What every girl dreams. If she lives in Santa Margalida. At the weekend, Francisca Oliver Fornés was chosen to be La Beata, the saint Catalina Thomàs. Requirements for being selected include having participated as an attendant in previous Beata ceremonies, being church-going, single and eighteen. To be nominated as La Beata is quite some honour. The fiesta in September is often referred to as Mallorca's most traditional, La Beata herself acting out the refusal to be tempted by the devil.
Single, eighteen, not necessarily church-going and not necessarily inclined to turn down temptation. The contrast between a weekend ceremony to select the current-day embodiment of a saint and a weekend ceremony of unsaintliness is stark. At a similar time to Francisca's selection, the Districte 54 party in Sa Pobla was rumbling. The mayor of Sa Pobla has been forced to apologise to the people of the town. Mess, noise, lack of respect, excessive drinking. What on earth had he expected?
The mayor had wanted the party reinstated as part of the town's fiestas. It was largely his doing that it took place this year. It was he who had criticised the previous administration for not staging it last year. It was he who said that it brought economic benefits and a load of people from across the island.
He was not wrong in respect of the numbers attending. But the numbers, as with other fiesta parties, are swelled by those who, thanks to social networks, know full well that there's to be a botellón. The street-drinking parties are happening everywhere. Organised through Facebook and what have you, they are creating attendances at the parties so large that villages and towns cannot cope. They are being overwhelmed by people, by drunkenness and violence. I ask again: what on earth had the mayor expected?
Districte 54, more than most of the parties, is a magnet for trouble. It's why it was banned last year. Nevertheless, the town decided to go ahead with it again, with the result that the police had to respond to numerous complaints and the medical services were needed to treat those who were totally off their faces.
Mayor Serra says that there will not be a repetition; that if the party happens again, it won't take place slap bang in the centre of the town. It might find a convenient finca somewhere in the countryside, which is what they have done in Maria de la Salut, and the parties there pass off without much incident.
Whether it happens again or not, the trouble at Districte 54 is further evidence of the degree to which the fiesta parties have grown in size to the point at which they are out of control. The wishes of town halls to limit street drinking botellóns, as in Pollensa, are not being met because the social networks enable people to find ways around whatever controls might be put in place. The town halls seem to have failed utterly to comprehend how modern communications work.
The traditional Mallorcan fiesta has broken down and has been taken over by DJs and cheap booze. And this breakdown in tradition isn't simply one that can be styled as being down to the generation gap. There is a division also within generations. Which is what Francisca represents. While she was being named Santa Margalida's Beata, the Santa Margalida herself was being defiled in Sa Pobla; Districte 54 was part of the Santa Margalida festivities.
The coincidence of this is one thing; the contrast another. Over one weekend in July, two separate happenings highlighted the way in which Mallorcan youth has split. The requirement for a Beata aspirant to demonstrate her good Catholic credentials seems almost quaint now. The church has lost much meaning for and support among the younger generation.
If you had to choose between the two, you would opt for Districte 54 and its attendant troubles as being more representative of Mallorcan youth than Francisca and La Beata. And if you do opt so, it kills, once and for all, the myth of Mallorcan (and Spanish) youth being unlike their British counterparts. You might recall that some while ago a report established that the level of alcohol intake among Spanish teenagers was as high if not higher and the frequency of drinking greater than that of British kids.
Of course, you can't and shouldn't tar every Mallorcan teenager and young person with the same alcoholic or violent brush, just as you shouldn't the British youth, but what can be said with some certainty is that a societal shift isn't underway; it has already happened. Temptation has been taken. And no amount of saintliness will put the devil back in the box.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Districte 54 causes problems again
The Districte 54 night party in Sa Pobla, reintroduced this year by the new ruling Partido Popular administration at the town hall, caused problems on Saturday night of the sort that had seen it scrapped last year. Police received numerous complaints about noise, and mayor Biel Serra has apologised for the mess and the lack of respect shown by those attending the event which became once more a botellón drinking party. He has said that there will not be a repetition.
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 18 July 2011
Yesterday evening saw some potentially stormy weather without there actually being a storm. Things have calmed down now and it is sunny with some cloud about and quite a fresh breeze. Temperatures at 07.30 are up to 22.3.
It's not been a particularly hot day, the high being only 25 degrees on the coast. Quite blustery, some cloud but also plenty of sun.
It's not been a particularly hot day, the high being only 25 degrees on the coast. Quite blustery, some cloud but also plenty of sun.
Mapping Mallorca's Imagination
Cartographic precociousness has left its impression on me. When a child, I drew a map of our village. It hadn't occurred to me at the time - it wouldn't have, as I wasn't cognizant of such politico-arcanum - that I had created a socio-geographic representation. The higher land of the village, to its southerly side, was more than just topographically elevated. It was the domain of the grand, the villa, the church, the upper-class landowning caste.
This affluent scarp on the Surrey landscape towered over the commercial centre of the village, the High Street in other words, and the modern estate of engineers and teachers, an agglomeration of the aspirational lower to middle class with its pretensions to the acquisitiveness of late 1950s and early 1960s new consumerism.
To the northerly end, and on the wrong side of the tracks, thanks to the Aldershot to Waterloo line that sliced through the village, was the council estate, a post-war south London spillover and a place of cars jacked up on bricks and the occasional gypsy encampment.
My map showed all this. Importantly, it wasn't simply a representation, it was a social document, one that was the basis for stories, most of them outrageous fibs of course, that I invented for the people of my village.
Maps, as maps used to be, were acts of faith. You trusted in their accuracy, as you had no way of verifying them. You could see a map, but you couldn't see the truth of it for yourself. Maps were virtual reality before the term was invented. More than this, because maps were shorn of intimacy, they were templates for invention and imagination. They hid stories and histories.
The map, therefore, has served a dual purpose, that of practicality and that of interpretation. The imagination that was released by maps has, however, become dulled. A trend towards three-dimensionalism hastened the emergence of technologies such as exist today, the most extreme removal of imagination being the obscenity of Google Street View.
Such intimacy, such real reality makes archaic some of the most fabulous creations of the cartographer. It would be impossible for Beck to diagrammatically show the London Underground nowadays. He would be considered an idiot. Yet he achieved what should have been an impossibility - functionalism made from the abstract. And in so doing, his map added power to one of London's most enduring stories, that of the mystery of its old tube stations and lines.
Technology has not, however, replaced the map. It has digitalised it, put it onto mobile phones, zoomed into it and out of it, but the map remains, even in its basic, non-intimate state.
The tourist coming to Mallorca is confronted with map after map after map. It is the single most useful piece of information the tourist can have. Some may indeed app a map, but most don't. They seek the utility of something that never folds properly and that flaps in a breeze. Utility is the key, so much so that a tour operator rep once told me that he and colleagues used to have to clean up transfer coaches on which adverts that had surrounded maps handed out to the newly arrived had been discarded. The tourists would tear the ads off and keep the map. Why? Who knows.
For tourists who don't vandalise their maps, utility is served by being able to locate Bar Brit and its steak and chips and Sky TV on the corner of Calle Ikis and Calle E-griega. An advert without a means of locating an establishment for the unknowledgeable tourist isn't a great deal of use, yet many businesses persist in using media that fail to impart such knowledge.
The local maps, of the resorts and towns, and the maps of Mallorca are almost exclusively only used in a functional way. The other purpose of the map, the interpretation, is rarely deployed you would think. Yet take a look at a map of Mallorca and you see all manner of strangeness. The name places themselves are strange. They should conjure up enquiry, but how many do actually enquire? What is it with, say, Biniali or Bunyola or the innuendo of Búger? What are their stories?
Maps should map the imagination. A map of Mallorca should be a map of Mallorca's imagination.
You may remember a time when maps would be put up on walls and pins would be placed on them to denote this or that. You can still stick a pin in a map. Shut your eyes, and when you've stuck the pin in, off you go. To wherever it might be and to whatever story the place on your map is hiding.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
This affluent scarp on the Surrey landscape towered over the commercial centre of the village, the High Street in other words, and the modern estate of engineers and teachers, an agglomeration of the aspirational lower to middle class with its pretensions to the acquisitiveness of late 1950s and early 1960s new consumerism.
To the northerly end, and on the wrong side of the tracks, thanks to the Aldershot to Waterloo line that sliced through the village, was the council estate, a post-war south London spillover and a place of cars jacked up on bricks and the occasional gypsy encampment.
My map showed all this. Importantly, it wasn't simply a representation, it was a social document, one that was the basis for stories, most of them outrageous fibs of course, that I invented for the people of my village.
Maps, as maps used to be, were acts of faith. You trusted in their accuracy, as you had no way of verifying them. You could see a map, but you couldn't see the truth of it for yourself. Maps were virtual reality before the term was invented. More than this, because maps were shorn of intimacy, they were templates for invention and imagination. They hid stories and histories.
The map, therefore, has served a dual purpose, that of practicality and that of interpretation. The imagination that was released by maps has, however, become dulled. A trend towards three-dimensionalism hastened the emergence of technologies such as exist today, the most extreme removal of imagination being the obscenity of Google Street View.
Such intimacy, such real reality makes archaic some of the most fabulous creations of the cartographer. It would be impossible for Beck to diagrammatically show the London Underground nowadays. He would be considered an idiot. Yet he achieved what should have been an impossibility - functionalism made from the abstract. And in so doing, his map added power to one of London's most enduring stories, that of the mystery of its old tube stations and lines.
Technology has not, however, replaced the map. It has digitalised it, put it onto mobile phones, zoomed into it and out of it, but the map remains, even in its basic, non-intimate state.
The tourist coming to Mallorca is confronted with map after map after map. It is the single most useful piece of information the tourist can have. Some may indeed app a map, but most don't. They seek the utility of something that never folds properly and that flaps in a breeze. Utility is the key, so much so that a tour operator rep once told me that he and colleagues used to have to clean up transfer coaches on which adverts that had surrounded maps handed out to the newly arrived had been discarded. The tourists would tear the ads off and keep the map. Why? Who knows.
For tourists who don't vandalise their maps, utility is served by being able to locate Bar Brit and its steak and chips and Sky TV on the corner of Calle Ikis and Calle E-griega. An advert without a means of locating an establishment for the unknowledgeable tourist isn't a great deal of use, yet many businesses persist in using media that fail to impart such knowledge.
The local maps, of the resorts and towns, and the maps of Mallorca are almost exclusively only used in a functional way. The other purpose of the map, the interpretation, is rarely deployed you would think. Yet take a look at a map of Mallorca and you see all manner of strangeness. The name places themselves are strange. They should conjure up enquiry, but how many do actually enquire? What is it with, say, Biniali or Bunyola or the innuendo of Búger? What are their stories?
Maps should map the imagination. A map of Mallorca should be a map of Mallorca's imagination.
You may remember a time when maps would be put up on walls and pins would be placed on them to denote this or that. You can still stick a pin in a map. Shut your eyes, and when you've stuck the pin in, off you go. To wherever it might be and to whatever story the place on your map is hiding.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 17 July 2011
Already, by 08.30, reaching 26 degrees inland, a couple of degrees lower on the coast. Quite breezy but also sunny, there is a chance of cloud building up and even of a spot of rain this afternoon. Highs of 31 forecast.
Some cloud did build up but no sign of any rain on what has otherwise been a fabulous summer's day. Hot but with a good enough breeze at times on the beaches. Highs on the coast today have been 32.2.
Some cloud did build up but no sign of any rain on what has otherwise been a fabulous summer's day. Hot but with a good enough breeze at times on the beaches. Highs on the coast today have been 32.2.
Getting Into An I Pad-dy: Newspapers
I Pad, U Pad, Wii Pad. We all Pad together.
Unfortunately, for Apple and for newspaper and magazine publishers, we don't. We may in some distant future. But for now, we pad as a small minority.
The publishers are ambivalent to this future. They would happily dispense with one of their biggest cost bases - printing - but they are no nearer creating a business model that satisfactorily digitalises and monetises hard copy into oblivion. Ah but the iPad will be that model. Some might think so; some, like Steve Jobs, would hope so. But the mere newspaper-reading mortal continues to be a Steve Unjobsworthy who hasn't become an Apple organisation man and hasn't been commanded by the contemporary tablets of stone, the ostentatiously styled modern miracle of the iPad tablet and its peers.
There's bad news for newspaper publishers; good news for publishers of magazines. PriceWaterhouseCoopers have reported that whereas revenue from digital magazines is set to "sky rocket", thanks to the iPad, sales of subscriptions of newspapers in this digital form will not be sufficient to offset the fall in print sales.
The iPad is many things, but essentially, for many of its products, its newspaper products, it is merely a digital replacement of the hard copy. The hype, and that also for the iPhone, the Android and any other current-day trickery you care to mention, outstrips the reality. There are many, many users of course. But this doesn't mean that newspapers will suddenly disappear. As pointed out by the UK firm Enders Analysis: "Ten million pay for a daily newspaper in the UK. They spend roughly 30 pounds a month each. There will not be 10 million people spending 30 pounds a month on the iPad any time soon".
In a way, the iPad is an experiment, as is much digital and internet publishing. It is worthwhile playing with, but it is only one aspect of the digital future. Newspaper publishers who see it as the only holy grail of a prosperous non-print new world are seriously deluding themselves. Experiments need to be conducted in different ways, and one is to create a wholly new product (or products) with its own revenue stream. It's thinking out of the box, but the fear is that publishers will be seduced into boxing themselves solely inside the iPad tablet box.
All of which brings us to the "Majorca Daily Bulletin". It is now iPad-able, online in full. At a price. Part of a service under the non-snappy moniker of Kioskoymas, through which we are told "the most complete offer of press of quality" is available, the Bulletin is the only English paper in what is an online iPad-oriented system for Spanish newspaper and magazine publishers. A bizarre aspect of this service, were you minded to want to subscribe to the paper, is that you would need to read Spanish. Obviously you would. They're not going to have an English version to guide you through the online registration and payment process when the service is meant to be for Spanish readers.
And subscription is a not unimportant element. Getting the punter to buy a month or more ahead does wonders for cash planning in the uncertain digital world but it runs counter to consumer psychology. Subscriptions to hard-copy newspapers have only ever been a small part of publishers' businesses. Readers habitually buy daily, a truism for a daily publication. Why would you stump up in advance when you haven't in the past? News International is facing this conundrum along with other more pressing matters.
A solution is an incentive. Yet from what I can make out, unless you have a multiple subscription, i.e. to at least more than one title through Kioskoymas, you pay the going rate. And unless you, as an English reader, are inclined to also read Spanish papers or even able to, then you are not going to have a multiple subscription. Moreover, a month seems to be the minimum subscription period, this being unlike other services which enable you to pay daily.
And one of these services is Orbyt. This was launched last year and features "El Mundo", "La Razón" and other Spanish papers as well as magazines. So Kioskoymas is a rival and a less elegant one than Orbyt, if the websites of the two services are anything to go by. The competition with Orbyt is probably quite significant. The Bulletin is part of the Grupo Serra stable, of which "Ultima Hora" is its biggest-selling paper. And "Ultima Hora" is a competitor with the Balearics version of "El Mundo". For it to have an iPad presence as a rival makes sense, and you wonder if this is the main reason why The Bulletin is now iPad-able; it has been bundled in, but it is "Ultima Hora" that really matters.
The Bulletin might gain from this service, it might not, but fundamentally it cannot be seen as the be all and end all, and this is the message for any newspaper publisher. The iPad is basically a means of cannibalising the product. It is a replacement technique more than it is a new-product technique and it is the latter that publishers need to work on.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Unfortunately, for Apple and for newspaper and magazine publishers, we don't. We may in some distant future. But for now, we pad as a small minority.
The publishers are ambivalent to this future. They would happily dispense with one of their biggest cost bases - printing - but they are no nearer creating a business model that satisfactorily digitalises and monetises hard copy into oblivion. Ah but the iPad will be that model. Some might think so; some, like Steve Jobs, would hope so. But the mere newspaper-reading mortal continues to be a Steve Unjobsworthy who hasn't become an Apple organisation man and hasn't been commanded by the contemporary tablets of stone, the ostentatiously styled modern miracle of the iPad tablet and its peers.
There's bad news for newspaper publishers; good news for publishers of magazines. PriceWaterhouseCoopers have reported that whereas revenue from digital magazines is set to "sky rocket", thanks to the iPad, sales of subscriptions of newspapers in this digital form will not be sufficient to offset the fall in print sales.
The iPad is many things, but essentially, for many of its products, its newspaper products, it is merely a digital replacement of the hard copy. The hype, and that also for the iPhone, the Android and any other current-day trickery you care to mention, outstrips the reality. There are many, many users of course. But this doesn't mean that newspapers will suddenly disappear. As pointed out by the UK firm Enders Analysis: "Ten million pay for a daily newspaper in the UK. They spend roughly 30 pounds a month each. There will not be 10 million people spending 30 pounds a month on the iPad any time soon".
In a way, the iPad is an experiment, as is much digital and internet publishing. It is worthwhile playing with, but it is only one aspect of the digital future. Newspaper publishers who see it as the only holy grail of a prosperous non-print new world are seriously deluding themselves. Experiments need to be conducted in different ways, and one is to create a wholly new product (or products) with its own revenue stream. It's thinking out of the box, but the fear is that publishers will be seduced into boxing themselves solely inside the iPad tablet box.
