The Tourism Season: It's just not cricket

Who said that the season is getting shorter? Quite the opposite. It is getting longer. Fact. In 1964 it started on 2 May. This year it started on 6 April. Ok, some explanation is needed. The season - the tourism season - is underway (sort of), a number of places having opened over the first week of the month, but I'm not referring to the tourism season. The English county cricket season started on Sunday.

Fifty years ago, resident and tourist alike would not just have had to wait until what has become the official start of the tourism season - May - to catch up with the county scores. They would have to have waited for as long as it took for a British newspaper to find its way on to a newsstand. It seems remarkable now, when scores are available in real time, that this delay was still with us until relatively recently, a delay which, before printing in Europe, typically meant that a paper was read a day late. In the good old days of early tourism, it would have been a longer delay. Matches would have finished by the time it was possible to pore over the scorecards for the first day's play.

Had you been a tourist or resident desperate to know the scores from the first matches of the 1964 season, you would have been engrossed by the passage of play of the first two games of that season. They were slow, painfully slow. This was, after all, the era of the young Geoffrey Boycott and the year when the most mind-numbingly dull test match of all time was played - England v. Australia at Old Trafford. Simpson batted into the third day in scoring 300, and Barrington spent most of the rest of the match making 250. The result? It was a foregone conclusion from the first ball. A very bore draw.

Oddly enough, and despite the sheer tedium that was most cricket in the early 1960s, it still had a hold over the nation's sporting affections (the nation largely of course having been England). But then we didn't really know any different. There was a tradition, and this tradition demanded lack of excitement and staidness. It wasn't just cricket. This was British society fifty years ago, one that was right on the cusp of being shaken out of its traditional stuffiness, stiffness and dullness.

For the tourist (British, that is) in search of the cricket scores in 1964, he encountered something that was anything but dull. This was the new world. Yet for all that there was sun, sea and sombreros, British customs demanded that some traditions were transported south. In compiling the history of the last 50 years of Mallorcan tourism for the "Majorca Daily Bulletin" last year, I was struck by how pervasive this export was. Local hotels had to adapt to different tastes, and local bar owners had to learn how to make a proper cuppa.

Cricket, in its longer form, persists with its bizarre ritual of the "tea break". It is doubtful that much tea is now drunk, as the break is a period for a brief encounter with the masseur and for the quaffing of bananas, but it is a relic of a bygone era, when tea was taken around four o'clock: by cricketers and by the rest of Britain. The tourist would have wanted his or her afternoon cuppa as well until he or she came to appreciate that there were alternatives and they were available in industrial quantities at dirt cheap prices.

What any cricket-loving from the early 1960s tourist would have been unable to indulge in would have been a decent game of beach cricket. I don't know if there has ever been any worthy research into the subject, but I would suggest that the rise of the holiday to Mallorca (and other destinations), where beaches are unlike Weston-super-Mare's, had something to do with the decline in cricket's popularity. Football can, after all, be played on soft sand.

For all that it was new and exciting, the Mallorcan holiday back then held true to traditions that were not Mallorca's but were those of other nations, the British in particular. The first phase of tourism was, in a sense, akin to the rituals and norms of English county cricket. Predictability was demanded, but in pandering to this predictability, Mallorca fell foul of the stodginess that typified cricket.

The holiday to Mallorca became, inadvertently therefore, a tradition with the trappings of an imported culture. It required shocks to wake the island out of the stupor that this created, just as it needed shocks to shake cricket out of its torpor. Kerry Packer and the World Series were cricket's equivalent of the oil crisis. And much closer to the present day, the emergence of fast and furious competitors in distant lands - Egypt, Turkey and so on - is like IPL and T20, with the axis of cricket power having been tilted.

Cricket has had to adapt. Its county season starts a month earlier in order to accommodate the brashness of the 20-over thrash. A traditional sport, shaken to its roots, has been able to move with the times. For Mallorca, the most traditional of holiday destinations, the season hasn't truly started. It has typically got later and shorter.

MALLORCA TODAY - Mallorca fail to move closer to the play-offs in Galicia

Lugo 2 : 1 Real Mallorca
Mallorca failed to get closer to a play-off position. The visitors had taken the lead after twelve minutes (Riverola) but Lugo came back strongly and equalised through Díaz on the half hour and it was Lugo who mainly dominated the rest of the match. Miño saved Mallorca after 60 minutes but he couldn't on the 84th minute, when pressure from Lugo finally told and Juanjo secured the winner for the home side, who also have play-off ambitions. Seven rounds of matches remaining, Mallorca are four points off sixth spot.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 6 April 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (8.00am): 13.5C
Forecast high: 19C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): South 2 to 3 backing for a time Northeast 3 to 4 during the middle of the day. Swell to one metre.

Another fine day. Sun all the way and warm. Outlook for the week - good. Photo here is of Puerto Alcúdia yesterday.

Evening update (19.00): A high of 22.9C.

Mainly On The Plain: Tourism in Mallorca's centre

The size of a town's population doesn't determine whether it has or doesn't have some form of tourism or some form of tourism presence (there is a difference; I'll come to that). By population, Ses Salines with 5,227 inhabitants is the smallest Mallorcan town with a discernible tourism industry (consisting of Colonia Sant Jordi), though Deyá, with under a thousand residents, might also make a claim. But many Mallorcan towns have little tourism. Fourteen of them comprise the mancomunidad (commonwealth, if you like) of the Pla de Mallorca (Mallorca's plain). The largest of these towns is Porreres with 5,486 people; the smallest is Ariany with 877. If you combined all the fourteen, their collective population would still only make it the fourth largest town in Mallorca. They can muster 38,114 people between them, over 2,500 fewer than Manacor, the third largest municipality.

The towns of the plain neither have much by way of tourism nor much by way of tourism presence, i.e. official information for tourists (so I thought) or tourist information offices. In fact, between the fourteen towns there is only one information office. It is in Sineu and it only opens on Wednesday market days.

Acknowledging this lack of presence, the fourteen have hit on the idea of beefing up Sineu's office. They are planning on it opening every day, being staffed by someone who can speak different languages (especially English and German) and offering information about all the towns and not just Sineu, which is the case at present.

Apart from it already having this office, Sineu as the centre of the plain's tourism presence makes some sense. The geographic centre of Mallorca doesn't quite lie within its municipal boundaries, but it almost does; it is actually in the neighbouring Lloret de Vistalegre. But unlike Lloret, which no one has ever heard of, Sineu has been heard of. The market is one thing, there is also the palace of the Kings of Mallorca, which was redeveloped in the early fourteenth century, having previously been a Moorish building.

So Sineu has some form in terms of history that might appeal to the more discerning tourist; more so perhaps than any of the other towns on the plain. Petra might, thanks to Father Junipero Serra, claim otherwise, but it doesn't have a feature quite as dominating as Sineu's Santa Maria church. When it comes to a tourist information office, therefore, Sineu it is.

The towns lack a tourist presence not just because they don't have any information offices; their official websites are similarly without tourist presence. Go to them and you won't find on any of them something which shouts out "tourism". Montuïri does have something called "visita turística prehistórica y tradicional", a PDF for the Son Fornés museum and talayotic site, some of which is conveniently upside down. It does, though, point out that guided tours can be booked. Otherwise, the towns' websites, while several of them have menu entries for places of interest and for fiestas, make no mention of tourism.

But, tucked away on some of them is a link to "Visit Pla de Mallorca". I probably should have known of the existence of this, but I didn't. It is a separate website. And it isn't at all bad. The information is even in English (and German), and the information is pretty decent. There are historical backgrounds to each of the towns and, under "sightseeing", there are lists of features in each town which, when you click on them, give good detail. For example, the palace of the Kings of Mallorca was handed over to an order of nuns in the late sixteenth century. The description tells us much about its architectural development since then.

Who, though, is aware of this little gem of a website? Why is it sitting there, lurking on some of the municipal websites and not on others? Why is it seemingly not linked into some grander portal? Why is not more known of the information for places to stay? The agrotourism, for instance. Why is there not more awareness of a promotional video on YouTube? It was uploaded four years ago. It has only had slightly over 4,500 views.

