I can't wait till October. I even found myself saying it yesterday. What on Earth was I thinking? Well I know what I was thinking. Having been up and out early to do the hotel rounds (if it was Monday it had to be Can Picafort) and having been doing much the same for God knows how many weeks, I thought - jeez, I could do with it being October. You what. Why would you wish the summer away? There are, after all, worse things that I could be doing than visiting hotels and tourist offices and rent-a-car offices and golf clubs and shops and ... and and and ... across the northern zone - oh and the airport. Worse things like running a bar. Now that can be tough. And it is in bars that you most often hear the bring-on-October refrain. The wish falls into two categories - we're so busy, we're knackered or the season's been rubbish, can't wait for it to end. On balance I guess most would opt for the former. If it's the latter, don't go wishing too swift an end to this season - there's next year to come yet. Then there are also those who want the more moderate weather of October (save for the tornadoes if this one is like the last) because it's been and is too hot. I don't quite get this one. Why are people living here? Isn't heat a part of the whole deal?
October does start to loom in the mind around this time in August. It may well still be high summer with temperatures due to be nudging the 100 mark again today, the beaches and the poolsides may well be packed, but the middle of August brings with it a psychological shift. For some it is that the end is in sight, albeit that the season is effectively still less than two-thirds through; for others it is the realisation that it (summer) is going to peter out in the not too distant future. Whatever one says, one lives for the summer. Back at the start of June for instance, the summer seems infinite. Time plays strange tricks with the mind. Now there are but three weeks till September; September that feels like the leftovers after the meal. Winter is not far away. This psychology is of course the same elsewhere, but for somewhere that lives for summer it is accentuated. And this year there is the concern that the looming winter will be harsh - not necessarily in terms of the weather but from the point of view of mere living. The summer may have been difficult for many; winter will be even more so. It is rare, but this season staff have been laid off by businesses sustained by tourism. The cycle of economic difficulty only speeds up during winter. For some, it is a question of how can they survive; what will they have to live on. And they will be willing the return of summer, but willing a return, one fears, with little confidence.
MARKETS
Following on from yesterday, I have to hold my hand up and say that I got it wrong. The "market" in the paseo is not a market at all; it is just things like kids' "workshops". I really must not trust to reports and town-hall handouts. Like the chill-out zone on the beach, far better to check it out personally. Should have known better. Anyway, it doesn't change the basic idea of yesterday's piece but I have re-written the end so as to reflect better what actually is going on. Apologies for that.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Kooks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yCvYA3t6Mc). Today's title - personally I can't understand why this is such a big hit.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
Down To The Market
I have never quite got it with markets. The local ones are fair enough to dash in and get some cheap underpants or a pair of shoes that fall to pieces within a month or so, but all that greengrocery, leather and lace, tat of both the cheap and expensive variety and the bloody pipe-players homogenise into market sameyness. Not all: the ancient Mallorcans who live next door and also have a pile in Sineu have long suggested a visit to the Sineu market, pressure to do so from various quarters suggesting I may have to succumb. Perhaps it's a male thing, which places bone idleness or a glass of cold foamy higher up the agenda than the female inclination to blow the household budget on bags of loose olives and some curious shapes made from iron. Out of season the markets are reasonably pleasurable affairs as there is no one lurking about trying to liberate your wallet; in summer they are a hell of heat and heaving inhumanity.
Wherever you go there is a market of some sort. Even the hotels are in on the act; Sea Club for example has one of trinkets and this-and-that. Maybe it's all an inherited trait, going back to the days of trooping for several days to the nearest market to sell the settlement's goat. One could argue that the lucky-lucky men are just another facet of this; all they've done is to dispense with the stalls. Wherever you go someone's trying to sell something to someone else that that someone else doesn't actually want.
The scramble for market space has been a let's-shop-lebensraum of stall here, rack of some old clothes there. The "other" markets, i.e. not the town markets, are partly social events and partly like legalised lucky-lucksterism - all that they're missing are the wraps of coke. The flea market of, say, the Jolly Roger Saturday off The Mile is a gathering of local lags and gossip, the contents of the loft and the occasional rather tasteful - I can stare at some on the sofa when I divert my eyes from the Mac.
There are others who are none too rapt with market-mania. The shopowners in Puerto Alcúdia for instance. They are apparently seeking "legal measures" to put an end to the market thing in the marina. I spoke about this some time last year. It may be a pleasant little diversion for the tourist, but the regular traders ain't too keen, though one wonders why it has taken them this long to start really kicking up a stink. One senses the rumblings of "crisis" and diminished sales and the resultant search for a scapegoat.
An argument is that these markets bring in more people and so everyone benefits. I'd need some convincing; the Alcudiamar market may be a small attraction for tourists (should they actually know about it of course), but if they end up spending their dosh with the markets, they don't spend it elsewhere. There was a time when all these things could have complemented each other and all would have indeed reaped the rewards, but that time is not now one suspects.
The shops are especially none too happy as the regular evening children's workshops and so on that are taking place on the paseo are designed to give shops something of a leg-up during a difficult season, the belief being that hordes of people will flock to these events and spend like crazy in the shops. This, apparently I now find out , was/is the purpose of the town hall's poster advertising them. Easy to have misconstrued that poster. It is meant to say - come along to these wonderful events and then go shopping and not come along and do some shopping at some additional market, which was how it had been presented. Can't trust any reports these days, or town hall posters.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Hall and Oates - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQUMDoZ4VCg. Today's title - indie group - think David Bowie for their name.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Wherever you go there is a market of some sort. Even the hotels are in on the act; Sea Club for example has one of trinkets and this-and-that. Maybe it's all an inherited trait, going back to the days of trooping for several days to the nearest market to sell the settlement's goat. One could argue that the lucky-lucky men are just another facet of this; all they've done is to dispense with the stalls. Wherever you go someone's trying to sell something to someone else that that someone else doesn't actually want.
The scramble for market space has been a let's-shop-lebensraum of stall here, rack of some old clothes there. The "other" markets, i.e. not the town markets, are partly social events and partly like legalised lucky-lucksterism - all that they're missing are the wraps of coke. The flea market of, say, the Jolly Roger Saturday off The Mile is a gathering of local lags and gossip, the contents of the loft and the occasional rather tasteful - I can stare at some on the sofa when I divert my eyes from the Mac.
There are others who are none too rapt with market-mania. The shopowners in Puerto Alcúdia for instance. They are apparently seeking "legal measures" to put an end to the market thing in the marina. I spoke about this some time last year. It may be a pleasant little diversion for the tourist, but the regular traders ain't too keen, though one wonders why it has taken them this long to start really kicking up a stink. One senses the rumblings of "crisis" and diminished sales and the resultant search for a scapegoat.
An argument is that these markets bring in more people and so everyone benefits. I'd need some convincing; the Alcudiamar market may be a small attraction for tourists (should they actually know about it of course), but if they end up spending their dosh with the markets, they don't spend it elsewhere. There was a time when all these things could have complemented each other and all would have indeed reaped the rewards, but that time is not now one suspects.