All of which brings us to the "Majorca Daily Bulletin". It is now iPad-able, online in full. At a price. Part of a service under the non-snappy moniker of Kioskoymas, through which we are told "the most complete offer of press of quality" is available, the Bulletin is the only English paper in what is an online iPad-oriented system for Spanish newspaper and magazine publishers. A bizarre aspect of this service, were you minded to want to subscribe to the paper, is that you would need to read Spanish. Obviously you would. They're not going to have an English version to guide you through the online registration and payment process when the service is meant to be for Spanish readers.
And subscription is a not unimportant element. Getting the punter to buy a month or more ahead does wonders for cash planning in the uncertain digital world but it runs counter to consumer psychology. Subscriptions to hard-copy newspapers have only ever been a small part of publishers' businesses. Readers habitually buy daily, a truism for a daily publication. Why would you stump up in advance when you haven't in the past? News International is facing this conundrum along with other more pressing matters.
A solution is an incentive. Yet from what I can make out, unless you have a multiple subscription, i.e. to at least more than one title through Kioskoymas, you pay the going rate. And unless you, as an English reader, are inclined to also read Spanish papers or even able to, then you are not going to have a multiple subscription. Moreover, a month seems to be the minimum subscription period, this being unlike other services which enable you to pay daily.
And one of these services is Orbyt. This was launched last year and features "El Mundo", "La Razón" and other Spanish papers as well as magazines. So Kioskoymas is a rival and a less elegant one than Orbyt, if the websites of the two services are anything to go by. The competition with Orbyt is probably quite significant. The Bulletin is part of the Grupo Serra stable, of which "Ultima Hora" is its biggest-selling paper. And "Ultima Hora" is a competitor with the Balearics version of "El Mundo". For it to have an iPad presence as a rival makes sense, and you wonder if this is the main reason why The Bulletin is now iPad-able; it has been bundled in, but it is "Ultima Hora" that really matters.
The Bulletin might gain from this service, it might not, but fundamentally it cannot be seen as the be all and end all, and this is the message for any newspaper publisher. The iPad is basically a means of cannibalising the product. It is a replacement technique more than it is a new-product technique and it is the latter that publishers need to work on.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 16 July 2011
A clear, sunny morning, early temperatures locally at 08.00 up to 21 degrees. Highs of 30 anticipated later.
A fair amount of breeze in the afternoon both inland and on the coast, the wind direction shifting southerly and so pushing up temperatures to a coastal high of 31 degrees this afternoon.
A fair amount of breeze in the afternoon both inland and on the coast, the wind direction shifting southerly and so pushing up temperatures to a coastal high of 31 degrees this afternoon.
In The Middle Of Nowhere
It used to be a restaurant, a different type of restaurant, one that had struggled. The lady owner was pleasant to the point of being jolly, but she couldn't disguise the problems the restaurant experienced. They decided, four years ago, to call it quits.
The restaurant remained closed. A small garden in front of its entrance, hemmed in by a low wall, gathered discarded Coke cans and beer bottles. The alcove of the entrance porch filled with detritus, and the council's street blowers would add to it by scattering leaves into its accommodating enclosure.
Then one day there was activity. For a year, the work involved not just the old restaurant but a unit next to it, a former supermarket which, like the old restaurant, had suffered from little trade.
It hadn't been clear what was being created, until finally the name appeared, the glass frontage became evident and the terrace was laid. It was a new restaurant. A large restaurant, one made from two previously sizeable units. It was classy. From the outside you couldn't have known how big the kitchen was, how well-equipped and modern it was, or that the restaurant bent in an L-shape, so that there was as much again as that which was apparent if you stood in front of it.
The new owners were pleasant as well. It was unfortunate that the work had dragged on so that it hadn't opened until half way through the summer season, but there was optimism. There was, after all, no other restaurant immediately nearby. The parking was easy. There were hotels not far away. There were plenty of holiday homes and permanent residents.
The optimism didn't last long. By the following season pessimism had taken root. The causes were not unfamiliar: all-inclusives; the amounts folks spent nowadays; economic crisis. The redevelopment work had begun to be undertaken before the impact of crisis was apparent. Bad luck?
Not totally. The reasons for the initial optimism were also reasons for wondering as to the wisdom of the restaurant. Having no competitor nearby isn't necessarily an advantage. Being grouped with other restaurants creates an attraction as well as an atmosphere. Isolation can mean neither. A solitary restaurant, let's say, for sake of argument, Can Cuarassa on the bay of Pollensa between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa, can benefit. It does so through the drama of its location. But the restaurant of our story, though in a pleasant enough location, does not have the same power of landscape or place.
Of the hotels not far away, some are far away enough to be far away, and they are also strongly all-inclusive. The other hotels, which are closer by, are more chic, five-star chic. A strong market you would think. Yes, but this is a strong market which can afford to take taxis to restaurants with more dramatic locations, a clientele that prefers to venture further afield, a clientele not just with money but also with a sense of its own worth, one better catered for by the ambience and gastronomic reputations of the area's old towns or by splendid beachside establishments or by fine finca restaurants in the island's hinterland.
This was intelligence that was known or that could have been sought before the new restaurant was born. There was other intelligence that was known, such as the growing influence of the all-inclusive and the trend towards lower tourist spend that pre-dated the economic crisis. Some of the factors which might have been grounds for optimism were the same ones that had led to the old restaurant closing.
Yet the new one came along. And it replaced not only the old one but grafted on the adjoining unit. How much had it cost? The time alone that was taken on conversion must have meant a significant outlay.
The pessimism grew. And finally, just recently, the restaurant gave up. It is sad to see it go, but it is not a surprise. The model for its business was never there. Its market existed more in the hope than in the reality. Its size was one thing, its location another. It wasn't in the middle of nowhere as such, but it might as well have been. Indeed had it been, it might, blessed by a more remote and more dramatic location, have been more viable.
But even with the knowledge and the market intelligence, would the mistake have been avoided and will the mistake be avoided in the future? Optimism, egotism, blind faith; they can all contribute to the heart ruling the head and making opaque what should be transparently obvious. Similar stories are yet to be told and similar mistakes will keep on being made.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The restaurant remained closed. A small garden in front of its entrance, hemmed in by a low wall, gathered discarded Coke cans and beer bottles. The alcove of the entrance porch filled with detritus, and the council's street blowers would add to it by scattering leaves into its accommodating enclosure.
Then one day there was activity. For a year, the work involved not just the old restaurant but a unit next to it, a former supermarket which, like the old restaurant, had suffered from little trade.
It hadn't been clear what was being created, until finally the name appeared, the glass frontage became evident and the terrace was laid. It was a new restaurant. A large restaurant, one made from two previously sizeable units. It was classy. From the outside you couldn't have known how big the kitchen was, how well-equipped and modern it was, or that the restaurant bent in an L-shape, so that there was as much again as that which was apparent if you stood in front of it.
The new owners were pleasant as well. It was unfortunate that the work had dragged on so that it hadn't opened until half way through the summer season, but there was optimism. There was, after all, no other restaurant immediately nearby. The parking was easy. There were hotels not far away. There were plenty of holiday homes and permanent residents.
The optimism didn't last long. By the following season pessimism had taken root. The causes were not unfamiliar: all-inclusives; the amounts folks spent nowadays; economic crisis. The redevelopment work had begun to be undertaken before the impact of crisis was apparent. Bad luck?
Not totally. The reasons for the initial optimism were also reasons for wondering as to the wisdom of the restaurant. Having no competitor nearby isn't necessarily an advantage. Being grouped with other restaurants creates an attraction as well as an atmosphere. Isolation can mean neither. A solitary restaurant, let's say, for sake of argument, Can Cuarassa on the bay of Pollensa between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa, can benefit. It does so through the drama of its location. But the restaurant of our story, though in a pleasant enough location, does not have the same power of landscape or place.
Of the hotels not far away, some are far away enough to be far away, and they are also strongly all-inclusive. The other hotels, which are closer by, are more chic, five-star chic. A strong market you would think. Yes, but this is a strong market which can afford to take taxis to restaurants with more dramatic locations, a clientele that prefers to venture further afield, a clientele not just with money but also with a sense of its own worth, one better catered for by the ambience and gastronomic reputations of the area's old towns or by splendid beachside establishments or by fine finca restaurants in the island's hinterland.
This was intelligence that was known or that could have been sought before the new restaurant was born. There was other intelligence that was known, such as the growing influence of the all-inclusive and the trend towards lower tourist spend that pre-dated the economic crisis. Some of the factors which might have been grounds for optimism were the same ones that had led to the old restaurant closing.
Yet the new one came along. And it replaced not only the old one but grafted on the adjoining unit. How much had it cost? The time alone that was taken on conversion must have meant a significant outlay.
The pessimism grew. And finally, just recently, the restaurant gave up. It is sad to see it go, but it is not a surprise. The model for its business was never there. Its market existed more in the hope than in the reality. Its size was one thing, its location another. It wasn't in the middle of nowhere as such, but it might as well have been. Indeed had it been, it might, blessed by a more remote and more dramatic location, have been more viable.
But even with the knowledge and the market intelligence, would the mistake have been avoided and will the mistake be avoided in the future? Optimism, egotism, blind faith; they can all contribute to the heart ruling the head and making opaque what should be transparently obvious. Similar stories are yet to be told and similar mistakes will keep on being made.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, July 15, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 15 July 2011
Decidedly cooler overnight, almost duvet time, but not quite. A bright and sunny morning, with a local high of 21.6 at 08.30. The temperatures will crank up again today and over the weekend.
It has been a generally sunny day with some cloudy intervals. Temperatures not that high, a local maximum having been just short of 27 degrees. The weekend forecast looks ok with temperatures up to 30 degrees.
It has been a generally sunny day with some cloudy intervals. Temperatures not that high, a local maximum having been just short of 27 degrees. The weekend forecast looks ok with temperatures up to 30 degrees.
The Sun Always Shines On TV
"Summer arrives." And every evening from Monday to Thursday, the Mallorcan summer and everything that is happening during it is presented by Maria Salas. The sun always shines on TV Mallorca. Until it no longer shines.
It might as well in fact rain until September, when TV Mallorca's harvest moon may terminally wane and when the sun will no longer shine. Where once was Maria and her sunny days of a Mallorcan summer will be a blank screen of an endless Mallorcan winter.
Presidents Bauzà and Salom have decided to reach for the off switch: the permanent off switch for the channel. The closure of TV Mallorca is far from unexpected; it's just a question as to when it closes. It has been leeching money and its purpose has been questionable throughout its four years of existence.
There have been suggestions that it could be absorbed into the other Mallorcan television channel, IB3, or that it could become a second IB3 channel - IB3-2 presumably - but neither suggestion has found favour with the hatchet wielders at the regional government and Council of Mallorca.
The decision to close TV Mallorca and to send in a lawyer as its new director-general to oversee its closure has brought forward protests. Two hundred demonstrated in the Plaza España. One might be tempted to suggest that this was the sum of its audience, but that would be unfair. Its now ex-director-general said earlier this year that the channel was watched by 77,000 people on the island, without detailing for how long they watch or how often.
All manner of groups have leapt to the defence of TV Mallorca. They read like a list of the usual suspects on the left: the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB); the Esquerra Unida (the united left); the ecology warriors of GOB (quite what this has to do with them is not clear); PSOE (Francina Armengol, the former president of the Council of Mallorca, calling the closure decision a "political, social and economic error"); the Mallorcan socialist party; and something called the Association of the Memory of Mallorca.
Amidst this little lot there is the unmistakable sound of a political point being made, one that comes back to the Catalan question, though this does rather overlook the fact that IB3 is also a Catalan station.
Questionable though the necessity for TV Mallorca is, the economic error that Armengol has referred to deserves some consideration. In addition to the loss of some one hundred or so jobs, the station costs far less to run than IB3 (its annual budget of 10.5 million euros is a sixth of that of the other station). But as important is the effect that the closure will have on the channel's suppliers (and it should be noted that it is both a television and a radio station).
Some 2,000 employees of these suppliers - production companies and audio-visual equipment providers - are said to be likely to be affected by closing down TV Mallorca. This may not mean that they lose their jobs or that the suppliers themselves have to close, but the loss of the station is clearly not good news for them. Moreover, these suppliers have grown up on the back of both IB3 and TV Mallorca in creating an industrial cluster that shouldn't be underestimated in terms of its significance.
The ParcBit technology park in Palma is home to a number of these audio-visual companies, and the technology park is foremost in being the impulse behind what innovation, development and economic diversification there is in Mallorca. TV Mallorca's role in adding to this impulse may be being overstated but it is nevertheless important. It would be interesting to learn what Josep Aguiló, the regional government's vice-president, makes of the potentially negative impact of shutting TV Mallorca down. With his finance hat on, he would probably argue that it was unavoidable, but he is also in charge of business, employment and industry; the super-ministries that Bauzá has created have the potential to raise conflicts of interest, and Aguiló's has the most potential conflicts.
Even if it is and remains a minority-interest channel, TV Mallorca has a role that is wider than simply being a broadcaster. The government's desire to cut costs is understandable enough, but Armengol is almost certainly right when she refers to the error being made. Unfortunately, the discourse regarding the closure has become a political one, with the inevitable (and not wholly justifiable) hints, evidenced by the support of the likes of the OCB and GOB, that TV Mallorca is a victim of alleged PP anti-Catalanism and anti-regionalism.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
It might as well in fact rain until September, when TV Mallorca's harvest moon may terminally wane and when the sun will no longer shine. Where once was Maria and her sunny days of a Mallorcan summer will be a blank screen of an endless Mallorcan winter.
Presidents Bauzà and Salom have decided to reach for the off switch: the permanent off switch for the channel. The closure of TV Mallorca is far from unexpected; it's just a question as to when it closes. It has been leeching money and its purpose has been questionable throughout its four years of existence.
There have been suggestions that it could be absorbed into the other Mallorcan television channel, IB3, or that it could become a second IB3 channel - IB3-2 presumably - but neither suggestion has found favour with the hatchet wielders at the regional government and Council of Mallorca.
The decision to close TV Mallorca and to send in a lawyer as its new director-general to oversee its closure has brought forward protests. Two hundred demonstrated in the Plaza España. One might be tempted to suggest that this was the sum of its audience, but that would be unfair. Its now ex-director-general said earlier this year that the channel was watched by 77,000 people on the island, without detailing for how long they watch or how often.
All manner of groups have leapt to the defence of TV Mallorca. They read like a list of the usual suspects on the left: the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB); the Esquerra Unida (the united left); the ecology warriors of GOB (quite what this has to do with them is not clear); PSOE (Francina Armengol, the former president of the Council of Mallorca, calling the closure decision a "political, social and economic error"); the Mallorcan socialist party; and something called the Association of the Memory of Mallorca.
Amidst this little lot there is the unmistakable sound of a political point being made, one that comes back to the Catalan question, though this does rather overlook the fact that IB3 is also a Catalan station.
Questionable though the necessity for TV Mallorca is, the economic error that Armengol has referred to deserves some consideration. In addition to the loss of some one hundred or so jobs, the station costs far less to run than IB3 (its annual budget of 10.5 million euros is a sixth of that of the other station). But as important is the effect that the closure will have on the channel's suppliers (and it should be noted that it is both a television and a radio station).
Some 2,000 employees of these suppliers - production companies and audio-visual equipment providers - are said to be likely to be affected by closing down TV Mallorca. This may not mean that they lose their jobs or that the suppliers themselves have to close, but the loss of the station is clearly not good news for them. Moreover, these suppliers have grown up on the back of both IB3 and TV Mallorca in creating an industrial cluster that shouldn't be underestimated in terms of its significance.
The ParcBit technology park in Palma is home to a number of these audio-visual companies, and the technology park is foremost in being the impulse behind what innovation, development and economic diversification there is in Mallorca. TV Mallorca's role in adding to this impulse may be being overstated but it is nevertheless important. It would be interesting to learn what Josep Aguiló, the regional government's vice-president, makes of the potentially negative impact of shutting TV Mallorca down. With his finance hat on, he would probably argue that it was unavoidable, but he is also in charge of business, employment and industry; the super-ministries that Bauzá has created have the potential to raise conflicts of interest, and Aguiló's has the most potential conflicts.
Even if it is and remains a minority-interest channel, TV Mallorca has a role that is wider than simply being a broadcaster. The government's desire to cut costs is understandable enough, but Armengol is almost certainly right when she refers to the error being made. Unfortunately, the discourse regarding the closure has become a political one, with the inevitable (and not wholly justifiable) hints, evidenced by the support of the likes of the OCB and GOB, that TV Mallorca is a victim of alleged PP anti-Catalanism and anti-regionalism.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Obama faces prosecution from Mallorcan lawyer
A Palma-based lawyer, Daniel Fiol, has filed a claim for prosecution against US President Barack Obama with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the charge being that his order to kill Osama bin Laden contravened the Geneva Convention.
MALLORCA TODAY - Porto Cristo bridge must be demolished by 26 September
The Balearic Supreme Court, which had already ordered that the Riuet bridge in Porto Cristo be demolished but which bowed to representations that it should not occur during the tourism season, has decreed today that it must be demolished no later than 26 September.
MALLORCA TODAY - Fire near Costa d'en Blanes
Another forest fire, this time in Calvia near to the Bendinat gold course and Costa d'en Blanes. It has affected only some 15 hectares, but it caused particular alarm as it was close to residential areas.
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 14 July 2011
Heavy overnight rain has brought a cloudy and damp morning. The rainfall was as great as 15.5 mm. Things should clear up during the day and then be fine for the rest of the week going into the weekend. Local high at 08.00, a mere 21 degrees.