A regularly manned tourist information office in Sineu is an improvement. It could hardly be anything other than an improvement, but one has to question the determination and/or interest in developing tourism in the towns of the Mallorcan plain. All the towns have now had to submit tourism plans (and I've mentioned a couple of them previously; those for Algaida and Montuïri). This obligation under the tourism law has probably shaken them out of a certain lethargy. Yet astonishingly, they had already got together and produced a highly informative website. It's just that no one knew it was there.
http://www.visitplademallorca.net/

* Photo is of the convent at the former royal palace in Sineu. With due acknowledgement, it is taken from the website.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 5 April 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (7.30am): 13.5C
Forecast high: 20C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): Variable 2 to 3 settling North 3 during the middle of the day. Swells to two metres.

Total contrast with yesterday morning. Calm, bright and a fine day in prospect, following what was a warm night (still 19C at midnight). Northerly breezes making things fresh, but warm sunshine otherwise. Outlook is very good into next week.

Evening update (20.00): Fine day. A high of 22.1C.

The Allure Of The Mallorcan April Fair

When summer slips into autumn, you know that the season is changing, not because of leaves turning brown and falling but because the fiestas finish and the fairs start. The thing that we erroneously refer to as "winter" in Mallorca is bookended by fairs. They usher it in and they show it the door. The fairs are back, an agricultural-industrial-artisanal merry-go-round of pre-match warm-ups for the main events of the summer fiestas.  

The fairs are not all tractors, light engineering and pots to which livestock may or may not be added to their list of attractions, but it is Mallorca's agro-industrial complex which dominates the exhibition stands at the island's April fairs. Andraitx this weekend, Calvia, Santa Eugènia, Santa Margalida all next weekend, Muro and Santa Maria over the final weekend of the month. Each fair follows a similar theme, a variant being next weekend in Porreres where the fair has been ecologicalised.

The exceptions to this rule of fairs include, appropriately enough for the bookending nature of the spring fairs, the book fair in Vilafranca at the end of the month. A town more commonly associated with its melon gluttony goes cultural. Another exception is the Playa de Muro bike fest this coming week, a predominantly Germanic gathering of cycle technology, fitness and racing. At the end of the month and stretching into May is the daddy of all the fairs - the Palma boat show, happily restored following its hiatus. And this weekend there is another boat show, Puerto Alcúdia's mini-me to Palma's maxi.

There didn't used to be a fair in Alcúdia's port. The boats did make an appearance, but they showed up in the old town at the October fair. The people of the "moll" were keen on having their own slice of the fair cake, and so they suggested that the boats might be better off being next to what one normally associates boats with - water, rather than the ancient walls of old Alcúdia. And so, the port's fair came into being, but boats were to be only one part of the fair. The other part was to be gastronomy, and what did they choose as a theme? One also associated with water, a fishy theme but one, for many Brits, with an altogether different association, that of budgies. The cuttlefish gastronomy fair, which when it is referred to in its Castellano or Catalan versions sounds very much enticing - sepia/sipia.

I confess to finding cuttlefish in its full-bodied form somewhat less than appealing. It shares with other species of the Cephalopoda class the unfortunate trait of having been manufactured by Dunlop. Yet, take a handy knife to it and reduce it to less than mouth-sized bites, fry it in herby/spicy oil and present it with rice blackened by its own ink and with a side portion of mayo, and yum, yum. Other recipes are of course available, and the restaurants' marquee at the fair will have been doing a roaring trade in its variety of sepia tapas.

The Alcúdia boat show/sepia fair is in its ninth edition. My, how they love telling us how many editions there have been of fairs and other events. None is respectable without some Roman numerals forming a prefix to the title. I have witnessed the fair's development over its nine editions. The first one, blessed with glorious early April weather, was a huge success. It was a tremendous idea, as it breathed life into a port area struggling to wake up after the prolonged winter. It remains a tremendous idea. The whole island seems to turn up, make parking anywhere near the port impossible, pack the terraces and the marquees, watch the fishermen at work, dream of their own boat and gawp at the inevitable giants.

But it is a fair that has had its moments of controversy. The fishermen got into a right old hump a few years back when the restaurants refused to pay their prices for cuttlefish. It all seemed a little odd that a fair in celebration of the local catch would instead use sepia snaffled up much cheaper from wholesalers. The town hall intervened in order to come to a compromise agreement. Then the crafty-artisany sorts got into a strop of their own. The reason? Too many damn boats occupying specks along the extended Paseo Marítimo that had previously been for the sale of knicky-knackery. The growth in the on-land flotilla was a direct consequence of Palma's boat show having gone into hibernation. Mini-me has been restored, along with the pots and craft paraphernalia.

The fairs are not confined to April. In May, you can barely move for them. But, in seeking an alliteration for Mallorca in April, they have an allure, and even cuttlefish can have a certain allure, which is saying something.

Photo: Gawping at giants, 2011.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 4 April 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (7.45am): 12.5C
Forecast high: 19C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): Northwest 6 to 7 easing by the afternoon to West 4 to 5. Swells to two metres. Rain and possible storm until midday.

A grey and dismal morning with alerts in place for wind and poor coastal conditions. Improving from midday and giving what should be a fine weekend. General outlook is good.

Evening update (19.45): Once the morning's wind and rain had gone (and there was a good deal of both), things turned out nice. A high of 20.5C. All is looking favourable for the next few days.

De-Greasing The Greasy Mile

I was recently earholed by a certain lady bar owner from Puerto Pollensa who had been enjoying the hospitality at an inauguration and who demanded to know of me why - in essence - Pollensa town hall was rubbish and Alcúdia town hall wasn't. Far be it for me to rush to the defence of Pollensa's mayor, Tomeu Cifre, but I felt the necessity to defend him. The dysfunctionality of the town hall isn't really his fault. It is in part the consequence of the fragmented nature of the political organisation on the council. This said, though, I also felt it necessary to point out that Alcúdia (which has a generally harmonious political organisation) is typically proactive and progressive in ways that Pollensa tends not to be.

No one is suggesting, least of all me, that everything is perfect in Alcúdia, because it isn't, but the town hall, under Coloma Terrasa and also (because one fancies he has been highly influential) the deputy mayor Juan González, has been impressive in certain ways, and one of these is the way that the town hall communicates. Its information is really quite good, and an example of this is the posting of the town's tourism development plan on the municipal website. Stretching to fifty pages, this is a mightily detailed document.

A chief concern for those who have businesses in or who work in the complementary sector of the town's tourism industry is, of course, the proliferation of the all-inclusive offer. The plan will disappoint anyone looking for proposals to tackle AI. There aren't any, but why would there be? The town hall has no control over the type of board which hotels provide. But among the various projects that the town hall wishes to effect as part of its plan is one for Alcúdia's main tourism centre and specifically a "revitalisation" of the area around the Avenida Pedro Mas y Reus, otherwise and variously known as Dollar Street, the Greasy Mile or simply The Mile.

Though any plan for The Mile would not necessarily take account of what hotels do, it would be difficult to divorce hotel operations from general improvements (whatever these might be and which might be more than the underwhelming improvements that were undertaken last year). And these hotel operations mean overwhelmingly all-inclusive and all-inclusive at one specific hotel complex - Bellevue.

The fortunes of bar, restaurant and shop owners along The Mile have always been inextricably linked to Bellevue. At peak capacity the complex can accommodate at least 5,000 people. It has always catered for an essentially economy-class tourist, but now this is an economy-class tourist who - in 80% or more of cases - is staying all-inclusive.

There are plenty of other hotels around The Mile, but Bellevue - physically, visually and economically - dominates. A revitalisation of The Mile, I would suggest, cannot hope to be effective unless something were to happen to Bellevue, the question being - what?

The construction of Bellevue started in the early years of the '70s. It took several years for it to become a hotel complex, as the original plan (sale of time share apartments) was a flop, one not helped by legal and financial wrangles. And such wrangles have dogged the complex for much of its existence. They still do. At present, the former boss of the bankrupted Grupo Marsans and the head of Possibilitum, both companies linked to the ownership of Bellevue, are facing hefty prison sentences. Both have been detained, unable to pay bail amounts in the region of 50 million euros.

