MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 24 July 2014

Stefanos

Morning high (6.45am): 20.5C
Forecast high: 31C; UV: 9
Three-day forecast: 25 July - Sun, 32C; 26 July - Sun, 27C; 27 July - Sun, some cloud, 28C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): South and Southeast 3 to 4, backing East by the afternoon.

A bright morning with just some odd bits of patchy cloud. Another hot day in store, with southerlies dominating. Looking ahead to the weekend, temperatures are forecast to drop to the upper-20s.

Evening update (20.30): A high today of 34.7C. Warm, huh?

No Frills Excursions

The Illogic Of Mallorca's Tourism

There are two organisations in Mallorca which above all others deserve being listened to when it comes to tourism issues. Neither may be totally independent - (which organisation can be?) - but each does its best in being objective. The organisations are the Chamber of Commerce and the Universitat de les Illes Balears. They strive for objectivity, and one reason why they generally succeed in doing so is because they both undertake their own research.

Antoni Riera, professor of applied economics at the university, has been making some observations about the nature of Mallorca's tourism, drawing on a study that was undertaken last summer. The findings will come as no surprise, but they will be findings which, in certain respects, will be ignored. A key one has to do with private accommodation tourism, aka holiday lets. Tourists who rent accommodation spend on average 30% more than tourists who stay in hotels. This is spend which is necessary. It is what keeps a great number of the almost 50,000 tourist-related businesses (the complementary sector and tourism services) going.

Who will be doing the ignoring? Those who are not objective; the regional government being among them. The hoteliers will also want to ignore the findings except to point out that this rental market is partly illegal and unfair competition. It is unfair in different ways, one being that the accommodation is generally cheaper. And so it may well be. But that is the reason why those doing the renting can spend 30% more than the hotel-based tourist.

This 30% figure is striking not just in that it shows a much higher level of spending. It is also very similar to the figure for the total spend by tourists in Mallorca that ends up with the complementary sector. That figure is 29%. Where does the rest go? On hotel accommodation and price of the holiday package.

It needs to be noted that the hotel part of the equation includes all type of board and so not only all-inclusive, but all-inclusive has exacerbated the situation and quite dramatically so. Economic crisis brought about a significant increase in the level of AI. The consequence has been that, although Mallorca has registered record numbers of tourists in the past couple of years and has in fact registered record levels of turnover, the level of spend has declined and is continuing to decline. All-inclusives have seen to this and will continue to see to this.

As I say, none of this will come as a surprise. Indeed, none of it is new. But it sometimes needs organisations with real credibility to try and get the message across. The trouble is that they are consistently ignored, as was the Chamber of Commerce when it issued a report in 2006. This looked at the level of private accommodation holiday rental. One of the report's conclusions was that spending behaviour between hotel and rental tourists represented two distinct profiles. The former spent less than the latter. Another conclusion was that rental tourism lengthened the tourism season (the hoteliers have consistently said that it doesn't). A further conclusion was that a "more stable" tourist resort required a capacity for rental tourism.

We were given grand figures this week for the economic contribution of all-inclusives. 2.5 billion euros. At least there was an admission that the lion's share of this comprised the cost of hotel accommodation and the package. I've been seemingly banging my head against a brick wall for years trying to explain that spend statistics primarily consist of these costs. Just as others, like the Chamber of Commerce and the university, have been trying to explain that there is a vast tourism population which contributes negligible amounts to the local economy and that there is a significant tourism population which stays in rental accommodation which contributes a great deal to the local, non-hotel economy. If there was any logic to Mallorca's tourism, you would think that someone in government might reflect on the model of the island's tourism and conclude that the all-eggs-in-the-hotel-basket model is not necessarily the best model.

But then, when did logic have anything to do with anything? If it did, then the government would accept that there are distinct profiles of tourist, as the Chamber of Commerce noted in 2006, and as Professor Riera has reiterated this past week. One profile being that which makes a telling contribution to the general economy and another one which doesn't.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 23 July 2014

Stefanos

Morning high (5.45am): 21C
Forecast high: 30C; UV: 9
Three-day forecast: 24 July - Sun, 31C; 25 July - Sun, some cloud, 28C; 26 July - Sun, some cloud, 27C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): Variable 2 to 3 increasing South 4 predominantly in the Cap Farrutx area.

Another sunny day coming up. The breezes are now forecast to shift southerly from later today and into tomorrow, so likely to feel hotter. Outlook remains very good, cooling slightly from Friday.

Evening update (22.00): A high of 33.6C. Sun and more sun.