The shops are especially none too happy as the regular evening children's workshops and so on that are taking place on the paseo are designed to give shops something of a leg-up during a difficult season, the belief being that hordes of people will flock to these events and spend like crazy in the shops. This, apparently I now find out , was/is the purpose of the town hall's poster advertising them. Easy to have misconstrued that poster. It is meant to say - come along to these wonderful events and then go shopping and not come along and do some shopping at some additional market, which was how it had been presented. Can't trust any reports these days, or town hall posters.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Hall and Oates - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQUMDoZ4VCg. Today's title - indie group - think David Bowie for their name.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Kiss On My List
The kiss. It is of course a social grace here, and is becoming so in countries where previously the notion of puckering up to a relative stranger would once have been considered the height or low of poor hygiene or the grounds for a visit from the men in heavy boots with a sex offence warrant. Let us put it all down to holidays abroad, Princess Diana, cross-cultural business advice seminars and the Spice Girls. The kiss, the social kiss, is on everyone's lips and all over their cheeks as well.
The Mallorcan and Spanish kiss is a relatively straightforward affair - one, two. Done. There is though the protocol. Always lead with your right, as it were. Whether one kisses air or flesh is largely immaterial. The local kiss does not have to become an interruption, unlike the French kiss, by which I mean ... oh, come on. Depending upon which part of France the kissers come from, the exchange of pecks can amount to not far short of douze points-squared of slobbering. I have witnessed communes of French people coming together on a beach. The time it takes to perform the multiple kissing with every single member of the groups and then the repetition just to make sure no one was missed out first time means that by the end of the procedure it's time to pack up and go - not before going through the whole rigmarole again however.
The northern European, in particular the stiff upper-lipped Brits whose stiff upper lips do not make for good social kissing or indeed any come to that, can find all this carry-on slightly embarrassing, even if it is now becoming more widely accepted. It is perhaps one thing for men to kiss women and for women to kiss women, but for men to kiss men? Lighten up, it isn't the precursor for a good rogering; well not usually anyway. Not that men-on-men kissing is widely practised except between family members and good friends, but it can happen outside of such relationships. I have engaged in some male bonding by means of the social kiss, not at my instigation, and it does take one aback a tad. But, hey, we're all metrosexuals now, whatever they are. And expressions of affection between and across the genders are to be found in the language as well. "Un abrazo" (hug), "un beso" (kiss) and even "un besito" (little kiss) are commonly used as a goodbye.
Perhaps the greatest challenge of protocol is knowing who to kiss and who not to. And I, like many I suspect, don't really have the answer. Should I , for instance, kiss my female bank manager? I mean, I get on fine with her, but one still has the nagging fear that to go for the air kiss might be interpreted in a way it is not meant to be, though with a bank manager it might infer a request for a substantial interest-free loan with no payback. There again, shaking hands with women has always seemed a rather strange thing - to me at any rate.
You can sometimes witness unease. I was once with someone who might vaguely be described as a business contact. He had a reputation, one largely fostered by himself, of being a between-the-sheets athlete on a Casanovan scale. When we met up with a couple (not Spanish), he instantly dived into a hug and a right and left with the lady whom he had not previously met, unlike her husband whose face suggested that his missus had just been propositioned. Reputation in the social kissing arena can count for much especially if the advance comes from one with a history of rapid bedding. The social kiss should not be treated as an invitation to a shag, but some may actually see it like that.
The rules of kissing are hard to define. Perhaps one should have a sort of checklist to swiftly mentally activate when confronted by a potential kiss situation. The possibility of contracting a disease or a severe case of halitosis may well be grounds for spurning the offer, but decorum suggests that such a list should not include do I fancy so-and-so. And remember that leading from the right. Go for a left-right combination and chances are that the confusion will result in your nose-butting your partner, and it's no good saying that this is how the Eskimos do it unless you are carrying an ice-pick and have a pack of howling huskies behind you. I guess you will just have to use your judgement. Just don't go kissing the wrong person.
* Some of this takes as reference a piece from "The Guardian" (5 August), "A Moment On The Lips", .....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/aug/05/humanbehaviour.familyandrelationships.
And while with "The Guardian", there was a piece yesterday about a German woman who, for the last ten years, has lived in Palma airport. She had no home and no money, so she just started living there. Can't say I've ever seen her. There again, I don't suppose you would necessarily notice. Extraordinary story. Go here for the whole thing: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/09/spain.germany.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Doobie Brothers - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMHFmr5fuyc. Today's title - white soul.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The Mallorcan and Spanish kiss is a relatively straightforward affair - one, two. Done. There is though the protocol. Always lead with your right, as it were. Whether one kisses air or flesh is largely immaterial. The local kiss does not have to become an interruption, unlike the French kiss, by which I mean ... oh, come on. Depending upon which part of France the kissers come from, the exchange of pecks can amount to not far short of douze points-squared of slobbering. I have witnessed communes of French people coming together on a beach. The time it takes to perform the multiple kissing with every single member of the groups and then the repetition just to make sure no one was missed out first time means that by the end of the procedure it's time to pack up and go - not before going through the whole rigmarole again however.
The northern European, in particular the stiff upper-lipped Brits whose stiff upper lips do not make for good social kissing or indeed any come to that, can find all this carry-on slightly embarrassing, even if it is now becoming more widely accepted. It is perhaps one thing for men to kiss women and for women to kiss women, but for men to kiss men? Lighten up, it isn't the precursor for a good rogering; well not usually anyway. Not that men-on-men kissing is widely practised except between family members and good friends, but it can happen outside of such relationships. I have engaged in some male bonding by means of the social kiss, not at my instigation, and it does take one aback a tad. But, hey, we're all metrosexuals now, whatever they are. And expressions of affection between and across the genders are to be found in the language as well. "Un abrazo" (hug), "un beso" (kiss) and even "un besito" (little kiss) are commonly used as a goodbye.
Perhaps the greatest challenge of protocol is knowing who to kiss and who not to. And I, like many I suspect, don't really have the answer. Should I , for instance, kiss my female bank manager? I mean, I get on fine with her, but one still has the nagging fear that to go for the air kiss might be interpreted in a way it is not meant to be, though with a bank manager it might infer a request for a substantial interest-free loan with no payback. There again, shaking hands with women has always seemed a rather strange thing - to me at any rate.
You can sometimes witness unease. I was once with someone who might vaguely be described as a business contact. He had a reputation, one largely fostered by himself, of being a between-the-sheets athlete on a Casanovan scale. When we met up with a couple (not Spanish), he instantly dived into a hug and a right and left with the lady whom he had not previously met, unlike her husband whose face suggested that his missus had just been propositioned. Reputation in the social kissing arena can count for much especially if the advance comes from one with a history of rapid bedding. The social kiss should not be treated as an invitation to a shag, but some may actually see it like that.
The rules of kissing are hard to define. Perhaps one should have a sort of checklist to swiftly mentally activate when confronted by a potential kiss situation. The possibility of contracting a disease or a severe case of halitosis may well be grounds for spurning the offer, but decorum suggests that such a list should not include do I fancy so-and-so. And remember that leading from the right. Go for a left-right combination and chances are that the confusion will result in your nose-butting your partner, and it's no good saying that this is how the Eskimos do it unless you are carrying an ice-pick and have a pack of howling huskies behind you. I guess you will just have to use your judgement. Just don't go kissing the wrong person.
* Some of this takes as reference a piece from "The Guardian" (5 August), "A Moment On The Lips", .....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/aug/05/humanbehaviour.familyandrelationships.