The cloud disappeared and it has been a pleasant day. Lots of sun but not particularly hot, 24 degrees being the local high to 18.30.
The cloud disappeared and it has been a pleasant day. Lots of sun but not particularly hot, 24 degrees being the local high to 18.30.
The State We're In: Language
Should Mallorcan businesses get it right? Get English right? It was once put to me that it didn't matter and that mangled English was just all part of the charm. Possibly so, but possibly it is also a case of being lazy or of mistake reinforcing mistake.
There are any number of English speakers knocking around who might help a restaurant, a shop, an event, an estate agency from making a language gaffe. Are any ever asked to give a menu, some instructions, a sign the once-over, just to be sure? Some are, but there are plenty of businesses who still manage to mangle English. All part of the charm perhaps, but there is charm and there is being professional.
Recently, we had the priceless "rules" set out by the Pollensa Music Festival, under which, among other things, it was not allowed "to enter any type of container nor devices of telephony". We know what they were getting at, but a little bit of attention might have eliminated the potential for confusion or indeed hilarity.
There have been some wonderful mistakes that I have encountered over the years. A personal favourite remains the "flesh on the tenterhooks" of a grill restaurant. The owner said that the printers who had been responsible for the translation had insisted that they could do the English correctly. Which may be part of the problem; that of non-native speakers who fall into the language trap.
"Flesh on the tenterhooks" was, one presumed, meant to be something along the lines of tender meat, but it came out as sounding like an act of torture by the Inquisition. Tenterhooks, for the record, have nothing to do with cooking and everything to do with stretching cloth.
Making a complete balls-up has arguably been made more likely thanks to the Google translator and other machine translation systems. And when it comes to idioms and slang terms, of which there are an awful lot in English, such systems are almost completely useless.
Some mistakes, however, just keep on getting repeated. And a prime example is the "state agency"; not an agency of the state, but an estate agency. You can find many states that appear to be being traded by state agencies which should in fact be estate agencies.
A new sign appeared at one estate agency the other day, replete with the same old mistake. But why does it keep being made? Has no one ever pointed the mistake out? My guess is that "state" is so common that it is thought to be correct, not least by signmakers who will insist that it is correct as they have been in this state for years.
Proper names can also be problematic. In certain cases, they always have been. In Puerto Alcúdia, the recent fire at an apartment block caused a bit of a problem as to how it should be reported. The apartments have always lacked one letter. Who originally took the "p" out of the Mississipi (sic)? The same person possibly who didn't see the "c" in the Picadilly (sic) bar. Has anyone ever noticed the missing "n" that means that the Britania (sic) bar doesn't rule the waves? (The missing "p" might be put down to being Spanish, but then in Spanish there would be a missing "s" as well - twice over; Picadilly and Britania are Spanish, but their markets have been British.)
Not that these probably matter. Test your average Brit tourist and, nine times out of ten, he wouldn't know how to spell them anyway. And it's certainly not as though the language trap doesn't work in reverse or that borrowing from Spanish doesn't come into play.
Pop along to your nearest state agency, or preferably estate agency, and you might find a property that takes your fancy. However, the state agent tells you that it is in need of reform. Has it been a naughty boy? Is it to have its law changed? The widespread use of reform to mean altering a building in some way isn't, strictly speaking, correct usage. Incorrect or not, it is a good example of a word whose meaning has been borrowed from Spanish that, because of its generality, works rather better than correct English alternatives.
And the property needing reform might well be in an urbanisation, another specific adaptation from the Spanish to mean an estate, or should it be a state? Once reformed, the property may well become "perfect", states of perfection being more widely expressed by "perfecto" Spaniards and therefore also now by English-speaking adopters.
To answer my initial question though. Tell me. Should they get it right? Go on, tell me. I command you. The abrupt, somewhat impolite use of this imperative is something else that has passed from Spanish. "Digame". Tell me.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
There are any number of English speakers knocking around who might help a restaurant, a shop, an event, an estate agency from making a language gaffe. Are any ever asked to give a menu, some instructions, a sign the once-over, just to be sure? Some are, but there are plenty of businesses who still manage to mangle English. All part of the charm perhaps, but there is charm and there is being professional.
Recently, we had the priceless "rules" set out by the Pollensa Music Festival, under which, among other things, it was not allowed "to enter any type of container nor devices of telephony". We know what they were getting at, but a little bit of attention might have eliminated the potential for confusion or indeed hilarity.
There have been some wonderful mistakes that I have encountered over the years. A personal favourite remains the "flesh on the tenterhooks" of a grill restaurant. The owner said that the printers who had been responsible for the translation had insisted that they could do the English correctly. Which may be part of the problem; that of non-native speakers who fall into the language trap.
"Flesh on the tenterhooks" was, one presumed, meant to be something along the lines of tender meat, but it came out as sounding like an act of torture by the Inquisition. Tenterhooks, for the record, have nothing to do with cooking and everything to do with stretching cloth.
Making a complete balls-up has arguably been made more likely thanks to the Google translator and other machine translation systems. And when it comes to idioms and slang terms, of which there are an awful lot in English, such systems are almost completely useless.
Some mistakes, however, just keep on getting repeated. And a prime example is the "state agency"; not an agency of the state, but an estate agency. You can find many states that appear to be being traded by state agencies which should in fact be estate agencies.
A new sign appeared at one estate agency the other day, replete with the same old mistake. But why does it keep being made? Has no one ever pointed the mistake out? My guess is that "state" is so common that it is thought to be correct, not least by signmakers who will insist that it is correct as they have been in this state for years.
Proper names can also be problematic. In certain cases, they always have been. In Puerto Alcúdia, the recent fire at an apartment block caused a bit of a problem as to how it should be reported. The apartments have always lacked one letter. Who originally took the "p" out of the Mississipi (sic)? The same person possibly who didn't see the "c" in the Picadilly (sic) bar. Has anyone ever noticed the missing "n" that means that the Britania (sic) bar doesn't rule the waves? (The missing "p" might be put down to being Spanish, but then in Spanish there would be a missing "s" as well - twice over; Picadilly and Britania are Spanish, but their markets have been British.)
Not that these probably matter. Test your average Brit tourist and, nine times out of ten, he wouldn't know how to spell them anyway. And it's certainly not as though the language trap doesn't work in reverse or that borrowing from Spanish doesn't come into play.
Pop along to your nearest state agency, or preferably estate agency, and you might find a property that takes your fancy. However, the state agent tells you that it is in need of reform. Has it been a naughty boy? Is it to have its law changed? The widespread use of reform to mean altering a building in some way isn't, strictly speaking, correct usage. Incorrect or not, it is a good example of a word whose meaning has been borrowed from Spanish that, because of its generality, works rather better than correct English alternatives.
And the property needing reform might well be in an urbanisation, another specific adaptation from the Spanish to mean an estate, or should it be a state? Once reformed, the property may well become "perfect", states of perfection being more widely expressed by "perfecto" Spaniards and therefore also now by English-speaking adopters.
To answer my initial question though. Tell me. Should they get it right? Go on, tell me. I command you. The abrupt, somewhat impolite use of this imperative is something else that has passed from Spanish. "Digame". Tell me.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Garcia's PSM representation in Alcúdia challenged
At a meeting of Alcúdia town hall it has been established that the town's administration is a coalition between the Partido Popular and PSM (and Iniciativa Verds). Yet, Carme Garcia had left the PSM in order to align with the PP in creating the coalition. Or had she? She argues that she was booted out of the PSM. Either way, the rest of the PSM is decidedly unhappy, as are other opposition groups and legal action against the administration is being considered.
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 13 July 2011
Some spots of rain overnight, the morning is much fresher, albeit the high at 08.30 is 24 degrees. Quite thick cloud mixed with sun at present, it should brighten up, with temperatures up to 29. Tomorrow is also expected to be cloudy overnight and into the morning.
Cloud that had looked quite threatening this morning cleared away, leaving a sunny afternoon and a local high to 18.30 of 28.9.
Cloud that had looked quite threatening this morning cleared away, leaving a sunny afternoon and a local high to 18.30 of 28.9.
All Night Long: Fiesta parties
So there will, after all, be a party on the final night of Pollensa's Patrona festivities. Public pressure helped to ensure this, the last town hall meeting having been packed by those in favour of it. The mayor had been criticised for not having consulted in seeking to ditch the event.
Here we go again. If it's Pollensa, it must be a case of the town hall not consulting. There are some things it should consult about, such as the pedestrianisation plan for Puerto Pollensa that was scrapped primarily because it had failed to consult, but there is surely a limit to what it is obliged to consult about. Or perhaps, in the case of fiestas, the people's parties if you like, there should be an obligation. There again, they didn't consult the people of Puerto Pollensa about what has turned out to be a programme for Virgen del Carmen that is like little more than a village fete.
The night party is going ahead, but economic constraints will mean that it will finish earlier than previously, at 2.30 in the morning of 2 August. Economic constraints or something else? The deputy mayor, Malena Estrany, hopes that by ending the party a couple of hours earlier there will not be a repeat of the botellón street party and unseemliness that has been associated with the event. There remains the suspicion that cost was a secondary factor in the town hall's wish to call the event off, and that the botellón was the primary factor.
But now, having backtracked, the town hall would wish us to believe that lopping two hours off the party will help to stop a grand old booze-up. Are they serious? The strangeness of this logic is made even stranger by the town hall's intention to ask neighbouring towns to check that people being bussed in to the event from the likes of Sa Pobla or Alcúdia aren't carrying drink.
This presumably means the local police in these towns being called on to search and confiscate. A question arises whether they have any right to do so. Drinking alcohol in the street may be against local laws, drinking on a bus may also be, but carrying drink? Moreover, drink can be obtained in other ways. The botellón isn't always just a bunch of people turning up at random with a carrier-bag with a couple of cheap bottles of vino.
Elsewhere in Mallorca, one party has been scrapped precisely because of the problems that a botellón can create. In Pòrtol, following incidents last weekend, a DJ party for this coming Saturday is to be dropped and probably replaced by a dance orchestra.
But also this coming Saturday, a party which had been dropped last year and which had acquired greater notoriety than the Patrona party is to make a re-appearance. Sa Pobla is organising the Districte 54 event as part of its Santa Margalida festivities. This was banned last year on safety grounds and because of complaints about noise and the state that the town got into thanks to its accompanying botellón.
Districte 54 has been one of the biggest of the fiesta night parties. It was first launched in 2003 by the then Partido Popular administration in the town. Who is now the new mayor of Sa Pobla? Biel Serra of the Partido Popular. Last year he criticised the decision to scrap the event, pointing to its economic benefits and to the fact that it brought the whole island to Sa Pobla.
There is more than just a hint of the populist behind the decision to resurrect Districte 54, and Pollensa's mayor may also have begun to have had second thoughts about how a decision to ban the night party might impact on his popularity, a mere month into his new term of office.
Serra's belief that Districte 54 has economic benefits contrasts with the economic constraints said to have been influencing the Pollensa decision. Which brings you back to the question as to how well these economic benefits are measured, if at all, and to a further question therefore, which is, despite the costs of staging events, do they actually generate a sufficiently greater revenue?
Local businesses would argue that they do. And this is the nub of the issue with the botellón parties which occur at Patrona or Districte 54. Yes, they can cause unpleasantness but they are really about potentially depriving businesses of revenue; hence the measures that are being introduced to try and limit their impact. People can put up with noise and mess if the tills are turning. And you can bet that those who packed the Pollensa town hall meeting weren't just revellers.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Here we go again. If it's Pollensa, it must be a case of the town hall not consulting. There are some things it should consult about, such as the pedestrianisation plan for Puerto Pollensa that was scrapped primarily because it had failed to consult, but there is surely a limit to what it is obliged to consult about. Or perhaps, in the case of fiestas, the people's parties if you like, there should be an obligation. There again, they didn't consult the people of Puerto Pollensa about what has turned out to be a programme for Virgen del Carmen that is like little more than a village fete.
The night party is going ahead, but economic constraints will mean that it will finish earlier than previously, at 2.30 in the morning of 2 August. Economic constraints or something else? The deputy mayor, Malena Estrany, hopes that by ending the party a couple of hours earlier there will not be a repeat of the botellón street party and unseemliness that has been associated with the event. There remains the suspicion that cost was a secondary factor in the town hall's wish to call the event off, and that the botellón was the primary factor.
But now, having backtracked, the town hall would wish us to believe that lopping two hours off the party will help to stop a grand old booze-up. Are they serious? The strangeness of this logic is made even stranger by the town hall's intention to ask neighbouring towns to check that people being bussed in to the event from the likes of Sa Pobla or Alcúdia aren't carrying drink.
This presumably means the local police in these towns being called on to search and confiscate. A question arises whether they have any right to do so. Drinking alcohol in the street may be against local laws, drinking on a bus may also be, but carrying drink? Moreover, drink can be obtained in other ways. The botellón isn't always just a bunch of people turning up at random with a carrier-bag with a couple of cheap bottles of vino.
Elsewhere in Mallorca, one party has been scrapped precisely because of the problems that a botellón can create. In Pòrtol, following incidents last weekend, a DJ party for this coming Saturday is to be dropped and probably replaced by a dance orchestra.
But also this coming Saturday, a party which had been dropped last year and which had acquired greater notoriety than the Patrona party is to make a re-appearance. Sa Pobla is organising the Districte 54 event as part of its Santa Margalida festivities. This was banned last year on safety grounds and because of complaints about noise and the state that the town got into thanks to its accompanying botellón.
Districte 54 has been one of the biggest of the fiesta night parties. It was first launched in 2003 by the then Partido Popular administration in the town. Who is now the new mayor of Sa Pobla? Biel Serra of the Partido Popular. Last year he criticised the decision to scrap the event, pointing to its economic benefits and to the fact that it brought the whole island to Sa Pobla.
There is more than just a hint of the populist behind the decision to resurrect Districte 54, and Pollensa's mayor may also have begun to have had second thoughts about how a decision to ban the night party might impact on his popularity, a mere month into his new term of office.
Serra's belief that Districte 54 has economic benefits contrasts with the economic constraints said to have been influencing the Pollensa decision. Which brings you back to the question as to how well these economic benefits are measured, if at all, and to a further question therefore, which is, despite the costs of staging events, do they actually generate a sufficiently greater revenue?
Local businesses would argue that they do. And this is the nub of the issue with the botellón parties which occur at Patrona or Districte 54. Yes, they can cause unpleasantness but they are really about potentially depriving businesses of revenue; hence the measures that are being introduced to try and limit their impact. People can put up with noise and mess if the tills are turning. And you can bet that those who packed the Pollensa town hall meeting weren't just revellers.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Patrona party to go ahead
The threat to the night party of the first into the second of August during Pollensa's Patrona festivities has been lifted, but the party will be shortened and will end at 2.30am. The hope is that this will reduce costs and also limit any "botellón" street drinking party. Local town halls are to be asked to help in checking buses which leave for the party and to stop the bringing of alcohol.
MALLORCA TODAY - Sa Fortalessa goes for a song
According to an estate agency in Pollensa, the Sa Fortalessa finca in Puerto Pollensa has been sold for only roughly a third of what had been asked when it was put on the market at around 120 million euros; 40 million therefore.
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 12 July 2011
While the temperature is only 24 degrees at 08.30, it feels a lot warmer. No breeze, with a fair amount of cloud, the highs may well be 36 later today.
The heatwave that had been promised failed to materialise. Instead, it has been sticky and largely cloudy, with highs, to 18.00, just below 30 degrees.
The heatwave that had been promised failed to materialise. Instead, it has been sticky and largely cloudy, with highs, to 18.00, just below 30 degrees.
For Sale: Hotel, Needs Work
The possibility that the Posibilitum investment group, the owners of Alcúdia's Bellevue complex, might acquire the Hotasa hotels of the troubled Nueva Rumasa conglomerate should be viewed as welcome news by those running the hotels. I am told that the hotels are experiencing difficulties in providing services they should be. When the hotels opened for the season, and at one point it looked as some might not, suppliers made it clear that they would supply only on a cash-on-delivery basis.
The Hotasa hotels, which include three in Can Picafort, are an extreme case, but they are far from alone in having owners seeking buyers. Much of Mallorca's hotel stock is up for sale. And there are very few buyers.
The accord between tourism minister Carlos Delgado and the hoteliers that should pave the way for reform of the tourism law and so facilitate hotel conversion and change of use has been sought by the hoteliers for some years. The antiquity of many hotels makes their redevelopment a pressing necessity, but even with agreement and legal reform, a question would remain. How would these conversions be funded?
Delgado has said that the days of expecting grants, especially from central government, have passed. The banks have all but turned the taps off. The markets are reassured by this summer's rise in tourism numbers, but the leading hotel chains - and those which would be listed and more attractive to investors - have tended to look overseas for growth potential.
The hype of all the talk of hotel renovations and changes of use and the unions getting hot under the collar and threatening protests as a consequence may therefore be just that - hype. Some hotels and hotel chains are in good enough shape to effect changes, but many are not.
One reason why owners want to sell hotels and why it is proving difficult to do so and would also prove difficult to convert them is because they are that old that the cost of conversion would be nigh on prohibitive. Buyers are unlikely to take on hotels that demand significant investment in addition to what are sales tags which are too high. Like with many restaurants or bars that are for sale, the expectations of owners are unrealistic, based on past or expected performance and divorced from the circumstances that now obtain.