No Frills Excursions

The Railway That Never Was: Cala Ratjada

One hundred years ago, on 23 July, 1914, one Rafel Blanes Tolosa presented a plan for a railway line between Manacor and Artà. Over a year later, on 8 September, 1915, "La Gaceta de Madrid", a newspaper which was to eventually become (along with other major cities' "gacetas") the "Boletín Oficial del Estado", announced the bidding for the line. On 12 November that year, the result of the bidding process became known. The concession was awarded to the company S.A. Ferrocarriles de Mallorca. Blanes Tolosa was a director.

Roughly half of the finance came from the Banco de Crédito Balear in the form of a two million pesetas loan (Blanes Tolosa was also a director of the bank.). Work on the line took until 1921. There was, however, one part of the line that was missing and so one municipality that wasn't included in the project. It should have been, but it wasn't. The line was meant to have gone on to Cala Ratjada in Capdepera. It didn't and it never did.

Connecting the railway to the port would have been important, or so you might have thought. Yet, it is a curiosity of Mallorca's railway building that connections with the coast have been all but non-existent.

There was once a line from Palma's port to the Plaça d'Espanya. It closed in 1965. There was a project for a line from Palma to the port in Andratx. It was to have gone to Calvia (village) and then on to Andratx and would have involved the building of two tunnels. The extension to Alcúdia, still spoken about, was scrapped when the Civil War intervened, but the rail line there was considered very much earlier. So much so in fact that there was a ceremony in 1912 for the laying of the first stones of what was meant to have become a station in Pollensa on its route to Alcúdia from Inca. There would have been branch lines to both Puerto Pollensa and Puerto Alcúdia. Quite a few years later, there was another scheme, one which would have seen a railway connect with the seaplanes base in Puerto Pollensa. Elsewhere on the island, there was a project to take a line to Porto Cristo. None of them of course were realised.

Port Sóller is the only place that nowadays has a coastal connection, and even that isn't of course a train as such. Apart from the old station in Palma's port and one also in Arenal on the old line that went to Llucmajor and on to Santanyí, the island's coastline has been totally untouched by rail transport.

There are a number of theories as to why railways didn't extend to the coasts. One is that coastal land was relatively worthless and unpopulated. But when there were ports, and quite successful ones like Cala Ratjada's, this explanation doesn't really add up. A second one has to do with the traditional fear of the coast because of the threat of piracy. By the twentieth century, however, although there might have been the odd pirate knocking around, illegal activity was of a different nature, i.e. smuggling. Again, the explanation isn't strong. A third is financial and logistical, but when promoters often also had associations with banks, the money wasn't necessarily a problem, while the experience of the Sóller train, which required the engineering achievement of the tunnel, demonstrated that obstacles could be overcome.

There is a fourth theory, and it is specific to Cala Ratjada. It has to do with rivalries between Artà and Capdepera and between wealthy landowners. Blanes Tolosa was a wealthy man. He owned a large chunk of Artà. But though he had some aristocratic blood, he wasn't of the higher order of Mallorcan nobility. Capdepera, on other hand, was largely owned by this higher order, and it was one that wanted nothing to do with anything that smacked of the new entrepreneurial bourgeoisie and some lower-order upstart from the next town.

Maybe this was the reason why the railway line never reached Cala Ratjada. Whatever the reason, the line was never built and though it was considered many years later during the time that the Manacor-Artà line existed (the line closed in 1977), nothing came of it. When the railway line was due to have been reopened under the scheme envisaged by the Antich regional government of 2007-2011, Cala Ratjada was again spoken of. But the line of course hasn't been reopened, and it won't be. An appalling waste of money went into a project which had to be abandoned because there wasn't any more money, so the eastern part of Mallorca was denied a new railway and the possibility that it might go as far as Cala Ratjada. It was another familiar story, some will argue. It is the eastern part of Mallorca which is always neglected.

* Photo of train at Artà station from www.baleareslive.com

What's On Around Alcúdia and Pollensa - La Patrona

This is the real "biggie" of the local fiestas, La Patrona - Mare de Déu dels Angels, replete with the Moors and Christians battle. Starts on 26 July with the traditional bell-ringing and firing of rockets and ends on 2 August with fireworks after the Moors and Christians battle from 7pm and the singing of "Visca Pollença". The day of 2 August starts with the Alborada - the band of music plays an early-morning reveille at 5am - the party from the night before not having gone on as late as it once did. If there is one major change to La Patrona - to what it was even only three years ago - is the lesser concentration on the night parties. The Marxa Fresca white party is still very much a part of the programme, though, and it will start at 11.30pm on 31 July.

