Sa Pobla. The event is more confined, more focussed, but no less frightening.
Once the demons have gone, there is the folk music. And the "ballada popular" of all ages raising their arms and legs in the gentility of the ball de bot. Small children, older children, adults, young and old, all together, unashamedly moving in time to the chords of musicians, themselves of different generations, dancing in front of the church and town hall in a communal expression of tradition. These different generations, such as with the kids who dance with the demons. Can there be anything more magical, more imagination-inspiring than to jump around under the falling flames of the demons while the drummers beat? Can there be anything more determined than Sant Antoni to prolong local traditions?
The kids will want to be demons when they are older, they will want to be the musicians inspiring the ball de bot. It is perpetuation. Of tradition. You hope that it doesn't stop. The permanent living death of the demons of Sant Antoni is a permanency that is never disrupted as part of tradition.
And perhaps in older age, these kids might become "glosadors", such as the old woman with her frankly male-masturbatory style of penetrating her ximbomba instrument and issuing a most God-awful caterwaul as she relates some raunchy tale, incomprehensible to anyone but the most Mallorcan of aficionado. She is one of the side-shows of Sant Antoni, on one of the many squares that later give way to the less traditional - the rock, the indie, the hip-hop.
In this more contemporary vein, however, there is, at an event such as Muro's Sant Antoni Eve, the local television. IB3. They spoke to me but presumably didn't reckon on an interview that wasn't going to be given in Catalan. But they did film us. We Brits. With our sobrassadas being toasted on the embers of one of the fires in front of the church. Later, we had a beer in a bar by the church square, and there it was - coverage of Muro's Sant Antoni on the telly, replete with us, twelve, fourteen of us.
We didn't really count though. And that is the sadness of Sant Antoni. The most astonishing of the fiestas, but it is one for the Mallorcans. No one else.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Trays of flames and pots of fire hanging from palm trees play shadows onto the brooding enormity of the church. Organ music, a phantom of the opera, a Hammer house of horrors, throbs menacingly. A disconnected voice, deep, sombre and threatening, a Vincent Price of Catalan, warns of "foc" and "dimonis" that await the "mureres". Then a sybil-like lullaby from within an aura of bright white and silver seeks to calm fears before ...
The fires crack into life, lit by spears of tridents. They explode, whizz and bang. Now it is the demons' time. The fire time. The spooks and ghouls are roaming, racing, pressing their grotesque faces into those of the innocent, the witnesses to this ritual, this paganism. They brandish their tridents, whirl them like hammer throwers in this Hammer horror, spitting burning rain.
Primal screams and spirits, awakened from a permanent living death, collide in this maelstrom caused by the most basic element, this hell of fire. Their horrid masks that glare unseeingly into the awed expressions of the innocent are looking nevertheless. They seek the innocents and find them, spiriting them away into their purgatorial, incendiary orgy.
The beating of drums. Incessant. Rhythmic. Calling out to the living to pass over into the world of the satanic majesty of the profane acolytes of the devil, calling them to jump, writhe and be blessed with the showers of accursed droplets of flame. An innocent is grabbed, he is taken, then another. And then others, entranced by the pulsation and the offers of fiery temptation, come forward and leap and dance under firefalls.
The children have been taken! They have become one with the demons. But have they? Some taunt the devils, mocking their horns, stabbing towards them, making them dance ever more and chase with their burning prongs. We are witnesses to this, but suddenly we look elsewhere. For the church is aflame.
From its towers tumble hailstones of white flamelets. As Muro church falls, so falls Muro church in sheets of sheer pureness, a purging and exorcism of the devilry below. The drums cease, the demons are still. It is over.
This was Muro on the eve of Sant Antoni, an intimate spectacular of Mallorcan tradition at its most extreme, its most bestial and its finest. There is more than just a slight sense of the macabre about Sant Antoni, a feeling of "The Wicker Man", of folkloric degeneracy. And Muro does it well, better perhaps than its neighbour Sa Pobla. The event is more confined, more focussed, but no less frightening.
Once the demons have gone, there is the folk music. And the "ballada popular" of all ages raising their arms and legs in the gentility of the ball de bot. Small children, older children, adults, young and old, all together, unashamedly moving in time to the chords of musicians, themselves of different generations, dancing in front of the church and town hall in a communal expression of tradition. These different generations, such as with the kids who dance with the demons. Can there be anything more magical, more imagination-inspiring than to jump around under the falling flames of the demons while the drummers beat? Can there be anything more determined than Sant Antoni to prolong local traditions?
The kids will want to be demons when they are older, they will want to be the musicians inspiring the ball de bot. It is perpetuation. Of tradition. You hope that it doesn't stop. The permanent living death of the demons of Sant Antoni is a permanency that is never disrupted as part of tradition.
And perhaps in older age, these kids might become "glosadors", such as the old woman with her frankly male-masturbatory style of penetrating her ximbomba instrument and issuing a most God-awful caterwaul as she relates some raunchy tale, incomprehensible to anyone but the most Mallorcan of aficionado. She is one of the side-shows of Sant Antoni, on one of the many squares that later give way to the less traditional - the rock, the indie, the hip-hop.
In this more contemporary vein, however, there is, at an event such as Muro's Sant Antoni Eve, the local television. IB3. They spoke to me but presumably didn't reckon on an interview that wasn't going to be given in Catalan. But they did film us. We Brits. With our sobrassadas being toasted on the embers of one of the fires in front of the church. Later, we had a beer in a bar by the church square, and there it was - coverage of Muro's Sant Antoni on the telly, replete with us, twelve, fourteen of us.
We didn't really count though. And that is the sadness of Sant Antoni. The most astonishing of the fiestas, but it is one for the Mallorcans. No one else.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Summer In January
In the days when there was such a thing as summer holidays, I used to have bad dreams prior to them; bad dreams of snow in summer. Winter in July. That was Bomb The Bass; perhaps they read my dreams.
There's a symmetry between this and summer in January. Six months between two months of J. The seasons turned upside down. It doesn't seem right, not least to one of the old men of the neighbourhood who was wandering by the beach. How was he? His reaction was spontaneous. It's never easy to deal with someone crying in the street. He must have been crying for six months now, since his wife passed away. It doesn't seem right. She should have died now. In the winter. Except it isn't.
Parked by the beach is a mobile home, a remnant of summer that shouldn't be there in January. There are anglers with their anorexic cranes strained by bait anchor and taut in the sand. A girl sits by the water's edge, reading and idly tossing posidonia kiwis into the idly lapping wavelets.
It's twenty degrees or so, but the chill water and air from the sea is the reminder that this isn't really summer. Once upon a time you used to be able to head into the dunes and find sand banks that were breaks against the dank air and which created sun traps. You still can, I guess, but they've roped them all off. They only want you to look now, not actually be a part of all this nature.
This is not unusual, this summer in January, this gentleness of the sea that allows one of the fishermen to wade out in search of a catch, this stillness of sky a rhapsodical blue above the tops of pines and palms. From the upper terrace, the one onto which it is impossible to venture in summer because of the ferocity of the heat, the wall obliterates everything apart from the peaks of trees and the sky. The sun burns, even in January.
The sounds are those of distant gunshot during the never-ending hunting season, of the buzzing of winter saws cutting into deadwood or making firewood. For over from where the gunshot comes, fires are being built on the streets of Sa Pobla and Muro, fires that will be lit and which which will light the sight of demons playing with their own fire. It seems incongruous that there should be fires. Not now, not when it is summer in January. But when the sun falls into the horizon of the eel farms of Albufera, the cold descends with the tumbling yellow, as though this were a desert.
The smoke will stay you feel, it will hang in the still air. There will be a kind of smog, because of the night and morning fogs that have crept in with stealth and cloaked the stillness of this eery winter-summer, which have wrapped the crystallised spiders' weaves around car wing mirrors, gates and leaves and which have added a rare sound - that of a fog horn belching across the bay of Alcúdia. The fogs clear but their dampness lingers. The sand, which is never absent from the streets and pavements but may be all but invisible, sticks to shoes, glued there by the wetness that tells you this isn't really summer.
There is other incongruity. It is the rogue mosquito at night, a fly or two whizzing in and out of an open door or window, a brown, decaying cricket that should now be dead but which has survived the suicide dive against a brick wall that it would have performed in October and November, wanting it to all end quickly. There is even the sound of scraping legs, buried in an unattended, holiday-home garden, in this late or is it early summer or spring, for the daffodils are shooting as well.
But in a few days, you imagine, it will be winter in January. It's not so unusual to have summer in January, this reverse of the bad dream of winter in July, just as it's not so unusual for the month to head towards a deathly cold and the reactivation of daytime wood burners and heaters which, for now, need only be fired up once the sun has set. And now, at around half past six, it has just about faded completely, leaving only the streaks of red and orange above Sa Pobla and Muro, the red and orange into which will flame different reds and oranges of the Sant Antoni fires.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
There's a symmetry between this and summer in January. Six months between two months of J. The seasons turned upside down. It doesn't seem right, not least to one of the old men of the neighbourhood who was wandering by the beach. How was he? His reaction was spontaneous. It's never easy to deal with someone crying in the street. He must have been crying for six months now, since his wife passed away. It doesn't seem right. She should have died now. In the winter. Except it isn't.
Parked by the beach is a mobile home, a remnant of summer that shouldn't be there in January. There are anglers with their anorexic cranes strained by bait anchor and taut in the sand. A girl sits by the water's edge, reading and idly tossing posidonia kiwis into the idly lapping wavelets.
It's twenty degrees or so, but the chill water and air from the sea is the reminder that this isn't really summer. Once upon a time you used to be able to head into the dunes and find sand banks that were breaks against the dank air and which created sun traps. You still can, I guess, but they've roped them all off. They only want you to look now, not actually be a part of all this nature.
This is not unusual, this summer in January, this gentleness of the sea that allows one of the fishermen to wade out in search of a catch, this stillness of sky a rhapsodical blue above the tops of pines and palms. From the upper terrace, the one onto which it is impossible to venture in summer because of the ferocity of the heat, the wall obliterates everything apart from the peaks of trees and the sky. The sun burns, even in January.
The sounds are those of distant gunshot during the never-ending hunting season, of the buzzing of winter saws cutting into deadwood or making firewood. For over from where the gunshot comes, fires are being built on the streets of Sa Pobla and Muro, fires that will be lit and which which will light the sight of demons playing with their own fire. It seems incongruous that there should be fires. Not now, not when it is summer in January. But when the sun falls into the horizon of the eel farms of Albufera, the cold descends with the tumbling yellow, as though this were a desert.
The smoke will stay you feel, it will hang in the still air. There will be a kind of smog, because of the night and morning fogs that have crept in with stealth and cloaked the stillness of this eery winter-summer, which have wrapped the crystallised spiders' weaves around car wing mirrors, gates and leaves and which have added a rare sound - that of a fog horn belching across the bay of Alcúdia. The fogs clear but their dampness lingers. The sand, which is never absent from the streets and pavements but may be all but invisible, sticks to shoes, glued there by the wetness that tells you this isn't really summer.
There is other incongruity. It is the rogue mosquito at night, a fly or two whizzing in and out of an open door or window, a brown, decaying cricket that should now be dead but which has survived the suicide dive against a brick wall that it would have performed in October and November, wanting it to all end quickly. There is even the sound of scraping legs, buried in an unattended, holiday-home garden, in this late or is it early summer or spring, for the daffodils are shooting as well.
But in a few days, you imagine, it will be winter in January. It's not so unusual to have summer in January, this reverse of the bad dream of winter in July, just as it's not so unusual for the month to head towards a deathly cold and the reactivation of daytime wood burners and heaters which, for now, need only be fired up once the sun has set. And now, at around half past six, it has just about faded completely, leaving only the streaks of red and orange above Sa Pobla and Muro, the red and orange into which will flame different reds and oranges of the Sant Antoni fires.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
The Time Of Day: Working hours and productivity
Did you know that there is a national commission in Spain dedicated to the rationalisation of timetables (Comisión Nacional para la Racionalización de los Horarios Españoles)? Well, you do now.
The title is a bit misleading. This commission isn't concerned with the "horarios" of buses or trains but with working hours. It wants, among other things, to bring the Spanish working day into line with most of Europe. In other words, the siesta would go.
The commission does not seek to make working days longer (the Spaniards already, contrary to what might be thought, tend to work longer than most Europeans). What it does seek is greater productivity, and Spain's productivity is one of Europe's lowest. Longer hours do not mean more productivity, as anyone, bar the most macho of managers, can tell you.
If it has its way, the commission would apply greater conformity to the working day, with 9-5 becoming more of the norm insofar as it can be said to be the norm anywhere nowadays. It would also like Spain to switch back to Greenwich Mean Time (some sixty years after abandoning it), a move, it reckons, that would aid productivity. Not that it does in Portugal where productivity is lower still.
There are a number of reasons for low productivity, not all of them to do with the siesta and the afternoon break, but some specifically are - phone calls not being taken; erratic schedules for appointments to fit around the break; too much commuting (in effect, four rush hours a day); too much food and potentially too much sleep.
To these can be added more general problems of higher levels of absenteeism than in other countries; lack of punctuality; too much time spent on meetings which aren't necessarily meetings just excuses for a chat and often in a café; and too little sleep (although some might nod off into a deep sleep in the afternoon, which is not a good idea, most don't but also don't sleep enough at night).
While there may once have been a sound reason for the siesta, and still is for those engaged in farming or labouring, there is less justification for it in what is now an advanced economy. Within the public sector there has been some attempt to move towards a 9-5 regime; the Ministry of Public Administration, for instance, has encouraged these hours. But there has been only limited success, and there is also the fact that many public offices which close at one or two o'clock then don't re-open later.
Coming into line with how business operates in other European countries would not be the only advantage for a realignment of the working day. Another would be that it would meet the demands of changing lifestyles. It isn't only the British, the Germans and other northern Europeans who get frustrated by the afternoon break, so also do increasing numbers of Spaniards. A further advantage would be to attack what is still something of a bureaucratic culture within business, as opposed to an entrepreneurial one.
Playing around with hours and time is, however, something of a challenge for a society that treats time with such disregard. This is no more than the case than with "mediodía". Just as lunch is literally a movable feast - any time you want it to be really - so also is midday. The vagueness of Mallorcan and Spanish time is probably the greatest culture clash that a northern European has to contend with. Midday is hardly ever twelve o'clock, but an appointment may be made for "mediodía", the exact time of which is anyone's guess. And whether the appointment is actually met is another matter; often it will not be because one man's one o'clock is another man's two-thirty.