Bellevue, though taken on by Posibilitum, is a case in point when it comes to old stock. The complex, all 1400 apartments of it, is nearly 40 years old. Its sheer size is a constraint on renovation as is its age, but renovation is badly needed. Bellevue has acquired a more diverse market over the past few years - it isn't the ultra-Brit complex it once was - but it tends to be hotels for the British market in the resorts of Alcúdia and Magalluf that are the oldest and which attract less profit because of the very nature of the particular market they cater for. Another reason, therefore, why prospective buyers might be wary.
A further reason is the complexity of financing arrangements and ownership issues. The travel and hotel group Orizonia had, still has as far as I am aware, a mortgage on Bellevue which was raised as a guarantee against a debt to the company run up by the previous owners, the now bust Grupo Marsans. And there is a similar story with Hotasa.
Bank funding requires security, and in the case of Hotasa, the house has well and truly been bet. The court bankruptcy proceedings relating to Nueva Rumasa have revealed the scale of the mortgages that hang over Hotasa. One hotel alone, Santa Fe in Can Picafort, has been used as a guarantee four times, to which can be added the embargo slapped on it by the Hacienda in respect of a debt of some 120,000 euros. In total, the seven Hotasa hotels in the Balearics have mortgages valued at just short of 138 million euros, three and a half times the size of the mortgage debt said to be owed to Orizonia.
The judge presiding over the proceedings has been obliged to appoint five administrators because of the sheer complexity of the hotels' affairs. The labyrinth of different companies in addition to the various mortgages would surely make a purchaser riding to Hotasa's aid, be it Posibilitum or any other, pause while the administrators try and unravel the affairs. Hotasa may be a specific case, but who's to say what complexity might apply to other hotels or hotel groups and which might add to deterring prospective purchasers.
Outdated, unprofitable, underfunded, debt-ridden: the reasons why there are so few buyers for hotels and why the much-hoped-for conversions may yet never take place.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The Hotasa hotels, which include three in Can Picafort, are an extreme case, but they are far from alone in having owners seeking buyers. Much of Mallorca's hotel stock is up for sale. And there are very few buyers.
The accord between tourism minister Carlos Delgado and the hoteliers that should pave the way for reform of the tourism law and so facilitate hotel conversion and change of use has been sought by the hoteliers for some years. The antiquity of many hotels makes their redevelopment a pressing necessity, but even with agreement and legal reform, a question would remain. How would these conversions be funded?
Delgado has said that the days of expecting grants, especially from central government, have passed. The banks have all but turned the taps off. The markets are reassured by this summer's rise in tourism numbers, but the leading hotel chains - and those which would be listed and more attractive to investors - have tended to look overseas for growth potential.
The hype of all the talk of hotel renovations and changes of use and the unions getting hot under the collar and threatening protests as a consequence may therefore be just that - hype. Some hotels and hotel chains are in good enough shape to effect changes, but many are not.
One reason why owners want to sell hotels and why it is proving difficult to do so and would also prove difficult to convert them is because they are that old that the cost of conversion would be nigh on prohibitive. Buyers are unlikely to take on hotels that demand significant investment in addition to what are sales tags which are too high. Like with many restaurants or bars that are for sale, the expectations of owners are unrealistic, based on past or expected performance and divorced from the circumstances that now obtain.
Bellevue, though taken on by Posibilitum, is a case in point when it comes to old stock. The complex, all 1400 apartments of it, is nearly 40 years old. Its sheer size is a constraint on renovation as is its age, but renovation is badly needed. Bellevue has acquired a more diverse market over the past few years - it isn't the ultra-Brit complex it once was - but it tends to be hotels for the British market in the resorts of Alcúdia and Magalluf that are the oldest and which attract less profit because of the very nature of the particular market they cater for. Another reason, therefore, why prospective buyers might be wary.
A further reason is the complexity of financing arrangements and ownership issues. The travel and hotel group Orizonia had, still has as far as I am aware, a mortgage on Bellevue which was raised as a guarantee against a debt to the company run up by the previous owners, the now bust Grupo Marsans. And there is a similar story with Hotasa.
Bank funding requires security, and in the case of Hotasa, the house has well and truly been bet. The court bankruptcy proceedings relating to Nueva Rumasa have revealed the scale of the mortgages that hang over Hotasa. One hotel alone, Santa Fe in Can Picafort, has been used as a guarantee four times, to which can be added the embargo slapped on it by the Hacienda in respect of a debt of some 120,000 euros. In total, the seven Hotasa hotels in the Balearics have mortgages valued at just short of 138 million euros, three and a half times the size of the mortgage debt said to be owed to Orizonia.
The judge presiding over the proceedings has been obliged to appoint five administrators because of the sheer complexity of the hotels' affairs. The labyrinth of different companies in addition to the various mortgages would surely make a purchaser riding to Hotasa's aid, be it Posibilitum or any other, pause while the administrators try and unravel the affairs. Hotasa may be a specific case, but who's to say what complexity might apply to other hotels or hotel groups and which might add to deterring prospective purchasers.
Outdated, unprofitable, underfunded, debt-ridden: the reasons why there are so few buyers for hotels and why the much-hoped-for conversions may yet never take place.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, July 11, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 11 July 2011
24 degrees at 08.30 and humidity high at near on 90%. Quite a bit of light cloud around but sunny as well. Highs today of 30 being anticipated. Tomorrow might prove to be generally more cloudy.
This afternoon, to 19.00, the highs have been 28.3 by the coast and 29.3 inland in Pollensa. A short heatwave is expected tomorrow temperatures likely to reach 36 degrees.
This afternoon, to 19.00, the highs have been 28.3 by the coast and 29.3 inland in Pollensa. A short heatwave is expected tomorrow temperatures likely to reach 36 degrees.
The World's Greatest Newspaper Outrage
When Angus Deayton became the news, his position as presenter of "Have I Got News For You" became untenable. You can't have a news comedy show in which one major item of news might be skirted around (it wasn't of course) and in which that major item is squirming as the barbs come in from both sides.
Deayton was caught in a web spun by the "News Of The World". Like Deayton, when a newspaper becomes news - bad news, really bad news - its position becomes questionable. Newspapers exist to report news, not to be the news. A truism you might think, except that it isn't true.
Newspapers acquired long ago a sense of their own importance to such a degree that they have made and make their own front pages. But when this self-importance becomes so inflated that it causes a break with reality and becomes so arrogant that it strips away any vestige of moral code, then all respect is lost.
This self-importance witnessed its final, appallingly self-congratulatory act on Sunday. "The world's greatest newspaper 1843-2011." How dare it?
Journalists at the "News Of The World" can rightly feel indignant at the paper's closure - those whose methods have not been underhand, that is - but they have reaped the failed harvest of a culture into which they bought. Taking the "News Of The World" shilling meant living by its moral code, or lack of one. Its fall from grace may have been the product of a small and secretive cadre associated with the paper, but this lack of grace had long existed within the paper's consciousness and ethic of nastiness, bullying and arguably anti-democracy through abuse of power.
The Brit bars of Mallorca will now be deprived of a paper that, on Sundays and as breakfasts and roasts were consumed, became ever more grease-marked and ketchup-splattered. Many a Brit bar applies a principle of the LCD and provides for its customers the lowest common denominators of "The Sun" and the "News Of The World". The bars may not have to wait long for a replacement. Rather than titles that have been suggested (and indeed registered two days before the announcement of the closure of the "News Of The World"), why not simply call a new rag "Sunday". Murdoch has aspired to dominate in other spheres, so taking over the sabbath should pose no great difficulty and thus reinforce the arrogance and self-importance.
The LCD principle and its accompanying salaciousness play well among an expat and tourist audience, just as they play well with the inpat (I've invented another new word) back in the UK. This audience no longer has the "News Of The World" to feed its hunger for scandal and the shallow, but it will not cease to have an appetite.
William Rees-Mogg, the former editor of "The Times", has referred to losing touch with the moral codes of the readership, defined - by him - as common sense, goodwill, help to neighbours and decent conduct in general. However, because the audience's appetite will never be fully sated, is Rees-Mogg right? Be the audience expat or inpat, what actually is its moral code?
Amidst all the discussion about the goings-on at the "News Of The World", it was the more sensationalist aspects of the paper's desire for the sensational, the hacking of the phones of dead servicemen's families and those of the parents of murdered children or the children themselves, which informed the expat (and inpat) audience debate as it thumbed through the last copy and sipped a cold San Miguel or a warm John Smiths.
The moral code of the audience isn't offended; rather, it is stripped as bare as that of the perpetrators at the "News Of The World". The audience laps it up and craves more; it requires being outraged by further news of the actions of a newspaper it relied upon to pander to its own outraged voyeurism.
The "News Of The World" could only have ever gone out in one way: the way it has chosen, through one grand act of self-destruction born out of the uncontrolled pursuit of the sensational, out of its disregard for morality and out of its self-importance and viciousness. The audience was not a participant in this final act, but it was a willing participant in all that went before. It feels let down. Not so much by the actions of the paper but by the disappearance of a source to feed its fix of the drug of being outraged.
Edwina Currie, who knows a thing or two about the salacious exposé, having manufactured one of her own, has placed blame for the paper's downfall on the audience being voracious consumers of the questionable or the immoral. But then what comes first? The chicken of the public's prurience or the egg poisoned with the salmonella of journalistic immorality? Both parties are culpable.
The "News Of The World" may have believed that whatever stories might have emerged from its hacking would have had the public on its side. Sadly, it was probably not wrong in believing this. It is the conspiracy between paper and public that is the real moral of this story and how low each will stoop in feeding and consuming the salacious.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Deayton was caught in a web spun by the "News Of The World". Like Deayton, when a newspaper becomes news - bad news, really bad news - its position becomes questionable. Newspapers exist to report news, not to be the news. A truism you might think, except that it isn't true.
Newspapers acquired long ago a sense of their own importance to such a degree that they have made and make their own front pages. But when this self-importance becomes so inflated that it causes a break with reality and becomes so arrogant that it strips away any vestige of moral code, then all respect is lost.
This self-importance witnessed its final, appallingly self-congratulatory act on Sunday. "The world's greatest newspaper 1843-2011." How dare it?
Journalists at the "News Of The World" can rightly feel indignant at the paper's closure - those whose methods have not been underhand, that is - but they have reaped the failed harvest of a culture into which they bought. Taking the "News Of The World" shilling meant living by its moral code, or lack of one. Its fall from grace may have been the product of a small and secretive cadre associated with the paper, but this lack of grace had long existed within the paper's consciousness and ethic of nastiness, bullying and arguably anti-democracy through abuse of power.
The Brit bars of Mallorca will now be deprived of a paper that, on Sundays and as breakfasts and roasts were consumed, became ever more grease-marked and ketchup-splattered. Many a Brit bar applies a principle of the LCD and provides for its customers the lowest common denominators of "The Sun" and the "News Of The World". The bars may not have to wait long for a replacement. Rather than titles that have been suggested (and indeed registered two days before the announcement of the closure of the "News Of The World"), why not simply call a new rag "Sunday". Murdoch has aspired to dominate in other spheres, so taking over the sabbath should pose no great difficulty and thus reinforce the arrogance and self-importance.
The LCD principle and its accompanying salaciousness play well among an expat and tourist audience, just as they play well with the inpat (I've invented another new word) back in the UK. This audience no longer has the "News Of The World" to feed its hunger for scandal and the shallow, but it will not cease to have an appetite.
William Rees-Mogg, the former editor of "The Times", has referred to losing touch with the moral codes of the readership, defined - by him - as common sense, goodwill, help to neighbours and decent conduct in general. However, because the audience's appetite will never be fully sated, is Rees-Mogg right? Be the audience expat or inpat, what actually is its moral code?
Amidst all the discussion about the goings-on at the "News Of The World", it was the more sensationalist aspects of the paper's desire for the sensational, the hacking of the phones of dead servicemen's families and those of the parents of murdered children or the children themselves, which informed the expat (and inpat) audience debate as it thumbed through the last copy and sipped a cold San Miguel or a warm John Smiths.
The moral code of the audience isn't offended; rather, it is stripped as bare as that of the perpetrators at the "News Of The World". The audience laps it up and craves more; it requires being outraged by further news of the actions of a newspaper it relied upon to pander to its own outraged voyeurism.
The "News Of The World" could only have ever gone out in one way: the way it has chosen, through one grand act of self-destruction born out of the uncontrolled pursuit of the sensational, out of its disregard for morality and out of its self-importance and viciousness. The audience was not a participant in this final act, but it was a willing participant in all that went before. It feels let down. Not so much by the actions of the paper but by the disappearance of a source to feed its fix of the drug of being outraged.
Edwina Currie, who knows a thing or two about the salacious exposé, having manufactured one of her own, has placed blame for the paper's downfall on the audience being voracious consumers of the questionable or the immoral. But then what comes first? The chicken of the public's prurience or the egg poisoned with the salmonella of journalistic immorality? Both parties are culpable.
The "News Of The World" may have believed that whatever stories might have emerged from its hacking would have had the public on its side. Sadly, it was probably not wrong in believing this. It is the conspiracy between paper and public that is the real moral of this story and how low each will stoop in feeding and consuming the salacious.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Sa Fortalessa sold to a Briton
It is the most expensive property in Spain. Sa Fortalessa in Puerto Pollensa, in fact a small castle, seven houses, its own forest and coves, has been sold by John Ogden to a fellow Briton whose name has not been revealed and for whom a Spanish company has been acting. The exact price has also not been revealed, but it had been marketed, by different firms, at 100 million euros and 120 million.
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 10 July 2011
Cloud that was blown in on that easterly yesterday afternoon hasn't gone completely, but plenty of sun and another warm day in prospect, with temperatures expected to reach 30 again. Currently, at 08.00, 22.5 is the local high.
Wasn't quite as warm as expected on the coast with highs getting to 27 plus, but inland, in Pollensa, they were just short of the 30 mark.
Wasn't quite as warm as expected on the coast with highs getting to 27 plus, but inland, in Pollensa, they were just short of the 30 mark.
Widening The Umbrella: Beaches
I must have told you the story of the javelin-throwing nudists of Cap d'Agde. Surely I have. But if not ... To set the scene, and just to add that they weren't in fact javelins, the mayor of Agde, some time in the mid-90s, decreed that "pornographic" activity on the nudist beach had to stop. This meant, of course, that the order was mostly ignored. Things came to a head one summer when certain nudists, numbering several hundred, or so it seemed from a safe distance, were confronted by riot police on horseback during the early evening shag-in that used to occur at the far end of the beach. It was at this point, point being apt, that the nudists retaliated. The poles from beach umbrellas rained down on the police.
I tell this story, not because beach-umbrella poles are commonly used on Mallorcan beaches as offensive weapons, but because these poles could theoretically cause harm. And they are most likely to when the wind suddenly gets up.
Umbrellas are becoming, like balcony diving, the theme of this summer. The main theme has to do with the companies providing the umbrellas, the reed or grass-made ones, as opposed to the multi-coloured ones with a pole that fly into the air at the merest hint of a breeze. The kerfuffle in Puerto Pollensa over provision of umbrellas and other services appears to have died down, only for it re-emerge in Can Picafort.
There is a connection between the two. F&A Beach, the Puerto Pollensa operator, has had concessions on Playa de Muro beach, as has Bernat Riutort. They have not exactly seen eye to eye in the past. Anyway, Riutort is running the Can Picafort concession this year, and a familiar story has cropped up, one familiar to anyone who was aware of the over-provision of beach umbrellas in Playa de Muro in the past.
The mayor of Santa Margalida, Miguel Cifre (always a Miguel Cifre), said that there were too many umbrellas and sunbeds. Way too many in fact. Oh no, there weren't, came the Riutort retort. Plod was duly despatched, unmolested and not attacked by beach umbrella poles, as would be the practice in the south of France, and found that an order for the removal of the excessive numbers of umbrellas had been complied with. "For now," mayor Cifre has observed cryptically.
The over-proliferation of umbrellas on Can Picafort's beach had one big advantage. Sorry, two big advantages. One was that the umbrella sunbedsraum of the beach meant that more beachside businesses had umbrellas in front of them. Now that they have been taken away, businesses are complaining and demanding that they be put back. The other big advantage was that by making it impossible to find any space that wasn't occupied by a static umbrella meant that umbrellas on poles couldn't be planted. And the big advantage with this was that the likelihood of death by beach-umbrella pole was lessened considerably.
I have wondered, especially as a beach umbrella hurtles past me or crashes into me in mid-snooze, whether any litigation has resulted from flying poles. They are normally the result of negligence. Off go the owners into the water or to the beach bar, leave the umbrella up, wind suddenly gets up and off goes the umbrella. And what about the harm to the environment? Wind in the right direction and the umbrella makes a dash for France, assuming it has come from a beach in the north of Mallorca. Might be useful of course if it makes its way as far as Cap d'Agde, but otherwise it will eventually come to rest and clog up the Med.
The beach umbrella, offensive though it is, is not the worst beach offender. Other items of beach furniture, though less likely to cause injury, could be said to contravene certain regulations. The beaches are public spaces, and one reason why a concessionaire putting too many umbrellas out falls foul of a town hall is that he is occupying too much of that public space.
The same could be said, however, for the beach tent. They take that much time to erect that by the time they are put up it is time to go home, and they offend in the sheer amount of space they demand. They are also offensive in reinforcing the fact that, whereas going to the beach used once to be a straightforward enough procedure, it now requires a removals van, and this includes the dog, which shouldn't be there at all, but which is then hidden from view of the beach plod inside the tent.