The management company does its best, but a prevailing atmosphere of uncertainty offers little hope that a genuine plan might be put in place to revamp a complex that is in bad need of a total overhaul. Until such a time as the private sector can work its way through the complexities that surround Bellevue (even if it was inclined to do so), little, one imagines, will happen. Meantime, the town hall wants to revitalise the area which Bellevue dominates. I wish them luck.

Anyway, if you are interested in finding out more about the tourism development plan, it can be downloaded from the town hall website. It is in Castellano, which might be considered another plus mark for the town hall.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 3 April 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (7.45am): 16C
Forecast high: 18C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): South and Southwest 4 to 6. Swells to one metre. Possible storm.

Grey with the prospect of rain during the day and into tomorrow. Improving for the weekend, which should be sunny and quite warm.

Evening update (18.30): A high of 16.6C on an April showers sort of day. Heavy rain occasionally and some sun at times.

Cards Versus Corruption: What matters to expats

Tuesday was an eventful day in the Balearics parliament. It was a day which brought joy to expatriates. Their lives will soon be made that much more worth living. Oh, the convenience of it all. A lovely, lovely residence card replete with identifying photo and chipped fingerprints. Just like the ones the natives have. Rejoice, rejoice.

The Balearic parliament approved a motion calling for an end to the residence certificate, which not so long ago was reduced to a credit-card-sized piece of flimsy green paper but which lacks a photo unlike a health card or driving licence, both of which can do a reasonable job as means of identification but aren't complete (no fingerprints, for example). Parliamentary approval means comparatively little, other than adding more pressure on Madrid to get a move on and scrap the flimsy piece of paper and replace it with some plastic. Madrid has already agreed to this.

But never let the moment be missed for politicians to get in on a photo opportunity and appear as though they might have had something to do with this momentous decision. There was a beaming President Bauzá, radiant at the prospect that the bit of plastic in an expat's wallet might rub off on his party when it comes to municipal elections next year. Unfortunately, one can well believe that some expats might actually think that he was in some way instrumental, when he wasn't.

While the champagne corks were popping and expatriates could face a bright future with their shiny new piece of plastic and convict-style photo, parliament was engaged in other matters. One of these had to do with the minor issue of political corruption.

Jaume Matas, the one-time president of the Balearics and member of the Partido Popular, has sought a pardon from the national Rajoy government (and by extension, the King) which would mean that he would avoid doing nine months in choky. This was the greatly reduced sentence he received in respect of the first of various charges which he faces. Already having seen several years lopped off of the sentence, such judicial generosity hasn't been enough for Jaume.

The matter came before parliament. It is, like residence cards, not something over which the regional parliament has any real say. It can make its views known but no more. As such, it might have been considered irrelevant that the matter had even been raised, but it was relevant, highly relevant. Bauzá has made much of this PP administration being clean and of attempting to distance himself from the murky recent past in which Matas and others snorted around the sty as happy as political pigs in shit, gobbling up whatever was going.

The PP were content to vote in favour of a general motion against there being any pardons for political corruption. This wasn't good enough for the opposition on the left. They wanted a specific motion which would have called on Madrid to turn down Matas's request for a pardon. The PP refused to back this motion.

A justification for this was given by the PP's Miguel Jerez. He said that the motion led by the Més leftist grouping would personalise a specific case (i.e. Matas). The general motion that the PP favoured would avoid the need for any possible future debates if politicians on corruption raps also sought a pardon. In a rare moment of humour, he suggested that debates related to other individuals might require the use of an "indultómetro", a pardon-o-meter.

He may well have been right to suggest this, but of course the opposition were right to personalise the issue. Matas may not be the only Balearics politician to face further charges or to already have been sentenced, but he was at the top of the whole festering pile of corruption that has been exposed as having existed during his second period of office. He deserves the personalisation.

By having refused to accept the opposition's motion, the PP has risked looking as though it is soft on corruption and is unwilling to finger one of its own. As such, therefore, the corruption debate was both relevant and revealing. Yet, what was more important in parliament on Tuesday?

Expat convenience viz the residence card versus political corruption. There, in a nutshell, was an expression of priorities and concerns.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 2 April 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (7.45am): 15.5C
Forecast high: 22C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): Southeast 4 to 5.

Windy overnight, calmer now, grey and warm with the breezes coming from the south. Some sun later. Tomorrow looking poor with rain.

Evening update (19.15): Though not all that sunny, really quite warm. A high of 25.4C. With rain on the way and the southerlies in evidence, expect some dirty rain.

Into Extinction: Theme parks

On becoming tourism minister in 2011, Carlos Delgado reeled off what was either a wish list or a series of initiatives he genuinely believed that he was going to bring about. Condohotels were one. Well, they were in the tourism bill, but they have proved to be thin on the ground to the point of non-existence. Reducing IVA was another. Not sure how he proposed doing this as it was not and is not within the remit of a Balearics tourism minister to do so. And then there were theme parks. Ah yes, theme parks. Whatever happened to them?

Some time into his period as minister, Delgado was asked about one particular theme park - the one that was going to be created somewhere between Llucmajor and Campos. He replied that, in effect, he didn't know what was happening with it. In so doing, he joined a sizable club.

The age of the theme park that Carlos had seemingly been intent on ushering in has failed to materialise. Another scheme, the dinosaur park in Sineu, has gone the way of all dinosaur theme parks - meteored into oblivion by the urban planning commission at the Council of Mallorca which has archived the processing of the project. A year ago, the Council told the promoters that it had to supply proper documentation for the project and to pay a tax. The promoters have done neither. The Council has now, therefore, concluded that the project has been dropped. Another fossilised skeleton of a theme park is thus consigned to the earth of Mallorca and buried for years until someone exhumes it, comes back with another bright idea only for it to be made extinct as well.

The Llucmajor-Campos theme park is still, in theory, a possibility. Or put it this way, its website is still in existence. Where there is internet presence, there is always hope. The chances of it ever becoming a reality, though, are probably about as likely as dinosaurs once again roaming freely across the plain of Mallorca (rather than being animated replicas, which was what the Sineu Jurassic Park had supposedly envisaged). The likelihood is unlikely because the whole scheme had rather depended upon the land being reclassified. The well-publicised meeting with President Bauzá to present the project had all been part (one presumes) of an attempt to persuade the government to smooth the way with some reclassification. None has been forthcoming.

It is an all too familiar tale. Every blade of grass (some of it not even on land but under the sea) and every grain of sand in Mallorca is subject to some form of plan or other or indeed to more than one plan. One of the people involved with the Llucmajor-Campos theme park is also behind a scheme for the development of Ca'n Angelí in Palma. One of the objections to this development has been based on the fact that Ca'n Angelí is considered to be open public space under something known as PGOU. Which is? The general plan for urban organisation. Last heard of, the scheme was in any event being held up because Palma City Council had ordered a report from the Institute of Municipal Sports to check whether the project (for recreational purposes) was or wasn't complementary with existing sports facilities in the city.

Why does any promoter ever try to get any project off the ground in Mallorca? Occasionally, one gets the green light and even manages to get underway, such as the Hyatt hotel complex in Canyamel. But it takes forever for decisions to be made, and there always seems to be a threat that somewhere down the line a legal challenge will be made that means paralysing a project, demolishing it or having to restore the land to its former unspoilt state.

In another recent case, that of the project for a five-star hotel with golf course in Marratxí, documentation that had been required by the Council's urban planning commission had also not been forthcoming. The commission has, as with the dinosaur park, called time-out on the project, which cannot now be considered for being declared as being in the "general interest", which is a catch-all notion that can - theoretically - supersede plans for this or that. Perhaps the developers decided the project was a non-starter. Perhaps the dinosaur park people thought likewise. Or perhaps they thought that neither project was worth all the aggravation. 

Mallorca's land has to be protected. No one is suggesting a free-for-all, but while Paramount can plan for a theme park in Murcia and while Ferrari plans to open its theme park at Port Aventura next year (the same area where the BCN World mega casinos and theme park are going), nothing happens in Mallorca. And nothing is likely to happen. Stagnation, if not extinction.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 1 April 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (7.30am): 8C
Forecast high: 20C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): South 3 increasing Southeast 4 to 5 during the afternoon.