This vagueness also leads to the almost unknown concept of punctuality. The word exists - "puntualidad" - but few have ever learnt what it means. I once turned up for an appointment bang on nine in the evening, as had been the arrangement. "Muy puntual," was the surprised comment. "I am English," I responded only half-jokingly.
For nine to five to become normal practice would require a pretty major shift in behaviour and culture, and, as with everything else, there is a tradition to be preserved, the siesta most obviously.
The commission for timetables faces opposition, such as that from the National Association of Friends of the Siesta. And yes, there really is one, and in October last year it held its first siesta championship. Seriously, there was a competition to judge the best siesta-ist. The commission may want to rationalise hours, but it will never be able to rationalise the irrational.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The title is a bit misleading. This commission isn't concerned with the "horarios" of buses or trains but with working hours. It wants, among other things, to bring the Spanish working day into line with most of Europe. In other words, the siesta would go.
The commission does not seek to make working days longer (the Spaniards already, contrary to what might be thought, tend to work longer than most Europeans). What it does seek is greater productivity, and Spain's productivity is one of Europe's lowest. Longer hours do not mean more productivity, as anyone, bar the most macho of managers, can tell you.
If it has its way, the commission would apply greater conformity to the working day, with 9-5 becoming more of the norm insofar as it can be said to be the norm anywhere nowadays. It would also like Spain to switch back to Greenwich Mean Time (some sixty years after abandoning it), a move, it reckons, that would aid productivity. Not that it does in Portugal where productivity is lower still.
There are a number of reasons for low productivity, not all of them to do with the siesta and the afternoon break, but some specifically are - phone calls not being taken; erratic schedules for appointments to fit around the break; too much commuting (in effect, four rush hours a day); too much food and potentially too much sleep.
To these can be added more general problems of higher levels of absenteeism than in other countries; lack of punctuality; too much time spent on meetings which aren't necessarily meetings just excuses for a chat and often in a café; and too little sleep (although some might nod off into a deep sleep in the afternoon, which is not a good idea, most don't but also don't sleep enough at night).
While there may once have been a sound reason for the siesta, and still is for those engaged in farming or labouring, there is less justification for it in what is now an advanced economy. Within the public sector there has been some attempt to move towards a 9-5 regime; the Ministry of Public Administration, for instance, has encouraged these hours. But there has been only limited success, and there is also the fact that many public offices which close at one or two o'clock then don't re-open later.
Coming into line with how business operates in other European countries would not be the only advantage for a realignment of the working day. Another would be that it would meet the demands of changing lifestyles. It isn't only the British, the Germans and other northern Europeans who get frustrated by the afternoon break, so also do increasing numbers of Spaniards. A further advantage would be to attack what is still something of a bureaucratic culture within business, as opposed to an entrepreneurial one.
Playing around with hours and time is, however, something of a challenge for a society that treats time with such disregard. This is no more than the case than with "mediodía". Just as lunch is literally a movable feast - any time you want it to be really - so also is midday. The vagueness of Mallorcan and Spanish time is probably the greatest culture clash that a northern European has to contend with. Midday is hardly ever twelve o'clock, but an appointment may be made for "mediodía", the exact time of which is anyone's guess. And whether the appointment is actually met is another matter; often it will not be because one man's one o'clock is another man's two-thirty.
This vagueness also leads to the almost unknown concept of punctuality. The word exists - "puntualidad" - but few have ever learnt what it means. I once turned up for an appointment bang on nine in the evening, as had been the arrangement. "Muy puntual," was the surprised comment. "I am English," I responded only half-jokingly.
For nine to five to become normal practice would require a pretty major shift in behaviour and culture, and, as with everything else, there is a tradition to be preserved, the siesta most obviously.
The commission for timetables faces opposition, such as that from the National Association of Friends of the Siesta. And yes, there really is one, and in October last year it held its first siesta championship. Seriously, there was a competition to judge the best siesta-ist. The commission may want to rationalise hours, but it will never be able to rationalise the irrational.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Flaming Ellipse: Plagiarism in Palma
Palma council has been placed in a highly embarrassing situation. The poster that is being used to promote its Sant Sebastià festivities includes a design that the council now accepts has been plagiarised. The design, which comprises a series of ellipse-shaped rings intertwined and superimposed onto others and coloured in shades of red and yellow to denote flames, bears a very strong resemblance to one created by a designer called David Yerga and which was used to promote the "Falles" fiestas in Valencia last year.
The council set up a competition for the poster design. The winner receives a prize of 3,000 euros, which will now not be forthcoming. Yerga is demanding the same amount as compensation. He has also insisted that the poster be withdrawn and that unless the council complies he will seek legal redress. The council, for its part, has said that it cannot now withdraw the poster and has also said that it was in no position to be able to judge if designs were original works or had potentially violated intellectual property.
Without knowing the ins and outs of the terms of its competition, it might be argued that, as the "client", the council did have a responsibility to ensure that it was at least protected from any claim. There has been some chatter on the internet about this case to the effect that the council should have been aware of the Valencia design - they're all "Catalans" after all. This seems a bit harsh, but the council may now wish that there had been greater diligence.
Moving from the specifics of this case, it is not exactly unknown for designs to look similar. Often they are knowingly similar, but not always. As with music, there are always influences. Indeed with music, it might be argued that there is no such thing as originality any longer, just degrees of copying, conscious or not.
In creative endeavour, however, plagiarism, or allegations of it, can be highly destructive. It can kill careers stone dead, and the student who did the Palma design may come to regret what she put forward for the competition. It is also inherently lazy and runs counter to the very notion of creativity in the sense that this means originality (or as near as this can be achieved nowadays).
While borrowing ideas is commonplace, to look to effectively pass off something as one's own when it isn't is an abrogation of the creative impulse. It's why plagiarism is so frowned upon. Call yourself an artist when you nick another's painting; call yourself a writer when you lift another's words. It makes no sense. If you are involved in creative endeavour, you want to paint your own pictures, write your own words. What's the point of doing it if you don't?
There have been examples of plagiarism in its written format, ones with a Mallorcan context. Take that of the well-known journalist with a leading UK tabloid who used more or less verbatim a description of Puerto Pollensa that came from the home page of puertopollensa.com. What on earth was she thinking of? The conclusion I drew was that she hadn't actually been to Puerto Pollensa but needed some copy. It would be instructive to know what she was paid.
Resort to the internet, be it for design works, photography or texts may be about working smart, but to take whole tracts of text or take photos and make them appear as your own verges on betrayal. Betrayal of the creative endeavour, of whatever profession may be involved and of the audience. I don't get it, and no more do I not get it than with grabbing from Wikipedia and other sites and reproducing word for word. If you write, you write. In your own words, not with those of someone else.
In Mallorca, as in Spain and as in the rest of the European Union, there is a clear enough law on copyright. It means that everything you do which is creative, be it written, designed, photographed, whatever, is your property. It may sometimes be difficult to prove, but the law exists nonetheless. But in Mallorca there can at times be a rather lax attitude. It's one I know only too well, having found my photos or designs reproduced somewhere without permission. It's an attitude which, when confronted, can receive a shrug of the shoulders or a look of bewilderment that anyone might suggest that something wrong had been done.
David Yerga needs to be congratulated. If a high-profile case of plagiarism can help to convince firstly councils that they need to be rather more thorough with their compliance and secondly a wider public that there is such a thing as copyright, then he will have performed a great service.
Go here to see the two designs:
http://ultimahora.es/mallorca/noticia/noticias/local/cort-admite-el-plagio.html
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The council set up a competition for the poster design. The winner receives a prize of 3,000 euros, which will now not be forthcoming. Yerga is demanding the same amount as compensation. He has also insisted that the poster be withdrawn and that unless the council complies he will seek legal redress. The council, for its part, has said that it cannot now withdraw the poster and has also said that it was in no position to be able to judge if designs were original works or had potentially violated intellectual property.
Without knowing the ins and outs of the terms of its competition, it might be argued that, as the "client", the council did have a responsibility to ensure that it was at least protected from any claim. There has been some chatter on the internet about this case to the effect that the council should have been aware of the Valencia design - they're all "Catalans" after all. This seems a bit harsh, but the council may now wish that there had been greater diligence.
Moving from the specifics of this case, it is not exactly unknown for designs to look similar. Often they are knowingly similar, but not always. As with music, there are always influences. Indeed with music, it might be argued that there is no such thing as originality any longer, just degrees of copying, conscious or not.
In creative endeavour, however, plagiarism, or allegations of it, can be highly destructive. It can kill careers stone dead, and the student who did the Palma design may come to regret what she put forward for the competition. It is also inherently lazy and runs counter to the very notion of creativity in the sense that this means originality (or as near as this can be achieved nowadays).
While borrowing ideas is commonplace, to look to effectively pass off something as one's own when it isn't is an abrogation of the creative impulse. It's why plagiarism is so frowned upon. Call yourself an artist when you nick another's painting; call yourself a writer when you lift another's words. It makes no sense. If you are involved in creative endeavour, you want to paint your own pictures, write your own words. What's the point of doing it if you don't?
There have been examples of plagiarism in its written format, ones with a Mallorcan context. Take that of the well-known journalist with a leading UK tabloid who used more or less verbatim a description of Puerto Pollensa that came from the home page of puertopollensa.com. What on earth was she thinking of? The conclusion I drew was that she hadn't actually been to Puerto Pollensa but needed some copy. It would be instructive to know what she was paid.
Resort to the internet, be it for design works, photography or texts may be about working smart, but to take whole tracts of text or take photos and make them appear as your own verges on betrayal. Betrayal of the creative endeavour, of whatever profession may be involved and of the audience. I don't get it, and no more do I not get it than with grabbing from Wikipedia and other sites and reproducing word for word. If you write, you write. In your own words, not with those of someone else.
In Mallorca, as in Spain and as in the rest of the European Union, there is a clear enough law on copyright. It means that everything you do which is creative, be it written, designed, photographed, whatever, is your property. It may sometimes be difficult to prove, but the law exists nonetheless. But in Mallorca there can at times be a rather lax attitude. It's one I know only too well, having found my photos or designs reproduced somewhere without permission. It's an attitude which, when confronted, can receive a shrug of the shoulders or a look of bewilderment that anyone might suggest that something wrong had been done.
David Yerga needs to be congratulated. If a high-profile case of plagiarism can help to convince firstly councils that they need to be rather more thorough with their compliance and secondly a wider public that there is such a thing as copyright, then he will have performed a great service.
Go here to see the two designs:
http://ultimahora.es/mallorca/noticia/noticias/local/cort-admite-el-plagio.html
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Space Monsters Ate My Atmosphere
One of my nieces is an animator. She makes models that are transformed through computer-generated imagery. She has a penchant for strange, Gerald Scarfe-like grotesques that inhabit an alternative world of the weird. I have an idea for her. Creatures with mushroom heads, thin, skeletal torsos and one tree-trunk-thick leg. These would lumber across landscapes, terrorising man and environment alike with their noxious fumes which consume air and the atmosphere. These monsters would be the Space Eaters.
One impact of the smoking ban has been that the sale of heating units for terraces has shot up. Space heaters have been common enough in bars and restaurants, but suppliers have been recording record sales as owners look to keep their clientele warm while they smoke.
Is there anything quite as ridiculous as heating outdoor air? This, let's call it the "batty proposition", is one argument against space heaters. But heating outdoor space has long been with us. Bonfires, braziers, no one ever objected unless they were being set fire to. The difference with the space heater is that it is environmentally harmful. Supposedly.
Space heaters have been around for years. The Germans, for example, have used them to warm Munich beer drinkers and Glühwein imbibers at Christmas markets since the 50s. In the UK, they were a rarity, only coming into vogue in the late 90s before being elevated into the position of number-one environmental killer thanks to the UK's own smoking ban.
The side effect of all the legislation aimed at driving smokers outside was that previously unknown carbon emissions started wafting into the atmosphere and onto the radars of environmental groups and tree-hugging politicians. Friends of the Earth leapt to the defence of the environment, earholed a Liberal Democrat MEP and, bingo, the European Parliament agreed to ban space heaters, in that it agreed with a report that was to form the basis of guiding decisions by member countries.
This was in 2008 though and bans, were they to be introduced, have yet to be implemented. But don't discount them being so. If something can be banned, then politicians will find a way of getting it banned.
Inevitably, sides have been taken in the space-heater debate, which has been warming up nicely since Brussels and Strasbourg started to stoke the fire.
An average heater uses the same amount of energy as a gas hob would use in six months and produces 50 kilograms of carbon dioxide annually, said the UK's Energy Saving Trust. No, it produces less, said Calor Gas: 35 kgs. Compare this with the average 3000kgs from a car, said someone else. The overall impact of heaters on emissions was minimal, said an Eric Johnson from the UN's Convention on Climate Change: less than plasma TVs, for example. Electric outdoor heaters have greater carbon burdens than the usual gas ones, said a report for the UK Government's sustainable energy policy, but can be more efficient as they provide focussed heat.
So, round and round the debate goes. Locally, I am unaware of enviro watchdogs having had their centimo's worth, but it can only be a matter of time if they haven't. GOB will surely come to the aid of the environmental party, but I wonder how many GOB-ists take a coffee on a space-heated terrace. Perhaps they don't indulge in such a past-time because to do so would be environmentally incorrect as coffee plantations are destructive of Brazilian or Kenyan eco-systems and the greenhouse effect of a bar's coffee machine is equivalent to the warming caused by all the methane from the dung of the entire wildebeest population of sub-Saharan Africa. Or something like this.
There is apparently a law covering heaters, one which says that they must be movable and can only be used during winter months. Which sounds like the bleeding obvious. But it also says that they should be used for only four months. Really? This is the first I've heard of this, but it comes from one of the many reports that have appeared in the local media regarding the sudden growth in space-heater sales.
For the time being though, and until any definitive moves to put a stop to space heaters, smokers and others can be kept warm on open-air terraces. But the Space Eater monsters' days may be numbered, because, as Friends of the Earth have said, there should be a ban on "these carbon-belching monstrosities".
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
One impact of the smoking ban has been that the sale of heating units for terraces has shot up. Space heaters have been common enough in bars and restaurants, but suppliers have been recording record sales as owners look to keep their clientele warm while they smoke.
Is there anything quite as ridiculous as heating outdoor air? This, let's call it the "batty proposition", is one argument against space heaters. But heating outdoor space has long been with us. Bonfires, braziers, no one ever objected unless they were being set fire to. The difference with the space heater is that it is environmentally harmful. Supposedly.