No, rather than tents, rather than life-threatening umbrellas and poles, let the concessionaires put out as many of their umbrellas as they like. After all, the town halls should worry. All those lovely fines.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
I tell this story, not because beach-umbrella poles are commonly used on Mallorcan beaches as offensive weapons, but because these poles could theoretically cause harm. And they are most likely to when the wind suddenly gets up.
Umbrellas are becoming, like balcony diving, the theme of this summer. The main theme has to do with the companies providing the umbrellas, the reed or grass-made ones, as opposed to the multi-coloured ones with a pole that fly into the air at the merest hint of a breeze. The kerfuffle in Puerto Pollensa over provision of umbrellas and other services appears to have died down, only for it re-emerge in Can Picafort.
There is a connection between the two. F&A Beach, the Puerto Pollensa operator, has had concessions on Playa de Muro beach, as has Bernat Riutort. They have not exactly seen eye to eye in the past. Anyway, Riutort is running the Can Picafort concession this year, and a familiar story has cropped up, one familiar to anyone who was aware of the over-provision of beach umbrellas in Playa de Muro in the past.
The mayor of Santa Margalida, Miguel Cifre (always a Miguel Cifre), said that there were too many umbrellas and sunbeds. Way too many in fact. Oh no, there weren't, came the Riutort retort. Plod was duly despatched, unmolested and not attacked by beach umbrella poles, as would be the practice in the south of France, and found that an order for the removal of the excessive numbers of umbrellas had been complied with. "For now," mayor Cifre has observed cryptically.
The over-proliferation of umbrellas on Can Picafort's beach had one big advantage. Sorry, two big advantages. One was that the umbrella sunbedsraum of the beach meant that more beachside businesses had umbrellas in front of them. Now that they have been taken away, businesses are complaining and demanding that they be put back. The other big advantage was that by making it impossible to find any space that wasn't occupied by a static umbrella meant that umbrellas on poles couldn't be planted. And the big advantage with this was that the likelihood of death by beach-umbrella pole was lessened considerably.
I have wondered, especially as a beach umbrella hurtles past me or crashes into me in mid-snooze, whether any litigation has resulted from flying poles. They are normally the result of negligence. Off go the owners into the water or to the beach bar, leave the umbrella up, wind suddenly gets up and off goes the umbrella. And what about the harm to the environment? Wind in the right direction and the umbrella makes a dash for France, assuming it has come from a beach in the north of Mallorca. Might be useful of course if it makes its way as far as Cap d'Agde, but otherwise it will eventually come to rest and clog up the Med.
The beach umbrella, offensive though it is, is not the worst beach offender. Other items of beach furniture, though less likely to cause injury, could be said to contravene certain regulations. The beaches are public spaces, and one reason why a concessionaire putting too many umbrellas out falls foul of a town hall is that he is occupying too much of that public space.
The same could be said, however, for the beach tent. They take that much time to erect that by the time they are put up it is time to go home, and they offend in the sheer amount of space they demand. They are also offensive in reinforcing the fact that, whereas going to the beach used once to be a straightforward enough procedure, it now requires a removals van, and this includes the dog, which shouldn't be there at all, but which is then hidden from view of the beach plod inside the tent.
No, rather than tents, rather than life-threatening umbrellas and poles, let the concessionaires put out as many of their umbrellas as they like. After all, the town halls should worry. All those lovely fines.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 9 July 2011
A calm and sunny morning. Local temperatures at 08.30 reaching 23 degrees. Seems set fair for a good weekend with highs getting up to 29 today and tomorrow.
Temperatures back up again, with 32 being the high to 18.00 but with an at-times annoyingly strong easterly wind if you happened to be on the beach.
Temperatures back up again, with 32 being the high to 18.00 but with an at-times annoyingly strong easterly wind if you happened to be on the beach.
Henry The Seventh: Social media success
Do you "like"? Do you "tweet"? Do you tube? Does your business do any or all of these things and, if so, does it really know what it is doing with them?
Social media. Social networks. Once upon a time, social networks were just networks of people, doing what people do, i.e. being social, being friends, being business acquaintances. Whatever the type of network, the purpose is the same: to make contact and connections.
And that's what it's about. "Making connections." The words of Seamus Cullen at No Frills Excursions when I told him I was going to be talking to his business partner, Toni Alenyar, about social media.
No Frills is a small business, but it is a successful one, and one reason why it is successful is that it goes about its business in a purposeful fashion. It plans. And among its plans is one for the use of social media. I have a copy: all fourteen pages of it.
Not every business can devote significant time and resources to social media, but most have come to appreciate that they are, as Toni says, "essential tools". Many businesses have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and the like, but do they really appreciate what they are doing with them?
No Frills is guided by a seven-step strategy. It is one that is partly specific to it as an excursions' operator, but most of the steps can be applied to or adapted by any business. How the company uses social media is geared to meeting one or more of these seven steps. Crucially, they are not the company's, they are the customer's.
From the customer's seeking of holiday inspiration and information to his planning and decision-making, to his taking action (making a booking and travelling) and to his sharing of his experiences, social media accompany each step along the way.
No Frills tests out any social media going. With some it is a case of learning what they offer and which may assume greater importance in the future. But with all its social media activity, there is a wish for the business to be visible, to enhance its reputation and to be seen as innovative.
Of the different networks, the most important to the company are Facebook, You Tube and Trip Advisor. The glowing reviews that No Frills attracts on Trip Advisor come quite obviously as a result of good experiences and good service, but the company actively encourages customers to review what it does, whether good or not so good, and spends time in responding to reviews which are posted.
The sharing of experiences by customers on Trip Advisor is the seventh step in the company's strategic approach, but it can just as easily be seen as the first step. As Toni points out, Trip Advisor is that significant now that a majority of travellers consult it as part of their initial planning.
The attention given to the traveller's information-gathering process is one that has led No Frills to be highly proactive and innovative. For example, it now makes short videos about hotels and posts them on You Tube. Why? Because someone interested in coming on holiday searches for information about specific hotels. No Frills videos give a short tour of the hotel and other relevant information about the resort, and relevance is a keyword in Toni's vocabulary.
But how does this benefit the business? It's not about selling as such. Of course, selling is the outcome that is sought, but it comes back to making connections. Someone sees a video about a hotel, it comes from No Frills, there will be some means of connecting to more No Frills information and the result ... There may be a sale either online or in-resort. Critically though, trust and credibility are being created.
Actually quantifying the benefits of the company's social media activity is nigh on impossible. Toni freely admits this. But then much promotional activity is hard or impossible to quantify. It is hard to place a value on the benefits derived from visibility, reputation and innovation, but social media, used well and planned well, will bring such benefits, and the importance attached to social media by No Frills is reflected by the fact that there is now a full-time member of staff who concentrates on the company's internet presence.
There is way more to the No Frills internet story. I've not mentioned how Google search enquiries have helped to create a whole separate website, I've not mentioned that each of the four No Frills offices (three in Puerto Alcúdia and one in Puerto Pollensa) has its own You Tube channel, and I've not mentioned Henry the elephant. You might guess though that Henry has his own Facebook page.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Social media. Social networks. Once upon a time, social networks were just networks of people, doing what people do, i.e. being social, being friends, being business acquaintances. Whatever the type of network, the purpose is the same: to make contact and connections.
And that's what it's about. "Making connections." The words of Seamus Cullen at No Frills Excursions when I told him I was going to be talking to his business partner, Toni Alenyar, about social media.
No Frills is a small business, but it is a successful one, and one reason why it is successful is that it goes about its business in a purposeful fashion. It plans. And among its plans is one for the use of social media. I have a copy: all fourteen pages of it.
Not every business can devote significant time and resources to social media, but most have come to appreciate that they are, as Toni says, "essential tools". Many businesses have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and the like, but do they really appreciate what they are doing with them?
No Frills is guided by a seven-step strategy. It is one that is partly specific to it as an excursions' operator, but most of the steps can be applied to or adapted by any business. How the company uses social media is geared to meeting one or more of these seven steps. Crucially, they are not the company's, they are the customer's.
From the customer's seeking of holiday inspiration and information to his planning and decision-making, to his taking action (making a booking and travelling) and to his sharing of his experiences, social media accompany each step along the way.
No Frills tests out any social media going. With some it is a case of learning what they offer and which may assume greater importance in the future. But with all its social media activity, there is a wish for the business to be visible, to enhance its reputation and to be seen as innovative.
Of the different networks, the most important to the company are Facebook, You Tube and Trip Advisor. The glowing reviews that No Frills attracts on Trip Advisor come quite obviously as a result of good experiences and good service, but the company actively encourages customers to review what it does, whether good or not so good, and spends time in responding to reviews which are posted.
The sharing of experiences by customers on Trip Advisor is the seventh step in the company's strategic approach, but it can just as easily be seen as the first step. As Toni points out, Trip Advisor is that significant now that a majority of travellers consult it as part of their initial planning.
The attention given to the traveller's information-gathering process is one that has led No Frills to be highly proactive and innovative. For example, it now makes short videos about hotels and posts them on You Tube. Why? Because someone interested in coming on holiday searches for information about specific hotels. No Frills videos give a short tour of the hotel and other relevant information about the resort, and relevance is a keyword in Toni's vocabulary.
But how does this benefit the business? It's not about selling as such. Of course, selling is the outcome that is sought, but it comes back to making connections. Someone sees a video about a hotel, it comes from No Frills, there will be some means of connecting to more No Frills information and the result ... There may be a sale either online or in-resort. Critically though, trust and credibility are being created.
Actually quantifying the benefits of the company's social media activity is nigh on impossible. Toni freely admits this. But then much promotional activity is hard or impossible to quantify. It is hard to place a value on the benefits derived from visibility, reputation and innovation, but social media, used well and planned well, will bring such benefits, and the importance attached to social media by No Frills is reflected by the fact that there is now a full-time member of staff who concentrates on the company's internet presence.
There is way more to the No Frills internet story. I've not mentioned how Google search enquiries have helped to create a whole separate website, I've not mentioned that each of the four No Frills offices (three in Puerto Alcúdia and one in Puerto Pollensa) has its own You Tube channel, and I've not mentioned Henry the elephant. You might guess though that Henry has his own Facebook page.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, July 08, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Santa Margalida and Artà fires were not intentional
Investigators looking into the causes of the destructive fires that broke out on Wednesday in the Santa Margalida and Artà areas have more or less ruled out that they were started deliberately and are working on the theory that random sparks from machinery or a car were the cause.
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 8 July 2011
A change this morning. The wind has moved back towards northerly, the sea is more turbulent and there is cloud cover which is due to clear away later. Current local highs to 23 degrees at 08.30.
Temperatures have been down quite noticeably today. 25 being the maximums locally this afternoon.
Temperatures have been down quite noticeably today. 25 being the maximums locally this afternoon.
The Great Reform Act: Mallorca's hotels
President Bauzà and tourism minister Carlos Delgado have been parleying with the hoteliers. Love is now in the air where once were poisoned arrows, those being lobbed by the hoteliers in Mr. D's general direction.
Delgado is promising the hotels just about everything they might have wished for: a change of use for obsolete hotel stock; a new tourism law that will make procedures more flexible; a crackdown on illegal accommodation. Throw in some redevelopment of resorts and you have just about the perfect result for the hotels.
Just about, but not entirely. The redevelopment of Playa de Palma, still being battled over and still short of funding, is held up as the model for resort upgrading elsewhere - Magalluf and Alcúdia have been mentioned specifically - but not all hotels in Playa de Palma want to see changes that might remove the bread and butter of the three-star hotel.
But plenty do want improvements. Mallorca's tourism industry suffers from having been one of the first locations of the tourism industrial revolution of the mid-twentieth century. As with all original infrastructures, they become obsolete or old-fashioned; hence the desire to redevelop the resorts.
Knocking old hotels down isn't really an option except in extreme cases, but upgrading them or converting them is. One type of conversion would see hotels become condohotels; another would let them become residential. With either option, and depending on the precise nature of what "condo" might actually entail and what constraints, if any, were placed on what could be done with these residential former hotels, what you might end up with is a system whereby holiday lets are made available under the control of the hotels.
You can conclude, therefore, that behind the opposition to holiday rentals and behind what is now meant to be a more rigorous approach to stamping illegal ones out, there is another dynamic. The hoteliers aren't daft. They know full well that a market, a very sizeable market, exists for accommodation which isn't that of the hotel. What could be better than to get hold of that market as well, whilst at the same time seeking to eliminate or limit alternatives.
The hotels have been lobbying to be able to undertake conversions for some years. The consequence of this, however, together with a reduction in total hotel stock envisaged under plans for Playa de Palma (and therefore elsewhere, you would think) and the fact that Delgado doesn't foresee new hotels springing up in abundance, is that there will be fewer hotel beds around.
This could all make sense if you believe that Mallorca's tourism should become leaner if not necessarily meaner. However, take a certain number of hotel places out of the equation and the attack on the holiday-rentals market looks even more ludicrous than it already is.
Following my article of 5 July ("No Hope"), I had some correspondence on the issue, and one question that came up was just how many hotel beds there are in Mallorca. I'd thought finding the answer would be difficult. It wasn't. Thanks to the Fomento del Turismo (the Mallorcan tourism board), I discovered that in 2005 there were 283,436 beds. The figure won't have changed materially. It was also easy, because I had written about it before, to find out how many tourists, at the very height of the summer season, there are. In August 2008, the number peaked at 1,930,000 in the Balearics; it will be higher this year.
Allowing for the other islands and various other factors, you can guess that, at a conservative estimate, there are at least as many tourists who stay in rental accommodation such as apartments and villas as there are those who stay in hotels. If the hotels cut their overall capacity, and even if they don't, were holiday lets to be driven out of business or to be hounded more than they already are, where on earth would everyone stay?
The hotels might think that condos and hotels converted to residential use might go some way to housing these tourists, but the numbers would surely not be great. Plus, you would have lost those hotel beds into the bargain. Far from holiday lets being "unfair competition", they are in fact a competitive necessity - for Mallorca and its whole tourism industry.
I have high hopes for Delgado. He should go some way to proving that these hopes are not misplaced. He should look at the total mix of the industry he now presides over and come to a conclusion that the hoteliers might not like, but which Mallorca can ill afford to be without.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Delgado is promising the hotels just about everything they might have wished for: a change of use for obsolete hotel stock; a new tourism law that will make procedures more flexible; a crackdown on illegal accommodation. Throw in some redevelopment of resorts and you have just about the perfect result for the hotels.
Just about, but not entirely. The redevelopment of Playa de Palma, still being battled over and still short of funding, is held up as the model for resort upgrading elsewhere - Magalluf and Alcúdia have been mentioned specifically - but not all hotels in Playa de Palma want to see changes that might remove the bread and butter of the three-star hotel.
But plenty do want improvements. Mallorca's tourism industry suffers from having been one of the first locations of the tourism industrial revolution of the mid-twentieth century. As with all original infrastructures, they become obsolete or old-fashioned; hence the desire to redevelop the resorts.
Knocking old hotels down isn't really an option except in extreme cases, but upgrading them or converting them is. One type of conversion would see hotels become condohotels; another would let them become residential. With either option, and depending on the precise nature of what "condo" might actually entail and what constraints, if any, were placed on what could be done with these residential former hotels, what you might end up with is a system whereby holiday lets are made available under the control of the hotels.
You can conclude, therefore, that behind the opposition to holiday rentals and behind what is now meant to be a more rigorous approach to stamping illegal ones out, there is another dynamic. The hoteliers aren't daft. They know full well that a market, a very sizeable market, exists for accommodation which isn't that of the hotel. What could be better than to get hold of that market as well, whilst at the same time seeking to eliminate or limit alternatives.
The hotels have been lobbying to be able to undertake conversions for some years. The consequence of this, however, together with a reduction in total hotel stock envisaged under plans for Playa de Palma (and therefore elsewhere, you would think) and the fact that Delgado doesn't foresee new hotels springing up in abundance, is that there will be fewer hotel beds around.
This could all make sense if you believe that Mallorca's tourism should become leaner if not necessarily meaner. However, take a certain number of hotel places out of the equation and the attack on the holiday-rentals market looks even more ludicrous than it already is.
Following my article of 5 July ("No Hope"), I had some correspondence on the issue, and one question that came up was just how many hotel beds there are in Mallorca. I'd thought finding the answer would be difficult. It wasn't. Thanks to the Fomento del Turismo (the Mallorcan tourism board), I discovered that in 2005 there were 283,436 beds. The figure won't have changed materially. It was also easy, because I had written about it before, to find out how many tourists, at the very height of the summer season, there are. In August 2008, the number peaked at 1,930,000 in the Balearics; it will be higher this year.
Allowing for the other islands and various other factors, you can guess that, at a conservative estimate, there are at least as many tourists who stay in rental accommodation such as apartments and villas as there are those who stay in hotels. If the hotels cut their overall capacity, and even if they don't, were holiday lets to be driven out of business or to be hounded more than they already are, where on earth would everyone stay?
The hotels might think that condos and hotels converted to residential use might go some way to housing these tourists, but the numbers would surely not be great. Plus, you would have lost those hotel beds into the bargain. Far from holiday lets being "unfair competition", they are in fact a competitive necessity - for Mallorca and its whole tourism industry.
I have high hopes for Delgado. He should go some way to proving that these hopes are not misplaced. He should look at the total mix of the industry he now presides over and come to a conclusion that the hoteliers might not like, but which Mallorca can ill afford to be without.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Too many beach umbrellas in Can Picafort
The mayor of Santa Margalida has ordered the concessionaire who provides the service of beach umbrellas and sunbeds on the main part of the beach in Can Picafort to remove nearly 600 umbrellas which exceed the maximum permitted. The umbrellas are, in addition to being excessive, too close in some cases to the sea. Can Picafort has a history of problems associated with its beaches, a former mayor, Antoni del Olmo, being forced to resign over a case of alleged corruption in respect of the beach service.