And while with "The Guardian", there was a piece yesterday about a German woman who, for the last ten years, has lived in Palma airport. She had no home and no money, so she just started living there. Can't say I've ever seen her. There again, I don't suppose you would necessarily notice. Extraordinary story. Go here for the whole thing: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/09/spain.germany.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Doobie Brothers - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMHFmr5fuyc. Today's title - white soul.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Long Train Running
The age of the train* is a question of the age of the terrain. Which bit of land to build on? It is the age of the terrain in respect of the proposed extension of the line from Sa Pobla to Alcúdia. When the decision was taken to site the line alongside the main road from Sa Pobla, the local town halls went into full aggrieved mode. The alternative route, favoured by Alcúdia and Muro town halls, would see a terminal sited by the industrial estate next to Albufera. Muro offered the somewhat spurious argument that such a location would be better for the coastal area. Alcúdia now seems to be supporting this, mayor Ferrer arguing that the number of tourists should be taken into account and not just the proximity of local residents, which is part of the reasoning behind the route that was decided upon. The central department (of "mobility") that has the final say states that the proposed route has a significantly greater proportion of the population within a hundred metres of its terminal area than does the alternative. This sounds like an impressive bit of population statistical justification, but neither this nor the number of tourists should be the determining factor. Wherever a terminal is sited, passengers, be they local residents or tourists, would have to get to it; that's the nature of rail terminals anywhere. The siting of the terminal under the favoured option has, as far as I am aware never been announced, though an assumption is that it would be by the Horse Roundabout. The alternative terminal, at what is the Es Foguero ruin, would also not be in someone's backyard; these things never are. No one would want a terminal in that yard anyway. Either location would make sense from that point of view.
One aspect that does not seem to be mentioned is that the Es Foguero option would be next to the new industrial estate. I don't know what plans are in store for the industrial estate, but it does not have to be something filled with industrial units only. The estates in Palma, such as Son Castelló, have shops as well. Has anyone thought that perhaps the industrial estate could be developed as part industrial and part quasi Festival Park? Stick a rail terminal next to it, and potentially you have a well-served-by-public-transport centre of business, entertainment and shopping, though where the latter is concerned doubtless the shopowners of the town and port would be up in arms. Whether though Alcúdia could sustain such a development is another question, but the improved infrastructure in terms of the road and eventually the railway might give pause for thought that it could. There is, however, the ruin of Es Foguero as a testament to the folly of over-grandiose ideas; the sheer size of the place meant it was not sustainable, which is why it became a ruin.
As the town halls are at loggerheads with the mobility department as to the siting, there is now a third option, which would be to take the line behind the mountain at the back of Bellevue rather than continue to, say, the Horse Roundabout. The Es Foguero site would be the terminal under this option. This all has the makings of an endless and never-solved saga. Our old chums in the enviro lobby, the pressure group GOB, are having their penn'orth as well, not wanting Albufera to be impacted upon. In Sa Pobla one has the distinct impression that the town hall would rather the whole project was dropped, which of course it still might be if Madrid reneges on promises for funding. Alcúdia's mayor Ferrer says that he will not bow to "ultimatums" given by the centre. What he's really cheesed off about is that Alcúdia town hall was not closely consulted when the decision for the route was taken. He may be justified; there again maybe he's just throwing his toy train out of the pram. This still has a long way to go; a long train running or perhaps not.
* The age of the train was the motto used by incoming Balearic President Francesc Antich when he won the elections last year; rail transport was his "big idea".
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Grover Washington - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0OQyG_h98o. Today's title - which American band?
Incidentally the last time I did a piece about the rail extension (26 June: "Came Down The Track And She Blew"), the remarkable Dimple Diamond was introduced to his now ever-growing army of fans. His "Runaway Train" now stands at 560 plus visits on youtube - a leap of getting on for 100% since it was first mentioned here.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
One aspect that does not seem to be mentioned is that the Es Foguero option would be next to the new industrial estate. I don't know what plans are in store for the industrial estate, but it does not have to be something filled with industrial units only. The estates in Palma, such as Son Castelló, have shops as well. Has anyone thought that perhaps the industrial estate could be developed as part industrial and part quasi Festival Park? Stick a rail terminal next to it, and potentially you have a well-served-by-public-transport centre of business, entertainment and shopping, though where the latter is concerned doubtless the shopowners of the town and port would be up in arms. Whether though Alcúdia could sustain such a development is another question, but the improved infrastructure in terms of the road and eventually the railway might give pause for thought that it could. There is, however, the ruin of Es Foguero as a testament to the folly of over-grandiose ideas; the sheer size of the place meant it was not sustainable, which is why it became a ruin.
As the town halls are at loggerheads with the mobility department as to the siting, there is now a third option, which would be to take the line behind the mountain at the back of Bellevue rather than continue to, say, the Horse Roundabout. The Es Foguero site would be the terminal under this option. This all has the makings of an endless and never-solved saga. Our old chums in the enviro lobby, the pressure group GOB, are having their penn'orth as well, not wanting Albufera to be impacted upon. In Sa Pobla one has the distinct impression that the town hall would rather the whole project was dropped, which of course it still might be if Madrid reneges on promises for funding. Alcúdia's mayor Ferrer says that he will not bow to "ultimatums" given by the centre. What he's really cheesed off about is that Alcúdia town hall was not closely consulted when the decision for the route was taken. He may be justified; there again maybe he's just throwing his toy train out of the pram. This still has a long way to go; a long train running or perhaps not.
* The age of the train was the motto used by incoming Balearic President Francesc Antich when he won the elections last year; rail transport was his "big idea".
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Grover Washington - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0OQyG_h98o. Today's title - which American band?
Incidentally the last time I did a piece about the rail extension (26 June: "Came Down The Track And She Blew"), the remarkable Dimple Diamond was introduced to his now ever-growing army of fans. His "Runaway Train" now stands at 560 plus visits on youtube - a leap of getting on for 100% since it was first mentioned here.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Friday, August 08, 2008
A Secret Place
Ok, let's not get over-excited; calm down, chill-out. There was even some interest coming out of Puerto Pollensa this morning, and a lady mailed me wanting more information, which was fair enough. What, what, what? Yes, friends, the chill-out zone on Puerto Alcúdia beach. The photo above, the one that isn't La Villa, may rather give you an impression. Sorry, the weather was not great this morning; mercifully there were clouds and wind after all the extreme heat. It may not show the chill-out area at its best, but to be honest I'm not sure what the fuss is all about.
The tourist office in Bellevue was also not sure. I went and had a word with Pilar this morning; Pilar who is a tower of knowledge and help. So, Pilar, asks I, this chill-out zone on the beach? Chill-out, she says, and begins to tell me about the chill-out bars Playero, in the marina and in Bonaire. No, no, says I, the chill-out zone, the one on the beach, the one that the town hall has started. What chill-out zone? There isn't one. Yes there is. Oh no there isn't. Oh yes there is. It was in the "Ultima Hora" or "Diario" months ago and there was something in "The Bulletin" the other day. Pah, or something like that, and muttering about English newspapers. But there is, Pilar, and it's the town hall's. The head of town planning was quoted the other day. What's his name? What? I can't remember, but he was talking about the chill-out zone. Give Magdelena (her boss) a call. She's on holiday. So there was a call to a lady who's something to do with technical services on the beach. I get passed to her. Hello, this chill-out zone on the beach. Why do you want to know? Eh? Because people are asking about it, because it's in the newspapers. One moment ... ... ... The phone gets cut off. I tell you what, Pilar, I'll go find it and take a photo. So I do; photos in fact. How does one find it? There is no sign anywhere. Don't whatever you do go left on the beach at the top of The Mile, go right. Go right, over the canal, and then some. Past the Playero and then a bit, and there it is. You know it is as it says so. Well some signs flapping in the wind say so. The loungers look quite nice, wooden-framed and well-cushioned with the town hall's logo on. There are a couple of speakers hanging somewhat apologetically from poles. There is no bar attached. Don't know where you get your drinks from. Remember what I said about the Son Real necropolis the other day? Is that it? The chill-out zone is a contemporary equivalent. Twelve grand for ... Well, let's just say that maybe the weather didn't show it at its best.