Space heaters have been around for years. The Germans, for example, have used them to warm Munich beer drinkers and Glühwein imbibers at Christmas markets since the 50s. In the UK, they were a rarity, only coming into vogue in the late 90s before being elevated into the position of number-one environmental killer thanks to the UK's own smoking ban.
The side effect of all the legislation aimed at driving smokers outside was that previously unknown carbon emissions started wafting into the atmosphere and onto the radars of environmental groups and tree-hugging politicians. Friends of the Earth leapt to the defence of the environment, earholed a Liberal Democrat MEP and, bingo, the European Parliament agreed to ban space heaters, in that it agreed with a report that was to form the basis of guiding decisions by member countries.
This was in 2008 though and bans, were they to be introduced, have yet to be implemented. But don't discount them being so. If something can be banned, then politicians will find a way of getting it banned.
Inevitably, sides have been taken in the space-heater debate, which has been warming up nicely since Brussels and Strasbourg started to stoke the fire.
An average heater uses the same amount of energy as a gas hob would use in six months and produces 50 kilograms of carbon dioxide annually, said the UK's Energy Saving Trust. No, it produces less, said Calor Gas: 35 kgs. Compare this with the average 3000kgs from a car, said someone else. The overall impact of heaters on emissions was minimal, said an Eric Johnson from the UN's Convention on Climate Change: less than plasma TVs, for example. Electric outdoor heaters have greater carbon burdens than the usual gas ones, said a report for the UK Government's sustainable energy policy, but can be more efficient as they provide focussed heat.
So, round and round the debate goes. Locally, I am unaware of enviro watchdogs having had their centimo's worth, but it can only be a matter of time if they haven't. GOB will surely come to the aid of the environmental party, but I wonder how many GOB-ists take a coffee on a space-heated terrace. Perhaps they don't indulge in such a past-time because to do so would be environmentally incorrect as coffee plantations are destructive of Brazilian or Kenyan eco-systems and the greenhouse effect of a bar's coffee machine is equivalent to the warming caused by all the methane from the dung of the entire wildebeest population of sub-Saharan Africa. Or something like this.
There is apparently a law covering heaters, one which says that they must be movable and can only be used during winter months. Which sounds like the bleeding obvious. But it also says that they should be used for only four months. Really? This is the first I've heard of this, but it comes from one of the many reports that have appeared in the local media regarding the sudden growth in space-heater sales.
For the time being though, and until any definitive moves to put a stop to space heaters, smokers and others can be kept warm on open-air terraces. But the Space Eater monsters' days may be numbered, because, as Friends of the Earth have said, there should be a ban on "these carbon-belching monstrosities".
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
More Stars In Their Eyes: Hotels' strategy
Mallorca's hotel federation has pronounced once more. Ahead of the local elections, it has sent out a clear message to the to-be-newly elected that "bold and strategic" measures need to be adopted to tackle the island's tourism.
Bold and strategic. Fine words. The question is whether there is anyone capable of being bold or acting strategically. Don't bank on the political classes offering such a paragon of tourism virtue. They don't have a great track record in doing so.
The federation has identified a fundamental problem with Mallorca's tourism. Or perhaps they have borrowed it. The federation says that over the period 2000 to 2008 the number of tourists increased by nearly 22% yet the level of revenue generated went up by a mere 2.3%. Where have we heard something similar? Ah yes, the other day. Dr. Ivan Murray and his findings on the diminishing returns of tourism since 2003.
The solution, says the federation, is for there to be ever more tourists, the trouble with this being that at the current rates of growth it makes little sense. If revenue goes up only slightly, but the number of tourists increases dramatically, then how can there be a benefit? In order for there to be so, the federation believes in the replacement of obsolete accommodation by superior-grade hotels which would result in greater revenues. As an indication of what it is referring to, you need look no further than the situation in Calvia. Seven out of ten hotels in the municipality are 35 years or older, and three-quarters of the places in the hotels are between one and three-star.
Grand plans for the regeneration of Mallorca's hotels and tourism are nothing new. If you go back to the 80s and then into the 90s, plans were popping up from drawing-boards on an almost annual basis. One of the first was the "decreto Cladera" of 1984 that determined the square meterage per one tourism bed. Later there was the "plan for tourism resort embellishment" (making resorts looks prettier in other words). Then there was Ecomost, which sought to establish the limit as to the number of tourists; the "D" Plan of 1997 to address seasonality; the hotel accommodation modernisation plan of the 90s under which hotels could have been closed down if they did not comply with upgrades (and many managed to somehow slip through the net); the modernisation of complementary supply (bars and restaurants) of 1996.
What all these had in common was that they were drawn up in a period before the onset of the new competition from the eastern Mediterranean. Then the new century began and brought in what we now discover, that, for all those plans, the number of tourists has increased but the money they bring in has barely increased at all.
And of these plans, notably the hotel modernisation plan and that for tackling seasonality, were particularly unsuccesful. Furthermore, they both prove that there is nothing new under the sun, as they are but two issues that plague Mallorca's ability to operate in the far more competitive tourism market of today.
Nevertheless, the hotels seem determined to modernise, which is fine, but then what? If this results in higher-grade all-inclusives, then not a great deal. It may lead to an increase in revenue, but revenue for whom? As we know from the idiotic tourism spend statistics, the gearing is towards revenue generated by aspects of the tourism offer which filter only indirectly into the wider economy; it is that on accommodation, the holiday package itself and transport.
More fundamentally though, the desire, the need to increase the number of tourists raises enormous questions as to the capacity-carrying ability of the island (whether it has the resources to support increases), as to possible further building developments (for the most part restricted by planning laws) and as to where the tourists will come from. The new markets, Russia and so on, are going to have to be pursued with considerable vigour.
Getting more tourists cannot be just about adding more during the summer. There has to be a limit to the number of tourists which can be catered for during the summer months. Moreover, creating plusher hotels adds to the current absurdity of so many of them being unproductive for such lengthy periods. Which brings in the question of seasonality. And it is here, more than anything, that an ability to deliver on a strategy, let alone develop one, is exposed.
You can go back further than that "D" Plan of 1997. In the 1980s they were planning the development of "winter products". Guess what they were. You're right: cycling, golf, culture.
The point is that when it comes to being bold and strategic, we've been here before. Several times. And it amounted to very little, even in the days before Turkey, Croatia and Egypt became the threats they now are. You wouldn't count on it being any better this time round.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Bold and strategic. Fine words. The question is whether there is anyone capable of being bold or acting strategically. Don't bank on the political classes offering such a paragon of tourism virtue. They don't have a great track record in doing so.
The federation has identified a fundamental problem with Mallorca's tourism. Or perhaps they have borrowed it. The federation says that over the period 2000 to 2008 the number of tourists increased by nearly 22% yet the level of revenue generated went up by a mere 2.3%. Where have we heard something similar? Ah yes, the other day. Dr. Ivan Murray and his findings on the diminishing returns of tourism since 2003.
The solution, says the federation, is for there to be ever more tourists, the trouble with this being that at the current rates of growth it makes little sense. If revenue goes up only slightly, but the number of tourists increases dramatically, then how can there be a benefit? In order for there to be so, the federation believes in the replacement of obsolete accommodation by superior-grade hotels which would result in greater revenues. As an indication of what it is referring to, you need look no further than the situation in Calvia. Seven out of ten hotels in the municipality are 35 years or older, and three-quarters of the places in the hotels are between one and three-star.
Grand plans for the regeneration of Mallorca's hotels and tourism are nothing new. If you go back to the 80s and then into the 90s, plans were popping up from drawing-boards on an almost annual basis. One of the first was the "decreto Cladera" of 1984 that determined the square meterage per one tourism bed. Later there was the "plan for tourism resort embellishment" (making resorts looks prettier in other words). Then there was Ecomost, which sought to establish the limit as to the number of tourists; the "D" Plan of 1997 to address seasonality; the hotel accommodation modernisation plan of the 90s under which hotels could have been closed down if they did not comply with upgrades (and many managed to somehow slip through the net); the modernisation of complementary supply (bars and restaurants) of 1996.
What all these had in common was that they were drawn up in a period before the onset of the new competition from the eastern Mediterranean. Then the new century began and brought in what we now discover, that, for all those plans, the number of tourists has increased but the money they bring in has barely increased at all.
And of these plans, notably the hotel modernisation plan and that for tackling seasonality, were particularly unsuccesful. Furthermore, they both prove that there is nothing new under the sun, as they are but two issues that plague Mallorca's ability to operate in the far more competitive tourism market of today.
Nevertheless, the hotels seem determined to modernise, which is fine, but then what? If this results in higher-grade all-inclusives, then not a great deal. It may lead to an increase in revenue, but revenue for whom? As we know from the idiotic tourism spend statistics, the gearing is towards revenue generated by aspects of the tourism offer which filter only indirectly into the wider economy; it is that on accommodation, the holiday package itself and transport.
More fundamentally though, the desire, the need to increase the number of tourists raises enormous questions as to the capacity-carrying ability of the island (whether it has the resources to support increases), as to possible further building developments (for the most part restricted by planning laws) and as to where the tourists will come from. The new markets, Russia and so on, are going to have to be pursued with considerable vigour.
Getting more tourists cannot be just about adding more during the summer. There has to be a limit to the number of tourists which can be catered for during the summer months. Moreover, creating plusher hotels adds to the current absurdity of so many of them being unproductive for such lengthy periods. Which brings in the question of seasonality. And it is here, more than anything, that an ability to deliver on a strategy, let alone develop one, is exposed.
You can go back further than that "D" Plan of 1997. In the 1980s they were planning the development of "winter products". Guess what they were. You're right: cycling, golf, culture.
The point is that when it comes to being bold and strategic, we've been here before. Several times. And it amounted to very little, even in the days before Turkey, Croatia and Egypt became the threats they now are. You wouldn't count on it being any better this time round.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Keep The Home Fires Burning
Around this time of the year, in the spirit of the traditions of January's fiestas, I uphold my own tradition, one that I share with others. It is the tradition of asking why on earth more is not made of these fiestas. I think I might have the answer. They - the great, anonymous "they" of tourism promotion - don't want to make more of them. They want them for themselves.
This, at least, is the conclusion you have to draw. And as with the fiestas, so also anything else that occurs. Take the Winter in Mallorca programme. I popped into my local, friendly tourist office the other day. Did they have a copy of the January programme? Not as such. None had been delivered, as indeed none had been delivered in December. Notwithstanding the fact that a call to whoever "they" are to ask if some might be delivered seemed not to have been considered, for a tourist office that happens to be open to be overlooked during the distribution run says much for a - how to put it - uncoordinated approach to information dissemination.
And it's not much better on the internet, a medium which, in these times of spondoolex shortage, offers the advantage of not having to cough up for Mallorca's overpriced print bills. "Infomallorca.net" was volunteered as a source of information for the Winter in Mallorca programme. Sorry, but it isn't. One thing it has is a calendar of "touristic agenda". What does this have? Well, nothing about the fiestas for starters. And nothing about the programme either. Helpfully it does let us know that there are weekly markets in Valldemossa and Ariany. Why? Or rather, why these two and none of the others? Anyone got any sensible suggestions? I'm damned if I can think of any.
"Illesbalears.es" was the other recommendation. I already knew the answer, but double-checked. There is a link, a link to complete gobbledegook. Fat lot of use.
Oh well, let's forget Winter in Mallorca. It seems as though "they" have, so why should I worry? But there are still the fiestas. Fiestas which are not any old fiestas. Antoni and Sebastià. Sa Pobla, the main centre of Antoni celebrations, and Palma, for Sebastià, to which the whole island descends. Trouble is that no one else much does.
It remains a mystery to me why, given the proximity in time of Antony and Sebastian and their undoubtedly spectacular content, they are not afforded some prominence in encouraging a January tourist. A two-centre fiesta that has the bonus of spreading things about and not being only Palma-centric.
Let's take Sebastian. Three years ago this fiesta began to take shape as an event with international content. Admittedly this was a rump Electric Light Orchestra sans Jeff Lynne who had to step in to replace Earth Wind & Fire who turned out not to be Earth Wind & Fire and didn't turn up, but then there were also Echo And The Bunnymen. Following what was a highly successful Sebastian fiesta, Palma council admitted that more needed to be done to attract an international audience for the concerts and the fire spectacular.
So what happened? Nothing. Instead the following year the acts were solidly local. "Ultima Hora" laid into the event big time, criticising the organisation, criticising the organisers for not knowing what the people wanted, criticising the lack of international acts, criticising the lower quality than in previous years. Economic straitened times might well have been the excuse, but another way of looking at it, despite the expression of good international intentions the previous year, was that they couldn't be bothered. Couldn't be bothered because, well, it's our fiesta, isn't it. Ours as in Mallorcan.
This is what you do have to start to conclude. And it is a conclusion that doesn't apply solely to Antony and Sebastian, it applies to fiestas as a whole. Yet these are at the heart of all the culture garbage that "they" trot out; they are the one aspect of culture that really does mean something to a visitor. Or would do were they given far greater prominence. But they are not. Even the summer fiestas are essentially add-ons; they do not form a focal point for promotion. And then you have the problem as to whether you can find any information or, where you can, if it is not released at too short a notice.
The fires and demons of Antoni, the bands and fire spectacular of Sebastià. Fabulous events. But we'll keep them to ourselves, thanks very much. We'll keep the home fires burning - so long as they stay at home.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
This, at least, is the conclusion you have to draw. And as with the fiestas, so also anything else that occurs. Take the Winter in Mallorca programme. I popped into my local, friendly tourist office the other day. Did they have a copy of the January programme? Not as such. None had been delivered, as indeed none had been delivered in December. Notwithstanding the fact that a call to whoever "they" are to ask if some might be delivered seemed not to have been considered, for a tourist office that happens to be open to be overlooked during the distribution run says much for a - how to put it - uncoordinated approach to information dissemination.
And it's not much better on the internet, a medium which, in these times of spondoolex shortage, offers the advantage of not having to cough up for Mallorca's overpriced print bills. "Infomallorca.net" was volunteered as a source of information for the Winter in Mallorca programme. Sorry, but it isn't. One thing it has is a calendar of "touristic agenda". What does this have? Well, nothing about the fiestas for starters. And nothing about the programme either. Helpfully it does let us know that there are weekly markets in Valldemossa and Ariany. Why? Or rather, why these two and none of the others? Anyone got any sensible suggestions? I'm damned if I can think of any.