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 7 July 2011
Already a warm morning by 08.30, with the temperature 25 degrees. Set to go higher than yesterday's 32 later today.
The high this afternoon has been 35.2. Quite hot enough, thank you.
The high this afternoon has been 35.2. Quite hot enough, thank you.
The New Model Fiesta
The rumours had been circulating, and for once they proved to have substance. Puerto Pollensa's summer fiesta of Virgen del Carmen will have neither a firework display nor a beach party. The fireworks that finish off Pollensa town's Patrona fiesta in August are a likely further victim of the financial crisis at Pollensa town hall. What else? Will Cala San Vicente, treated as a sideshow anyway, have any sort of a fiesta this summer?
It comes as no great surprise, other than that it has taken till this year for reality to bite. The funding shortages have been there for ages. They existed B.C. (before crisis), but no one thought to do much about them, ever reliant on government funds or taking on extra debt that town halls are now forbidden from doing.
In 2009, cuts to fiesta budgets did start to come in. In Pollensa, for instance, there was supposed to have been a reduction of up to 25%. If there indeed was, and the main targets were said at the time to be the autumn and wine fairs rather than the fiestas, then it wasn't necessarily obvious.
If there are to be cuts to the fiestas, and there have to be, then what should their priorities be, who should pay for them and who indeed should organise them? Is a firework display, for instance, a priority? It depends on how much it costs, and getting to that information isn't always straightforward.
One town, Felanitx, cut its budget for fireworks by 2,000 euros in 2009, so that it cost 3,000 euros. My guess is that displays in resorts such as Can Picafort and Puerto Pollensa require a far larger wedge. Upwards probably of 10,000 euros. More possibly.
In itself, this doesn't sound like a lot. In the context of this year's budget for fiestas in Puerto Pollensa of 30,000 euros, then it is. But note that it is fiestas and not fiesta. The budget was for both Virgen del Carmen, now stripped of its fireworks and beach party, and the Feria del Mar and Sant Pere fiesta just gone. Yet, the main fiesta is Virgen del Carmen. Sant Pere may not cost a lot by comparison, but why didn't they just scrap it? Why have two fiestas three weeks apart? And on the religious angle, Sant Pere, or rather his image, gets dragged out during the Virgen celebrations, so what's the point of the earlier event?
The argument goes that the fiestas bring in tourists. I'm not convinced that they do, except those which occur out of season. There may be some tourists who book holidays expressly with the fiestas in mind, but how many is some? I'm sure no one has bothered to find out. But as there is so much entertainment being laid on, then maybe those who enjoy it, whether specifically attracted by fiestas or not, should contribute to the cost.
I don't have a good suggestion as to how you would create a mechanism for doing so, but assuming one could be dreamt up and let's say you have five thousand tourists knocking around, charge them all two euros a pop and bingo, there's the cost of your fireworks covered. And while you're at it, what about charging people from other towns? They don't pay the local taxes.
If not tourists paying, then what about the private sector? In the town of Dos Hermanas in the province of Sevilla, business has come to the rescue of the fiesta firework display. Put such a suggestion to businesses in Puerto Pollensa, and it would probably go down like a lead balloon, given the poor relations with the town hall and gripes about services for which taxes are paid, but the involvement of the private sector is common enough in other countries. In the USA, for example, the money for fireworks at fairs typically comes not from local authorities but from fundraising and from business.
And then there is the issue of who organises the fiestas. There has been talk of local people in Puerto Pollensa trying to stage the missing ingredients to the Virgen fiesta. In Inca, they have already looked to involve the locals in fiesta organisation. As a general principle, were the local citizenship charged with doing the organising, were it given a grant by the town hall (lower obviously than what it would otherwise spend), then this would not only give the local population greater "ownership" of the fiestas, it would also bring about a mix of private-public funding.
Perhaps we have to accept that the fiestas got too lavish for their own good and that a return to a more basic fiesta becomes the norm; DJs playing dance music isn't exactly traditional. Or perhaps we should now expect a different model for the fiestas, and one that isn't dependent upon the public purse.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
It comes as no great surprise, other than that it has taken till this year for reality to bite. The funding shortages have been there for ages. They existed B.C. (before crisis), but no one thought to do much about them, ever reliant on government funds or taking on extra debt that town halls are now forbidden from doing.
In 2009, cuts to fiesta budgets did start to come in. In Pollensa, for instance, there was supposed to have been a reduction of up to 25%. If there indeed was, and the main targets were said at the time to be the autumn and wine fairs rather than the fiestas, then it wasn't necessarily obvious.
If there are to be cuts to the fiestas, and there have to be, then what should their priorities be, who should pay for them and who indeed should organise them? Is a firework display, for instance, a priority? It depends on how much it costs, and getting to that information isn't always straightforward.
One town, Felanitx, cut its budget for fireworks by 2,000 euros in 2009, so that it cost 3,000 euros. My guess is that displays in resorts such as Can Picafort and Puerto Pollensa require a far larger wedge. Upwards probably of 10,000 euros. More possibly.
In itself, this doesn't sound like a lot. In the context of this year's budget for fiestas in Puerto Pollensa of 30,000 euros, then it is. But note that it is fiestas and not fiesta. The budget was for both Virgen del Carmen, now stripped of its fireworks and beach party, and the Feria del Mar and Sant Pere fiesta just gone. Yet, the main fiesta is Virgen del Carmen. Sant Pere may not cost a lot by comparison, but why didn't they just scrap it? Why have two fiestas three weeks apart? And on the religious angle, Sant Pere, or rather his image, gets dragged out during the Virgen celebrations, so what's the point of the earlier event?
The argument goes that the fiestas bring in tourists. I'm not convinced that they do, except those which occur out of season. There may be some tourists who book holidays expressly with the fiestas in mind, but how many is some? I'm sure no one has bothered to find out. But as there is so much entertainment being laid on, then maybe those who enjoy it, whether specifically attracted by fiestas or not, should contribute to the cost.
I don't have a good suggestion as to how you would create a mechanism for doing so, but assuming one could be dreamt up and let's say you have five thousand tourists knocking around, charge them all two euros a pop and bingo, there's the cost of your fireworks covered. And while you're at it, what about charging people from other towns? They don't pay the local taxes.
If not tourists paying, then what about the private sector? In the town of Dos Hermanas in the province of Sevilla, business has come to the rescue of the fiesta firework display. Put such a suggestion to businesses in Puerto Pollensa, and it would probably go down like a lead balloon, given the poor relations with the town hall and gripes about services for which taxes are paid, but the involvement of the private sector is common enough in other countries. In the USA, for example, the money for fireworks at fairs typically comes not from local authorities but from fundraising and from business.
And then there is the issue of who organises the fiestas. There has been talk of local people in Puerto Pollensa trying to stage the missing ingredients to the Virgen fiesta. In Inca, they have already looked to involve the locals in fiesta organisation. As a general principle, were the local citizenship charged with doing the organising, were it given a grant by the town hall (lower obviously than what it would otherwise spend), then this would not only give the local population greater "ownership" of the fiestas, it would also bring about a mix of private-public funding.
Perhaps we have to accept that the fiestas got too lavish for their own good and that a return to a more basic fiesta becomes the norm; DJs playing dance music isn't exactly traditional. Or perhaps we should now expect a different model for the fiestas, and one that isn't dependent upon the public purse.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
MALLORCA TODAY - Fires hit Santa Margalida and Artà
Two separate forest fires this afternoon affected some 350 hectares of land between Santa Margalida and Maria de la Salut and 250 hectares near Artà. The fire near Artà has required greater demands on emergency services in order to bring it under control, and the two fires have stretched the various services. Road transport was affected by the fires, for example causing the main road between Santa Margalida and Muro to be closed.
Update on this. It was being reported at 05.30 this morning that the Artà fire was still only 40% under full control. The fires, provoked by winds, dry land and high temperatures, caused in all four main roads to be closed, including the main coast road from Artà to Alcúdia.
Further update. The fires in the area around Santa Margalida, Maria and Llubi started up again this afternoon (7 July), but didn't cause a major incident.
Update on this. It was being reported at 05.30 this morning that the Artà fire was still only 40% under full control. The fires, provoked by winds, dry land and high temperatures, caused in all four main roads to be closed, including the main coast road from Artà to Alcúdia.
Further update. The fires in the area around Santa Margalida, Maria and Llubi started up again this afternoon (7 July), but didn't cause a major incident.
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - US marine detained after fight in Magalluf
A US marine from the assault ship USS Bataan, moored in Palma bay, was arrested earlier today after a fight involving a tourist in a hotel in Magalluf. The marine was released after making a declaration in front of a judge.
MALLORCA TODAY - Four Britons arrested over sexual attack
Four male British tourists, aged 19 and 20, have been arrested by the Guardia Civil investigating an alleged sexual assault on a young woman of 19 (also British) at a hotel in Magalluf.
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 6 July 2011
Around 23 degrees at 08.30, clear skies, quite fresh and breezy. Highs of 30 anticipated later in the day.
That old southerly wind has been a-blowin' and meaning warm air and therefore higher temperatures. Maximum locally, to 18.30, has been 32 degrees, but feeling a degree higher.
That old southerly wind has been a-blowin' and meaning warm air and therefore higher temperatures. Maximum locally, to 18.30, has been 32 degrees, but feeling a degree higher.
The Tender Trap
Trains don't have tenders as such any longer. What they do have are tenders of a different type; public ones to arrive at which firm gets the contract for this or that. Or to not arrive at. The tender for the train now arriving at Sa Pobla station has been delayed. We are sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused.
The trains operated by SFM (Serveis Ferroviaris de Mallorca) and the railway stations on the lines to Sa Pobla and Manacor from Palma are not being cleaned. The contract ran out at the end of June. The new tendering process has not been completed; indeed it seems to have all but run out of steam. As a consequence, the trains and stations are gathering litter and at Inca station the loos are shut because there is no hygiene service.
How is it that there can be such a break in continuity of service? Did someone fail to notice that a new contract was due? The answer is probably down to a failure of bureaucracy.
Though the rail service in Mallorca is pretty reasonable and inexpensive, there is something distinctly not right with it. Apart from the collapse of the extension to Alcúdia from Sa Pobla, it took ten months to get the line between Manacor and Sineu up and running again following an accident which occurred in May last year, and then you have the situation regarding the re-development of the old line between Manacor and Artà. When will it be completed? Will it be completed?
The new track and other facilities were due to have been completed some time between May and September this year. They won't be. They might be completed by the end of next year. Or they might not be. There is, and you might have guessed it, an issue with financing. However, that there is this issue with financing is a slight surprise.
When the Alcúdia extension was scrapped, funding from Madrid was meant to have been transferred to the Manacor-Artà line. If it was, then where is it? Or was there always going to be a shortfall on the budget that has now gone up to 150 million euros? Construction firms involved in the project are being left unpaid, indicative of a general malaise in the island's public sector of non-payment of suppliers, and one that President Bauzà is meant to be tackling.
Coming back to the breakdown in the tendering process for SFM's cleaning service, this highlights an issue as to how well or not the bureaucracy works in making the process happen smoothly. Putting out to tender makes contracts more transparent, but it doesn't always go to plan and indeed you wonder why it is really necessary.
As ever, we can rely on events in Puerto Pollensa to shed some light on the strange world of tendering in a Mallorcan style. Firstly, an example of when there is no tender. This occurred with the granting of a contract (later rescinded) to a firm charged with coming up with a general transport plan for the resort. The firm which was awarded it just so happened to have a family connection with the then town hall delegate for Puerto Pollensa. Something seemed a bit fishy, or so thought a number of people, especially as the firm in question had not previously undertaken such a project.
So much for transparency, something that the new mayor is planning to address. And being transparent and being seen to do the right thing was probably behind the mayor's demand that Sail and Surf should cease operations, only for him to say a couple of days later they could continue.
The story of Sail and Surf is bizarre. The sailing school has been in Puerto Pollensa for 40 years. What happened was that the school wanted a reduction in what it paid to the town hall. It was agreed that there would be a reduction, but, and despite having an annual concession with a four-year extension, the town hall reckoned that this demanded a new contract and therefore a new tender process.
Why such an established business should need to go through the rigmarole was anyone's guess. But the rigmarole was started and then got lost. As a result, the school started up again this year, someone found that everything wasn't quite in order, and the mayor, as I say, probably needing to be seen to be acting correctly, said the school had to stop. Then they could carry on, and an emergency tender notice for the "lot" that Sail and Surf has was posted onto the town hall's website. And the result of all this will be?
Not getting round to a new tendering process, not doing it all, or doing it but then forgetting that it was being done, when it was pointless doing it at all. The tender traps of Mallorca.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The trains operated by SFM (Serveis Ferroviaris de Mallorca) and the railway stations on the lines to Sa Pobla and Manacor from Palma are not being cleaned. The contract ran out at the end of June. The new tendering process has not been completed; indeed it seems to have all but run out of steam. As a consequence, the trains and stations are gathering litter and at Inca station the loos are shut because there is no hygiene service.
How is it that there can be such a break in continuity of service? Did someone fail to notice that a new contract was due? The answer is probably down to a failure of bureaucracy.
Though the rail service in Mallorca is pretty reasonable and inexpensive, there is something distinctly not right with it. Apart from the collapse of the extension to Alcúdia from Sa Pobla, it took ten months to get the line between Manacor and Sineu up and running again following an accident which occurred in May last year, and then you have the situation regarding the re-development of the old line between Manacor and Artà. When will it be completed? Will it be completed?
The new track and other facilities were due to have been completed some time between May and September this year. They won't be. They might be completed by the end of next year. Or they might not be. There is, and you might have guessed it, an issue with financing. However, that there is this issue with financing is a slight surprise.
When the Alcúdia extension was scrapped, funding from Madrid was meant to have been transferred to the Manacor-Artà line. If it was, then where is it? Or was there always going to be a shortfall on the budget that has now gone up to 150 million euros? Construction firms involved in the project are being left unpaid, indicative of a general malaise in the island's public sector of non-payment of suppliers, and one that President Bauzà is meant to be tackling.
Coming back to the breakdown in the tendering process for SFM's cleaning service, this highlights an issue as to how well or not the bureaucracy works in making the process happen smoothly. Putting out to tender makes contracts more transparent, but it doesn't always go to plan and indeed you wonder why it is really necessary.
As ever, we can rely on events in Puerto Pollensa to shed some light on the strange world of tendering in a Mallorcan style. Firstly, an example of when there is no tender. This occurred with the granting of a contract (later rescinded) to a firm charged with coming up with a general transport plan for the resort. The firm which was awarded it just so happened to have a family connection with the then town hall delegate for Puerto Pollensa. Something seemed a bit fishy, or so thought a number of people, especially as the firm in question had not previously undertaken such a project.
So much for transparency, something that the new mayor is planning to address. And being transparent and being seen to do the right thing was probably behind the mayor's demand that Sail and Surf should cease operations, only for him to say a couple of days later they could continue.
The story of Sail and Surf is bizarre. The sailing school has been in Puerto Pollensa for 40 years. What happened was that the school wanted a reduction in what it paid to the town hall. It was agreed that there would be a reduction, but, and despite having an annual concession with a four-year extension, the town hall reckoned that this demanded a new contract and therefore a new tender process.
Why such an established business should need to go through the rigmarole was anyone's guess. But the rigmarole was started and then got lost. As a result, the school started up again this year, someone found that everything wasn't quite in order, and the mayor, as I say, probably needing to be seen to be acting correctly, said the school had to stop. Then they could carry on, and an emergency tender notice for the "lot" that Sail and Surf has was posted onto the town hall's website. And the result of all this will be?
Not getting round to a new tendering process, not doing it all, or doing it but then forgetting that it was being done, when it was pointless doing it at all. The tender traps of Mallorca.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 5 July 2011
A less stifling night, with midnight temperatures of only around 22 degrees and now a morning that is sunny and promises a fine day. Local temperatures at 08.00 around the 21 mark. A high today of 29 may be on the cards.
And 29 it was today. 29.7 the local high to 18.00 in fact.
And 29 it was today. 29.7 the local high to 18.00 in fact.
MALLORCA TODAY - Police clash with "indignados" in Palma
The last remaining protesting "indignados" left the Plaza España in Palma yesterday morning, police and town hall deciding enough was enough after some two months of occupation. There was then a regathering which moved onto the plaza of the town hall where national police clashed with protesters and took action to protect the town hall. Some injuries resulted. There is due to be a further protest today.
No Hope: Private holiday lets
Justin in Paris has made 90,000 dollars. Daren in London has raked in 100 grand. In Mallorca, you can expect to coin in 2003 euros per month.
An advert on a Facebook page demanded a damn good clicking. Make money in Spain, it said. Rent out your place to travelers (all American travellers, therefore, as they are lacking an "l") and make 75 euros+ per night. Interesting, I thought. Not because I want to rent out to travelers or even travellers, but because it is quite possible that anyone wishing to - in Mallorca - shouldn't.
On the site, there was Daren, relaxing, sound in the knowledge of the 100 grand he had made. Novi from San Francisco was smiling, thanks to her 30,000 dollars. Justin looked suitably satisfied with his ninety thousand.