The programme in English: http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/2014/07/pollensa-la-patrona-2014.html

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 22 July 2014

Stefanos

Morning high (6.30am): 22C
Forecast high: 31C; UV: 9
Three-day forecast: 23 July - Sun, 29C; 24 July - Sun, 30C; 25 July - Sun, some cloud, 31C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): South 2 backing East and Northeast 3.

A fine morning and a fine day to come. The general outlook seems very settled with easterlies coming to dominate which mean hot but not excessively hot conditions.

Evening update (19.15): A high of 32.6C. A good day, some cloud but not obscuring the sun.

No Frills Excursions

Paradise Regained?: What tourism should have been

(In the previous two articles I have argued that it was war and what followed - economic autarky and then technocracy - which destroyed the original principle of Mallorca's tourism from pre-war times and led to the type of tourism which emerged in the 1960s.)

The technocracy was such that it hasn't ever really gone away. It may be more friendly, it may have a greater appreciation of individuals' needs, of the environment and of markets, but it survives in its current-day form. It is typified by a Balearics tourism minister whose background is as an architect and planner and by a Mallorcan national tourism secretary of state whose specialism is property and its planning. They are representative of the new technocracy, knowledgeable of things but not, one fears, people.

Despite all this, we are seeing signs, I believe, of how uninterrupted organic development might have shaped very different resorts. The current-day technocrats are not blind to the sins of the past, even if they can sin in human terms and in being undemocratic in their biases towards property (hotels versus private accommodation, as an example). They have established a framework for belated, very belated modernisation of mature resorts, those which were the result of Fordist mass tourism. This framework cannot bring back what was lost of the natural patrimony but it can, through a re-conception of resorts, bring back - to an extent - the lost philosophy of the greater harmony of the 1930s garden city resorts. And nowhere is this potentially more evident than in Magalluf.

To take again my thesis about how war shaped later tourism development, Magalluf was a prime example. Had there been more organic development, Magalluf would still have become a resort, but it would not have been as it was to become. In 1959, approval was given for its exploitation, and that exploitation was sudden and disastrous. The environment was just one victim of a model of authoritarian-state diktat combined with virtually non-existent planning regulations and with inadequate, easily swayed, corrupt officialdom. Magalluf was, if you like, the model fascistic tourist resort. It was Fordist mass tourism in extremis. From nothing in the late '50s emerged architectural barbarism. It was the technocrats' wet dream.

Palmanova and Santa Ponsa, though they were both to also fall victim to this barbarism, were, unlike Magalluf, products of pre-war planning. Had they developed organically, they too would have been very different. Santa Ponsa is a better example than Palmanova. You can discern from some of its layout the original garden city principle, and that original principle, similar to Alcúdia, would in all likelihood have spawned a golfing resort of a different style to today. It may be forgotten that there was actually a golf company in Santa Ponsa that pre-dated Alcúdia's 1934 golf course. It was to be decades before that golf vision was realised, and by then it had to vie with the technocratic undermining of the original principle.

Magalluf would in all likelihood have been developed before it was. Like its neighbours there was a similar need for land exploitation, but this exploitation would almost certainly have corresponded with the garden city principles in 1930s' Palmanova and Santa Ponsa. All three resorts would thus have taken on a very different appearance to that which they did in the 1950s and 1960s. The chances are that there would have been a form of mass tourism even with organic development, but the mass would have been smaller and it would have been of an alternative character. It would still have been foreign, but the offer would have been less dominated by foreign culture and concreted vandalism. It would simply have been more "Mallorcan". The transformation of Magalluf, as we are not witnessing because of Meliá's intervention, is, I would argue, along lines that would have emerged had Magalluf been left to develop organically and not been that model fascistic tourist resort. Even aspects of the new look owe something to the 1930s principles: boulevard, green areas, and thus a greater harmony between living space and natural patrimony.

One of the challenges that Mallorca faces is determining what mass should now mean. If it is to be smaller mass, and it may well mean this, then there are inevitable consequences, but this smaller mass would have been the norm had it not been for the mad dash to develop in the 1960s. One can argue that what occurred in the '60s was in fact an aberration. It was not how it was meant to have been and it was not how it would have been, had war not led to the desperate solutions of the technocrats and had the resorts been allowed to develop organically. It has taken fifty years to attempt to right the wrongs of fascistic mass tourism. These attempts should not be criticised. They should be applauded. They are what Mallorca should have been.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 21 July 2014

Stefanos

Morning high (5.45am): 21.5C
Forecast high: 29C; UV: 9
Three-day forecast: 22 July - Sun, some cloud, 31C; 23 July - Sun, 29C; 24 July - Sun, 30C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): Variable 2 to 3 increasing North 3 to 4 during the morning and veering and easing Southeast 2 to 3 by the evening.