Anyway I go back and see Pilar and show her the photos. So now the tourist office in the area knows. Hats off for internal town hall communications. While I'm there I also ask about the WiFi zone. Why, I wonder, aren't there any signs about that either? There is publicity in the hotels. But not on the beach, as such. No. Fine. So how do you actually know about it? Pause. Em, how do you pay for it, assuming you know about it? The sunbed men. You pay them and they give you cards. Well that's something, I guess. Good to know that the million euros or whatever it was has at least got some chaps who will take your money for something that isn't publicised, unless you are in one of the hotels.
Later on, when in Puerto Pollensa and there is somewhat unexpected interest in the chill-out one, I'm told that it (the chill-out zone) has a WiFi zone. Well yes, I say, but it's the beach area not just the chill-out zone; there's a network for the beach and the hotels next to the beach. So not just the chill-out zone? No, no. Oh.
Fabulous. Publicity is everything, or would be. Someone said to me today that these things get put in place but they remain "top secret". Secret places. Strange.
LA VILLA
To other matters. A while back I mentioned that La Villa, the Chinese restaurant in Puerto Alcúdia, had a new place in Puerto Pollensa. Tonight is the official opening. There are many who will know La Villa in Alcúdia, many who will know Ray who is one of the nicest people you could meet. I would go the inauguration but I have a visceral dislike for these occasions; not because of the restaurant or bar owners, but because of the freeloaders who pitch up. I know that they are something that has to be done, but there are those who make a career of attending them. Not for me except to take some photos. But Ray has sent me some, one of which is above. La Villa in Alcúdia has long enjoyed an excellent reputation, and now it is in Puerto Pollensa.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Madonna - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJgzJTg-plc. Today's title - jazz man who was mentioned here recently in connection with Bill Withers.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Vogue, Vogue, Vogue
With some degree of coincidence following on from the piece about chill-out the other day comes a different form of chill-out - the chill-out area on the beach in Puerto Alcúdia. One is tempted to suggest, as the temperatures rise towards the 100 mark, that chill-out in the form of ice baths might be more meaningful than a part of the beach that is, well, not that much different to the rest. But vogue is everything, even if it takes some time to kick in. We've been chilling for years and now we can on the beach - after a fashion. Ho hum.
The chill-out area, heralded here several months ago, as part of a programme for the beach, the centrepoint with no centre being the WiFi zone, is a sort of sun-lounger plus enclave. Add a table with a mould for a glass, a bit of muzak and hey presto chill-out. Everything has become chill-out. It's as if you need a chill-out area to escape from all the chill-out. There is nothing wrong with the idea as such, just that it is hardly anything new, albeit that it may be in Alcúdia. Elsewhere it has long been an aspect of beach life that areas are sectioned off, usually attached to a beach-bar, in which one can enjoy a drink and a sunbathe without being struck on the head by a football. No one ever thought to call them anything, least of all chill-out areas; they were just, well, there. Vogue and branding is everything. Hey, we've got a chill-out area.
What most intrigued me when reading "The Bulletin's" report on this latest manifestation was not that the town hall's spokesperson came from the tourism department, which - one might think - would be the section of the council that would front-up on the development; it was the councillor for town planning and services. I'm not altogether surprised. I had a bit of a chat recently with the tourism department. I wondered if this blog had become required reading for them. WiFi zone, computers on beaches, chill-out areas - are there not more pressing priorities? The tourism offices may be somewhat remote, as I said in another piece recently, but this is partly because of resources; they want more staff and longer opening hours, the idea of tourism patrol teams was one they quite liked. But they won't get any of it because there's no budget; it goes on prestige developments that sound good in marketing terms but are largely floss. They may be remote but they are not without a pretty good idea as to the sort of things that are needed. One might also add other parts of the town hall. Someone was bemoaning the state of the pathways around The Mile and the lack of cleaning. It's all well and good having chilled out on the beach with your laptop getting covered in sand and oil only to walk back and tread in some dog shit. The streets need to be kept pristine if only to prevent all manner of disease being caught by the lunatics who insist on walking around barefoot.
To a different matter, which kind of leads on from the item of two days ago about hotels. Is this just more rumour or is this more substantial? Alcúdia's all-inclusives will cease in 2010. The source of this is a gestor, one of the professional ranks who, one might believe, has some idea as to what is going on. Maybe. But how can they cease? They can if their licences are revoked and the town hall really does feel that they've made a bit of a pig's ear of the all-inclusive situation. I'm not convinced. There are hotels that are all-inclusives where the directors would gladly drop AI tomorrow, but the market pressures to offer it plus the diktats of the tour operators make it very difficult. Would the Macs simply stop being all-inclusive in under 24 months time? Hard to conceive. But if there is substance to all this, it could be the shining light of a new summer at the end of a very dark tunnel that this one is becoming.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Andy Fairweather-Low - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5FG3Ty3jD4. Today's title - very easy.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The chill-out area, heralded here several months ago, as part of a programme for the beach, the centrepoint with no centre being the WiFi zone, is a sort of sun-lounger plus enclave. Add a table with a mould for a glass, a bit of muzak and hey presto chill-out. Everything has become chill-out. It's as if you need a chill-out area to escape from all the chill-out. There is nothing wrong with the idea as such, just that it is hardly anything new, albeit that it may be in Alcúdia. Elsewhere it has long been an aspect of beach life that areas are sectioned off, usually attached to a beach-bar, in which one can enjoy a drink and a sunbathe without being struck on the head by a football. No one ever thought to call them anything, least of all chill-out areas; they were just, well, there. Vogue and branding is everything. Hey, we've got a chill-out area.
What most intrigued me when reading "The Bulletin's" report on this latest manifestation was not that the town hall's spokesperson came from the tourism department, which - one might think - would be the section of the council that would front-up on the development; it was the councillor for town planning and services. I'm not altogether surprised. I had a bit of a chat recently with the tourism department. I wondered if this blog had become required reading for them. WiFi zone, computers on beaches, chill-out areas - are there not more pressing priorities? The tourism offices may be somewhat remote, as I said in another piece recently, but this is partly because of resources; they want more staff and longer opening hours, the idea of tourism patrol teams was one they quite liked. But they won't get any of it because there's no budget; it goes on prestige developments that sound good in marketing terms but are largely floss. They may be remote but they are not without a pretty good idea as to the sort of things that are needed. One might also add other parts of the town hall. Someone was bemoaning the state of the pathways around The Mile and the lack of cleaning. It's all well and good having chilled out on the beach with your laptop getting covered in sand and oil only to walk back and tread in some dog shit. The streets need to be kept pristine if only to prevent all manner of disease being caught by the lunatics who insist on walking around barefoot.