Breezy and quite chilly start, but should be quite warm today with good amounts of sun. Looking less good from tomorrow with rain around.

Evening update (19.30): A high of 21.7C. Pretty good day.

Insecurities Of Mallorca

What do expatriates worry about? Do they share similar concerns to the natives? Were you to present an expat with a diagram that shows him or her at its centre surrounded by crises of basic rights, politics, socioeconomics and lack of social cohesion, would any of it be of any obvious concern? Or would any of the further issues within these "crises" be of concern - the provision of services (education and health, for instance), poverty, the devaluation of democracy and corruption?

I am referring to a diagram produced by the Mallorcan research organisation, Gadeso, which forms the basis for a survey it has conducted into uncertainties and insecurities felt by people in the Balearics (when it says insecurities, it is referring to a feeling of insecurity, e.g. through employment worries, but more to feeling unsafe). Of its 900 respondents, one would have to presume that few if any are expatriates. Why would Gadeso ask expats? Would they show any interest or concern?

It is easy to brand the expat class as being indifferent, but this is a generalisation, albeit one with some justification. Expats (and I'm primarily referring to British ones) fall into different categories, of which one is undoubtedly the indifferent one, but to apply this branding across the board would be wrong. By the simple expedients of talking to people and the gathering of intelligence from social media, one is aware of uncertainties and insecurities that are not far removed from those identified in the survey once one gets to its nitty-gritty.

What are the situations which generate insecurity? They include offences against people and property, petty crime and street prostitution. What are the principal causes of insecurity? Lack of police presence and vigilance, unemployment and unstable work, laws and the judicial system. What are the main solutions to this insecurity? Modification of laws, increase in policing numbers and effectiveness, reduction in social inequality, measures to provide youth employment, changes to the educational system.

All of these are listed in the survey and all of them have increased in terms of the percentage of respondents identifying them. Over the past five years, the sense of insecurity has, according to the survey, risen alarmingly. Some of it might be attributable to economic crisis, but it would be wrong to conclude that it can all be.

Expatriate responses, were he or she to be asked the same questions, would, I would suggest, reflect their own package of circumstances - financial, social, work, location and so on. For the expat down Magalluf way, as an example, there is plenty in this survey which matches what has been said over the past months about the resort - lack of policing, petty crime, prostitution, need to modify laws - and judging by the amount of coverage these get, one would conclude that they have increased as expat concerns as markedly as they have for the survey respondents.

But one makes this conclusion through a process of extrapolation and some assumption and not on a more scientific basis. The fact is that we know very little about what expats think, about their insecurities, uncertainties and concerns. We know of some which are a long way distant from those of the survey but which are, in truth, inconsequential. Getting into a lather over a residence card is hardly in the same category as corruption, lack of effective policing or prostitution. But even were there to be a more scientific approach to unearthing these worries, the results would probably be very uneven. For some, there are few worries, save for the reporting of assets. There is the expat real world and there is the expat unreal world. Two or more worlds divided as greatly as Mallorcan society is divided and has grown in its lack of social cohesion.

Expatriate generalisation, driven to no small extent by an often wilfully prejudiced British media, is full of fallacies, but certain generalisations, even if they have been twisted somewhat, can cut to the bone because they expose some truths. Yes, I remember that "Daily Mail" article well. The Portalsisation of Mallorcan expat life, one might have called it. But it is world away from the other expat worlds, ones in which issues contained in the survey might be just as applicable - unstable work, poverty, drug addiction. Other worlds that do not revolve around the beautiful people and the need-to-be-seen and which are essentially humdrum in the sun and are concerned principally with pensions or the effects of all-inclusives on their bars: the everyday expats.

Whatever concerns the expat may or may not have, will he or she take notice of the concerns expressed in the Gadeso survey? Some will, some won't, but the increase in insecurity that the people of Mallorca has identified, combined with low levels of satisfaction as to its handling (be it through laws, by the police or other agencies) is something with which everyone should be concerned.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 31 March 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (8.00am): 13C
Forecast high: 18C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): West 2 to 3 switching to East around midday.

A dull morning, but due to be sunny today. The week ahead looks mostly ok but with the forecast for Thursday suggesting rain.

Evening update (19.15): A high of 19C. Pleasant enough day once the dullness had lifted. 

Forget Me Not: Historical memory

Adolfo Suárez's death last week ushered forth a generally positive appraisal of his premiership. As is often the case when a major political figure passes away, there was some selective memory being applied. Though Suárez is now remembered for his achievements in helping to found democracy in Spain, his time as prime minister came to an end because of a lack of consensus, something which conflicts with how the obituary revisionists have portrayed his prime ministership (even if this consensus was evident with the Moncloa Pact of 1977 that was important in the immediate post-Franco period). But his Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD) was a shaky coalition and it fell apart, he having already gone down with it by the time it was dissolved. One faction within it had criticised Suárez for not being democratic enough and for showing uninspired leadership.

That period in Spain's history was volatile for different reasons. One was industrial relations strife. Symbolically perhaps, what had promised to be a stormy UCD congress in Palma was cancelled because of an air-controllers' strike. Suárez, who had faced the prospect of a hostile gathering, didn't need the meeting to tell him that the writing was on the wall. He resigned anyway, less than a month before the coup attempt in February 1981.

The nonetheless successful transition to democracy obscured what arguably was Suárez's greatest failure. Though a reformer and moderniser, he was a product of Francoism. It took the coup attempt to bring home to the new democrats this failure: one which had not looked Francoism straight in the eye and dealt with it square on. The period from 1977 to 1981 was dubbed the politics of amnesia, and these were politics which were produced by the "pacto de olvido" (the pact of forgetting).

It is too easy to argue with hindsight that Suárez should have taken a different course and that there shouldn't have been this forgetfulness. The course that was taken was essentially pragmatic. Francoism most certainly did not die along with the Generalísimo. The coup attempt confirmed this, and indeed pressures from the military are sometimes cited as a reason why Suárez resigned.

I stated above that there was some selective memory with the tributes for Suárez, and memory - or its absence - has been a key factor in Spain since the Civil War. The politics of transition demanded that there was amnesia, but in applying this forgetfulness, Suárez and the rest of the political class were adopting a similar course to that which the Franco regime had. It airbrushed Republicanism from the memory and from the physical landscape of Spain. Its symbols were torn down and destroyed. It never existed.

The amnesia is often said to have lasted well into this century, but that isn't strictly accurate. Events of 23 February, 1981 heralded two decades of the "accommodation period". Acknowledgement of the past was made but without anything officially being done to reverse the forgetfulness pact or the Amnesty Law which had in effect pardoned repression and those who had committed offences during the Franco era. As these two decades went on, though, the pressure grew for some form of official recognition of the past and for official abandonment of the forgetfulness.

It wasn't until the Zapatero PSOE administration introduced the Law of Historical Memory that this recognition was made official. The law included the removal of Francoist symbols from public places, a condemnation of the repression, and state aid to exhume graves. As a process of reconciliation, it has been praised, even if it had taken 30 years for it to occur.

Between 2006 and 2010, almost 20 million euros were made available in the form of government grants for reconciliation funding. With the change of national government, these grants came to a halt. They may not have been necessary in any event (or affordable in a time of austerity), but reconciliation has proved to be shortlived. The law has not been the success that some would suggest it has been, and the politics of right versus left have conspired to undermine whatever success it might have achieved.

Like the Franco regime removed symbols of Republicanism, symbols of Francoism have also been removed, but not in the destructive manner with which the fascists attacked the Republican symbols. The removal of the symbols has been a physical sign of the implementation of the historical memory law, but there has not been consistency. In Llucmajor, for example, the mayor is under pressure to insist that the parish church removes a Francoist shield replete with the legend "fallen for God and for Spain". It is a small reminder of a past that some would like to cling to, a testimony to the strength of memory not to the weakness of officially induced forgetfulness. What would Suárez have made of such a little symbol? We'll never know.