Cloudyish start to the day but due to clear. Highs down a touch with breezes switching predominantly northerly. The week's outlook is fine and hot.

Evening update (20.00): A bit fresher today. A high of only 30.1C. Only.

No Frills Excursions

Mallorca's Tourism: The technocratic solution

In the first article in this series I looked at how Mallorca's tourism, had it not been for war, would have developed organically in line with a philosophy established in the early years of the twentieth century.

What happened instead was that there was no philosophy, other than a politico-economic philosophy of technocracy. At its most extreme, technocracy advocates a scientific response to a problem, usually with scant regard for democratic principles or general welfare needs. Spain's solution, and thus Mallorca's, was primarily a technocratic one, and the technocrats were those who inhabited Franco's think-tank.

Franco himself was unconvinced as to the merits of tourism, mainly because he feared a corruption of a highly conservative, Catholic and introverted society by foreigners, for whom he reserved a paranoid xenophobia. It took the Americans to, in effect, bribe him into thinking differently. But once he started to change his thinking, he needed those who would bring about this new tourism industry. And those were the technocrats of Opus Dei. Their scientific method was one which owed a great deal to Henry Ford: mass production and standardisation. Take the mass out of the car factory, put it in the resorts and what do you get? Mass tourism. Far from being organic, therefore, Mallorca's tourism development was subject to a sudden shock of artificiality that tore down the edifice of the original philosophy and erected instead innumerable edifices that ripped to shreds the garden city notion and the natural patrimony.

War - both the Civil War and the Second World War - reinforced Franco's paranoia. It led to the imposition of the truly disastrous economic model of autarky, a model symptomatic of the hyper-xenophobic. Had the post-war model been open rather than closed, it is arguable that war would have represented a pause in tourism development and not a breakdown, but autarky was a consequence of war and of its dogmatic victors. Thus, war was the determining factor in shaping what was to occur towards the end of the fifties, which was the technocratic solution of Fordist mass tourism as a response to the complete failure of war-inspired autarky.

It is all hypothesis, I appreciate, and there is a further factor which suggests that tourism development may well have occurred in the way that it did anyway. And that, perversely enough, was the very land that the founding fathers of Mallorca's tourism were keen to preserve as much as possible for its heritage value. Coastal land had typically been considered all but worthless. The need to exploit it was a further reason why the 1930s garden city resorts emerged, but it doesn't follow that this need for exploitation would inevitably have led to the total transformation of some of the island's coastline (parts of Calvia being cases in point). Coming back to Alcúdia and to its pre-war golf course and hotel, it might have been that the development there would have been more in line with a golfing resort, perhaps in a Portuguese style. Alcúdia would be a very different place now, had it been. The part tourist, part residential urbanisation was already conceived in the 1930s, don't forget. Organic development would have meant something quite different to the artificiality of the 1960s that rapidly sought to make up for the lost 30 or more years in the desperate pursuit of the pressing need for sudden economic improvement.

Perhaps above all, a continuous process of development would have meant that the Mallorcan people maintained control of their destiny. Sure, a whole load of Mallorcans cashed in thanks to mass tourism, but the cashing-in was made possible by an economic model dictated from Madrid, by foreign interests and by a total loss of the collective spirit that had sought to maintain the natural patrimony. The Mallorcans lost much of their own say, and so little did their culture come to matter, that by the time mass tourism arrived it had been cast adrift on the Mediterranean and been replaced by a kitsch Spanishness and the comfort blankets of imported foreign cultures for the new tourist innocents abroad, British and German for the most part.

The technocratic solution also took away what soul there would have been in Mallorca's tourism. Mass production for the factory floor paid little attention to the needs of the individual. Mass tourism was similar. It dealt with units of production: hotels of standard designs and tourists packaged into the hotels' standardised rooms. The human touch was absent from the technocratic solution, but fortunately the human touch couldn't be killed off, and it was maintained by what grew up alongside the hotels - the bars and restaurants of the resorts, the so-called complementary offer. It was they, more than other parts of this new tourism industry, which humanised mass tourism. It is all the more scandalous, therefore, that this very humanising element has been so disregarded by the current-day scramble to impose all-inclusives.

(The final part tomorrow.)

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 20 July 2014

Stefanos

Morning high (7.30am): 23.5C
Forecast high: 32C; UV: 8
Three-day forecast: 21 July - Sun, some cloud, 30C; 22 July - Sun, 28C; 23 July - Sun, 30C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): South 3 to 5 veering Northwest during the morning.