To a different matter, which kind of leads on from the item of two days ago about hotels. Is this just more rumour or is this more substantial? Alcúdia's all-inclusives will cease in 2010. The source of this is a gestor, one of the professional ranks who, one might believe, has some idea as to what is going on. Maybe. But how can they cease? They can if their licences are revoked and the town hall really does feel that they've made a bit of a pig's ear of the all-inclusive situation. I'm not convinced. There are hotels that are all-inclusives where the directors would gladly drop AI tomorrow, but the market pressures to offer it plus the diktats of the tour operators make it very difficult. Would the Macs simply stop being all-inclusive in under 24 months time? Hard to conceive. But if there is substance to all this, it could be the shining light of a new summer at the end of a very dark tunnel that this one is becoming.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Andy Fairweather-Low - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5FG3Ty3jD4. Today's title - very easy.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Wide-Eyed And Legless
There are times when one wonders if this small world of Mallorcan existence is not almost totally inhabited by the deluded, the criminal and the insane. I am inclined to exclude mostly all nationalities other than the English from this admittedly broad sense of wonderment, though I fancy some Celtic neighbours might also creep under the wire. Jeremy Clarkson, in discussing the qualifications for becoming an expat in different countries, once suggested that anyone moving to Spain had recently held up a post office; he might have added anyone coming to Spain, well this bit of Mallorca, for the purposes of gainful employ as well. And before you ask, it wasn't me, m'lud, who did the Little Sodbury-on-Stool sub-post office job; it was my old mucker Albert "Lightfingers" Lightfoot who has appeared all too rarely on this blog, so I thought I'd give him another mention.
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, nutters. There was this chef in one of the "Fawlty Towers" episodes. Kurt was his name. He got blind drunk and passed out because Manuel wouldn't kiss him. I was reminded of this when being told of a bar chef who was found closed-eyed and legless only some metres from home, the same chef who a few days later took a carving-knife to his employer. Not that it was used, merely waved around in a threatening manner. I suppose if you are a chef, availing yourself of kitchen utensils as offensive weapons makes some sense, though an egg-whisk might have been slightly less dangerous. As far as I am aware there were no suggestions of unrequited love that dares not speak its name that caused the carving knife to be engaged in a form of diversification away from the usual piece of meat - a different slice of the action as it were. Now I know all the protagonists involved in this little set-to; it was the employers who told me. The chef in question had seemed, to me at any rate, a fairly decent sort of cove with an air of a pre-Raphaelite aesthete as demonstrated by the style of his headgear. Just goes to show how appearances can deceive.
It is not the first time that chefs and other staff have got themselves involved in some fracas or other; indeed it seems almost mandatory that at some point during the summer there will be an incident which suggests that the chef is a couple of rashers short of the full English, though this should not imply that all chefs have spent too long baking fruit cakes and have morphed into their creations.
Always one for the bigger picture, it strikes me that the seasonal worker fills a category or indeed several categories of the expat. Some while ago, John, ex-Highlander, offered me a few such categories. I must dig out the email as the subject has the potential to form an entire blog in its own right. But this will be for another day.
And while on knives. One of the more curious personalities that one might encounter hereabouts is the chap who periodically pops up in what can only be described as an upturned square dustbin on wheels from which emanates a whistle that might have a passing and very stupid ornithologist scrambling for his binoculars. I am led to believe that the chap inside the dustbin is the bloke who sharpens your knives, for whatever purpose one has in mind. This is a splendidly quaint and archaic service. When I was a kid there was a chap who used to come round the estate with a bike, dragging a stone behind him for the purposes of knife-sharpening. This was quite some years ago, yet here a similar practice is still observed, admittedly with the aid of a motorised converted refuse container. Just makes you wonder why they don't also have the laundry man on a Tuesday, the Corona man on a Thursday and the fish man on a Friday. Mind you, there is always the butane-gas chap who does the Thursdays; never seen him with any bottles of fizzy drink though.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Chicago Transit Authority, when they were any good, which they were when this track was released - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHZJCJerqhM. They were cut down to simply Chicago and then weren't much good. Today's title - a blues artist who was also, curiously, a one-time teenybopper idol.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, nutters. There was this chef in one of the "Fawlty Towers" episodes. Kurt was his name. He got blind drunk and passed out because Manuel wouldn't kiss him. I was reminded of this when being told of a bar chef who was found closed-eyed and legless only some metres from home, the same chef who a few days later took a carving-knife to his employer. Not that it was used, merely waved around in a threatening manner. I suppose if you are a chef, availing yourself of kitchen utensils as offensive weapons makes some sense, though an egg-whisk might have been slightly less dangerous. As far as I am aware there were no suggestions of unrequited love that dares not speak its name that caused the carving knife to be engaged in a form of diversification away from the usual piece of meat - a different slice of the action as it were. Now I know all the protagonists involved in this little set-to; it was the employers who told me. The chef in question had seemed, to me at any rate, a fairly decent sort of cove with an air of a pre-Raphaelite aesthete as demonstrated by the style of his headgear. Just goes to show how appearances can deceive.
It is not the first time that chefs and other staff have got themselves involved in some fracas or other; indeed it seems almost mandatory that at some point during the summer there will be an incident which suggests that the chef is a couple of rashers short of the full English, though this should not imply that all chefs have spent too long baking fruit cakes and have morphed into their creations.
Always one for the bigger picture, it strikes me that the seasonal worker fills a category or indeed several categories of the expat. Some while ago, John, ex-Highlander, offered me a few such categories. I must dig out the email as the subject has the potential to form an entire blog in its own right. But this will be for another day.
And while on knives. One of the more curious personalities that one might encounter hereabouts is the chap who periodically pops up in what can only be described as an upturned square dustbin on wheels from which emanates a whistle that might have a passing and very stupid ornithologist scrambling for his binoculars. I am led to believe that the chap inside the dustbin is the bloke who sharpens your knives, for whatever purpose one has in mind. This is a splendidly quaint and archaic service. When I was a kid there was a chap who used to come round the estate with a bike, dragging a stone behind him for the purposes of knife-sharpening. This was quite some years ago, yet here a similar practice is still observed, admittedly with the aid of a motorised converted refuse container. Just makes you wonder why they don't also have the laundry man on a Tuesday, the Corona man on a Thursday and the fish man on a Friday. Mind you, there is always the butane-gas chap who does the Thursdays; never seen him with any bottles of fizzy drink though.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Chicago Transit Authority, when they were any good, which they were when this track was released - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHZJCJerqhM. They were cut down to simply Chicago and then weren't much good. Today's title - a blues artist who was also, curiously, a one-time teenybopper idol.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Does Anybody Really Know ... ?
What does one really know about the hotels? In the northern zone from Can Picafort to Pollensa, how many of them are there? 200 perhaps. The community lives alongside all this real estate, but for many they are a mystery. They are also the source of rumour, misinformation, untruths. Why? Because no one really knows about them. Sure, plenty of local people work in the hotels but even then what do they know. The huge hotels, such as Bellevue, are the stuff of Victorian novels - strange things go on, so one is led to believe, and they are shrouded in secrecy. Dare to enter a hotel in January and one could almost expect to find a mad Miss Havisham clad in shawls.
In my immediate area are Iberostars, a Viva, Alcúdia Pins and the luxury five-stars of the Palace de Muro and Parc Natural. Pleasure palaces all, occupying huge amounts of land, home to the transient tourist; impenetrable and aloof. The hotels are physically part of the community and communities but they are also not a part thereof. They themselves are transient, coming alive for a period and then lying still for the off-season, save for refurbishment. In winter the hotels have a brooding and almost sinister presence in a redundant landscape of imagined post-apocalyptic nothingness. They are part of the community but a community of summer strangers, and one of their choosing.