"Illesbalears.es" was the other recommendation. I already knew the answer, but double-checked. There is a link, a link to complete gobbledegook. Fat lot of use.
Oh well, let's forget Winter in Mallorca. It seems as though "they" have, so why should I worry? But there are still the fiestas. Fiestas which are not any old fiestas. Antoni and Sebastià. Sa Pobla, the main centre of Antoni celebrations, and Palma, for Sebastià, to which the whole island descends. Trouble is that no one else much does.
It remains a mystery to me why, given the proximity in time of Antony and Sebastian and their undoubtedly spectacular content, they are not afforded some prominence in encouraging a January tourist. A two-centre fiesta that has the bonus of spreading things about and not being only Palma-centric.
Let's take Sebastian. Three years ago this fiesta began to take shape as an event with international content. Admittedly this was a rump Electric Light Orchestra sans Jeff Lynne who had to step in to replace Earth Wind & Fire who turned out not to be Earth Wind & Fire and didn't turn up, but then there were also Echo And The Bunnymen. Following what was a highly successful Sebastian fiesta, Palma council admitted that more needed to be done to attract an international audience for the concerts and the fire spectacular.
So what happened? Nothing. Instead the following year the acts were solidly local. "Ultima Hora" laid into the event big time, criticising the organisation, criticising the organisers for not knowing what the people wanted, criticising the lack of international acts, criticising the lower quality than in previous years. Economic straitened times might well have been the excuse, but another way of looking at it, despite the expression of good international intentions the previous year, was that they couldn't be bothered. Couldn't be bothered because, well, it's our fiesta, isn't it. Ours as in Mallorcan.
This is what you do have to start to conclude. And it is a conclusion that doesn't apply solely to Antony and Sebastian, it applies to fiestas as a whole. Yet these are at the heart of all the culture garbage that "they" trot out; they are the one aspect of culture that really does mean something to a visitor. Or would do were they given far greater prominence. But they are not. Even the summer fiestas are essentially add-ons; they do not form a focal point for promotion. And then you have the problem as to whether you can find any information or, where you can, if it is not released at too short a notice.
The fires and demons of Antoni, the bands and fire spectacular of Sebastià. Fabulous events. But we'll keep them to ourselves, thanks very much. We'll keep the home fires burning - so long as they stay at home.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, January 10, 2011
China In Your Hand
Here's an illuminating fact. In just one month, October of last year, the volume of Chinese products that were bought in Mallorca was double that for the whole of the year 2000. The Chinese invasion, that can be seen in the growth of the number of shops selling cheap products, shows no sign of slowing down. While crisis forces others out of business, Chinese businesspeople step in and snap up premises. The Chinese population in Mallorca, now just over 4,000, is only around a quarter the size of the British, but it is also growing and is different in one respect - the Chinese do not come to Mallorca to retire; they come to work and to run businesses. Period.
What has brought the Chinese invasion about? There is a commonly held belief that Chinese businesses enjoy tax breaks. Though you will find many a reference to tax holidays for five or seven years, there is also ample evidence to suggest that these are something of an urban myth. The director of the Spanish confederation of small to medium-sized business organisations is one who disputes the idea. The tax office has also denied that such assistance exists. Where help, of a governmental nature, is available, it is more likely to come from the Chinese Government in the form of a grant.
Why would the Chinese offer financial assistance? One reason lies with the need for a sort of economic "lebensraum", an acknowledgement of China's domestic inability to satisfy employment and business opportunities. Another is that it is a form of economic imperialism, which may not be far from the truth.
It is the fear, real or not, of an economic army marching on Mallorca and Spain, allied to the tax-break story, that helps to fuel some of the xenophobia directed towards Chinese businesses. Business organisations maintain that there is no "war" against the Chinese entrepreneurs, but complaints about their practices are rising as quickly as new shops open: complaints as to the legality of premises, as to proper licences, as to the quality of products and as to the hours that are worked.
Anxiety as to what is perceived as favourable treatment of Chinese businesses has been heightened by what might otherwise be seen as good news for Spain: ever closer economic ties between Spain and China, as evidenced by trade agreements signed last week. There is also the matter of the Chinese Government holding, via the Bank of China, some 10% of Spanish debt.
What should be seen as generally positive is not. Rather, it is looked upon in some quarters as Chinese expansionism, with Spain as its main foothold in Europe. It's the idea of economic imperialism again, and the Chinese bazaar or restaurant on the high streets of Mallorca's towns is the foot soldier for Beijing's imperial palace.
These fears and anxieties, the "denuncias" for alleged infractions and the rest can themselves be seen as disguising the fact that local businesspeople simply can't get their heads around how the Chinese operate. The suggestions of financial favouritism ignore systems of family support for arranging funding for businesses and for sharing debts and also what in certain instances can be a pyramidal system of investment. The charges as to low prices and therefore - perish the thought - aggressive competition overlook the presence of vast warehouses on the mainland that supply Chinese businesses and also the existence of some local networks of businesses co-operating in purchasing in bulk. The complaints as to long hours being worked, despite working-hours agreements in employment law and orders as to opening hours, are symptomatic of the unpalatable truth that the Chinese function according to a work ethic which is alien to many a Mallorcan.
There is more bad news for Mallorcan businesses which have laboured for too long not labouring long enough and being largely immune to real competition. This is the emergence of Chinese brands, especially in the clothing and footwear sectors. Mulaya is one such and it, along with others, is growing in terms of its outlets and taking on the likes of Zara.
For all the angst about high prices in Mallorca, the Chinese businesses are doing their part to dispel it. They should be welcomed, and increasing numbers of consumers are welcoming them, but xenophobia and lack of local competitiveness combine to try and put obstacles in their way. Not to me, and not, I imagine, to many of you, as we walk home with some China in our hands.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
What has brought the Chinese invasion about? There is a commonly held belief that Chinese businesses enjoy tax breaks. Though you will find many a reference to tax holidays for five or seven years, there is also ample evidence to suggest that these are something of an urban myth. The director of the Spanish confederation of small to medium-sized business organisations is one who disputes the idea. The tax office has also denied that such assistance exists. Where help, of a governmental nature, is available, it is more likely to come from the Chinese Government in the form of a grant.
Why would the Chinese offer financial assistance? One reason lies with the need for a sort of economic "lebensraum", an acknowledgement of China's domestic inability to satisfy employment and business opportunities. Another is that it is a form of economic imperialism, which may not be far from the truth.
It is the fear, real or not, of an economic army marching on Mallorca and Spain, allied to the tax-break story, that helps to fuel some of the xenophobia directed towards Chinese businesses. Business organisations maintain that there is no "war" against the Chinese entrepreneurs, but complaints about their practices are rising as quickly as new shops open: complaints as to the legality of premises, as to proper licences, as to the quality of products and as to the hours that are worked.
Anxiety as to what is perceived as favourable treatment of Chinese businesses has been heightened by what might otherwise be seen as good news for Spain: ever closer economic ties between Spain and China, as evidenced by trade agreements signed last week. There is also the matter of the Chinese Government holding, via the Bank of China, some 10% of Spanish debt.
What should be seen as generally positive is not. Rather, it is looked upon in some quarters as Chinese expansionism, with Spain as its main foothold in Europe. It's the idea of economic imperialism again, and the Chinese bazaar or restaurant on the high streets of Mallorca's towns is the foot soldier for Beijing's imperial palace.
These fears and anxieties, the "denuncias" for alleged infractions and the rest can themselves be seen as disguising the fact that local businesspeople simply can't get their heads around how the Chinese operate. The suggestions of financial favouritism ignore systems of family support for arranging funding for businesses and for sharing debts and also what in certain instances can be a pyramidal system of investment. The charges as to low prices and therefore - perish the thought - aggressive competition overlook the presence of vast warehouses on the mainland that supply Chinese businesses and also the existence of some local networks of businesses co-operating in purchasing in bulk. The complaints as to long hours being worked, despite working-hours agreements in employment law and orders as to opening hours, are symptomatic of the unpalatable truth that the Chinese function according to a work ethic which is alien to many a Mallorcan.
There is more bad news for Mallorcan businesses which have laboured for too long not labouring long enough and being largely immune to real competition. This is the emergence of Chinese brands, especially in the clothing and footwear sectors. Mulaya is one such and it, along with others, is growing in terms of its outlets and taking on the likes of Zara.
For all the angst about high prices in Mallorca, the Chinese businesses are doing their part to dispel it. They should be welcomed, and increasing numbers of consumers are welcoming them, but xenophobia and lack of local competitiveness combine to try and put obstacles in their way. Not to me, and not, I imagine, to many of you, as we walk home with some China in our hands.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Don't Be Cold, Don't Be Angry To Me
The 1970s were responsible for some real horrors perpetrated in the name of music. Pilot were not in the A-list of offenders, but they did bequeath us "January" and memory of a lead singer who looked like a girly Peter Marinello, which was saying something, given that the new George Best appeared to have stepped out of Pan's People.
"Don't be cold, don't be angry to me." I'm all in favour of obscure lyrics, but how does a month display its anger? And why is it angry "to" me? Wrong preposition. But nevertheless, now I think of it, it is - a month being angry - rather poetic. Pilot were the new Wordsworths. Well, maybe not.
January isn't usually angry. But it stores up trouble. It is the month to reconnoitre the tree tops. You wander lonely staring at clouds, but in fact at the pines, their branches crowned with the coconut shies of the caterpillars' furry, testicular wombs. Through the needles, though, you see only blue sky, for this January is like so many - alarmingly warm and bright. Don't be cold with me; not at the moment it isn't.
The warmth, however, is the threat of trouble being stored up for when the weather breaks and for when the caterpillar nests also break and tip their crawling caravans earthwards. In the lonely days of January, the cats can sleak around and scavenge undisturbed, but then they come across the caterpillars. From the litters of moths to the litter of a cat prone on the ground, feigning sleep but in fact stone cold dead.
You make me sad with your eyes. I'm not so sure it does. September is the sad month. January's melancholic, but because of its silence. Until it bursts into flames. The eyes of January look down on the fires of mid-month and on the beasties that roam the villages and towns spitting the sparklers of Sant Antoni. January, the curious month when fiesta has no right to occur but does so in an incendiary fashion that is more pyrotechnic than the summer fireworks; more pyrotechnic because houses, whole streets are in the line of fire.
The month's eyes cast a glance also at how the shorelines shift with the wind. Beaches' edges are moulded and sculpted by the sea's changes in direction and by the harvesting of marine crops that form bulges and mounds which, from a distance, appear as rocky outcrops newly exposed by displaced sand but are the abstract grotesques of packed seaweed and posidonia. The eyes watch as you bounce along the trampolines of the springy and spongy sand topped with its ocean scrap.
You're telling me lies. This is what makes you worry about January. It's what it's telling you about what's to come. It cascades from the skies at the stroke of the new year with the cheer of optimism, but it can be deceitful and deceiving. What's to come? The clear skies of January can just as easily become the dark clouds of gloom, but unlike an English January when you slowly count off the days to the onset of spring, here you might hope for its delay. January doesn't tarry though. It rushes in the spring and thoughts of the season with the swiftness and surprise of a bore racing along an estuary. Maybe it's an illusion, but no; the days are already longer. And then suddenly January's gone. Don't go, don't go.
Why would you not want it to go? January is non-month, it barely exists other than to be set light to. But this is what makes it the month that it is. Because when it's gone, the pretend time of fiesta and holiday from early December goes with it. And things begin to start all over again. The never-ending cycle and repetition of Mallorca's months and seasons.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
"Don't be cold, don't be angry to me." I'm all in favour of obscure lyrics, but how does a month display its anger? And why is it angry "to" me? Wrong preposition. But nevertheless, now I think of it, it is - a month being angry - rather poetic. Pilot were the new Wordsworths. Well, maybe not.
January isn't usually angry. But it stores up trouble. It is the month to reconnoitre the tree tops. You wander lonely staring at clouds, but in fact at the pines, their branches crowned with the coconut shies of the caterpillars' furry, testicular wombs. Through the needles, though, you see only blue sky, for this January is like so many - alarmingly warm and bright. Don't be cold with me; not at the moment it isn't.
The warmth, however, is the threat of trouble being stored up for when the weather breaks and for when the caterpillar nests also break and tip their crawling caravans earthwards. In the lonely days of January, the cats can sleak around and scavenge undisturbed, but then they come across the caterpillars. From the litters of moths to the litter of a cat prone on the ground, feigning sleep but in fact stone cold dead.
You make me sad with your eyes. I'm not so sure it does. September is the sad month. January's melancholic, but because of its silence. Until it bursts into flames. The eyes of January look down on the fires of mid-month and on the beasties that roam the villages and towns spitting the sparklers of Sant Antoni. January, the curious month when fiesta has no right to occur but does so in an incendiary fashion that is more pyrotechnic than the summer fireworks; more pyrotechnic because houses, whole streets are in the line of fire.
The month's eyes cast a glance also at how the shorelines shift with the wind. Beaches' edges are moulded and sculpted by the sea's changes in direction and by the harvesting of marine crops that form bulges and mounds which, from a distance, appear as rocky outcrops newly exposed by displaced sand but are the abstract grotesques of packed seaweed and posidonia. The eyes watch as you bounce along the trampolines of the springy and spongy sand topped with its ocean scrap.
You're telling me lies. This is what makes you worry about January. It's what it's telling you about what's to come. It cascades from the skies at the stroke of the new year with the cheer of optimism, but it can be deceitful and deceiving. What's to come? The clear skies of January can just as easily become the dark clouds of gloom, but unlike an English January when you slowly count off the days to the onset of spring, here you might hope for its delay. January doesn't tarry though. It rushes in the spring and thoughts of the season with the swiftness and surprise of a bore racing along an estuary. Maybe it's an illusion, but no; the days are already longer. And then suddenly January's gone. Don't go, don't go.
Why would you not want it to go? January is non-month, it barely exists other than to be set light to. But this is what makes it the month that it is. Because when it's gone, the pretend time of fiesta and holiday from early December goes with it. And things begin to start all over again. The never-ending cycle and repetition of Mallorca's months and seasons.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, January 08, 2011
Free Radicals: Mallorca's other politics
An almighty great row kicked off in Sa Pobla at the end of last month. The cause of the row was the presence of one Laura Riera at a meeting organised by a group called Pinyol Vermell in a bar run by the town hall which is also that used for pensioners in Sa Pobla.