A stuffy morning with some light cloud. Another hot day in prospect but not as hot as yesterday, the breezes moving to the west and north and cooling things down a little. Week's outlook is very good.

Evening update (21.00): A high of 33.6C. Fair bit of cloud this morning, but sunny this afternoon.

No Frills Excursions

What-If: War and Mallorca's tourism

It's a game we can all play, the what-if game. Ultimately futile, it is nonetheless a game which can be instructive in explaining how things came to be as they are; these things being Mallorca's tourism. It's a game I have been playing again, and the starting-point, strangely enough perhaps, was golf. It was the old course in Alcúdia which set me thinking.

That course was opened in 1934. It closed two years later. Thirty years after it had been opened, Mallorca got what was truly its first golf course. Had it not been for war, there would have been several courses by the time that Son Vida opened. Of that, I think you can be certain. War and what was to follow until Spain began to wake up in the 1950s disrupted the development of tourism in Mallorca, and so my thesis, if you can call it such, is that it was war, as much if not more than the dynamics of the late 1950s, which created the Mallorca of the 1960s and thus the Mallorca of today.

The Alcúdia golf course was part of the planned urbanisation of an area along the bay. Part tourist, part residential, it mirrored other similar enterprises on the island - the garden city resorts of Son Bauló, Cala d'Or, Palmanova and Santa Ponsa. While one cannot and should not ignore the part played by opportunistic entrepreneurs and bankers in the creation of these resorts and while one can also say that there was no obvious all-island masterplan which brought them about, they were nevertheless the consequence of dual philosophies. One was the garden-city philosophy itself, the harmonious co-existence between living space and the environment. The other was that of the fathers of Mallorca's tourism, most obviously Miquel dels Sants Oliver and Bartomeu Amengual at the end of the nineteenth century and start of the twentieth.

These two journalists were alert to the potential of tourism for economic development. Indeed, there was a necessity; diversification was called for because of a crisis in agriculture. They saw the potential, so much so that they conceived a tourism for the summer, which ran counter to the generally held view that tourism was a winter phenomenon. This summer tourism may have been one based on the health benefits of the seaside, but it was still a different way of looking at tourism. It was their contributions which were to inform the Fomento del Turismo, the Mallorca Tourist Board, a body whose own contribution to tourism history anywhere in the world is pretty much without parallel.

There were obviously some powerful business interests that guided the tourist board, but if one looks back at its records during the early years after its founding in 1905, what emerges is a picture of an organisation working with a co-operative spirit and within - to use a dreadful word - an holistic framework. There was little to guide the tourist board. Yes, there were experiences in France, Italy and Switzerland, but the tourist board was working from almost a blank piece of paper and was doing so in creating an integrated industry for an island with its own specific needs and constraints. One of these constraints was land and so, by association, the environment and fragile nature of an island eco-system. There may not have been a scientific environmental perspective back then, but there most definitely was one that was founded on the island's patrimony, its natural heritage. Sants Oliver had it and perhaps crucially so also did any number of individuals from the arts world who were as important to the tourist board's co-operative spirit as the businesspeople. The resorts that emerged in the 1930s were thus in keeping with a guiding philosophy. They sought to balance the needs of construction with those of the island's natural patrimony. But then, war intervened.

It is of course quite legitimate to argue that the many factors of the late 1950s and early 1960s would have conspired to create what was created in any event. There is no escaping the realities of those factors - consumerism, the jet engine, higher standards of living, paid holidays, tour operators and so on. Perhaps it would have happened as it did, but I somewhat doubt it. My argument is that had it not been for war, Mallorca's tourism development would have been organic. It would have taken the creations and attitudes of the 1930s - the garden city resorts, the golf, the awareness of the natural patrimony - allied them to what was evident from the early part of the last century in terms of hotels, predominantly up-market ones, and followed a straighter line in arriving at a different model of tourism. It would thus have been a continuous revision of the original philosophy and one that would have been more sympathetic to that patrimony.

(To be continued tomorrow.)

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 19 July 2014

Stefanos

Morning high (5.45am): 26C
Forecast high: 33C; UV: 9
Three-day forecast: 20 July - Sun, some cloud, 32C; 21 July - Sun with some cloud, 27C; 22 July - Sun, 29C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): Southeast 4 to 5 veering and easing Southwest 3 to 4 during the morning.

A very warm night, stiff breezes having brought that African air in and so temperatures in parts not falling below 25 overnight. Likely to be cloudy to start with, clearing later, but haze can be expected along with high temperatures. The forecast high is 33, but as with yesterday it will probably three or so degrees higher. Hot weather persisting into tomorrow but the breezes are due to shift northwards and so cool things down a touch.