Index for March 2014

Berlin travel fair politicians' no-show - 8 March 2014
Bono seeks support for Spain - 9 March 2014
Capdepera tourism - 6 March 2014
Carnival - 1 March 2014
Catalan book week - 4 March 2014
Council of Mallorca: Bauzá - 3 March 2014
Cycling tourism - 28 March 2014
Emigration and crisis - 23 March 2014
Eurovision and English - 12 March 2014
Farm bill - 5 March 2014
Farm reform and tourism - 24 March 2014
Law of Historical Memory - 31 March 2014
Mining law - 13 March 2014
Pollensa and university: landscape improvements - 2 March 2014
Rafael Nadal honorary doctorate - 29 March 2014
Sa Pobla's bell - 24 March 2014
SICTED quality - 21 March 2014
Sleep and Spanish kids' education - 26 March 2014
Son Real - 11 March 2014
Spring in Mallorca 1936 - 22 March 2014
Threat to certainty of Mallorca's tourism - 7 March 2014
Touristic zones in Mallorca - 27 March 2014
Tramuntana website - 30 March 2014
Women in Spain - 10 March 2014

What's On In Alcúdia And Pollensa - Boat show/sepia gastronomy fair and Playa de Muro RoadBIKE Festival

A note to say that the old What's On Blog - wotzupnorth - is no longer being updated and that all information is now on the HotGUIDE Alcúdia Pollensa blog. I'll link new info here for entries on that blog, so here are two new ones - for Puerto Alcúdia's Boat Show and Sepia Gastronomy Fair (4-6 April) and the Playa de Muro RoadBIKE Festival (10-13 April).

http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/2014/03/puerto-alcudia-ninth-boat-fair-and.html

http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/2014/03/playa-de-muro-sigma-roadbike-festival.html

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 30 March 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (8.30am): 14.5C
Forecast high: 18C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): East and Southeast 4 to 5 easing during the morning to South 2 to 3.

Wet and staying wet during the day. Wind down though. Brighter tomorrow, and the outlook for the week is reasonable, getting warmer by midweek.

Evening update (19.15): The greyness and wetness did clear up somewhat. An unremarkable day, though. A high of 16.3C.

Tramuntana Is Number One

You can't or shouldn't take Trip Advisor at its word. Not for its rankings lists certainly. "Best restaurants" in a given a resort are often laughable. They become best not because they are but because someone has been clever in driving reviews. But sometimes these rankings do bear some semblance of a connection with reality. What is the number one attraction in Mallorca out of 221? If you guessed Pirates you would be wrong. It's number two, says Trip Advisor. At number one, and it is really quite heartening to find it at number one, is the Tramuntana mountain range.

The consortium which promotes the mountains and which was tasked with doing so following the declaration of the Tramuntana as a World Heritage Site has launched a website. About time, too, you might think. The declaration was made in 2011. Very little in promotional terms seems to have happened since. Better late than never, though.

The website is reasonable enough, and so it should be at a cost of 21 grand. It has a good amount of information and the English section, for once, seems to have actually been written in English and not passed through a Google Translate mangle or been Spanglished by a non-native speaker. It's reasonable in the worthy-but-dull sense of reasonable. Plenty of information, plenty of pictures, but no multimedia, interactivity or social media. This would probably cost too much.

Thanks to the press announcement of the site's launch, I knew of its existence and so went in search of it. I entered "Serra Tramuntana", and it was there in Google, though it might be confused with another website with the .eu suffix. The official one is .net. The first thing that occurred to me, though, was whether an English search would get to the site so easily. Its title is Catalan - Serra de Tramuntana - so would "Tramuntana mountains" work? They do. Very well. That's a big plus.

It was when checking that this English search was satisfactory that I noticed the fifth entry on the Google page. It was for the Serra de Tramuntana in Trip Advisor. Five of five stars, the abstract said, and on going into Trip Advisor, I found there were indeed five of five stars. Out of 196 reviews, 163 rated as excellent and 32 as very good. Not a hint of criticism, unless one considers a not-for-fainthearted warning for the route (by car) as being a criticism (which it isn't).

It is mightily reassuring and just a little surprising to find the Tramuntana at number one. It is reassuring in different ways. One very much doubts that someone is hard at it getting visitors to post positive reviews. They are, one has to presume, absolutely genuine and totally unsolicited. As such, it is an example of how one might hope that Trip Advisor would normally work but doesn't. There's nothing wrong at all in positive reviews being solicited - it's good business to do so because Trip Advisor is very powerful - but this can result in something of a credibility issue. We're back to some of those so-called "best restaurants".

A second way in which there is reassurance lies with the fact that the mountains are a natural attraction. Obviously they are. But the term attraction - in tourism circles - tends to mean something which isn't natural. We can all name some of them, and I would do, but to do so might imply a criticism when none is intended. It is the, shall we say, artificial attractions and the association that is made with them as "attractions" which makes the number-one position of the Tramuntana that much more surprising. Trip Advisor is hardly scientific, but occasionally it can be quite revealing, and this is one occasion. For all that Mallorca has its commercial tourist attractions, one that isn't commercial on account of it simply being there and that is ranked number one should tell a story. Mallorca's natural heritage is clearly appreciated and perhaps more so than might be thought.

The mountains can be enjoyed at any time of the year. I know how popular the excursion during the summer season is. As part of the island tour, it is probably the single most popular excursion that the island has to offer. But clearly, the mountains don't have to be enjoyed only during the summer season, and so one comes back, almost inevitably, to the theme of off-season tourism.

The hope with the World Heritage Site declaration was that this would lead to inroads being made into the absent off-season tourism through the promotion of the Tramuntana. With the website, at least there is some tangible evidence of this promotion, and with the Trip Advisor number-one ranking, there is evidence also of how impressed visitors are with the mountains.

Sometimes when number-one rankings are given, the relevant business or authority makes a point of saying so. Is anyone saying anything about the Tramuntana? This brings one back to the website. Because it seems to have neglected social media, there is no link to Trip Advisor and certainly no announcement of the ranking. A trick is being missed. Promotion isn't simply a case of spending twenty thousand euros on a website. One would have hoped that this would have been realised by now. Tramuntana. Number one on Trip Advisor.

* The web address is http://www.serradetramuntana.net

MALLORCA TODAY - Mallorca play-off ambitions not advanced against Recreativo

Real Mallorca 0 : 0 Recreativo Huelva
Despite their stuttering season, Mallorca still have ambitions of a play-off spot, while their opponents, Recreativo, occupy one of those spots.

An even enough first period, Mallorca initially in the ascendancy until Recreativo came strongly into the game towards the break. Little by way of clear chances for either side though. Mallorca upped the pace after the break - and they needed to - with Alfaro, Thomas, Hemed and especially Martí all creating opportunities. Recreativo went down to ten men with eight minutes left, but Mallorca couldn't press home any advantage.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 29 March 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (7.15am): 14C
Forecast high: 20C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): East 6 occasionally 7 easing 4 by the end of the day. Swells to two to three metres.

Warmer morning, partly cloudy. Wind due to be up with alerts for the coasts. Rain probable tomorrow.

Evening update (19.15): Not as warm as had been forecast. A high of 16.8C. Tomorrow's not looking too good.

Doctoring Nadal

During this week the Tramuntana has been transformed into a Christmas card scene. Absent from its snowy peaks, though, was Mallorca's Mr. Christmas (Sr. Nadal). He was in Miami and was thus spared the snowballs of the press being lobbed in his general direction. It was a difficult week for Rafael the red-faced racket-player who declined to go down in history by becoming the first sportsperson to accept an honorary doctorate from the Universitat de les Illes Balears.

The source of the boy Nadal's embarrassment was the succession of volleys fired over the net of the university management council's decision earlier this month to award the doctorate. When the press did finally manage to catch up with him in Florida, he explained that his life was just fine without a doctorate. Which it almost certainly is, so why disrupt this wonderful life by bothering to make space in the Nadal trophy warehouse for an honorary mortar board with accompanying gown?

At the heart of the rumpus - supposedly - was whether Nadal was deserving of the award. He is only a sportsperson, after all. Had he added to his sporting achievements by presenting a thesis on the aerodynamics of belting a small yellow thing over some netting, then that would have been all right. But no, all he had done was win the odd tennis tournament.