Were it not for the hotels, there would be no community or at least not as we know it, Jim. The communities have been built on hotels, none more so than Can Picafort and the tourism ghetto around The Mile. They are inescapable and omnipresent yet at the same time remote. They are local industry but they do not shape the sub-conscious of the community as would the factory of the factory town, as did the steelworks or the mine; they are in a permanent state of neutral indifference. They caused the communities but indulge them only insofar as the patronage of employment is extended.
When the BBC spoke with that director from Bellevue the other day, it was a rare example of a hotel being unveiled, if only very partially. Bellevue, perhaps more than any other single hotel in the area, holds an iconic position. I have said before that its status has long since gone beyond the confines of the complex; Bellevue is Alcúdia in the minds of many. It is for this reason that it has a responsibility to the wider community, yet it is not alone in holding such responsibility.
The hotels can well argue that they pay their contributions and create employment so why should they feel any need to engage more with their towns. It's a hard-nosed business position. The hotels' communication is with only a part of their constituency, with only some elements of their stakeholders if you like - customers and tour operators primarily. The immediate constituency, the community, save for its elected members at the town halls, is overlooked. What does only really know about them?
It isn't that one looks for some additional benevolence or philanthropy, gratifying though this might be. One looks for a community perspective. It is not as though the hotels are owned by distant multinational colossi; the hotel groups are Spanish, Mallorcan and even local to the towns. One might feel, therefore, that the hotels would see themselves as representatives of their communities, but to what extent do they? Just as the town halls seem ill-equipped to monitor what is said about the towns in various media, especially the internet, so - one suspects - are the hotels. Not in all cases; I know of instances where individuals at certain hotels do pay attention. But generally I would doubt it. The point though should not be lost; criticism of a hotel equates to criticism of the resort, certainly in the minds of many customers. It is this criticism that also informs the local community; informs and mis-informs as there is no mechanism to counter it.
When a group of traders in Can Picafort sought to bring an anti-competitive case against hotels operating on an all-inclusive basis, it was indicative of the degree to which the hotels and the community had split apart. When have the hotels ever sought to explain their policies or to adopt local public relations to at least try and mitigate the consequences of such policies? The communities have a right to know. If a hotel switches to all-inclusive, as happens, then of course it has an impact. But the local businesses are usually the last to know. By the same token, if a hotel reverts back to, say, half-board, this also has an impact. So much of this though is transmitted as rumour because the hotels do not engage with the communities. The hotels should be more transparent. They should be clear as to the scale of their various board offers, as to the real levels of occupancy. They should talk more to their communities. But they won't because they are a part of the community but also not a part.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Status Quo. No, sorry, you want a youtube, go look. Today's title - the rest of this title goes "what time is it"; which big American act (mainly the '70s) that dropped a public transport reference from its name?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
In my immediate area are Iberostars, a Viva, Alcúdia Pins and the luxury five-stars of the Palace de Muro and Parc Natural. Pleasure palaces all, occupying huge amounts of land, home to the transient tourist; impenetrable and aloof. The hotels are physically part of the community and communities but they are also not a part thereof. They themselves are transient, coming alive for a period and then lying still for the off-season, save for refurbishment. In winter the hotels have a brooding and almost sinister presence in a redundant landscape of imagined post-apocalyptic nothingness. They are part of the community but a community of summer strangers, and one of their choosing.
Were it not for the hotels, there would be no community or at least not as we know it, Jim. The communities have been built on hotels, none more so than Can Picafort and the tourism ghetto around The Mile. They are inescapable and omnipresent yet at the same time remote. They are local industry but they do not shape the sub-conscious of the community as would the factory of the factory town, as did the steelworks or the mine; they are in a permanent state of neutral indifference. They caused the communities but indulge them only insofar as the patronage of employment is extended.
When the BBC spoke with that director from Bellevue the other day, it was a rare example of a hotel being unveiled, if only very partially. Bellevue, perhaps more than any other single hotel in the area, holds an iconic position. I have said before that its status has long since gone beyond the confines of the complex; Bellevue is Alcúdia in the minds of many. It is for this reason that it has a responsibility to the wider community, yet it is not alone in holding such responsibility.
The hotels can well argue that they pay their contributions and create employment so why should they feel any need to engage more with their towns. It's a hard-nosed business position. The hotels' communication is with only a part of their constituency, with only some elements of their stakeholders if you like - customers and tour operators primarily. The immediate constituency, the community, save for its elected members at the town halls, is overlooked. What does only really know about them?
It isn't that one looks for some additional benevolence or philanthropy, gratifying though this might be. One looks for a community perspective. It is not as though the hotels are owned by distant multinational colossi; the hotel groups are Spanish, Mallorcan and even local to the towns. One might feel, therefore, that the hotels would see themselves as representatives of their communities, but to what extent do they? Just as the town halls seem ill-equipped to monitor what is said about the towns in various media, especially the internet, so - one suspects - are the hotels. Not in all cases; I know of instances where individuals at certain hotels do pay attention. But generally I would doubt it. The point though should not be lost; criticism of a hotel equates to criticism of the resort, certainly in the minds of many customers. It is this criticism that also informs the local community; informs and mis-informs as there is no mechanism to counter it.
When a group of traders in Can Picafort sought to bring an anti-competitive case against hotels operating on an all-inclusive basis, it was indicative of the degree to which the hotels and the community had split apart. When have the hotels ever sought to explain their policies or to adopt local public relations to at least try and mitigate the consequences of such policies? The communities have a right to know. If a hotel switches to all-inclusive, as happens, then of course it has an impact. But the local businesses are usually the last to know. By the same token, if a hotel reverts back to, say, half-board, this also has an impact. So much of this though is transmitted as rumour because the hotels do not engage with the communities. The hotels should be more transparent. They should be clear as to the scale of their various board offers, as to the real levels of occupancy. They should talk more to their communities. But they won't because they are a part of the community but also not a part.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Status Quo. No, sorry, you want a youtube, go look. Today's title - the rest of this title goes "what time is it"; which big American act (mainly the '70s) that dropped a public transport reference from its name?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Monday, August 04, 2008
Down, Down, Deeper And Down
It seems that barely a day cannot pass without some report or other stating that sales are well down. There was that one not so long ago that spoke about turnover in souvenir and jewellery stores being down some 60%. Then there are the bars and restaurants ... Across the board, according to the restaurant associations of two business groupings, there has been a 20% fall; in the tourist areas it is greater. The summer's difficulties have led, in some instances, to a shortening of opening hours and even to some places not opening at all. Two resorts that have been notable for this are Alcúdia and Can Picafort, says a spokesperson for the PIMEM association.
Anecdote is not always reliable, but there is plenty of it knocking around to back up the figures, and not just in Alcúdia or Can Pic. One restaurant in the old town of Pollensa spoke of 30%; that's a number I've been given elsewhere. Off The Mile in Alcúdia there is another restaurant which cites - in effect - a 50% decline. Yet there are always exceptions. In Puerto Pollensa one bar-owner was asked about how the "crisis" is affecting his bar. What crisis was the reply. This bar is enjoying increased sales. In Puerto Alcúdia one bar away from The Mile is at least holding its own against previous years. It benefits from the fact that people from The Mile are willing to tramp up to it as it has plenty of people in it. One thing the punter does not want is to sit in a bar on his or her own. When you have a mass of bars as you do along The Mile, the danger is that the punter is spread too thin. In the good times it is not an issue, but these are not good times.