Evening update (19.00): A high of 37C. Hot, you might say.

No Frills Excursions

Lokaykaser - Bauzá's Summer Smash

Forget all those summer hits of the past, throw your old Beach Boys 45s in the bin, switch off the Fresh Prince, there's a new dude on the summertime hit trail. Joserra raps. Sort of. August is not here yet and José Ramón, conspicuous by his absence these past couple of weeks, seems to have already gone on holiday. To compensate for his temporary non-existence, a video has been released that is destined to be a smash in the clubs of Mallorca. Well, maybe.

The Assemblea de Docents (teachers' assembly) is nothing if not switched on to the use of different media. Having produced a comic strip that featured the president, they have now put out Bauzá, the video. It starts with these words: "Achtung!Warning! Ooooooou! For your own safety, you are warned that the video you are about to see contains images that could hurt your sensibilities or even change the course of your lives". We are then treated to an animated Bauzá in flamenco dress, among other attire, along with the likes of his two favourite fields - the Camps of Joana and the Campos of Jorge, respectively the regional government's headmistress and the president of the fiercely anti-Catalanist Circulo Balear. It is all an excuse to promote some of the president's finest phrases, such as this one from the 2011 election campaign - "We are going to do what we have to do and we will do that which is necessary because we are going to do what we have to do". It could also have this one - "We know what to do and what we do and why we do what we say we are going to do, and we will continue doing what we have to do even though some do not think that we will do what we said we would do" - but that would be getting a bit silly.

Will it be a summertime hit? Doubtful. The tune's rubbish. If you must, you can always see it for yourself. So, here it is. The hashtag comes from "lo que hacer" and itself is a dig at Bauzá's occasionally mangled pronunciation, the type which once made it seem as though he had referred to farmers as clowns. Seem as though?

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 18 July 2014

Stefanos

Morning high (8.45am): 25C
Forecast high: 33C; UV: 9
Three-day forecast: 19 July - Cloud then sun, 33C; 20 July - Sun with some cloud, 29C; 21 July - Sun with some cloud, 27C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): Southeast 3 increasing 4 by the afternoon and locally 5, veering South later.

An alert out for high temperatures today and tomorrow. The forecast high may well be higher, therefore. Expected to cool down by Sunday, so, and though not forecast, it is possible that there might be the isolated thunderstorm.

Evening update (19.00): A high of 36.4C. Quite hazy for much of the afternoon.

No Frills Excursions

An Old Well In Alcúdia

The programme for this year's Sant Jaume fiestas in Alcúdia contains the usual information regarding the fiestas' events but it also includes a curious article. Curious because it is a history article which has no obvious connection with the fiestas but which is, nevertheless, fascinating.

This article starts out by referring to the book of "Determinations of the faithful town of Alcúdia (1702-1707)". One of these determinations, i.e. decisions, was dated 14 August, 1707. It was a decision to cover the well at the Xara gate in the old town. The reason why was to stop children from throwing stones down the well and to so further prevent costs of having to clean the well up each year.

A question this raises is - where is the Xara gate? It is in fact the gate more commonly referred to as the Porta des Moll, the one in the market square (or Plaça Carles V). The next question is - what does Xara refer to? The word is encountered in different places in Alcúdia. There is a road called Xara which leads out of the town towards Bonaire. The beach next to the marina is sometimes referred to as Xara beach, and the building by the beach, under which are restaurants such as Pippers and El Yate, is the Xara building. So what's the significance?

Xara has different meanings. One of them is a corruption from Arabic to mean Sharia, and thus Sharia Law. This, despite the Arabic history of Alcúdia, is not what is meant. Or at least one assumes not. A xara (also Arabic in origin) is a place with rocky shrubs. Where these rocky shrubs were is anyone's guess, but Alcúdia's xara is almost certainly derived from them.

The point of the article, though, is that well at the Xara (aka Moll) gate. We discover from the article that the well was positioned "106 steps from the cross", i.e. of Sant Jaume church, but where actually was it? It came to have considerable significance in the twentieth century, as it was in fact where the old Balearic Electricity Energy was, a building on the Carles square which, in 1927, was sold to the company Tapices Vidal (tapices meaning tapestries but also fabrics). The well, therefore, was what drove both the old electricity plant (and I doubt many of you will know that there was such a plant right in the old town) and then the factory, which is now a listed building.