The university rector Llorenç Huguet, only in the post for a few months, has been learning, as did his predecessor, the late Montserrat Casas, that there is more to this running-a-university malarkey than smiling nicely when handing over certificates. There are the politics as well, and Huguet suggested that elements on the university governing council (as distinct to its management council) had been the ones who had "dynamited" the doctorate. Rafa had been blown up.

With the press and its readership also none too certain that the doctorate was merited, Nadal added to his wonderful-life statement by saying that, in the absence of unanimity at the governing council, he would decline the offer. And more light was shed on these dissident elements on the council by Miguel Deyá, who is the regional government's director-general for universities. He described them as "anti-Spanish". Because Nadal "feels Spanish" and has shown himself to be, the anti-mob wanted nothing to do with him. Or at least I think this was what he was on about (and Nadal is a Real Madrid fan).

Perhaps with this rather odd observation in mind, Huguet moved the tramlines in justifying the original decision. Nadal was deserving not just because of his sporting achievement but also because he should be considered part of the culture - Balearics culture, that is. Whether he is or he isn't, advantage was with the governing council dissidents, and Huguet and Nadal duly lost. Game, set and match to the anti-Spanish.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 28 March 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (7.00am): 7C
Forecast high: 18C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): South 3 backing Southeast 4 to 5 and to East 5 to 6 during the afternoon.

A chilly, bright morning. Good amounts of sun anticipated today. The weekend, though, is going to be windy (alerts in place for wind and coastal conditions) with some rain likely.

Evening update (19.15): Not too bad. High of 18.7C. Looking iffy for the weekend though. 

In Praise Of Cycling Tourism

Those of you with good meteorological memories will recall that the first week of November last year was exceptionally warm. Your memories will also tell you that this exceptional warmth went downhill very suddenly and very drastically. All but out of control it freewheeled from a peak to a trough with all the recklessness and rapidity of a road cyclist who had mistakenly taken out a velodrome bike (minus brakes therefore) and who had encountered some black ice. Funny that, the reference to cycling, because back in November, cycling was one item on an agenda that has characterised this winter. Though that November weather did turn so dramatically, there was bewilderment at the fact that though that first week was knocking out thirty degrees or more, Mallorca had all but shut up shop for the "winter". Where was the winter tourism? And now, you may have noticed, winter is behind us, but in Mallorcan tourism terms, is still with us.

Call the season what you will, we are almost in April, and it seems appropriate to revisit cycling. In November there is very little cycling. By now and into April there is an awful lot of it, and along with this awful lot of cycling there is an awful lot of hot-under-the-collarness. More of that in a bit.

On Sunday there is a cycling event. Another damn cycling event, some will say and bemoan. It is the Mallorca Classic. In fact, it is the Mallorca Classic by Max Hürzeler. The race's name has been given this marketing appendage. The use of "by" (someone) is a piece of marketing me-too-ism that would normally make me want to find the nearest bike tyre and attack it with a sharp blade. But in Max Hürzeler's case, I shall make an exception. Hürzeler is one of the heroes of Mallorca's winter tourism (shall we call it off-season tourism instead). If a Classic is by him, then why ever not. He's deserved it.

In 1989, Hürzeler founded Bicycle Holidays. Though it is now 25 years since the founding of the business, Hürzeler had his idea for bringing cyclists to Mallorca some years before. A professional cyclist himself, at the start of the 1980s he had approached a travel-agency owner in his native Switzerland and had presented to him the concept of flying cyclists to the island. The travel-agency owner thought he was nuts.

He may well have been in one regard; the roads were certainly not as good as they now are. But he was undeterred. In 1985, still a leading pro cyclist, he organised his first training camp in Mallorca. Within four years the number of cyclists who came had risen from 185 to 1,400. He retired from cycling, started Bicycle Holidays and the rest is the history of growth.

Hürzeler has said that he didn't invent cycling tourism in Mallorca, just that he made it better, but he caught a wave, one that had been identified in the first tourism plan to be drawn up by the regional government in the 1980s. Cycling was one of its key, off-season elements, and the enthusiasm for cycling in Germany was to be made ever greater by its own cycling stars - Udo Bölts, Erik Zabel and Jan Ullrich - in a way not too dissimilar to that in which Wiggins and Cavendish have heightened British cycling enthusiasm.

The growth of cycling tourism in the 1990s prompted the Balearics Confederation of Business Associations (CAEB), in collaboration with the government, to produce the first proper study of this tourism. It is an incredibly detailed study, and one aspect it looked at was the other activities that cycling tourists engaged in. The sorts of things they didn't do (or hardly at all) were to also play golf, go sailing or to visit attractions. What they did most was to visit towns and "typical markets". This was closely followed (by 50.9% of them) by gastronomy routes. That left 49.1% who said  they didn't, but the fact that gastronomy (and visiting markets) were vastly more popular than any other activities gives a lie to the often-made criticism of cyclists; that they are not interested in restaurants and indeed don't go to them. Times have moved on, but it is no truer now than it was in 1995 when the research was conducted to suggest that cyclists don't frequent restaurants and therefore spend money on the "complementary offer".

Of course, not all the cyclists that Bicycle Holidays and others bring to Mallorca meet with everyone's approval. Frankly, I despair. What do people want or expect? Nothing it seems. Or nothing which entails a bit of inconvenience whilst driving. The vitriol that can be levelled against cyclists can be staggering and beyond rationality.

Max Hürzeler is partly responsible for this. He is also responsible for having given Mallorca something it might not have had or not have had to such a large extent, which is at least some off-season tourism. If you find a road closed on Sunday because of the Classic, it will be an inconvenience. But so what? There's an even greater inconvenience, and that's not having cycling tourism. 

Spam sites affect page views

If any of you follow the page views info and most popular posts on this blog, you might notice that some pretty ancient and unusual posts enter the most popular list. Usually the most popular ones are just that - the most popular - but what happens, and there really isn't anything that can be done about it, is that spammer sites attach themselves to particular entries and keep on referring them. It's an annoyance. For example, the popularity of the John Hirst case and the balcony fall in Cala Rajada are because of these spammer sites. The rest are kosher; they are popular. Where page views info is concerned, these spammer sites are responsible for roughly 10% of this info at any given time. They come and go. At present, the ones involved are semalt.com and eooznyfz.bloger.index (please don't visit these sites). I can see all this on the back system. They are usually harmless enough, just annoying. So, if you see what looks like or is an old entry, take it with a pinch of salt.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 27 March 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (8.00am): 10.5C
Forecast high: 16C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): Northwest 4 to 5 easing to Variable 2 to 4. Swells to one metre. Possible rain and storm in the morning.

Some more rain around. Dull but with some brightness emerging. Not feeling warm. Due to be sunnier tomorrow.

Evening update (19.15): A high of 16.2C. There has been some occasional rain but also sun today. A mixed but not very warm bag. 

So Very Little: Mapping tourism

We are all familiar with the map of Mallorca. We are able to pinpoint those parts of the island where there is a concentration of tourism. We are aware of these concentrations, but it requires a particular type of map to highlight them, a basic one which shows the boundaries of the municipalities but very little else. This map is colour-coded. Red indicates existing golf courses. Yellow denotes possible golf courses. Grey represents residential zones (without, by definition, any notable concentration of tourism). The fourth, in purple, shows tourism zones, or more accurately zones which accord with the plan of organisation for the touristic offer: POOT. The purple zones appear on a map which is the blueprint for the Plan Territorial de Mallorca, the Mallorca land plan.

POOT is an urban planning mechanism. Its purpose is to lay down rules as to the density of touristic development. Essentially, it operates according to a quota system; only so much land in given municipalities can be dedicated to such development. The POOT zones are the ones with tourism concentration, and when one looks at this particular map, something strikes you. Because it is so stripped-down, the amount of purple looks inconsequential. We know about the concentrations of tourism, but in the overall land scheme, they amount to only a very small part of Mallorca.

The residential zones, those not covered by POOT because there is little or no touristic development other than, for example, agrotourism, country fincas for rent and so on, are distributed right across the island with the exception of chunks of the Tramuntana region. They are the town centres. The grey that represents them is to be found in largest amount where you would expect it to be found - Palma and Marratxí.