Laura Riera and Pinyol Vermell are? Riera left prison in August last year, having spent nine years inside for collaboration with ETA's Barcelona unit. Pinyol Vermell (literally red stone) is a youth organisation in Sa Pobla, its membership comprising those with an "independence ideology". The theme of the meeting was one of anti-repression and of inviting the "democratic state" (of Spain) to improve human rights.
Since the meeting on 29 December, there have been calls for the mayor of Sa Pobla, Joan Comes, to resign, which have been rejected. Comes, for his part, was said to be furious when he learnt that Riera was attending the meeting. He has said that Pinyol Vermell has "had a laugh" at the expense of both the town hall, who agreed to let the organisation have the bar, and the town. He has also withdrawn the grant that Pinyol Vermell gets from the town hall.
As for the meeting itself, reports of what took place are sketchy. It would appear that Riera did not discuss her links with ETA; instead she spoke about herself and her experiences of prison. What has made it more sketchy is the fact that a press photographer was not allowed to take photos, the reasons being that Riera didn't want them being taken and that Pinyol Vermell was concerned that they might be used to imply some relationship between it and ETA. The organisation has, on its website, stated that it condemns ETA violence.
While this is all something of an embarrassment for Sa Pobla, it isn't really anything more than this. No offence was committed. But there was more to this meeting than the appearance of Riera. Its timing coincided with the end-of-year celebrations for Jaume I, the same celebrations that saw violence on the streets of Palma, provoked by independence activists.
What one has to ask is whether we are witnessing the emergence of radicalism in Mallorca. Pinyol Vermell has its independence ideology; it is one that it shares with other groups in Mallorca, such as the Obra Cultural Balear. But for every ideology of a distinct type, there is another which opposes it.
While researching the background to Pinyol Vermell, I came across a reference to it on the blog for the MSR in the Balearics. And what is the MSR? The letters stand for Movimiento Social Republicano. It was at those celebrations in Palma - to offer a real alternative to the drive towards independence (its words). If you want a flavour of where it comes from, then the fact that it is associated with the British National Party tells you all you need to know.
The MSR seems to have only recently sprung up in Mallorca. As a party it has existed since the start of the century in Spain and defines its politics in terms of the so-called Third Position, i.e. beyond the politics of left or right but usually considered to be neo-fascist. In its declaration on its blog, it says, among other things, that it defends the languages of the Balearics, such as Mallorquín, and Castilian. It is the same position as that espoused by the local leader of the Partido Popular, José Ramón Bauzá.
While he himself is not extreme, Bauzá's stance on language can be styled as being so. It is also not without danger, as it gives succour to more extreme views, be they of the MSR or those of the independence movement who flatly reject his opposition to Catalan.
There is a sense in which battle lines are being drawn ahead of local elections this spring which promise to be more interesting than normal. Or should this promise be a threat? There is an intensification of more radical opinion, one to which, knowingly or unknowingly, Pinyol Vermell has added. At a time when ETA - and all that it represents not just in terms of terrorism but also separatism - is on its last legs, it was provocative for it to have invited Riera. She may not have spoken about ETA, but her links were sufficient to raise temperatures. Her mere presence can only have added fuel to the views of groups who oppose independence, such as the MSR.
Politics in Mallorca are many things, but extreme is not one of them. Until now. This may be the year when politics get a bit tasty.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Laura Riera and Pinyol Vermell are? Riera left prison in August last year, having spent nine years inside for collaboration with ETA's Barcelona unit. Pinyol Vermell (literally red stone) is a youth organisation in Sa Pobla, its membership comprising those with an "independence ideology". The theme of the meeting was one of anti-repression and of inviting the "democratic state" (of Spain) to improve human rights.
Since the meeting on 29 December, there have been calls for the mayor of Sa Pobla, Joan Comes, to resign, which have been rejected. Comes, for his part, was said to be furious when he learnt that Riera was attending the meeting. He has said that Pinyol Vermell has "had a laugh" at the expense of both the town hall, who agreed to let the organisation have the bar, and the town. He has also withdrawn the grant that Pinyol Vermell gets from the town hall.
As for the meeting itself, reports of what took place are sketchy. It would appear that Riera did not discuss her links with ETA; instead she spoke about herself and her experiences of prison. What has made it more sketchy is the fact that a press photographer was not allowed to take photos, the reasons being that Riera didn't want them being taken and that Pinyol Vermell was concerned that they might be used to imply some relationship between it and ETA. The organisation has, on its website, stated that it condemns ETA violence.
While this is all something of an embarrassment for Sa Pobla, it isn't really anything more than this. No offence was committed. But there was more to this meeting than the appearance of Riera. Its timing coincided with the end-of-year celebrations for Jaume I, the same celebrations that saw violence on the streets of Palma, provoked by independence activists.
What one has to ask is whether we are witnessing the emergence of radicalism in Mallorca. Pinyol Vermell has its independence ideology; it is one that it shares with other groups in Mallorca, such as the Obra Cultural Balear. But for every ideology of a distinct type, there is another which opposes it.
While researching the background to Pinyol Vermell, I came across a reference to it on the blog for the MSR in the Balearics. And what is the MSR? The letters stand for Movimiento Social Republicano. It was at those celebrations in Palma - to offer a real alternative to the drive towards independence (its words). If you want a flavour of where it comes from, then the fact that it is associated with the British National Party tells you all you need to know.
The MSR seems to have only recently sprung up in Mallorca. As a party it has existed since the start of the century in Spain and defines its politics in terms of the so-called Third Position, i.e. beyond the politics of left or right but usually considered to be neo-fascist. In its declaration on its blog, it says, among other things, that it defends the languages of the Balearics, such as Mallorquín, and Castilian. It is the same position as that espoused by the local leader of the Partido Popular, José Ramón Bauzá.
While he himself is not extreme, Bauzá's stance on language can be styled as being so. It is also not without danger, as it gives succour to more extreme views, be they of the MSR or those of the independence movement who flatly reject his opposition to Catalan.
There is a sense in which battle lines are being drawn ahead of local elections this spring which promise to be more interesting than normal. Or should this promise be a threat? There is an intensification of more radical opinion, one to which, knowingly or unknowingly, Pinyol Vermell has added. At a time when ETA - and all that it represents not just in terms of terrorism but also separatism - is on its last legs, it was provocative for it to have invited Riera. She may not have spoken about ETA, but her links were sufficient to raise temperatures. Her mere presence can only have added fuel to the views of groups who oppose independence, such as the MSR.
Politics in Mallorca are many things, but extreme is not one of them. Until now. This may be the year when politics get a bit tasty.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, January 07, 2011
Too Many People: Mallorca's population
The population of Calvia now exceeds 50,000 - 53,765 if you like precision. In 1979 the number of inhabitants was just over 11,000. Population growth in Mallorca as a whole, from a census of 1981 up to 2008 was over 300,000, a percentage rise of nearly 60%. In Calvia, as in other parts of the island, the growth can be partly attributable to immigration; it exceeds emigration by a factor of roughly one-third. Prediction for further growth in population, during this current decade, is less dramatic - at around 7% - but this might not be accurate; from 2000 to 2008, the island's population went up by 170,000, a 25% rise.
The increase in population raises all manner of issues, not least one related to the diversity of the population; in Calvia the foreign population is 20,000, 37% if you prefer, of which 6,000 are British. The trend is not as marked in other municipalities, but foreign populations are still significant; around 8% British in Pollensa for instance, slightly less in Alcúdia. In more general terms, population increase asks questions of housing, education, health, transport and resources.
One can view the population increase in two ways - either positively or with alarm. On the plus side is the potential for wealth and demand creation; downsides include the environmental impact. As a matter of policy, the Spanish Government wanted an increase in population, growth having stalled after the early boom years of the 60s and 70s. The so-called "baby cheque", now dropped, was partly designed to give an incentive to growth. Not that it really worked, and Spain remains one of the lowest spenders on family benefits in Europe.
Where there has been population growth in Spain, it has been uneven, with Mallorca and the Balearics having the highest, double that of the national average. But the at-times dramatic rise in the local population begs the question as to whether there should be a limit, and if so, what it is.
Answering the question is far from easy. Economists and those engaged in demographics studies find it difficult to agree as to models of optimum population, so much so that many have abandoned the word "optimum" as it is too difficult to arrive at. Much of the theoretical basis for population studies is fairly ancient, one such basis being the social welfare model onto which has been grafted concepts such as happiness (Cameron's happiness index is not as stupid as it might sound). In general terms though, overcrowding and congestion are bad things as they lead to environmental damage and a loss of welfare, be it through crime or social breakdown, of which immigration might, say might, play a part.
None of this, however, gets us any nearer to being able to say with any degree of certainty whether Mallorca's population is set to become too large or if it already is too large. Indeed, the contrary may well be the case; there may be scope, a necessity even, for an increasing population.
Fundamentally though, the size of the population boils down to the ability to sustain it and to provide for it. And in Mallorca's case, the situation is complicated by the size of its temporary population - tourists.
Between 10 and 12 August in 2008, the number of tourists in the Balearics peaked. There were 1,930,000, the overwhelming majority being in Mallorca. This represented more than a doubling of the number of people on the island. To put this into some perspective, Mallorca is roughly the size of Essex. At peak times in the season, its population exceeds that of what is a densely populated county. But it has a very different geography. Congestion and overcrowding might well be said to occur, especially because of the uneven spread of people.
Ivan Murray, an academic at the Universitat de les Illes Balears, has made the point that Mallorca's level of tourism is all but unsustainable; it's too high in other words. He has also made the point that over the period from 2003 to 2008, the number of tourists needed to realise a million euros of tourist expenditure rose by 35%. What he is saying, therefore, is that the economic returns from the temporary population have slumped. Quite alarmingly so. And yet to provide for this decline, there is still the pressure on resources, be they water, electricity or other services. If the social welfare model places such a premium on the environment, and it does, then it can be argued that, because of diminishing returns from tourism and the overwhelming reliance upon tourism (80% of GDP), the temporary population actually creates a negative.
The logic of Murray's argument, not one that he advocates, is more construction for tourism in order to compensate for these diminishing returns. Though Mallorca is still relatively "unconstructed", further construction would be in existing centres. Indeed, it should be, if one adheres to the notion of the "Benidorm effect" of more efficient super holiday hubs. But then these would create localised overcrowding; the tipping point of too high a population would be reached, if it hasn't already been.
The conclusion from all this is that, while there may well be scope for the permanent population of Mallorca to increase, there may well not be if one adds in the temporary population. Not at current levels at any rate. But to not increase that temporary population means, where Murray is concerned, a loss of economic well-being. And none of this takes account of what might occur going forward - the greater strain on resources, water especially, because of climate change.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The increase in population raises all manner of issues, not least one related to the diversity of the population; in Calvia the foreign population is 20,000, 37% if you prefer, of which 6,000 are British. The trend is not as marked in other municipalities, but foreign populations are still significant; around 8% British in Pollensa for instance, slightly less in Alcúdia. In more general terms, population increase asks questions of housing, education, health, transport and resources.
One can view the population increase in two ways - either positively or with alarm. On the plus side is the potential for wealth and demand creation; downsides include the environmental impact. As a matter of policy, the Spanish Government wanted an increase in population, growth having stalled after the early boom years of the 60s and 70s. The so-called "baby cheque", now dropped, was partly designed to give an incentive to growth. Not that it really worked, and Spain remains one of the lowest spenders on family benefits in Europe.
Where there has been population growth in Spain, it has been uneven, with Mallorca and the Balearics having the highest, double that of the national average. But the at-times dramatic rise in the local population begs the question as to whether there should be a limit, and if so, what it is.
Answering the question is far from easy. Economists and those engaged in demographics studies find it difficult to agree as to models of optimum population, so much so that many have abandoned the word "optimum" as it is too difficult to arrive at. Much of the theoretical basis for population studies is fairly ancient, one such basis being the social welfare model onto which has been grafted concepts such as happiness (Cameron's happiness index is not as stupid as it might sound). In general terms though, overcrowding and congestion are bad things as they lead to environmental damage and a loss of welfare, be it through crime or social breakdown, of which immigration might, say might, play a part.
None of this, however, gets us any nearer to being able to say with any degree of certainty whether Mallorca's population is set to become too large or if it already is too large. Indeed, the contrary may well be the case; there may be scope, a necessity even, for an increasing population.
Fundamentally though, the size of the population boils down to the ability to sustain it and to provide for it. And in Mallorca's case, the situation is complicated by the size of its temporary population - tourists.
Between 10 and 12 August in 2008, the number of tourists in the Balearics peaked. There were 1,930,000, the overwhelming majority being in Mallorca. This represented more than a doubling of the number of people on the island. To put this into some perspective, Mallorca is roughly the size of Essex. At peak times in the season, its population exceeds that of what is a densely populated county. But it has a very different geography. Congestion and overcrowding might well be said to occur, especially because of the uneven spread of people.
Ivan Murray, an academic at the Universitat de les Illes Balears, has made the point that Mallorca's level of tourism is all but unsustainable; it's too high in other words. He has also made the point that over the period from 2003 to 2008, the number of tourists needed to realise a million euros of tourist expenditure rose by 35%. What he is saying, therefore, is that the economic returns from the temporary population have slumped. Quite alarmingly so. And yet to provide for this decline, there is still the pressure on resources, be they water, electricity or other services. If the social welfare model places such a premium on the environment, and it does, then it can be argued that, because of diminishing returns from tourism and the overwhelming reliance upon tourism (80% of GDP), the temporary population actually creates a negative.
The logic of Murray's argument, not one that he advocates, is more construction for tourism in order to compensate for these diminishing returns. Though Mallorca is still relatively "unconstructed", further construction would be in existing centres. Indeed, it should be, if one adheres to the notion of the "Benidorm effect" of more efficient super holiday hubs. But then these would create localised overcrowding; the tipping point of too high a population would be reached, if it hasn't already been.
The conclusion from all this is that, while there may well be scope for the permanent population of Mallorca to increase, there may well not be if one adds in the temporary population. Not at current levels at any rate. But to not increase that temporary population means, where Murray is concerned, a loss of economic well-being. And none of this takes account of what might occur going forward - the greater strain on resources, water especially, because of climate change.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, January 06, 2011
When In Rome: Climate change
Two euros per night per guest in one to three-star accommodation. Three euros a night for four and five-star hotels. Sounds familiar? It is. But this is not Mallorca, this is Rome. The Italian capital's council introduced its own version of the unlamented eco-tax on 1 January. Rome's tax is earmarked for keeping the city clean and for urban improvements; it should raise 82 million euros per year. It hasn't exactly met with universal approval. Just as Mallorca's eco-tax was met with a level of hostility that saw it booted far out to sea a year after its introduction.