There is a sense in which we are arriving at the tipping point. It is not as though there have not been previous periods of downturn; the early '90s was one such. You will hear the whistling to keep up spirits of a couple of years and it will all be back to where it was. I'm not so sure. The previous downturns did not have the proliferation of all-inclusives to contend with; in the early '90s the euro was still just a fantasy of politicians. One can add in factors such as greater restrictions on bars and ever higher costs.
It is not too soon to start looking ahead to 2009. If the pound remains weak against the euro, one does wonder as to the British holidaymaker. Ditto the problems with the credit crunch. The British tourist is of course just one from many nations. For some, such as the Scandinavians and the Irish, Mallorca can still represent pretty good value for money, but the British (and their spend) are vital. The fact also is that a lowering in spend was an observable trend before the current economic problems.
Something, you feel, is going to have to give.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum ... Today's title - who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Anecdote is not always reliable, but there is plenty of it knocking around to back up the figures, and not just in Alcúdia or Can Pic. One restaurant in the old town of Pollensa spoke of 30%; that's a number I've been given elsewhere. Off The Mile in Alcúdia there is another restaurant which cites - in effect - a 50% decline. Yet there are always exceptions. In Puerto Pollensa one bar-owner was asked about how the "crisis" is affecting his bar. What crisis was the reply. This bar is enjoying increased sales. In Puerto Alcúdia one bar away from The Mile is at least holding its own against previous years. It benefits from the fact that people from The Mile are willing to tramp up to it as it has plenty of people in it. One thing the punter does not want is to sit in a bar on his or her own. When you have a mass of bars as you do along The Mile, the danger is that the punter is spread too thin. In the good times it is not an issue, but these are not good times.
There is a sense in which we are arriving at the tipping point. It is not as though there have not been previous periods of downturn; the early '90s was one such. You will hear the whistling to keep up spirits of a couple of years and it will all be back to where it was. I'm not so sure. The previous downturns did not have the proliferation of all-inclusives to contend with; in the early '90s the euro was still just a fantasy of politicians. One can add in factors such as greater restrictions on bars and ever higher costs.
It is not too soon to start looking ahead to 2009. If the pound remains weak against the euro, one does wonder as to the British holidaymaker. Ditto the problems with the credit crunch. The British tourist is of course just one from many nations. For some, such as the Scandinavians and the Irish, Mallorca can still represent pretty good value for money, but the British (and their spend) are vital. The fact also is that a lowering in spend was an observable trend before the current economic problems.
Something, you feel, is going to have to give.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum ... Today's title - who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Sunday, August 03, 2008
The Big Chill
Summertime, and the living is easy.
A lyric and a mood that will forever be summer and summer music. But the very mention of summer in the lyric or title is too much of a giveaway. Summer music. It is more mood than overt statement of fact. The holiday plays all sorts of summer music; neither mood nor lyric. Can a karaoke "we will rock you" being belted out by a tenth-rate cabaret Freddie Mercury from a hotel stage be described as summer music? It is not summer; it is barely music. All that tribute and all that entertainment, and none of it is summer except in a temporal way - because it happens to be summer.
Mood, atmosphere, evocativeness. Suggestions of beach, sun and the idyllic sensations caused by the association of summer through music. Some twenty years or more ago I was in Zante, at a time before it had been invaded by the lager and pills battalions. At the end of Laganas beach was a bar. It was run by a couple of American-accented Demis Roussos lookalikes. It played music most of the day - out onto the beach from a couple of speakers by the entrance. The music was never anything other than laidback, cool if you like; chilled to use a more up-to-date word. Summer music. Mood and atmosphere. If only they'd known. Perhaps a whole genre might have grown from a beach-side bar in Greece rather than one in the Balearics.
Mallorca does not really have a summer music tradition, but the Balearics do, Ibiza most obviously. And it is the Ibiza tradition that can be found in Mallorca; chilled is the word, or chill-out. Summer music. The influence of Ibiza's Café del Mar runs deeper than just the pirated copies of the compilations to be found in the rucksacks and carrier bags of the lucky-lucky men. It can be heard all over; some clubs became Café del Mar shrines of impersonation. The old Mambo Playa in Playa de Muro was one; it even sub-titled itself the Sunset Bar, despite the sun setting in the opposite direction from over the sea - it was in fact Sunrise Bar but had often closed by the time of the first flickers of the new dawn. The sunset, and the music which accompanied it, was what inspired Café del Mar and especially Jose Padilla. On a recent BBC radio documentary he spoke of how he would coincide the last emotion of a track as the final flash of the sun dropped into the sea.
Chill-out, though a pejorative when it encroaches into the easy listening, largely defines the music of Café del Mar, or perhaps it's the other way round - Café del Mar has defined chill-out. That same documentary sought to create a history of chill-out that, rather tenuously, found an origination in the work of Erik Satie. It was on firmer territory with more contemporary artists such as Brian Eno and The Orb. But Café del Mar stands apart from the experimentation of "Music for Films" or the electro-influenced psychedelia of "Little Fluffy Clouds"; it took the ambient of Eno and integrated it with Latin rhythm and flamenco that typifies the style of much of the Ibiza output - one of mood, atmosphere and of the sun and beach. House and Balearic beat yes, but the trance and chill of Café del Mar is the motif of Ibiza and Balearic music - summer music. From the pioneers such as Padilla have come others - Fundación Eivissa are one of the finest. I've looked for their "Doñana", but can't find it. It is a track of breathtaking drama and emotion; it deserves to be heard widely. In its absence I have selected some others. These are summer music. Ibiza perhaps, but Mallorca as well.
Jose Padilla, "El Sueño de Ibiza" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WV6SovEu_Q
Fundación Eivissa, "Es Vedra" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc9OxgQtVSo
Chambao, "Verde Mar" (Fundación Eivissa) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMoW8D3_0M
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Small Faces. And when I saw this, having not seen the Small Faces for donkey's years, I thought blimey, Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher (Marriott and Laine) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=446xNbvs0a8. Today's title - film; who starred? (There are a few to choose from.) The title, by the way, lent itself to a chill festival which has been running this weekend.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
A lyric and a mood that will forever be summer and summer music. But the very mention of summer in the lyric or title is too much of a giveaway. Summer music. It is more mood than overt statement of fact. The holiday plays all sorts of summer music; neither mood nor lyric. Can a karaoke "we will rock you" being belted out by a tenth-rate cabaret Freddie Mercury from a hotel stage be described as summer music? It is not summer; it is barely music. All that tribute and all that entertainment, and none of it is summer except in a temporal way - because it happens to be summer.
Mood, atmosphere, evocativeness. Suggestions of beach, sun and the idyllic sensations caused by the association of summer through music. Some twenty years or more ago I was in Zante, at a time before it had been invaded by the lager and pills battalions. At the end of Laganas beach was a bar. It was run by a couple of American-accented Demis Roussos lookalikes. It played music most of the day - out onto the beach from a couple of speakers by the entrance. The music was never anything other than laidback, cool if you like; chilled to use a more up-to-date word. Summer music. Mood and atmosphere. If only they'd known. Perhaps a whole genre might have grown from a beach-side bar in Greece rather than one in the Balearics.
Mallorca does not really have a summer music tradition, but the Balearics do, Ibiza most obviously. And it is the Ibiza tradition that can be found in Mallorca; chilled is the word, or chill-out. Summer music. The influence of Ibiza's Café del Mar runs deeper than just the pirated copies of the compilations to be found in the rucksacks and carrier bags of the lucky-lucky men. It can be heard all over; some clubs became Café del Mar shrines of impersonation. The old Mambo Playa in Playa de Muro was one; it even sub-titled itself the Sunset Bar, despite the sun setting in the opposite direction from over the sea - it was in fact Sunrise Bar but had often closed by the time of the first flickers of the new dawn. The sunset, and the music which accompanied it, was what inspired Café del Mar and especially Jose Padilla. On a recent BBC radio documentary he spoke of how he would coincide the last emotion of a track as the final flash of the sun dropped into the sea.