The 2003 euros was the calculation for a month to rent out an apartment in Palma or Pollensa. I went and had a look. Was anything actually available in Mallorca? Yes. Not much, but there were some places. By the night or longer. Some with photos, some without. Not having a photo doesn't really "sell" a place, but there might be good reason for there not being a photo.
It's kicking off again. The periodic wielding of the holiday-rental stick. The tourism ministry and friends at the tax authorities are spending their days in earnest perusal of websites, mainly British ones, seeking to identify properties for holiday rent. An announcement was made last year that web pages in particular would come under scrutiny, and a similar announcement has been made this year as well.
John Lance, in his letter to "The Bulletin" (Saturday, 2 July) made the point well enough, as he has in the past, about the lunatic situation in respect of holiday lets in Mallorca. The "grey area" he referred to isn't really all that grey. Want to now license your property for holiday rental? You can't.
There are plenty of properties which are licensed but they date back to and before the registration of, when was it, three, four years ago. Even then, however, there was massive confusion, and the dice were heavily loaded against apartment owners. The greyness of the situation is especially so with apartments, but it isn't so grey if you accept the version which states that you cannot rent out private apartments as holiday lets at all.
The tourism ministry has wielded its stick. In February, there were reports relating to action taken against owners of apartments in Santa Ponsa, to what was being offered, and to the fact that the apartments were being advertised via a UK website. And then there were the fines. Up to 30,050 euros.
We know the arguments in favour of more relaxed rules on holiday rentals: not everyone wants to stay in a hotel; tourists in private apartments and villas tend to spend more; a mix of accommodation types reflects the diversity of the tourism market. We know the hoteliers' arguments against: they have the hoops they have to go through; they invest heavily; they are a key source of employment. Like the endless all-inclusive debate, none of the arguments are new.
The hoteliers can, however, be somewhat disingenuous. When the Santa Ponsa reports were coming in, the head of the local hoteliers' association said that the competition from private apartments was unfair. Yes, but turn it around. Owners could argue the case of restriction of trade and of unfair competition that denies them the chance to properly register and market their properties.
As John Lance remarked, this could all end up with Europe getting involved. But for property owners, the problem is the lack of any co-ordinated voice. The hoteliers know this, and so, as importantly, does the Balearic Government.
It might be remembered that the hoteliers, well before the elections, expressed concern as to the appointment of Carlos Delgado as tourism minister. Now they express contentment, and Delgado, who one might hope might be more willing to throw off the shackles of trade restriction, has announced his intention to collaborate with the hotel sector in making the tourism law more flexible. And one aspect of this is the residential use of tourist establishments. Owned by the hoteliers, I think we can assume this to mean.
Just as is the case with its dealings with the major tour operators, a government in the Balearics, be it PP or PSOE, cannot afford to alienate the hotel sector. If there was hope that the private rental market might be treated more favourably by the new government, then I'm afraid it was probably a forlorn hope. And it will remain one.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
An advert on a Facebook page demanded a damn good clicking. Make money in Spain, it said. Rent out your place to travelers (all American travellers, therefore, as they are lacking an "l") and make 75 euros+ per night. Interesting, I thought. Not because I want to rent out to travelers or even travellers, but because it is quite possible that anyone wishing to - in Mallorca - shouldn't.
On the site, there was Daren, relaxing, sound in the knowledge of the 100 grand he had made. Novi from San Francisco was smiling, thanks to her 30,000 dollars. Justin looked suitably satisfied with his ninety thousand.
The 2003 euros was the calculation for a month to rent out an apartment in Palma or Pollensa. I went and had a look. Was anything actually available in Mallorca? Yes. Not much, but there were some places. By the night or longer. Some with photos, some without. Not having a photo doesn't really "sell" a place, but there might be good reason for there not being a photo.
It's kicking off again. The periodic wielding of the holiday-rental stick. The tourism ministry and friends at the tax authorities are spending their days in earnest perusal of websites, mainly British ones, seeking to identify properties for holiday rent. An announcement was made last year that web pages in particular would come under scrutiny, and a similar announcement has been made this year as well.
John Lance, in his letter to "The Bulletin" (Saturday, 2 July) made the point well enough, as he has in the past, about the lunatic situation in respect of holiday lets in Mallorca. The "grey area" he referred to isn't really all that grey. Want to now license your property for holiday rental? You can't.
There are plenty of properties which are licensed but they date back to and before the registration of, when was it, three, four years ago. Even then, however, there was massive confusion, and the dice were heavily loaded against apartment owners. The greyness of the situation is especially so with apartments, but it isn't so grey if you accept the version which states that you cannot rent out private apartments as holiday lets at all.
The tourism ministry has wielded its stick. In February, there were reports relating to action taken against owners of apartments in Santa Ponsa, to what was being offered, and to the fact that the apartments were being advertised via a UK website. And then there were the fines. Up to 30,050 euros.
We know the arguments in favour of more relaxed rules on holiday rentals: not everyone wants to stay in a hotel; tourists in private apartments and villas tend to spend more; a mix of accommodation types reflects the diversity of the tourism market. We know the hoteliers' arguments against: they have the hoops they have to go through; they invest heavily; they are a key source of employment. Like the endless all-inclusive debate, none of the arguments are new.
The hoteliers can, however, be somewhat disingenuous. When the Santa Ponsa reports were coming in, the head of the local hoteliers' association said that the competition from private apartments was unfair. Yes, but turn it around. Owners could argue the case of restriction of trade and of unfair competition that denies them the chance to properly register and market their properties.
As John Lance remarked, this could all end up with Europe getting involved. But for property owners, the problem is the lack of any co-ordinated voice. The hoteliers know this, and so, as importantly, does the Balearic Government.
It might be remembered that the hoteliers, well before the elections, expressed concern as to the appointment of Carlos Delgado as tourism minister. Now they express contentment, and Delgado, who one might hope might be more willing to throw off the shackles of trade restriction, has announced his intention to collaborate with the hotel sector in making the tourism law more flexible. And one aspect of this is the residential use of tourist establishments. Owned by the hoteliers, I think we can assume this to mean.
Just as is the case with its dealings with the major tour operators, a government in the Balearics, be it PP or PSOE, cannot afford to alienate the hotel sector. If there was hope that the private rental market might be treated more favourably by the new government, then I'm afraid it was probably a forlorn hope. And it will remain one.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, July 04, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 4 July 2011
Local highs at the 24 degrees mark by 08.30, but there is cloud and a breeze around that might bring on rain this morning. There seems to be more of a storm risk in the north east of the mainland rather than in the Balearics.
Got up to 30 degrees around midday, but then cooled off to a reasonable 25 in the afternoon. No sign of that rain once the morning mugginess wore off.
Got up to 30 degrees around midday, but then cooled off to a reasonable 25 in the afternoon. No sign of that rain once the morning mugginess wore off.
Language Rules: Don't enter containers!
"All concerts will start punctually at 22:00 hours."
So far not so bad. Bit of a problem with "22:00 hours" and the rather direct tone, which makes it sound like a police report, but then this is all part of the "rules", as will become evident.
"The entry will only be allowed in their precinct in the rest among the pieces of the program, if there is some."
Erm, now things get a tad awkward. We have a definite article "the entry" where a definite article is not required. We also have a "program" that can normally only be a "program" if it is American or a piece of software. We also have a totally meaningless sentence. If there is some what, exactly?
"The persons foreign to the organization can not make pictures, nor filming or enregistramens."
Ok, so the persons are presumably in fact people, as, and again a bit like police reports, persons are not generally the correct plural form. And who are these persons? They're foreigners. Is this right? From abroad. Tourists perhaps. Whoever they are, they "can not" where normally they "cannot" take pictures and then ... then we get a bit lost. The foreigners cannot make "enregistramens". Let me help out. It is in fact Catalan for recordings.
"It is not allowed to smoke in the inside of the courtyard of the Cloister, nor the use of ranges or similar. It is not allowed either to enter any type of container nor devices of telephony."
Right, so I think we get the bit about not smoking, but the use of these ranges or indeed similar. Where is this all going? And then it becomes a guessing game. What containers are there in the Cloister (I assume we are talking about the Cloister)? One is not, for example, allowed to enter a rubbish container or a skip. Is this what is meant? Entering a device of telephony would be some feat. Don't know about you, but I have never tried to physically get inside a mobile phone.
"The entry/ticket of those persons who use a non appropriate wardrobe in relation/relationship to/in the act will not be allowed."
Hmm. So someone or some persons come along with a wardrobe that is, oh I don't know, is it from IKEA perhaps? If it were from the grand El Corte Inglés department store would this be appropriate? The police report seems to have returned as well. Persons or persons unknown in a non appropriate (should of course be inappropriate) wardrobe and being caught in the act. Fine, it's becoming clearer. If you're caught in the act with your inappropriate wardrobe, then you are not allowed. Allowed to do what? Or allowed in maybe? Yep, I think it's allowed in.
Look, I could go on with all of this, but I imagine you have got the drift by now. This mangling of the English language comes from the ominously presented "General Rules" for the Pollensa Music Festival. Actually getting to these rules is a challenge in itself. Go to the website for the festival and the home page is that from 2010, so you might be inclined to give up. But if you click English, you come to 2011 and eventually to the rules.
There are several points about all this. One is that the publicity is still so poor that they haven't got round to changing the home page. The second is the sheer pomposity of some of these "rules", assuming you can understand them. They just go to reinforce what I have said about the limited appeal of the festival. They are designed to deter not to attract. And thirdly, there is of course the fact that the English is total gobbledegook.
This is an international event. Allegedly. English is the usual international language. Why on earth can't they find someone - from Britain or another English-speaking country, of whom there are many knocking around Pollensa - to spend a few minutes translating the Klingon that has been provided into English? Probably because they might have to pay someone, and they haven't got any money. It is, however, a dreadful indictment. You can understand a restaurant getting its English cocked up (actually you can't understand, because they could also get a native-speaker to give it the once-over), but this is a bloody music festival. Prestigious, so they say. The most prestigious in Mallorca. They're having a laugh.
You despair, you really do despair.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
So far not so bad. Bit of a problem with "22:00 hours" and the rather direct tone, which makes it sound like a police report, but then this is all part of the "rules", as will become evident.
"The entry will only be allowed in their precinct in the rest among the pieces of the program, if there is some."
Erm, now things get a tad awkward. We have a definite article "the entry" where a definite article is not required. We also have a "program" that can normally only be a "program" if it is American or a piece of software. We also have a totally meaningless sentence. If there is some what, exactly?
"The persons foreign to the organization can not make pictures, nor filming or enregistramens."
Ok, so the persons are presumably in fact people, as, and again a bit like police reports, persons are not generally the correct plural form. And who are these persons? They're foreigners. Is this right? From abroad. Tourists perhaps. Whoever they are, they "can not" where normally they "cannot" take pictures and then ... then we get a bit lost. The foreigners cannot make "enregistramens". Let me help out. It is in fact Catalan for recordings.
"It is not allowed to smoke in the inside of the courtyard of the Cloister, nor the use of ranges or similar. It is not allowed either to enter any type of container nor devices of telephony."
Right, so I think we get the bit about not smoking, but the use of these ranges or indeed similar. Where is this all going? And then it becomes a guessing game. What containers are there in the Cloister (I assume we are talking about the Cloister)? One is not, for example, allowed to enter a rubbish container or a skip. Is this what is meant? Entering a device of telephony would be some feat. Don't know about you, but I have never tried to physically get inside a mobile phone.
"The entry/ticket of those persons who use a non appropriate wardrobe in relation/relationship to/in the act will not be allowed."
Hmm. So someone or some persons come along with a wardrobe that is, oh I don't know, is it from IKEA perhaps? If it were from the grand El Corte Inglés department store would this be appropriate? The police report seems to have returned as well. Persons or persons unknown in a non appropriate (should of course be inappropriate) wardrobe and being caught in the act. Fine, it's becoming clearer. If you're caught in the act with your inappropriate wardrobe, then you are not allowed. Allowed to do what? Or allowed in maybe? Yep, I think it's allowed in.
Look, I could go on with all of this, but I imagine you have got the drift by now. This mangling of the English language comes from the ominously presented "General Rules" for the Pollensa Music Festival. Actually getting to these rules is a challenge in itself. Go to the website for the festival and the home page is that from 2010, so you might be inclined to give up. But if you click English, you come to 2011 and eventually to the rules.
There are several points about all this. One is that the publicity is still so poor that they haven't got round to changing the home page. The second is the sheer pomposity of some of these "rules", assuming you can understand them. They just go to reinforce what I have said about the limited appeal of the festival. They are designed to deter not to attract. And thirdly, there is of course the fact that the English is total gobbledegook.
This is an international event. Allegedly. English is the usual international language. Why on earth can't they find someone - from Britain or another English-speaking country, of whom there are many knocking around Pollensa - to spend a few minutes translating the Klingon that has been provided into English? Probably because they might have to pay someone, and they haven't got any money. It is, however, a dreadful indictment. You can understand a restaurant getting its English cocked up (actually you can't understand, because they could also get a native-speaker to give it the once-over), but this is a bloody music festival. Prestigious, so they say. The most prestigious in Mallorca. They're having a laugh.
You despair, you really do despair.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 3 July 2011
Some cloud lurking about inland, but otherwise a fine morning with temperatures at 09.00 already at 24 degrees. Winds moving southerly which could provoke higher temperatures.
The cloud built up and, at 17.00, the sky is overcast but the air sticky and with a local maximum of 30.2 (Alcúdia/Playa de Muro). There is a risk of rain tomorrow and also of a storm. Feels like it.
The cloud built up and, at 17.00, the sky is overcast but the air sticky and with a local maximum of 30.2 (Alcúdia/Playa de Muro). There is a risk of rain tomorrow and also of a storm. Feels like it.
MALLORCA TODAY - Higher taxes paid in tourist towns
According to information from the finance ministry, residents of tourist towns on the coast of Mallorca pay far higher taxes than those inland. Alcúdia ranks fifth of towns (Palma is excluded from the list) with a burden per resident of 1,180 euros. This is some way short of Deià which heads the list at 1,845 euros. Muro is eighth with 1,034 euros.
The Party's Over: Fiestas
The threat of cuts to fiesta programmes is becoming a reality. Pollensa town hall is considering scrapping the street party of the night of 1 August that runs on into the early hours of 2 August, the day of the Moors and Christians battle that is the climax to the town's Patrona festivities.
Mayor Tomeu Cifre has said that something has to give. If not the street party, then other things would have to go, one possibility being the "marxa fresca" (the white party) that is normally held on the night before the street party.
You might ask what the difference is between these two parties. Both are, after all, held in the streets and squares of Pollensa. The marxa fresca is more an open-air disco in the Plaça Major, whereas the street party of 1 August involves three squares holding rock and dance music concerts. The cost alone of staging this street party, according to the mayor, is 40,000 euros; 40,000 euros the town hall simply hasn't got.
The funding crisis for cultural events in Pollensa nearly claimed this year's music festival. While the previous town hall administration was tardy, to blame it entirely for the disorganisation is unfair. The new tourism ministry has ridden to the music festival's rescue in providing emergency funds, the ministry of the last government having blocked funding.
The town hall was short of nearly two hundred thousand euros for the music festival, money that had traditionally been forthcoming from the government. Though the new tourism minister, Carlos Delgado, has assured his support for the music festival, he has also made it perfectly clear that an examination of grants to events from the government is going to be undertaken - in an as objective fashion as possible. In other words, there can be no guarantee that the music festival, along with any other recipient of government cash, will be helped out so generously in future, if at all.
In the case of the music festival, why has the tourism ministry been helping to fund it? I raised the question before. What does it really do for tourism? Well, come on, what does it do? Anyone able to give a firm answer? I would very much doubt it. If any ministry should be putting its hands into its pockets, then it should be that for culture.
In terms of the economic resources directed towards fiestas or festivals and of the direct economic benefits from tourism, to justify funding in the name of tourism is sophistry.
In Pollensa the mayor has also said that the budget for this year's fiestas, well down in any event on what is needed, will see 30,000 euros directed towards the fiestas in Puerto Pollensa, both the recent "feria del mar" and the upcoming Virgen del Carmen.
The town hall has 130,000 euros in all at its disposal. Patrona in the old town gets the lion's share of the budget (100,000 euros), yet, with the exception of the Moors and Christians battle, Patrona doesn't necessarily attract huge numbers of tourists. The events in the port, on the other hand, do, for the very good reason that this is where most of the tourists are to be found.
This underlines the fact that, for all the talk of fiestas as traditional events which appeal to tourists, tourists are not the primary target. They are events for the local population; as is the case with the music festival as well. There is nothing at all wrong with this, but, and despite the music festival being a different category of event to fiestas, Delgado is absolutely right to be taking a hard look at grants. If by doing so, he sends out a message to town halls that they need to apply greater realism, then he will have done a great service.
To come back to the street party, there is a further reason for its possibly being scrapped, and that is the problems it causes. Increasingly, it has become an excuse for an almighty great piss-up - a botellón - and the ambience is less than pleasant. Calls have been made, for instance, for people to desist from using the streets as toilets.
In Sa Pobla they dropped their own street party last year. Similar reasons were cited to those in Pollensa where there has been disquiet expressed as to the fact that the fiestas have lost their sense of tradition among young people and simply become the launch pad for drunkenness and misbehaviour. So, Pollensa town hall has more than one agenda when it comes to abandoning the street party, but overriding this is the fact that the fiestas have needed to be scrutinised more intensely. It's a great shame that economic crisis has necessitated this, but it is long overdue.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Mayor Tomeu Cifre has said that something has to give. If not the street party, then other things would have to go, one possibility being the "marxa fresca" (the white party) that is normally held on the night before the street party.