The eco-tax was flawed for different reasons. One was that the revenue that it might have generated, while not insignificant (60 million euros a year in the Balearics as a whole), was not that significant. Think of it this way. Had it been distributed to each town hall in Mallorca and the Balearics in a proportionate manner, it would have failed to bridge town halls' funding gaps. A second reason was that it was discriminatory and based on the principle of "polluter pays". It was also potentially pernicious in that, applied unilaterally, it would have placed Mallorca at a disadvantage.
The eco-tax was an example of attempting to apply fiscal measures to tackle environmental problems. Legislatures and executives reach out for more law and more tax in the hope that they can turn back the rising tides of environmental damage and climate change. The eco-warriors of Mallorca, GOB and its fellow campaigners, are now calling on the regional government to introduce a climate change law, one akin perhaps to that now operating in the UK.
There isn't a specific climate change law either in the Balearics or nationally. What there is, in addition to a whole raft of previous laws and policy documents, are measures designed to promote energy efficiency and the use of renewables; these form part of the new law on sustainable economy. GOB and its enviro-fighting allies want the Balearics to go a stage further in bringing in what Friends of the Earth were calling for last year for the whole of Spain.
GOB has specifically fingered the power station of Es Murterar in Alcúdia as the greatest offender when it comes to emissions. Notwithstanding the possibility of the power station converting away from coal, GOB is right to identify it as a major contributor to environmental damage in Mallorca.
However, the resort to legislation and taxation is an essentially mechanistic response to the problem of climate change. The debate is impoverished, partly because of the primacy of the legislature as arbiter of policy and partly because of the nature of the debate itself - you are either a climate change believer or atheist. In the latter camp, for instance, is the leader of the Partido Popular nationally, Mariano Rajoy.
The mechanisms of tax and legislation, combined with political confusion and the inconclusiveness as to whether climate change exists or the degree to which it presents a threat, prevent a far more challenging discussion and far more searching policy decisions.
What if the predictions for climate change are right? It is the inability to answer this question that leads to the impoverishment of the debate where Mallorca's future is concerned. The most dire predictions of rising sea levels and temperatures would create, by the middle of the century, a very different Mallorca. Introducing laws and taxes now might go some way to stalling the inevitable, but if the inevitable is indeed inevitable, then what on earth is going to happen?
It takes little imagination to consider the impact on coastal resorts and on tourism. The impact would affect thousands of homes and businesses. It takes little imagination, but for Mallorca's policymakers it seems to remain unimaginable. They don't have to imagine though. The centre for scientific investigation at Palma university set it out in pretty simple terms last summer. A 20 centimetre rise in sea levels, a 20 metre loss of beach and coast, extended periods of drought, a greater propensity for hurricanes and tsunamis. All by 2050.
If you own a property by the sea, you might be well advised to try and get shot pretty sharpish and hope no one asks any awkward questions. While the Costas authority yomps across the coastal regions in its bovver boots, threatening demolition here and there, it may as well not bother. Something else will do its work for it. The worthless properties caught under the Costas' thirty-year law will be worthless anyway. As will any other that might find its owner sharing its terrace with some jellyfish.
The problem is that you, and others, may well prefer to play at ostriches on the beach. It won't happen. But can you be so sure? Your head in the sand and an almighty great tidal wave suddenly washes up and fills your lungs. Because it seems unimaginable, it won't happen. Maybe it won't. Or maybe it will. Rather than taxes and pieces of law, the government should have a plan. The worst-case scenario. Does such a plan exist? No, it doesn't. Has it even been considered? Not as far as I am aware. Instead, rather like Nero, it fiddles with legislation or is told to do so by GOB while its own Rome drowns and is set ablaze by rising mercury.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The eco-tax was flawed for different reasons. One was that the revenue that it might have generated, while not insignificant (60 million euros a year in the Balearics as a whole), was not that significant. Think of it this way. Had it been distributed to each town hall in Mallorca and the Balearics in a proportionate manner, it would have failed to bridge town halls' funding gaps. A second reason was that it was discriminatory and based on the principle of "polluter pays". It was also potentially pernicious in that, applied unilaterally, it would have placed Mallorca at a disadvantage.
The eco-tax was an example of attempting to apply fiscal measures to tackle environmental problems. Legislatures and executives reach out for more law and more tax in the hope that they can turn back the rising tides of environmental damage and climate change. The eco-warriors of Mallorca, GOB and its fellow campaigners, are now calling on the regional government to introduce a climate change law, one akin perhaps to that now operating in the UK.
There isn't a specific climate change law either in the Balearics or nationally. What there is, in addition to a whole raft of previous laws and policy documents, are measures designed to promote energy efficiency and the use of renewables; these form part of the new law on sustainable economy. GOB and its enviro-fighting allies want the Balearics to go a stage further in bringing in what Friends of the Earth were calling for last year for the whole of Spain.
GOB has specifically fingered the power station of Es Murterar in Alcúdia as the greatest offender when it comes to emissions. Notwithstanding the possibility of the power station converting away from coal, GOB is right to identify it as a major contributor to environmental damage in Mallorca.
However, the resort to legislation and taxation is an essentially mechanistic response to the problem of climate change. The debate is impoverished, partly because of the primacy of the legislature as arbiter of policy and partly because of the nature of the debate itself - you are either a climate change believer or atheist. In the latter camp, for instance, is the leader of the Partido Popular nationally, Mariano Rajoy.
The mechanisms of tax and legislation, combined with political confusion and the inconclusiveness as to whether climate change exists or the degree to which it presents a threat, prevent a far more challenging discussion and far more searching policy decisions.
What if the predictions for climate change are right? It is the inability to answer this question that leads to the impoverishment of the debate where Mallorca's future is concerned. The most dire predictions of rising sea levels and temperatures would create, by the middle of the century, a very different Mallorca. Introducing laws and taxes now might go some way to stalling the inevitable, but if the inevitable is indeed inevitable, then what on earth is going to happen?
It takes little imagination to consider the impact on coastal resorts and on tourism. The impact would affect thousands of homes and businesses. It takes little imagination, but for Mallorca's policymakers it seems to remain unimaginable. They don't have to imagine though. The centre for scientific investigation at Palma university set it out in pretty simple terms last summer. A 20 centimetre rise in sea levels, a 20 metre loss of beach and coast, extended periods of drought, a greater propensity for hurricanes and tsunamis. All by 2050.
If you own a property by the sea, you might be well advised to try and get shot pretty sharpish and hope no one asks any awkward questions. While the Costas authority yomps across the coastal regions in its bovver boots, threatening demolition here and there, it may as well not bother. Something else will do its work for it. The worthless properties caught under the Costas' thirty-year law will be worthless anyway. As will any other that might find its owner sharing its terrace with some jellyfish.
The problem is that you, and others, may well prefer to play at ostriches on the beach. It won't happen. But can you be so sure? Your head in the sand and an almighty great tidal wave suddenly washes up and fills your lungs. Because it seems unimaginable, it won't happen. Maybe it won't. Or maybe it will. Rather than taxes and pieces of law, the government should have a plan. The worst-case scenario. Does such a plan exist? No, it doesn't. Has it even been considered? Not as far as I am aware. Instead, rather like Nero, it fiddles with legislation or is told to do so by GOB while its own Rome drowns and is set ablaze by rising mercury.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Taking The Pea: Legumes and diet
In "Rivers of Gold", Hugh Thomas's epic study of the rise of the Spanish Empire, the author paints a picture of court life at Santa Fe prior to the siege of Granada in 1491. He describes the advisers to the monarchs and asks his readers to "imagine all these men dining together daily ... over biscuits, stews, fortified wine and chickpeas".
The humble chickpea. It has been a staple of the Spanish diet for centuries. Along with other legumes, it remains so. The Mediterranean diet, listed by Unesco last year as an aspect of "intangible cultural heritage of humanity", includes legumes as one of its principal characteristics.
Legumes, lentils in particular, used to be something of a joke food in the UK. They were associated with the wacky-baccy, vegetarian brigade; the lentil's comedic value was no better expressed than by hippy Neil in "The Young Ones". I myself had, on more than one occasion, to nod in earnest approval as a supper of nut roast and lentil bake was served to a group of us sitting cross-legged on a living-room floor while the Incredible String Band plinkety-plonked from the record-player. "Yea, really nice" would be intoned as thoughts turned to pie and chips. It took the importing of culinary culture, and the likes therefore of tarka dal and humous, to make the lentil and the chickpea be seen as not just representative of alternative lifestyles.
In Mallorca and Spain, the lentil and other legumes never suffered such a reputation for alternativism. Yet for all that the legume has been in the mainstream for so long, there is conflicting evidence as to its enduring appeal.
The Spanish market for legumes is said to be the largest anywhere in Europe. So great would the demand appear to be that domestic production can't cope; they are imported from Canada, Turkey, Argentina, the US and Australia. However, and despite the legume's place in the Mediterranean diet, it fell out of fashion to such an extent that it was being said that it had become the "forgotten" element of the diet.
Recently, fears had been expressed as to the decline in the consumption of legumes and to a consequently less healthy diet. In truth though, the decline had been occurring since the late 60s. The years of economic bonanza had changed eating habits, and the peasant style of the legume didn't fit with a more aspirational and eventually fast-food society. Menus of the day, and their traditional provision of square and balanced meals, were singled out for failing to include legumes.
This, though, was before the crisis took hold. Legume consumption suddenly shot up. In 2009 it was reported that an increase in the sale of legumes was the highest for 50 years; it was up by 10%. Though consumption per person - 4.2 kilograms a year - was not back to the levels of the sixties, it was not difficult to understand why there was a revival in the legume's popularity. Go into any supermarket and you'll find jars of lentils, chickpeas and beans - all at dirt-cheap prices. But the renewed popularity hasn't been distributed evenly across Spain; Mallorca and the Balearics have one of the lowest levels of consumption.
Despite this, legumes remain an important crop for Mallorca's farmers. Apart from legumes being the source of high protein, legume plants are highly valued by farmers for their capacity to replenish soil thanks to their production of nitrogen and the reduction in the cost of fertiliser. They play a significant role in the management of agricultural land. And for this reason, the fact that this winter's weather has been generally benign is good news. Moderate rainfalls and only a couple of light frosts have not disrupted more or less perfect conditions for sowing.
Current optimism for the legume harvest may yet turn along with the weather; and it has been ominously benign. Concerns as to what the weather might yet bring have been expressed in press reports about not only legume production, but also the potato crops. This reporting is one of the, if you like, quainter features of Mallorca. It comes in the wake of the strange story about artichokes being stolen from fincas in Sa Pobla and Muro, and reflects a world that is far removed from the tourist image of the island and indeed from the image that many who live in Mallorca have of the island. But it also reflects the enduring importance of agriculture.
How long the legume will endure is another matter. Its crisis-driven re-emergence has not been as strong in Mallorca as it has been in other parts of Spain, and in Mallorca the shift towards different types of food has been more marked than in much of the country. Mallorca shares with Madrid, Catalonia and other more cosmopolitan areas a greater liking for fast food, one that doesn't sit easily with the legume.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The humble chickpea. It has been a staple of the Spanish diet for centuries. Along with other legumes, it remains so. The Mediterranean diet, listed by Unesco last year as an aspect of "intangible cultural heritage of humanity", includes legumes as one of its principal characteristics.
Legumes, lentils in particular, used to be something of a joke food in the UK. They were associated with the wacky-baccy, vegetarian brigade; the lentil's comedic value was no better expressed than by hippy Neil in "The Young Ones". I myself had, on more than one occasion, to nod in earnest approval as a supper of nut roast and lentil bake was served to a group of us sitting cross-legged on a living-room floor while the Incredible String Band plinkety-plonked from the record-player. "Yea, really nice" would be intoned as thoughts turned to pie and chips. It took the importing of culinary culture, and the likes therefore of tarka dal and humous, to make the lentil and the chickpea be seen as not just representative of alternative lifestyles.
In Mallorca and Spain, the lentil and other legumes never suffered such a reputation for alternativism. Yet for all that the legume has been in the mainstream for so long, there is conflicting evidence as to its enduring appeal.
The Spanish market for legumes is said to be the largest anywhere in Europe. So great would the demand appear to be that domestic production can't cope; they are imported from Canada, Turkey, Argentina, the US and Australia. However, and despite the legume's place in the Mediterranean diet, it fell out of fashion to such an extent that it was being said that it had become the "forgotten" element of the diet.
Recently, fears had been expressed as to the decline in the consumption of legumes and to a consequently less healthy diet. In truth though, the decline had been occurring since the late 60s. The years of economic bonanza had changed eating habits, and the peasant style of the legume didn't fit with a more aspirational and eventually fast-food society. Menus of the day, and their traditional provision of square and balanced meals, were singled out for failing to include legumes.
This, though, was before the crisis took hold. Legume consumption suddenly shot up. In 2009 it was reported that an increase in the sale of legumes was the highest for 50 years; it was up by 10%. Though consumption per person - 4.2 kilograms a year - was not back to the levels of the sixties, it was not difficult to understand why there was a revival in the legume's popularity. Go into any supermarket and you'll find jars of lentils, chickpeas and beans - all at dirt-cheap prices. But the renewed popularity hasn't been distributed evenly across Spain; Mallorca and the Balearics have one of the lowest levels of consumption.
Despite this, legumes remain an important crop for Mallorca's farmers. Apart from legumes being the source of high protein, legume plants are highly valued by farmers for their capacity to replenish soil thanks to their production of nitrogen and the reduction in the cost of fertiliser. They play a significant role in the management of agricultural land. And for this reason, the fact that this winter's weather has been generally benign is good news. Moderate rainfalls and only a couple of light frosts have not disrupted more or less perfect conditions for sowing.
Current optimism for the legume harvest may yet turn along with the weather; and it has been ominously benign. Concerns as to what the weather might yet bring have been expressed in press reports about not only legume production, but also the potato crops. This reporting is one of the, if you like, quainter features of Mallorca. It comes in the wake of the strange story about artichokes being stolen from fincas in Sa Pobla and Muro, and reflects a world that is far removed from the tourist image of the island and indeed from the image that many who live in Mallorca have of the island. But it also reflects the enduring importance of agriculture.