The well then took on a greater significance. Enter into its story Pere Mas i Reus (aka Pedro Mas y Reus, after whom the Bellevue Mile is named). Mas y Reus owned the electricity distribution network in Alcúdia. The water from the well was extracted and pumped by electricity to fire this network. In 1933, Mas y Reus bought 198 hectares of land on and by Albufera. It was sold to him by Joaquim Gual de Torrella, the aristocrat who had acquired that land when he bought out what remained of the bankrupt company started by Frederick Bateman (one of the engineers responsible for the draining of Albufera in the second half of the nineteenth century).

What Mas y Reus bought corresponded, more or less, with what is now Alcúdia's main tourism centre. (He was, it should be noted, not the only one involved in the purchase; Jaume Ensenyat was, too.) They set about selling off one hundred plots and also set about creating the golf course, which was shortlived because of the Civil War, and building the Hotel Golf, which today is the Vanity Golf. On this land there was another building, the Club House, which is now the Calypso by Sea Club.

The well was important because it was needed to water the golf course and to provide water to the urbanisation which Mas y Reus and Ensenyat envisaged, but which didn't really get off the ground because of the war and only came to be realised in the 1960s when the land was properly reclaimed from the Albufera wetland. So, a pipeline was created to take the water from the old town, and Mas y Reus and Ensenyat paid Tapices Vidal two centimos of a peseta for each cubic metre for general use and seven centimos for water destined to water gardens.

All of this came to a stop in 1936, but this old well, says the article, has a well-deserved place in the economic development of Alcúdia and of Mallorca in general.

You never know what you might find in fiesta programmes. A bit of history which, I imagine for most people, is all but unknown.

* Photo of the old factory, taken from the programme for this year's Sant Jaume fiestas.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 17 July 2014

Stefanos

Morning high (8.45am): 25C
Forecast high: 31C; UV: 9
Three-day forecast: 18 July - Sun, 32C; 19 July - Sun with haze, 36C; 20 July - Sun and cloud, 27C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): Variable 2 increasing East and Southeast 3 to 4 by midday.

Lovely again this morning, and the short heatwave is still on the cards. 36C being forecast now for Saturday, but this exceptionally high temperature will not last and things will be back to what is more like normal from Sunday.

Evening update (19.15): People complaining about the heat - a high of 33.5C - but it's going to be hotter over the next two days. Alerts in place for high temperatures.

No Frills Excursions

A Very Peculiar Summer

It has indeed been a peculiar summer. Following a booming April, there was a May for which all manner of concerns were raised about the level of tourism but which were largely not realised, mainly it would seem because of bookings for private holiday accommodation. Then there was June - pretty good - but further worries about July, and in particular the first two weeks of July. Those worries appear to have been well founded, but they were all the more strange because only two years ago July had registered the highest levels of hotel occupancy in Mallorca since the turn of the century. It might yet be that July hits the heights of occupancy because suddenly things changed during the week. Was it all down to the World Cup after all?

To give an indication, my "manor" is the tourism centre of Alcúdia. One has become used over the years to complaints about the number of tourists and the consequent lack of business and so one has become used to treating these complaints with a touch of scepticism. This early July, however, has given no grounds for scepticism. The area around the Mile has indeed been dead. However, tour operators had suggested that there would be a pick-up from the middle of the month, and they seem to have been spot-on. Bellevue, the bellwether of tourist activity in the zone, has suddenly gone from being under 50% full to being all but full. This turnaround will be attributed to a surge in the British market, which is indeed part of the explanation, but Bellevue, as with the whole of Alcúdia, is by no means British alone.

There have been dark mutterings about a sharp fall in British bookings to Mallorca this summer, but until we know how the season shakes out - and we won't for some while yet - it will be difficult to know for sure. If the second half of July and August rescues the summer, then all well and good, but it is not all well and good if we are really talking about a season of feverish activity which lasts a mere six weeks or so.

The Spanish Confederation of Hotels and Tourist Accommodation (CEHAT) has, for its part, announced that this summer will be the best since the pre-crisis summer of 2007. Overbookings for August are said to be on the cards; or at least occupancy of above 90% in most Spanish tourist resorts, representing an overall increase in activity of around 11%. But CEHAT has reminded governments of different sorts of the need for major investment in tourism promotion, pointing to the significant rises in bookings to competitor destinations - Turkey up 17%; Greece, a rise of 22%.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 16 July 2014

Stefanos

Morning high (6.30am): 21C
Forecast high: 31C; UV: 9
Three-day forecast: 17 July - Sun, 31C; 18 July - Sun, 32C; 19 July - Sun, 35C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): Variable 2 increasing Northeast 2 to 3 during the morning.

Another splendid morning. Plenty of sun today with the prospect over the next three days of a notable rise in temperature, a high of 35 anticipated by Saturday, followed by a cooling-down.