You might ask what the difference is between these two parties. Both are, after all, held in the streets and squares of Pollensa. The marxa fresca is more an open-air disco in the Plaça Major, whereas the street party of 1 August involves three squares holding rock and dance music concerts. The cost alone of staging this street party, according to the mayor, is 40,000 euros; 40,000 euros the town hall simply hasn't got.
The funding crisis for cultural events in Pollensa nearly claimed this year's music festival. While the previous town hall administration was tardy, to blame it entirely for the disorganisation is unfair. The new tourism ministry has ridden to the music festival's rescue in providing emergency funds, the ministry of the last government having blocked funding.
The town hall was short of nearly two hundred thousand euros for the music festival, money that had traditionally been forthcoming from the government. Though the new tourism minister, Carlos Delgado, has assured his support for the music festival, he has also made it perfectly clear that an examination of grants to events from the government is going to be undertaken - in an as objective fashion as possible. In other words, there can be no guarantee that the music festival, along with any other recipient of government cash, will be helped out so generously in future, if at all.
In the case of the music festival, why has the tourism ministry been helping to fund it? I raised the question before. What does it really do for tourism? Well, come on, what does it do? Anyone able to give a firm answer? I would very much doubt it. If any ministry should be putting its hands into its pockets, then it should be that for culture.
In terms of the economic resources directed towards fiestas or festivals and of the direct economic benefits from tourism, to justify funding in the name of tourism is sophistry.
In Pollensa the mayor has also said that the budget for this year's fiestas, well down in any event on what is needed, will see 30,000 euros directed towards the fiestas in Puerto Pollensa, both the recent "feria del mar" and the upcoming Virgen del Carmen.
The town hall has 130,000 euros in all at its disposal. Patrona in the old town gets the lion's share of the budget (100,000 euros), yet, with the exception of the Moors and Christians battle, Patrona doesn't necessarily attract huge numbers of tourists. The events in the port, on the other hand, do, for the very good reason that this is where most of the tourists are to be found.
This underlines the fact that, for all the talk of fiestas as traditional events which appeal to tourists, tourists are not the primary target. They are events for the local population; as is the case with the music festival as well. There is nothing at all wrong with this, but, and despite the music festival being a different category of event to fiestas, Delgado is absolutely right to be taking a hard look at grants. If by doing so, he sends out a message to town halls that they need to apply greater realism, then he will have done a great service.
To come back to the street party, there is a further reason for its possibly being scrapped, and that is the problems it causes. Increasingly, it has become an excuse for an almighty great piss-up - a botellón - and the ambience is less than pleasant. Calls have been made, for instance, for people to desist from using the streets as toilets.
In Sa Pobla they dropped their own street party last year. Similar reasons were cited to those in Pollensa where there has been disquiet expressed as to the fact that the fiestas have lost their sense of tradition among young people and simply become the launch pad for drunkenness and misbehaviour. So, Pollensa town hall has more than one agenda when it comes to abandoning the street party, but overriding this is the fact that the fiestas have needed to be scrutinised more intensely. It's a great shame that economic crisis has necessitated this, but it is long overdue.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Pollensa Patrona party under threat
The night party of 1 August into 2 August during the Patrona fiestas in Pollensa may not happen. The town hall is considering dropping the party on account of its cost and the problems it brings (excessive drinking, for instance). The party usually comprises rock and other bands playing on stages in different squares in the town.
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 2 July 2011
At 08.00 we have cloud cover, some of it heavy cloud, and we have light rain. Where's this come from exactly, as it was not forecast. Temperature around 20 degrees. As for the rest of the day, who can tell, certainly not the forecasters.
Well, all cleared up and was bloomin' hot, an area high to 19.00 being 30.1 in Alcúdia/Playa de Muro.
Well, all cleared up and was bloomin' hot, an area high to 19.00 being 30.1 in Alcúdia/Playa de Muro.
All Fall Down: Balcony diving again
On the "Ultima Hora" website some wag posted a comment under a news item. It read (and I'm translating here): "Balearic tourist promotion. Blue-flag beaches. UNESCO mountain heritage. University Hospital Son Espases (specialists in balconying)".
You can probably work out what the news item was about. The day after someone died falling out of a hotel in Ibiza, two more didn't quite bite the dust in terminal fashion: one in Cala Rajada, the other in Sa Coma. I might be inclined to make a not so funny gag about comas in Sa Coma, but I won't; in any event the one who made the descent suffered relatively minor injuries.
Balconying. Balcony diving. I've done the subject before, but it doesn't stop me doing it again. Another person commented under the news item that it was the "theme of the summer". Which may be true, but then it was last summer's theme too. And what a fine theme it is as well. If it weren't for the case that it can end in tragedy, as it did in Ibiza, then we could all have a jolly good laugh. Actually, we do have a laugh, because what else can you do when you learn of the lack of brain capacity of some visitors to Majorca and the Balearics and the potential for the brain to be permanently lacking as it spills out onto some poolside concrete.
Rather than repeat what has been said before, let's consider some of the thought processes and justifications that have been forthcoming from the incidents of what may be balcony diving or may be falls as a result of climbing from balcony to balcony.
Instead of just admitting that falls are because someone was mad enough to try and dive into a pool, what you get is some other reason. Not from the police, the paramedics or the hotels, but from the ones who have suffered injuries or from their friends.
One thing about balconies is that they have railings or some other elevated barrier. They are there for a good reason. To stop you falling off. I can think of only two really good excuses as to why anyone might find him or herself on such a barrier. One is that there is a fire. The other is that an axe murderer has broken into the room. Both might require that a certain risk is taken in effecting an escape. Otherwise there isn't a good excuse.
Nevertheless, you get excuses. The fall was the result of a slip. The hotel was negligent. Neither is satisfactory because they ignore the obvious and seek a justification or to apportion blame. I can give you an example of how this goes.
When one particular incident occurred, I posted something about it onto this blog. This attracted a great number of comments, one coming from someone claiming to be the person who had fallen (and it may well have been this person) and who refuted the idea that it had been a case of balcony diving. The best of all was someone who reckoned that the hotel should be sued.
Do people deliberately fall from balconies as a way of trying to extract compensation? It would be an extreme way to do so, but you can bet your life that compensation and ambulance-chasing legal firms are likely to loom into the equation.
The Ibizan hoteliers' president has been at pains to point out that the railing at the hotel in Ibiza is of a height that conforms with requirements and that everything possible has been done to prevent the sort of incident which occurred there. But why should he have to make this confirmation? Well, why do you think?
Hotels in Majorca and the Balearics fall foul of compensation claims all the time, and many are spurious. I mentioned all this in an article back in February ("Trying It On", 22 February). And the poor hotel is normally left with no alternative but to cough up for cases that are brought not in Spain but in the UK or elsewhere. With balcony diving, well, you would deny you'd done this if there was some possibility of getting compensation; not even ambulance-chasers could surely get it to stick if it was admitted, though you wouldn't put it past them trying. And crazy it would be if the hotel were held liable because someone had been crazy enough to take a dive.
There is such a thing as assuming responsibility, but the notion has become obsolete thanks to the rush to compensatory litigation and to assigning blame when blame resides elsewhere - splattered over a hotel terrace.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
You can probably work out what the news item was about. The day after someone died falling out of a hotel in Ibiza, two more didn't quite bite the dust in terminal fashion: one in Cala Rajada, the other in Sa Coma. I might be inclined to make a not so funny gag about comas in Sa Coma, but I won't; in any event the one who made the descent suffered relatively minor injuries.
Balconying. Balcony diving. I've done the subject before, but it doesn't stop me doing it again. Another person commented under the news item that it was the "theme of the summer". Which may be true, but then it was last summer's theme too. And what a fine theme it is as well. If it weren't for the case that it can end in tragedy, as it did in Ibiza, then we could all have a jolly good laugh. Actually, we do have a laugh, because what else can you do when you learn of the lack of brain capacity of some visitors to Majorca and the Balearics and the potential for the brain to be permanently lacking as it spills out onto some poolside concrete.
Rather than repeat what has been said before, let's consider some of the thought processes and justifications that have been forthcoming from the incidents of what may be balcony diving or may be falls as a result of climbing from balcony to balcony.
Instead of just admitting that falls are because someone was mad enough to try and dive into a pool, what you get is some other reason. Not from the police, the paramedics or the hotels, but from the ones who have suffered injuries or from their friends.
One thing about balconies is that they have railings or some other elevated barrier. They are there for a good reason. To stop you falling off. I can think of only two really good excuses as to why anyone might find him or herself on such a barrier. One is that there is a fire. The other is that an axe murderer has broken into the room. Both might require that a certain risk is taken in effecting an escape. Otherwise there isn't a good excuse.
Nevertheless, you get excuses. The fall was the result of a slip. The hotel was negligent. Neither is satisfactory because they ignore the obvious and seek a justification or to apportion blame. I can give you an example of how this goes.
When one particular incident occurred, I posted something about it onto this blog. This attracted a great number of comments, one coming from someone claiming to be the person who had fallen (and it may well have been this person) and who refuted the idea that it had been a case of balcony diving. The best of all was someone who reckoned that the hotel should be sued.
Do people deliberately fall from balconies as a way of trying to extract compensation? It would be an extreme way to do so, but you can bet your life that compensation and ambulance-chasing legal firms are likely to loom into the equation.
The Ibizan hoteliers' president has been at pains to point out that the railing at the hotel in Ibiza is of a height that conforms with requirements and that everything possible has been done to prevent the sort of incident which occurred there. But why should he have to make this confirmation? Well, why do you think?
Hotels in Majorca and the Balearics fall foul of compensation claims all the time, and many are spurious. I mentioned all this in an article back in February ("Trying It On", 22 February). And the poor hotel is normally left with no alternative but to cough up for cases that are brought not in Spain but in the UK or elsewhere. With balcony diving, well, you would deny you'd done this if there was some possibility of getting compensation; not even ambulance-chasers could surely get it to stick if it was admitted, though you wouldn't put it past them trying. And crazy it would be if the hotel were held liable because someone had been crazy enough to take a dive.
There is such a thing as assuming responsibility, but the notion has become obsolete thanks to the rush to compensatory litigation and to assigning blame when blame resides elsewhere - splattered over a hotel terrace.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, July 01, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 1 July 2011
Not the cloud around that there was yesterday morning and it should be a clear and sunny day with maximums of 29 forecast. Local temperatures at 08.00 around 21 degrees.
Well, got that wrong. There was a fair amount of cloud and quite heavy cloud during the morning, but cleared up later to give a day's high to 18.00 of 25.9 C.
Well, got that wrong. There was a fair amount of cloud and quite heavy cloud during the morning, but cleared up later to give a day's high to 18.00 of 25.9 C.
Limited Appeal?: The Pollensa Music Festival
Better late than never. Used as one is to the tardiness with which fiesta and fair information is given out, the lateness with which that for this year's Pollensa Music Festival was officially announced takes some beating.
The music festival isn't like the fiestas. It is an international event, supposedly. It attracts international artists at any rate. And booking international artists and arranging for their appearance doesn't happen with the same minimal preparation as that required for, for example, fiesta "sardinadas" that occur every year, on the same day and with the same musical accompaniment.
The programme should have been released weeks ago. It finally emerged, on a scrappy PDF on Pollensa town hall's website on 29 June, three days before the first concert. No fanfare. Nothing. Not even a poster, and the website link still the same as that for 2010. To describe the pre-publicity as rubbish would be an insult to garbage the world over. It is very poor.
A mystery with the lateness with which the programme has been published is that it was already known. On 14 June, the line-up was announced on the website of a Spanish newspaper. It bears no difference to that which now appears on the town hall's website.
Yet, the day after the 29 June announcement, we learned that the programme had to be put together in a short period of three weeks. Given the previous press announcement, this doesn't quite chime, but to be fair the lateness of the official announcement may have more to do with finalising contracts rather than finding performers.
There are mitigating circumstances for the delay and for the reduction in the number of concerts. In 2009 there were twelve, last year there were eleven. This year there will be eight. (A later concert in September by the National Orchestra of Spain might yet be added.)
The circumstances are financial and political. As far as the latter is concerned, the previous Pollensa town hall administration is being blamed for having not done anything. But the funding of the festival is shrouded in some confusion. One report suggests that the budget is only 30,000 euros lower than 2010; previous ones had suggested it would be just over a half and that the primary cause of the shortfall was the non-receipt of a grant of 180,000 euros from the tourism ministry.
Whatever the financial or political reasons, the fact is that this year's festival, which did seem at one point to be in doubt, is the fiftieth. For such a celebration the organisation has, at best, been disappointing.
Despite the reduction in the number of concerts, quality, we are also told, has not been lost. While quality doesn't mean that you might have heard of the performers (and as one who is hardly a classical music aficionado, I haven't heard of most of them), there is none of previous years' quirkiness, insofar as you can describe Supertramp's Roger Hodgson or Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley as quirky. Of this year's performers only the flamenco singer José Mercé registers with me.
Mercé and the Israeli singer Noa are identified as two acts with appeal to a wider public. Possibly so, but perhaps the fiftieth anniversary is a time to take stock and assess what the music festival should all be about. While the setting of the concerts in the cloister of Sant Domingo is unquestionably fine, the programme and the atmosphere of the festival are too elitist.
The festival is described as being the Balearics' most prestigious. But prestige doesn't necessarily mean appeal. What does it really do for Pollensa or for Mallorca? Does it, in itself, attract much tourism? No one has probably ever sought to find out. Carlos Delgado, the new tourism minister, has said the festival will continue to get support, but in Delgado we trust to take a good look at some sacred cows.
The festival would benefit from a broader programme, a sort of fringe if you like. There might also be sense in integrating it with what goes on in Sa Pobla at its jazz festival where genuinely international artists such as McCoy Tyner have appeared, and for free.
If the festival is so prestigious and if financing is such an issue, then why not find major sponsors? Thomas Cook can sponsor an Ironman triathlon in Alcúdia, so why not a sponsor of such size on board for the music festival? Despite the prestige, it isn't perhaps that interesting an event for sponsors. And you come back to the whole issue of tourism with a cultural bent. Sports tourism yes, but some stuffy concerts for a small minority?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The music festival isn't like the fiestas. It is an international event, supposedly. It attracts international artists at any rate. And booking international artists and arranging for their appearance doesn't happen with the same minimal preparation as that required for, for example, fiesta "sardinadas" that occur every year, on the same day and with the same musical accompaniment.
The programme should have been released weeks ago. It finally emerged, on a scrappy PDF on Pollensa town hall's website on 29 June, three days before the first concert. No fanfare. Nothing. Not even a poster, and the website link still the same as that for 2010. To describe the pre-publicity as rubbish would be an insult to garbage the world over. It is very poor.
A mystery with the lateness with which the programme has been published is that it was already known. On 14 June, the line-up was announced on the website of a Spanish newspaper. It bears no difference to that which now appears on the town hall's website.
Yet, the day after the 29 June announcement, we learned that the programme had to be put together in a short period of three weeks. Given the previous press announcement, this doesn't quite chime, but to be fair the lateness of the official announcement may have more to do with finalising contracts rather than finding performers.
There are mitigating circumstances for the delay and for the reduction in the number of concerts. In 2009 there were twelve, last year there were eleven. This year there will be eight. (A later concert in September by the National Orchestra of Spain might yet be added.)
The circumstances are financial and political. As far as the latter is concerned, the previous Pollensa town hall administration is being blamed for having not done anything. But the funding of the festival is shrouded in some confusion. One report suggests that the budget is only 30,000 euros lower than 2010; previous ones had suggested it would be just over a half and that the primary cause of the shortfall was the non-receipt of a grant of 180,000 euros from the tourism ministry.
Whatever the financial or political reasons, the fact is that this year's festival, which did seem at one point to be in doubt, is the fiftieth. For such a celebration the organisation has, at best, been disappointing.
Despite the reduction in the number of concerts, quality, we are also told, has not been lost. While quality doesn't mean that you might have heard of the performers (and as one who is hardly a classical music aficionado, I haven't heard of most of them), there is none of previous years' quirkiness, insofar as you can describe Supertramp's Roger Hodgson or Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley as quirky. Of this year's performers only the flamenco singer José Mercé registers with me.
Mercé and the Israeli singer Noa are identified as two acts with appeal to a wider public. Possibly so, but perhaps the fiftieth anniversary is a time to take stock and assess what the music festival should all be about. While the setting of the concerts in the cloister of Sant Domingo is unquestionably fine, the programme and the atmosphere of the festival are too elitist.
The festival is described as being the Balearics' most prestigious. But prestige doesn't necessarily mean appeal. What does it really do for Pollensa or for Mallorca? Does it, in itself, attract much tourism? No one has probably ever sought to find out. Carlos Delgado, the new tourism minister, has said the festival will continue to get support, but in Delgado we trust to take a good look at some sacred cows.
The festival would benefit from a broader programme, a sort of fringe if you like. There might also be sense in integrating it with what goes on in Sa Pobla at its jazz festival where genuinely international artists such as McCoy Tyner have appeared, and for free.
If the festival is so prestigious and if financing is such an issue, then why not find major sponsors? Thomas Cook can sponsor an Ironman triathlon in Alcúdia, so why not a sponsor of such size on board for the music festival? Despite the prestige, it isn't perhaps that interesting an event for sponsors. And you come back to the whole issue of tourism with a cultural bent. Sports tourism yes, but some stuffy concerts for a small minority?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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