How long the legume will endure is another matter. Its crisis-driven re-emergence has not been as strong in Mallorca as it has been in other parts of Spain, and in Mallorca the shift towards different types of food has been more marked than in much of the country. Mallorca shares with Madrid, Catalonia and other more cosmopolitan areas a greater liking for fast food, one that doesn't sit easily with the legume.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Of Mice And Meetings
The global market for MICE is worth 30 billion dollars a year. This is Mice not as in Mickey or the thing you click on, but the market for meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions. Nice little earner for someone, therefore. And guess what? Step forward Mallorca to tap into it. Any bit of the tourism market. There's no shame, Mallorca'll have it.
Of all the "alternative" tourism niches that are banged on about, Mice is the most obscure, partly because it doesn't really fit the idea of tourism. As a rule, tourists don't wear suits or ties, unless they're Russians. I was once waiting at the airport when the Ekaterinburg flight was coming into arrivals. Grim-faced Sverdlovskists, repeating on the airline diet of beetroot and cauliflower, and all sporting sports jackets, ties and hats. They'll learn. Give 'em a few years and they'll be turning up in their "Mafia on tour - Shagaluf" T-shirts.
The Russian Mice market is doubtless one, as with the rest of the Russian market, that Mallorca craves. The German market is currently Mallorca's largest, apart from the Spanish. In 2007, as an example, there were 2,240 meetings and conventions in Mallorca, of which 708 were German. The overall market is meant to be one of growth, one, along with all the other tourism alternatives, that will lead Mallorca to the promised land of a tourism future. However.
In April last year, the Mallorca Convention Bureau, which oversees much of the Mice business on the island, had to admit that in 2009 the level of business was down by 40% on 2007. The actual number of people who qualified as so-called tourists in this market in 2009 was all of 65,776, twenty-odd thousand from Germany and around 6,500 from the UK. Welcome to the promised land.
Put this into context. The total number of tourists which visit Mallorca per year is roughly 9 million. Mice tourism equates to 0.7%. It doesn't exactly sound like the basis for great riches of that tourism future. There is, though, a mitigating factor. Crisis. As the world recovers, so the Mice market will pick up. To some extent, it already has. In Spain as a whole, it grew by around five per cent during the first nine months of 2010. But this was Spain.
Mallorca's problem when it comes to Mice tourism is that Spain is full of rival destinations. Hosteltur, which is a sort of bible for the Spanish tourism industry, has recently produced a special magazine for congress, conventions and incentives tourism in 2011. There's barely a part of Spain that doesn't lay claim to this market, and in many parts of Spain there are the facilities that Mallorca is desperate to replicate, as in the new Palacio de Congresos in Palma.
The part of the Hosteltur magazine that is devoted to Mallorca and the Balearics is full of the usual tosh you expect from a brochure and is also full of references to what can be enjoyed by the business-class tourist - gastronomy, golf, hiking. Yes, all the other waifs and strays of alternative tourism. This, though, simply serves to emphasise the wider problem Mallorca has with attracting this different tourism. Everywhere else offers the same kind of thing, and when it comes to culture, for instance, in far greater abundance. Mallorca may have a lot to offer the Mice market, but so also do Barcelona, Madrid and anywhere else you care to mention. Barcelona, indeed, is reckoned to be one of the most popular convention destinations not just in Spain but in the world.
The competition, therefore, is fierce, which is a reason why the Palacio de Congresos is necessary in order to give Mallorca something more of a competitive edge. But despite the predictions of renewed growth in this market, how great might this be? Might Mallorca be able to push that percentage up to a round 1%? Again one needs to put this into context. Another of the world's popular convention destinations is Singapore. Mice tourism equates to 30% of its tourism revenue.
Even if the numbers could be boosted, the benefits to Mallorca as a whole are limited. Mice tourism is primarily Palma's tourism. There are conference and convention facilities away from the capital, such as Alcúdia's auditorium and hotels in Playa de Muro, but how much of the pie can these places ever hope to get? There is the additional issue of seasonality. Mice tourism is all-year tourism, but it is less significant during the peak summer months. The problem, as ever, would be satisfying a tourism market in the lower months when less is open and flights are more difficult to arrange.
Mice tourism is unquestionably valuable in that it brings with it tourists who have some value that you would hope they might spread about. But its value is unlikely to ever be more than very minor in the overall scheme of things. There's much riding on it and on the Palacio de Congresos, but its importance may well be being overestimated. To borrow from Rabbie Burns: the best laid schemes o' mice an' meetings gang aft agley.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Of all the "alternative" tourism niches that are banged on about, Mice is the most obscure, partly because it doesn't really fit the idea of tourism. As a rule, tourists don't wear suits or ties, unless they're Russians. I was once waiting at the airport when the Ekaterinburg flight was coming into arrivals. Grim-faced Sverdlovskists, repeating on the airline diet of beetroot and cauliflower, and all sporting sports jackets, ties and hats. They'll learn. Give 'em a few years and they'll be turning up in their "Mafia on tour - Shagaluf" T-shirts.
The Russian Mice market is doubtless one, as with the rest of the Russian market, that Mallorca craves. The German market is currently Mallorca's largest, apart from the Spanish. In 2007, as an example, there were 2,240 meetings and conventions in Mallorca, of which 708 were German. The overall market is meant to be one of growth, one, along with all the other tourism alternatives, that will lead Mallorca to the promised land of a tourism future. However.
In April last year, the Mallorca Convention Bureau, which oversees much of the Mice business on the island, had to admit that in 2009 the level of business was down by 40% on 2007. The actual number of people who qualified as so-called tourists in this market in 2009 was all of 65,776, twenty-odd thousand from Germany and around 6,500 from the UK. Welcome to the promised land.
Put this into context. The total number of tourists which visit Mallorca per year is roughly 9 million. Mice tourism equates to 0.7%. It doesn't exactly sound like the basis for great riches of that tourism future. There is, though, a mitigating factor. Crisis. As the world recovers, so the Mice market will pick up. To some extent, it already has. In Spain as a whole, it grew by around five per cent during the first nine months of 2010. But this was Spain.
Mallorca's problem when it comes to Mice tourism is that Spain is full of rival destinations. Hosteltur, which is a sort of bible for the Spanish tourism industry, has recently produced a special magazine for congress, conventions and incentives tourism in 2011. There's barely a part of Spain that doesn't lay claim to this market, and in many parts of Spain there are the facilities that Mallorca is desperate to replicate, as in the new Palacio de Congresos in Palma.
The part of the Hosteltur magazine that is devoted to Mallorca and the Balearics is full of the usual tosh you expect from a brochure and is also full of references to what can be enjoyed by the business-class tourist - gastronomy, golf, hiking. Yes, all the other waifs and strays of alternative tourism. This, though, simply serves to emphasise the wider problem Mallorca has with attracting this different tourism. Everywhere else offers the same kind of thing, and when it comes to culture, for instance, in far greater abundance. Mallorca may have a lot to offer the Mice market, but so also do Barcelona, Madrid and anywhere else you care to mention. Barcelona, indeed, is reckoned to be one of the most popular convention destinations not just in Spain but in the world.
The competition, therefore, is fierce, which is a reason why the Palacio de Congresos is necessary in order to give Mallorca something more of a competitive edge. But despite the predictions of renewed growth in this market, how great might this be? Might Mallorca be able to push that percentage up to a round 1%? Again one needs to put this into context. Another of the world's popular convention destinations is Singapore. Mice tourism equates to 30% of its tourism revenue.
Even if the numbers could be boosted, the benefits to Mallorca as a whole are limited. Mice tourism is primarily Palma's tourism. There are conference and convention facilities away from the capital, such as Alcúdia's auditorium and hotels in Playa de Muro, but how much of the pie can these places ever hope to get? There is the additional issue of seasonality. Mice tourism is all-year tourism, but it is less significant during the peak summer months. The problem, as ever, would be satisfying a tourism market in the lower months when less is open and flights are more difficult to arrange.
Mice tourism is unquestionably valuable in that it brings with it tourists who have some value that you would hope they might spread about. But its value is unlikely to ever be more than very minor in the overall scheme of things. There's much riding on it and on the Palacio de Congresos, but its importance may well be being overestimated. To borrow from Rabbie Burns: the best laid schemes o' mice an' meetings gang aft agley.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, January 03, 2011
Is The Price Right? Yes and no
What was I saying yesterday? The year has barely started and the recurring theme of prices, their alleged excessiveness and their control is already being aired. As every year. And as ever, the discussion is littered with anecdotal evidence that can be cited to support an argument of excessive prices. My personal favourite remains the one about the cost of a packet of paracetamol. Five euros at a supermarket, lamented a tourist letter-writer. An example of rip-off Mallorca. Yes, it was a rip-off, but more importantly the supermarket had no right to be selling the drug; the example was the right symptom but the wrong diagnosis.
For all the talk of high prices, the Balearics' consumer price index is one of the lowest among the regions of Spain. The most recent data related to price increases, those for November, show that the Balearics' increase was in the lower range. Statistical information, though, does not give the whole picture, certainly not when anecdotes can be dragged out to contradict it. For the most part, the debate is biased towards individual experiences of price, be it for a meal, a coffee, this or that product which are then used as a basis for a call for someone to do something; this something often being the demand for price control.
Price regulation does exist to an extent. In the case of tobacco, for example, it is not only prices that are subject to control; so also is the distribution chain. It is an example of price regulation that might be said to work. It doesn't create a shortage of supply or any obvious black market, two disadvantages of price control in the form of a price cap. Generally, as with the control of all medication through chemists alone, the market mechanism functions to the benefit of the consumer, eliminating any need for a more liberalised market.
Could a price-control approach be applied more widely? To the bar and restaurant sector, for instance? It's hard to see how. Unlike the sale of tobacco through the licensed tobacconists, bars and restaurants are too diverse. Even items such as a coffee are far from being homogeneous. There are too many types of coffee, too many types of bar in too many different locations with too many different circumstances.
Price controls can bring with them certain downsides. One is a loss of quality, assuming the cap is set too low (and set too high would make a nonsense of the attempt at control). Another is the sheer complexity and cost of enforcement. Yet another is that controls run counter to the principle of the free market which, by and large, Mallorca and Spain abide by. And the free-market element has an historical political factor. Current-day market liberalism is the culmination of dismantling any vestiges of what once existed under Franco - that of price control and centralised, statist regulation of most economic activity.
The market dictates, which is how it should be. That a coffee or a plate of steak and chips might seem expensive (or cheap) is the consequence. When President Zapatero, quizzed about the price of a coffee on Spanish television, gave his reply of 80 centimos, he also offered the caveat of "it depends". And it does depend. Depends on the market and on the bar or restaurant owner being allowed to fix his own prices. If he gets them wrong, that's his problem. No one else's.
It is not for government to intervene where it has no right to intervene, and one thing that the local government can do little about is the in-built disadvantage of Mallorca in terms of its isolation and its limited resources, land most obviously. Nevertheless, it is here that government should be more involved.
The costs of this isolation cannot be underestimated. The director of the small to medium-sized businesses organisation (PIMEM) has said that transport alone adds some 30% to the cost of production in Mallorca. And transport cost applies both to businesses importing as well as exporting. For the local producers, they also have to factor in the cost of land.
The vice-president of the local chamber of commerce has called for an end to the speculative acquisition of industrial and commercial land that has pushed the average cost per metre to buy a plot and establish a factory to roughly six times as much as it would be in, for example, Aragon on the mainland or over a third more than in somewhere even more isolated, the Canaries.
A further pressure on cost comes from what PIMEM's director has described as the "minimal installations for goods transportation at competitive prices and the lack of competition between shipping companies". This, combined with other factors, goes a long way to explaining why there is a lack of competitiveness in Mallorca, which has seen its industrial base decline by nearly 30% since 2005 (far greater a decline than in any other part of Spain). It also goes towards explaining why certain prices in Mallorca, because of the island's geographical competitive disadvantage, are what they are.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
For all the talk of high prices, the Balearics' consumer price index is one of the lowest among the regions of Spain. The most recent data related to price increases, those for November, show that the Balearics' increase was in the lower range. Statistical information, though, does not give the whole picture, certainly not when anecdotes can be dragged out to contradict it. For the most part, the debate is biased towards individual experiences of price, be it for a meal, a coffee, this or that product which are then used as a basis for a call for someone to do something; this something often being the demand for price control.
Price regulation does exist to an extent. In the case of tobacco, for example, it is not only prices that are subject to control; so also is the distribution chain. It is an example of price regulation that might be said to work. It doesn't create a shortage of supply or any obvious black market, two disadvantages of price control in the form of a price cap. Generally, as with the control of all medication through chemists alone, the market mechanism functions to the benefit of the consumer, eliminating any need for a more liberalised market.
Could a price-control approach be applied more widely? To the bar and restaurant sector, for instance? It's hard to see how. Unlike the sale of tobacco through the licensed tobacconists, bars and restaurants are too diverse. Even items such as a coffee are far from being homogeneous. There are too many types of coffee, too many types of bar in too many different locations with too many different circumstances.
Price controls can bring with them certain downsides. One is a loss of quality, assuming the cap is set too low (and set too high would make a nonsense of the attempt at control). Another is the sheer complexity and cost of enforcement. Yet another is that controls run counter to the principle of the free market which, by and large, Mallorca and Spain abide by. And the free-market element has an historical political factor. Current-day market liberalism is the culmination of dismantling any vestiges of what once existed under Franco - that of price control and centralised, statist regulation of most economic activity.
The market dictates, which is how it should be. That a coffee or a plate of steak and chips might seem expensive (or cheap) is the consequence. When President Zapatero, quizzed about the price of a coffee on Spanish television, gave his reply of 80 centimos, he also offered the caveat of "it depends". And it does depend. Depends on the market and on the bar or restaurant owner being allowed to fix his own prices. If he gets them wrong, that's his problem. No one else's.
It is not for government to intervene where it has no right to intervene, and one thing that the local government can do little about is the in-built disadvantage of Mallorca in terms of its isolation and its limited resources, land most obviously. Nevertheless, it is here that government should be more involved.
The costs of this isolation cannot be underestimated. The director of the small to medium-sized businesses organisation (PIMEM) has said that transport alone adds some 30% to the cost of production in Mallorca. And transport cost applies both to businesses importing as well as exporting. For the local producers, they also have to factor in the cost of land.
The vice-president of the local chamber of commerce has called for an end to the speculative acquisition of industrial and commercial land that has pushed the average cost per metre to buy a plot and establish a factory to roughly six times as much as it would be in, for example, Aragon on the mainland or over a third more than in somewhere even more isolated, the Canaries.