What is not shown on this basic map are other areas covered by the land plan. They include areas of a high level of protection, natural areas of special interest, rural areas of wooded landscape interest, areas of farming interest, and rustic land under the general forestry regime. There are others, each with their own acronym; areas for this, areas for that.

The POOT purple is only to be found in coastal areas. All of the municipalities which have coast have some POOT, with the exception of six along the west coast - Estellencs, Banyalbufar, Valldemossa, Deiá, Fornalutx and Escorca. Of these, it might be surprising to learn that Deiá has no purple; Deiá does, after all, have tourism. It does, but it isn't a touristic zone. Its land use is determined in other ways, which exclude development that would make it a touristic zone in the same way as Port de Sóller is.

Of the coastal municipalities, there is one striking example of just how little land, comparatively speaking, is dedicated to tourism development, and that is Llucmajor. By land area, it is Mallorca's largest municipality, 120 square kilometres or so bigger than Palma, 60 square kilometres bigger than the second largest, Manacor, and over twice the size of Calvia. Being home to Arenal, Llucmajor might conceivably have acquired a negative image, but when does anyone hear anything untoward about Sa Torre or Cala Pi? Arenal can be spoken of in the same breath as Magalluf, but then Magalluf is part of a virtually unbroken coastal conurbation within one municipality.

Calvia is, in a sense, an anomaly. The density of its tourism development, its POOT ratio, far exceeds that of any other municipality. And it is its disproportionate level of tourism development which, one suspects, is a principal reason for charges that Mallorca sold its soul to the devil of tourism. One is well aware of the coastal abominations that have been committed in different touristic zones and also aware of accusations of over-commercialism, over-construction and indeed over-reliance on tourism, yet, with the exception of Calvia (even Palma's POOT is relatively confined), the map paints a picture that doesn't quite measure up to this charge list. Only Alcúdia and Capdepera, roughly the same land size and both with relatively large amounts of POOT, might - in comparative terms - be placed in a similar category as Calvia.

This POOT land is what breathes economic life into Mallorca; a very small amount of land relative to its contribution. The POOT land may have changed local culture and landscape in the coastal areas, but elsewhere? 60% of Mallorca's land is for agriculture and contributes only 1% of gross added value. Much more of the land is protected by those various other acronyms. Can POOT and tourism be held so accountable? If culture elsewhere has been changed, then it has been changed through a process of modernisation, for which tourism is only partly or incidentally responsible. We are familiar with the map of Mallorca, but we are perhaps less familiar with what the map actually tells us.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 26 March 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (7.30am): 7C
Forecast high: 14C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): North and Northwest 5 to 6, locally 7 in the afternoon. Swells of one to two metres. Storm likely.

Currently quite clear and calm, but there was more rain overnight and there is due to be more during the day, with the wind up as well. Looking better tomorrow and a bit warmer.

Evening update (19.00): Snow in the mountains today. Distinctly chilly. A high of 13.3C.

Sleepy Time: Spanish kids and education

"It's often past midnight, well past midnight and you can hear the boy and what's probably a TV. This isn't just weekends by any means. And then you can hear them getting up at seven the next morning. Maybe he has a siesta, but if not, he's surely suffering from sleep deprivation. It can't be good. And it's been like this for some years. He's fourteen now, but it was a similar pattern when he was much younger."

This is the drift of what I was told by someone (English) who lives in a semi and whose neighbours are Mallorcan. Being a semi, you can hear something of what goes on next door and you are aware of people being up late. It is only one story, but how typical is it? How normal is it for Spanish kids (and indeed kids from other nationalities) to be up until past midnight and to seemingly get too little sleep? Quite normal, you might tend to think.

The broadcaster Telecinco has been criticised for showing "La Voz Kids", the children's version of "The Voice", between 10pm and 1.25am on Thursday nights. The average viewing figure for the show was 5.1 million in all. When the final was broadcast, ratings data suggested that over 300,000 viewers were children. They may not all have watched to the end, but you would guess that most did. 

Spanish TV programmes have a tendency to go on for an inordinately long time. Partly this is because of interminable and regular ad breaks. Partly it is because they are simply over long. Put these two factors together and you get a show that lasts for almost three and a half hours, one that doesn't start until 10pm on a weekday. If you take my anecdote, then you can add other examples of late broadcasting which are keeping children awake into the early morning.

Television is only element. It's a cultural thing, so the justification goes. We are all familiar with the sight of children being up and around late in Mallorca. It is nothing unusual. But is it good for them? Has this cultural fact of life been a contributory factor in educational underperformance, something which is more acute in Mallorca and the Balearics than in most other other parts of Spain?

Towards the end of 2012, the Spanish Institute for Sleep Research launched a campaign called "I Have a Dream". It was designed to promote better sleeping habits among children. What the institute was mainly concerned with were the health consequences of inadequate sleep - obesity and the development of diabetes - but it also considered educational performance and the effects of late-night TV watching and computer screen use. Its director was in doubt that fewer hours of sleep plus the wrong signals being sent to the brain by this late-night viewing were contributing to attention deficit syndrome. He said that 60% of Spanish children got less sleep than is recommended, that 30% displayed symptoms of daytime sleepiness, that there had been an ongoing tendency since the mid-1980s for children to go to bed later and that two-thirds of kids between the ages of ten and fifteen made the decision themselves as to what time they went to bed.

Research published in 2011 studied sleep among children from the ages of two to nine in different European countries. It found, among other things, that the percentage of children in, for instance, Germany, who slept between ten and eleven hours was almost 28%. For Spain, the percentage was under 5%. But other international research, published last year by the Boston College in the US, showed that, for maths teaching, Spanish teachers reported that 38% of pupils suffered from a lack of sleep. This was a comparatively low percentage. A higher one was for Finnish pupils. 60% of them suffered from lack of sleep, and yet maths performance is very much higher in Finland than Spain.

A conclusion that was drawn from the Boston research was that the use of phones and computers (to which could be added TVs) late at night was resulting in the lack of sleep and was a particular problem in more affluent countries. Does this mean, therefore, that Spain is a comparatively less affluent country?  

Drawing firm conclusions as to the relationship between sleep and the school performance of Spanish children is difficult because of apparent contradictions between these different pieces of research. And in any event, does research for Spain as a whole equate to the situation in Mallorca?

It may be right to criticise broadcasters, but before people get too critical or draw inaccurate conclusions, perhaps there ought to be thorough research into the sleep of children in different parts of Spain and the relationship with school performance. Only then might it be possible to say for sure that Mallorcan kids need more sleep or don't.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 25 March 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (7.00am): 11C
Forecast high: 18C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): Northwest 4 to 5 increasing West 5 to 6 veering Northwest 6 by the end of the day.

A fair old dumping of rain overnight. Grey and wet morning with an alert for winds in place. Should be some sun, but we are seemingly into a rather unsettled phase.

Evening update (20.15): Lightning around. Things are looking grim for the next 24 hours at least. A high today of 17.9C. Some sun, but feeling chilly.

The Melting Of Antonia: Sa Pobla's bell

For seven years the main bell of the Church of Sant Antoni Abat in Sa Pobla has not chimed. When a crack appeared, it was decided that it would be for the best if the bell was made mute, and so silence has reigned from the largest of the six bells ever since. This isn't any old bell, because of its name and association. The big old bell in Sa Pobla is called Antonia. The name is derived from the name of the parish church, and the church's name has existed since the mid-fourteenth century. When you have a church named after an ancient Egyptian hermit - Sant Antoni - who carries with him any amount of pre-Conquest Catalan tradition, then naturally enough you call the bell after him, but feminise the name. Personalising bells is not, of course, unknown elsewhere. Great Bell it may officially be, but we all know about Big Ben.

Finding a solution to the predicament of cracked Antonia has taken seven years, but only now can the preferred solution be implemented because of a lack of money up until now. And how much does this solution cost? 24,000 euros. This is to be the cost to transport Antonia to Valencia, melt her down and re-do her. It is a sort of final resort solution, because it in essence involves destroying the original. Re-creating her from her molten remains isn't quite the same as repairing her, but a repair job, one that would involve a journey to Germany, would be more costly and might not totally eliminate the possibility of the crack reappearing. It has to be a melting down job, therefore. 