Evening update (19.30): High of 31.8C.

No Frills Excursions

A Short History Of Wind

The shipping forecast for the bay of Alcúdia at this time of the year varies little from day to day. Its lack of variance doesn't prevent it, though, from saying that winds will be "variable". They are only light winds until some time not long after midday. From then, the winds pick up and become predominantly north-east. If you go to the beach along the bay, you will know this for yourself. You can pretty much set your watch according to when the wind increases. It's getting towards time for lunch.

Though the north-easterly occurs almost every afternoon, it is, and despite the variability of the shipping forecast, the southerlies which dominate in summer. The north-easterly is welcome. It may cause panic if it suddenly blows in and uproots beach umbrellas, it may be annoying in that it throws grains of sand and small pieces of beach detritus on to you, but it is cooling. If there were only southerlies and only African air, afternoons on the beach would be as stifling as they are inland, where the north-easterly rarely penetrates.

Mallorca is sun, sea and beach, but it is also wind. And not just one wind. The eight winds of the Mediterranean are so much a part of Mallorca's existence that they lend their titles to names of streets, to bars and restaurants and even to entire mountain ranges. The northerly tramuntana dominates in winter, along with its north-westerly neighbour, the mestral. The north-easterly gregal is less evident, but it blows nonetheless and can be cold and fierce, bringing with it rain and snow. In summer, it is more benign, more welcome. It lives up more to the summery implications of its meaning from the Latin "graegalis" - coming from Greece.

Though the summer gregal blows each day in the bay, it typically goes no further than the coast. Occasionally it can, if it has enough force. And if it does, the chances are that it encounters a different wind. Eight winds of the Mediterranean there are, but there is a ninth wind in Mallorca. Or different ninth winds, to be more accurate. The brisas marinas, the sea breezes peculiar to Mallorca. They have a collective name - embat - an atmospheric phenomenon caused by the contrasting daytime heat of the interior and the comparative coolness of the sea, which is both predictable and unpredictable. It can go in different directions and come from different coastal areas. Hence, there can be different winds - the brisas marinas - not just the one.

The eight winds, which in clockwise order starting with the tramuntana (the north wind) are gregal, llevant, xaloc, migjorn, llebeig (or garbi), ponent and mestral, were depicted in the "rose" of winds created by the father and son team of Abraham and Jehuda (aka Jafuda) Cresques in the latter part of the fourteenth century. The Cresques were responsible for the "Atlas Catalan", which is held in the French national library, and the rose was one aspect of this mediaeval cartographic masterpiece.

The Cresques were Mallorcan Jews. Jafuda certainly converted to Christianity, taking the name Jaume Riba, though Abraham probably didn't convert; the persecution of Jews in Mallorca was something that started after Abraham died. Their atlas, also known as a "mapamundi" (a map of the world as they knew it), was worked on from 1375. The Cresques received some payment from the Aragon crown for their work, but the atlas was donated to the French king, Charles VI, in 1381. It wasn't until the start of the nineteenth century that it was discovered, lurking unknown in the national library. While the map itself was of huge but seemingly unappreciated importance, the rose of the winds was also hugely important. Though the names on the Cresques' original were not identical to those of today, they bore a very strong resemblance, and the most significant of them was the tramuntana.

There has been much debate as to the origin of the name tramuntana. Its most likely origin was from the Latin "trans montes". Though it is said that it was first documented as an Italian word in the early sixteenth century, it most clearly wasn't. The Cresques used it, and Ramon Llull, the great Mallorcan polymath of the thirteenth century, also used a word that was very similar. Why, you might ask, is this important? Well, it is because the eight winds of the Mediterranean, as they are now known, are also sometimes referred to as the eight Catalan winds of the Mediterranean. In effect, the Cresques invented the "vents", the winds. Or certainly, they invented the tramuntana, no doubt borrowing from what was common usage that had probably been handed down from Llull.

So, when the wind blows in Mallorca, you should know that the winds aren't only part of the Mallorcan climate, they go very much deeper into Mallorcan existence. The winds, made in Mallorca.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 15 July 2014

Stefanos

Morning high (6.30am): 20C
Forecast high: 30C; UV: 9
Three-day forecast: 16 July - Sun, 31C; 17 July - Sun, 31C; 18 July - Sun, 31C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): Variable 2 to 3 increasing mainly Northeast 3 to 4 by midday.

A fine, clear morning, and the forecast, as it is for the whole of the week, is for pretty much cloudless skies, but as the forecast hasn't been too accurate in this respect just lately, we'll see.

Evening update (20.45): Decent day, some cloud at times. A high of 30.5C.

No Frills Excursions