A further pressure on cost comes from what PIMEM's director has described as the "minimal installations for goods transportation at competitive prices and the lack of competition between shipping companies". This, combined with other factors, goes a long way to explaining why there is a lack of competitiveness in Mallorca, which has seen its industrial base decline by nearly 30% since 2005 (far greater a decline than in any other part of Spain). It also goes towards explaining why certain prices in Mallorca, because of the island's geographical competitive disadvantage, are what they are.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, January 02, 2011
The Same Procedure As Every Year: Mallorca in 2011
For reasons best known to them, the Germans (and indeed other nationalities) broadcast a short "comedy" featuring Freddie Frinton every year around Christmas or New Year times. "Dinner For One" is largely unknown to the Brits, probably because it isn't any good, but the so-called comedy, always shown in its original English, is so much part of German life that its catchphrase (and there isn't much dialogue otherwise) has passed into general usage. "The same procedure as every year."
The procedure is the same every year. The crystal ball is brought down from the loft, dusted and peered into. What does 2011 hold for Mallorca?
The odd natural disaster. Airplanes grounded. Moans about all-inclusives. That sort of thing. Pretty much like 2010 then? Same procedure as every year.
Some things you can predict quite easily, like the moaning. Come May, there will be talk of protests against all-inclusives. How do I know this? Because it happened last year and the year before. The same procedure as every year.
Less of a procedure than every year will be that all bars will close as a consequence not of the smoking ban, but because there is no football this year. Not even the rugby World Cup will compensate, especially as games will be kicking off at around eight or nine in the morning at the latest. And bars don't really do the rugby in the same way as football in any event. I was once in a bar watching an England match during a World Cup and the game was switched off. "No one's interested in it other than you," came the curt explanation. Some football match featuring Coventry City came on instead. Not even Coventry though will be able to save the bars from permanent closure in 2011.
There'll be a procedure that takes place once every four years, and that is the local elections. All the printers on the island will be log-jammed with churning out posters and literature, so all commercial life that requires printing will shut down in order that we can all be cajoled by the imperative to "Vota" this way or that, and which everyone - Brits, that is - will ignore. Same procedure as every local elections. Brit residents don't give a stuff. Most will not even be aware that they're taking place. Unless they want to get some printing done.
The same procedure as every four years will occur after the elections, in that most Brits will pay no attention to the fact that there may or may not be a new government and a new regional president. That the current one, Antich, may be eclipsed, along with other regional administrations of a socialist style will barely register with the Sky-watching, Sun-reading expatriate populace. They will similarly fail to acknowledge that the national president, Zapatero, might be forced into resignation as a result. Or acknowledge that the Spanish economy will be plunged into ever greater uncertainty or turmoil as a consequence.
The same procedure as 2010 will be, some might hope, the further spiralling out of control of the euro. "The Daily Telegraph", which not be said to be entirely neutral in matters European, runs regular predictions as to the collapse of the euro, and this collapse could acclerate in 2011.
I have to thank my old friend David Novi, who writes about property matters, for drawing attention to a "Telegraph" article which reckons that sterling will be the best-performing major currency next year. Not the same procedure as every year therefore. And, if it proves to be true, some good news. Strengthening pound, Brit tourists and property buyers flocking back to Mallorca.
President Antich believes it will be a different procedure this year, with tourism increasing, thanks to improved economic outlooks in Germany and in the UK. In the UK? Does he read the papers? Maybe his prediction will prove to be right if the strengthening pound proves to also be right, but whether he's around to welcome the tourists off the plane is another matter. More likely, there will be the new president, the gaffe-prone Bauzá of the Partido Popular, to offer his remarkable insights into tourism. This is the man who said that the Baltic states are a competitive threat to Mallorca's tourism. And he might be president? God help us.
Otherwise, it will be the same procedure as every year. The fiestas will come around with the same programmes as usual, there will be warnings that there may or may not be a jellyfish plague, there will be talk of summer temperatures being slightly hotter or slightly cooler than normal, everyone in Puerto Pollensa will complain about dog mess, there will be letters to the press complaining about the price of car rental, a cup of coffee and paracetamol. Yep, the same procedure as every year. In a world of change, there is nowhere that remains as unchanging as Mallorca.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The procedure is the same every year. The crystal ball is brought down from the loft, dusted and peered into. What does 2011 hold for Mallorca?
The odd natural disaster. Airplanes grounded. Moans about all-inclusives. That sort of thing. Pretty much like 2010 then? Same procedure as every year.
Some things you can predict quite easily, like the moaning. Come May, there will be talk of protests against all-inclusives. How do I know this? Because it happened last year and the year before. The same procedure as every year.
Less of a procedure than every year will be that all bars will close as a consequence not of the smoking ban, but because there is no football this year. Not even the rugby World Cup will compensate, especially as games will be kicking off at around eight or nine in the morning at the latest. And bars don't really do the rugby in the same way as football in any event. I was once in a bar watching an England match during a World Cup and the game was switched off. "No one's interested in it other than you," came the curt explanation. Some football match featuring Coventry City came on instead. Not even Coventry though will be able to save the bars from permanent closure in 2011.
There'll be a procedure that takes place once every four years, and that is the local elections. All the printers on the island will be log-jammed with churning out posters and literature, so all commercial life that requires printing will shut down in order that we can all be cajoled by the imperative to "Vota" this way or that, and which everyone - Brits, that is - will ignore. Same procedure as every local elections. Brit residents don't give a stuff. Most will not even be aware that they're taking place. Unless they want to get some printing done.
The same procedure as every four years will occur after the elections, in that most Brits will pay no attention to the fact that there may or may not be a new government and a new regional president. That the current one, Antich, may be eclipsed, along with other regional administrations of a socialist style will barely register with the Sky-watching, Sun-reading expatriate populace. They will similarly fail to acknowledge that the national president, Zapatero, might be forced into resignation as a result. Or acknowledge that the Spanish economy will be plunged into ever greater uncertainty or turmoil as a consequence.
The same procedure as 2010 will be, some might hope, the further spiralling out of control of the euro. "The Daily Telegraph", which not be said to be entirely neutral in matters European, runs regular predictions as to the collapse of the euro, and this collapse could acclerate in 2011.
I have to thank my old friend David Novi, who writes about property matters, for drawing attention to a "Telegraph" article which reckons that sterling will be the best-performing major currency next year. Not the same procedure as every year therefore. And, if it proves to be true, some good news. Strengthening pound, Brit tourists and property buyers flocking back to Mallorca.
President Antich believes it will be a different procedure this year, with tourism increasing, thanks to improved economic outlooks in Germany and in the UK. In the UK? Does he read the papers? Maybe his prediction will prove to be right if the strengthening pound proves to also be right, but whether he's around to welcome the tourists off the plane is another matter. More likely, there will be the new president, the gaffe-prone Bauzá of the Partido Popular, to offer his remarkable insights into tourism. This is the man who said that the Baltic states are a competitive threat to Mallorca's tourism. And he might be president? God help us.
Otherwise, it will be the same procedure as every year. The fiestas will come around with the same programmes as usual, there will be warnings that there may or may not be a jellyfish plague, there will be talk of summer temperatures being slightly hotter or slightly cooler than normal, everyone in Puerto Pollensa will complain about dog mess, there will be letters to the press complaining about the price of car rental, a cup of coffee and paracetamol. Yep, the same procedure as every year. In a world of change, there is nowhere that remains as unchanging as Mallorca.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, January 01, 2011
Street Fighting Men: Balearic independence
The new year in Mallorca coincides with the celebration of the conquest of the island by Jaume I in 1229. On 31 December of that year, Jaume took what was then called Madina Mayurqa (Palma, as it is better known). It is a hugely symbolic date, and it is why it has been hi-jacked in the name of independence and by the arguments of language and the relationship with the Spanish nation.
The night of 30 December has become an annual event in which different sides of the arguments turn up in Palma to celebrate the conquest and in order to trade insults. This year things turned nasty. A pensioner and two police officers were injured when violence flared. There had been an indication of things to come. The building in Palma that houses the offices of the Fundación Nacional Círculo Balear, an organisation that, among other things, protests against the "imposition" of Catalan, had been daubed with graffiti. The organisation is now but one calling for political condemnation of independence activists who, during the demonstration, attempted to burn the Spanish flag.
The Círculo Balear's offices were targeted because it had said that it would participate in this year's Jaume celebrations. This was a red rag to the bull of its opponents who took none too kindly to the foundation's claim that the celebrations were being "Catalanised" and to a further claim that there is a growth in "nationalist violence".
The Círculo Balear was probably right when it came to denouncing violence, as this is what it got. As to the Catalanisation, there is a slight illogic to the argument. Jaume, though not from Catalonia, was instrumental in the introduction and promotion of the Catalan language. A Catalanised Jaume celebration seems entirely reasonable. Otherwise, though, reason seemed to be chucked out the window, or at least chucked across a square together with chairs from a café.
The demonstrators, the pro-Catalanists that is, combined behind the slogan "som una nació" (we are a nation), by which they mean the Balearics. Their ranks were swelled by the usual suspects of the nationalist-inclined left of local politics and groups such as the Maulets, an independence- and revolutionary-minded organisation. Their cause, in 2010, had been fuelled by the Spanish Supreme Court's denial of Catalonian nationhood and the rumpus inspired by the language policy of the Partido Popular in the Balearics.
Does the call for Balearic independence have any real substance? In terms of popular support, you would have to think that it doesn't. The prevailing mindset in Mallorca is conservative. There was little evidence of support, other than political, for Catalonia when the Supreme Court made its decision back in the summer which made it clear that Catalonia could not be a "state".
Nevertheless, there does appear to be a growing radicalisation. It is one that the Círculo Balear has drawn attention to, and a target of its concerns is the Obra Cultural Balear. The OCB, says Círculo Balear, has received over four million euros in grants from regional and central government during the past three years. Grants, it claims, with which the OCB "gives cover to the violent".
The president of the OCB, in a recent interview, said that he believed a Balearic state would be something from which much could be gained, not least from keeping all the "riches" that accrue from tourism and from having its own voice within a group of independent Catalan states. He is probably right when he also says that politically there is a bias towards the notion of independence. Only two parties, the Partido Popular and the Unión Progreso y Democracia, would be dead against it.
But you come back to the question as to whether there is sympathy within the public at large. The OCB is now rolling out a new campaign to try and generate such sympathy. Entitled "Mallorca m'agrada" (I like Mallorca), this is intended to create a "collective self-esteem" in promoting elements of identity that characterise the Mallorcan people. It remains to be seen what impact this might have.
While the notion of a Balearic state as part of a group of Catalan states may not be an issue that excites that many Mallorcans, there is another matter which just might. And that is the whole question to do with language. This spring's local elections could see the Partido Popular coming into power under its leader José Ramón Bauzá, someone who has so far proved to be capable of dividing not just the general public but also his own party where it comes to the Catalan-Castilian debate.
What Bauzá might do is to turn back decades of linguistic policy. It is potentially highly dangerous in terms of what it would represent symbolically. It is this issue that has the power to give the OCB, the Jaume I demonstrators and the independence activists the ammunition they need. For this reason, the local elections in May could prove to be highly significant. What occurred on the night of 30 December might, just might, be a precursor of what else could occur.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The night of 30 December has become an annual event in which different sides of the arguments turn up in Palma to celebrate the conquest and in order to trade insults. This year things turned nasty. A pensioner and two police officers were injured when violence flared. There had been an indication of things to come. The building in Palma that houses the offices of the Fundación Nacional Círculo Balear, an organisation that, among other things, protests against the "imposition" of Catalan, had been daubed with graffiti. The organisation is now but one calling for political condemnation of independence activists who, during the demonstration, attempted to burn the Spanish flag.
The Círculo Balear's offices were targeted because it had said that it would participate in this year's Jaume celebrations. This was a red rag to the bull of its opponents who took none too kindly to the foundation's claim that the celebrations were being "Catalanised" and to a further claim that there is a growth in "nationalist violence".
The Círculo Balear was probably right when it came to denouncing violence, as this is what it got. As to the Catalanisation, there is a slight illogic to the argument. Jaume, though not from Catalonia, was instrumental in the introduction and promotion of the Catalan language. A Catalanised Jaume celebration seems entirely reasonable. Otherwise, though, reason seemed to be chucked out the window, or at least chucked across a square together with chairs from a café.
The demonstrators, the pro-Catalanists that is, combined behind the slogan "som una nació" (we are a nation), by which they mean the Balearics. Their ranks were swelled by the usual suspects of the nationalist-inclined left of local politics and groups such as the Maulets, an independence- and revolutionary-minded organisation. Their cause, in 2010, had been fuelled by the Spanish Supreme Court's denial of Catalonian nationhood and the rumpus inspired by the language policy of the Partido Popular in the Balearics.
Does the call for Balearic independence have any real substance? In terms of popular support, you would have to think that it doesn't. The prevailing mindset in Mallorca is conservative. There was little evidence of support, other than political, for Catalonia when the Supreme Court made its decision back in the summer which made it clear that Catalonia could not be a "state".
Nevertheless, there does appear to be a growing radicalisation. It is one that the Círculo Balear has drawn attention to, and a target of its concerns is the Obra Cultural Balear. The OCB, says Círculo Balear, has received over four million euros in grants from regional and central government during the past three years. Grants, it claims, with which the OCB "gives cover to the violent".
The president of the OCB, in a recent interview, said that he believed a Balearic state would be something from which much could be gained, not least from keeping all the "riches" that accrue from tourism and from having its own voice within a group of independent Catalan states. He is probably right when he also says that politically there is a bias towards the notion of independence. Only two parties, the Partido Popular and the Unión Progreso y Democracia, would be dead against it.
But you come back to the question as to whether there is sympathy within the public at large. The OCB is now rolling out a new campaign to try and generate such sympathy. Entitled "Mallorca m'agrada" (I like Mallorca), this is intended to create a "collective self-esteem" in promoting elements of identity that characterise the Mallorcan people. It remains to be seen what impact this might have.
While the notion of a Balearic state as part of a group of Catalan states may not be an issue that excites that many Mallorcans, there is another matter which just might. And that is the whole question to do with language. This spring's local elections could see the Partido Popular coming into power under its leader José Ramón Bauzá, someone who has so far proved to be capable of dividing not just the general public but also his own party where it comes to the Catalan-Castilian debate.
What Bauzá might do is to turn back decades of linguistic policy. It is potentially highly dangerous in terms of what it would represent symbolically. It is this issue that has the power to give the OCB, the Jaume I demonstrators and the independence activists the ammunition they need. For this reason, the local elections in May could prove to be highly significant. What occurred on the night of 30 December might, just might, be a precursor of what else could occur.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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