Why, though, has it taken so long? One can understand the need to debate the alternative forms of rectifying the problem of the crack, but has this required seven years to debate? It hasn't only been the argument over the method that has caused the delay, there has also been the issue of paying for the chosen method. 24,000 euros do not, in the scheme of things, sound like a lot of money. If Antonia is so important and emblematic, and the bell is because of the Antoni association, then surely the money would have been found well before now. It isn't as if the Catholic Church is in a state of penury, but wealth or no wealth, it doesn't appear possible to, for example, apply to the Pope for a grant.

Grand churches - and they normally always are grand churches - demand a great deal of cash for their maintenance. I couldn't begin to tell you the state of the accounts for the Sant Antoni church (church accounts tend not to be public knowledge anyway), but it will, as with other churches, benefit in a way that other property owners do not. There is no property tax levied on churches.

Churches such as Sant Antoni are looked after by their own organisations. In Sa Pobla, this means the Obreria de Sant Antoni, which has been around since the end of the seventeenth century. It not only looks after the upkeep of the parish church, it is also the keeper of the tradition of Sant Antoni; all those demons and what have you during the January fiesta have to go by the Obreria's book. So, it is up to the Obreria to come up with the readies for something like a crack in Antonia, unless, that is, the town hall is willing to step in. And Sa Pobla town hall is distinctly short of readies of its own.

The Obreria comprises a board of "obrers", the "obrer major" being the rector and others coming from the oldest and most traditional of Sa Pobla families; there are eleven "obrers" in all. The Obreria is organising a benefit lunch this coming Sunday in order to raise the outstanding funds needed. It has to be confident that the lunch will mean that 17,000 euros are forthcoming, as Antonia will have been taken down before then in preparation for her journey to meet her melter.

This final fundraising push comes five years after it looked as though repair was going to be effected. It wasn't. Two years ago, the funding was still way short. A mere 5,000 euros had been raised, most of it in the form of a donation by the Sa Pobla guild association. Two thousand euros have been found since then. Things have been painfully slow.

Antonia will not, however, be shipped off immediately. She is to lie in state for a few weeks. Residents of Sa Pobla will be able to pay their last respects before she has her date with the furnace. The rector has said that this only seems right; not everyone is happy with the meltdown. There's no pleasing some people. For whom the bell tolls. The toll for repair could have been considerably greater.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 24 March 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (7.45am): 12C
Forecast high: 20C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): Northwest 4 to 5 easing 2 to 3 by the evening.

Sunny morning. Could be rain by the evening though, and the rest of the week looks up and down, with temperatures dropping midweek.

Evening update (19.00): A high of 21.2C. Good sun but also chilly breeze. Alert out for wind for tomorrow.

How Farming Land Reform Aided Tourism

In a document of 1933, drawn up as part of what was called the "Registro de la Propiedad Expropiable", there is a list of owners of land ("rustic property") who each possessed more than 250 hectares. There are nearly 70 names on this list for the Balearics as a whole. Many of them are similar - they were members of families - and a couple are familiar names. Juan March Ordinas, he of the Banca March, is one of them. A second was Joaquín Gual de Torrella. In addition to some land in Binissalem, he had much more in Alcúdia, Muro and Sa Pobla. The exact amount of land in the first two was unspecified. For Sa Pobla, it was specified. He owned most of it.

Gual de Torrella is central to the story of the development of Albufera. This member of the Mallorcan nobility acquired vast amounts of land - hence why he had interests in Sa Pobla, Alcúdia and Muro - included among which was the farming colony of Gatamoix, which had been founded by the British engineers responsible for draining and cultivating Albufera.

I referred yesterday to the farming colonies of the second half of the nineteenth century. Gatamoix was the biggest of them. Unlike others, such as Colonia Sant Pere, it lasted only a short time. It wasn't a philanthropic exercise on behalf of Frederick Bateman and the other engineers. They needed workers, so they created the colony. Bateman's son, Lee, was philanthropic. He also went native and was incredibly vain. He renamed the colony Sant Lluís, a Catalan corruption of his Christian name, and presided over the financial ruin of the New Majorca Land Company. Gual de Torrella got himself a bargain and promptly decided to close Gatamoix.

The sad story of Gatamoix is just one example of how Mallorca's land was subject to the whims of private landowners. The 1933 list, because of the families involved, shows that the island's land was in the hands of a small and select group of owners. Not all were bad or unscrupulous (Gual de Torrella did some immense good; it was he who was responsible for introducing rice cultivation to Albufera), but for political reasons (this was the time of the Second Republic and some of the owners were from the nobility) and for legitimate farming reasons, expropriation was deemed necessary in 1933.

Pre-tourism, Mallorca had long faced a struggle in optimising its land resources in terms of exploitation, self-sufficiency and export. The farming colonies had partly been a response to this struggle, and they were an attempt at some form of planning. But by 1933, there was still a lack of order. Land and its use was fragmented, despite reforms that had been ongoing for a century, and partly this was because the land was still predominantly in the hands of this select group of owners. This struggle wasn't helped by how the land was used. By the 1930s, there was still a reliance on cereal farming (Bateman had envisaged wheat cultivation at Albufera, which proved disastrous), but alternative crops promised far better yields and export possibilities - these were almonds, figs and carobs. And it was their cultivation which was the farming reason for the drawing up of the register of land for expropriation.

There was also, of course, the political reason, and in addition there was some pragmatism. Earlier changes to inheritance meant that the great estates of this select landowning class could no longer just be handed down. Also, a number of these owners had serious financial difficulties. The expropriation register hastened a process that had got underway before the Republic came into being, namely the sale of land.

When we consider Mallorca's tourism development, we tend to do so in terms of the tourist himself and of factors such as the jet engine and tour operators. What is often overlooked is the land factor. The expropriation register of 1933 may have referred to "rustic property", predominantly in rural areas, but some of it included coastal land (Albufera was a case in point). Typically, this land had been considered all but worthless, but entrepreneurs (and bankers) were starting to appreciate that it might not be, and this change in attitude towards coastal land plus inheritance rules, financial difficulties and the expropriation register combined to produce an unexpected result.

A fundamental reason why Mallorca's tourism took off as it did in the 1960s was the existence of nascent resorts which sprang up during the wars, and they came about almost by accident. Both in anticipation of the expropriation register and once it was published, sales of rural land which included parcels of coastal land led to the creation of Son Bauló (Can Picafort), Palmanova and Cala d'Or, to name but three.

Tourism development has been a principal cause for the decline of the farming sector. Yet, without a realisation that they would, reforms of rural land were to prove to be crucial to the very industry which was to usurp farming's one-time economic dominance.

MALLORCA TODAY - Mallorca eventually prevail over 10-man Castilla

Real Madrid Castilla 1 : 2 Real Mallorca
Mallorca away at what is Real Madrid's B team, one a couple of points below Mallorca in mid-table in the second division. For once, it wasn't Mallorca suffering the early setback, R.M. having striker Willian sent off before 15 minutes were up. Despite the one-man advantage, Madrid had the better of most of the first period until Mallorca woke up through efforts by Alfaro and Gerard Moreno. Nil-nil at the break, but with less fifteen minutes on the second-half clock, it was one-nil, Madrid going ahead through a Vázquez strike. It might have been expected that Mallorca would dominate, but this wasn't the case, the game becoming open and even, disadvantaged Madrid a match for the visitors. Finally, though, the numerical advantage told, Hemed equalising with seven minutes to go. And then, four minutes later, Thomas put Mallorca ahead. That wasn't it, as Madrid then had a penalty in time added on; Miño saved it. Suddenly, and following the win at home against Tenerife last weekend, a play-off place starts to look like a possibility for Mallorca.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 23 March 2014

No Frills Excursions


Morning high (7.30am): 12C
Forecast high: 17C
Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays): North 3 to 5 increasing Northwest 6 occasionally 7 during the morning.

Calm and bright morning despite there being a yellow alert for the coasts and a rough shipping forecast. Should be sunny today. The coming week looks unsettled with temperatures down at times.

Evening update (18.30): Fair amount of sun but a chilly old breeze. High of 15.7C.