Chill-out, though a pejorative when it encroaches into the easy listening, largely defines the music of Café del Mar, or perhaps it's the other way round - Café del Mar has defined chill-out. That same documentary sought to create a history of chill-out that, rather tenuously, found an origination in the work of Erik Satie. It was on firmer territory with more contemporary artists such as Brian Eno and The Orb. But Café del Mar stands apart from the experimentation of "Music for Films" or the electro-influenced psychedelia of "Little Fluffy Clouds"; it took the ambient of Eno and integrated it with Latin rhythm and flamenco that typifies the style of much of the Ibiza output - one of mood, atmosphere and of the sun and beach. House and Balearic beat yes, but the trance and chill of Café del Mar is the motif of Ibiza and Balearic music - summer music. From the pioneers such as Padilla have come others - Fundación Eivissa are one of the finest. I've looked for their "Doñana", but can't find it. It is a track of breathtaking drama and emotion; it deserves to be heard widely. In its absence I have selected some others. These are summer music. Ibiza perhaps, but Mallorca as well.
Jose Padilla, "El Sueño de Ibiza" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WV6SovEu_Q
Fundación Eivissa, "Es Vedra" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc9OxgQtVSo
Chambao, "Verde Mar" (Fundación Eivissa) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMoW8D3_0M
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Small Faces. And when I saw this, having not seen the Small Faces for donkey's years, I thought blimey, Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher (Marriott and Laine) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=446xNbvs0a8. Today's title - film; who starred? (There are a few to choose from.) The title, by the way, lent itself to a chill festival which has been running this weekend.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Saturday, August 02, 2008
All Or Nothing
Is the all-inclusive running out of low-grade beer-fuelled steam? If it is, they will be celebrating with a special fiesta. Take soundings around Alcúdia, and word is that the exclusive all-inclusives (which can sound like a contradiction but refers to those hotels which are AI only) are having a particularly hard time of it. Lagomonte's occupancy travails are well aired, the Delfin Verde may close its doors on barely a score percentage in October and talk has been of the Marte having been empty for a while with the Club Macsters being penned into Jupiter and Saturn.
It is worth asking why the likes of the Lagomonte and the Verde seem to be suffering when others, such as the half board Delfin Azul and the self-catering Alcúdia Beach, are full. It's not simply a question of size; the Delfin Azul and Lagomonte, for instance, are roughly similar in terms of beds, and the Verde is comparatively small. The Marte situation may have occurred, but it at least seems to be operating at reasonable capacity. I took a stroll around the Club Mac site yesterday. Stroll is not the right word; elbowing your way along Oxford Street on the last Saturday before Christmas comes to mind. It was its normal impersonation of a Dante-esque vision.
One wonders if those reviews that hurl around cyberspace have any effect. The Macs have copped more than their fair share of flak, the Verde has not been immune but Lagomonte has generally escaped the worst of the comments. There again, for every review that talks of vomit and crap in the pool there is one that could have been written about the Ritz. Maybe punters have rumbled the fact that all-inclusive often stands for inferior quality - in mostly all services and facilities. But there still are plenty who don't mind iffy lager served in a plastic glass and feeding times at zoos.
Perhaps it is just a case of economics. Despite the cost attractions of the all-inclusive, they still cost. They cater, in general, for less well-off families whose budgets are as affected as any others by the economic climate. Nevertheless, the word going round that the Verde may switch to half board could be an indication that the AI beast is being tamed. If the Azul can do well on such a basis, why not others?
And just returning to the Alcúdia Beach. There I was walking from the back of the hotel on my normal going-around hotels routine, when ... what was that? A voice in the air. Something disembodied like the PA system in "The Prisoner". "Good morning, Andrew, of the Alcudia Guide. Nice yellow t-shirt." I couldn't see him but I knew he was somewhere. How had he seen me that was the question. Grizz, aka Minty.
Further to yesterday's note about things going on in the port, the town hall sent me a poster which I've put on the WHAT'S ON BLOG. It implies that what the press report called craft workshops are in fact kids' workshops and that the events are "Shopping". Which makes one ask, well what about the shops that are already there? Also, rather than just Wednesdays and Saturdays, they are taking place on more occasions. Wish they'd make their minds up.
There has been a comment to the WHAT'S ON BLOG. It was in Spanish, a chap moaning about the Playa de Muro fiesta this weekend serving up little more than a local music band when other fiestas have all sorts of groups and DJs etc. It's a point. Alcúdia and Pollensa can have big events in both the towns and the resorts, why does Muro reserve the special stuff for the town only? So I tend to agree with whoever it was. Anyway, there are times when I take a certain perverse delight in putting Spanish stuff into a machine translator. And I have done so with this comment. This is how Babelfish mangled it. Brilliant stuff:
"Because it fence wall beach celebrations those. Whereas in other municipalities they bring to well-known people for the concerts we dedicated ourselves here to the band because? you will say it to us. Then he will be that Beaches of Wall do not give money enough to the city council not to deserve celebrations in conditions. Then already it is saying, goes celebrations that organize to us."
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Eric Clapton (with some mates at the Albert Hall) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64dUqMxxyjQ. Today's title - who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
It is worth asking why the likes of the Lagomonte and the Verde seem to be suffering when others, such as the half board Delfin Azul and the self-catering Alcúdia Beach, are full. It's not simply a question of size; the Delfin Azul and Lagomonte, for instance, are roughly similar in terms of beds, and the Verde is comparatively small. The Marte situation may have occurred, but it at least seems to be operating at reasonable capacity. I took a stroll around the Club Mac site yesterday. Stroll is not the right word; elbowing your way along Oxford Street on the last Saturday before Christmas comes to mind. It was its normal impersonation of a Dante-esque vision.
One wonders if those reviews that hurl around cyberspace have any effect. The Macs have copped more than their fair share of flak, the Verde has not been immune but Lagomonte has generally escaped the worst of the comments. There again, for every review that talks of vomit and crap in the pool there is one that could have been written about the Ritz. Maybe punters have rumbled the fact that all-inclusive often stands for inferior quality - in mostly all services and facilities. But there still are plenty who don't mind iffy lager served in a plastic glass and feeding times at zoos.
Perhaps it is just a case of economics. Despite the cost attractions of the all-inclusive, they still cost. They cater, in general, for less well-off families whose budgets are as affected as any others by the economic climate. Nevertheless, the word going round that the Verde may switch to half board could be an indication that the AI beast is being tamed. If the Azul can do well on such a basis, why not others?
And just returning to the Alcúdia Beach. There I was walking from the back of the hotel on my normal going-around hotels routine, when ... what was that? A voice in the air. Something disembodied like the PA system in "The Prisoner". "Good morning, Andrew, of the Alcudia Guide. Nice yellow t-shirt." I couldn't see him but I knew he was somewhere. How had he seen me that was the question. Grizz, aka Minty.
Further to yesterday's note about things going on in the port, the town hall sent me a poster which I've put on the WHAT'S ON BLOG. It implies that what the press report called craft workshops are in fact kids' workshops and that the events are "Shopping". Which makes one ask, well what about the shops that are already there? Also, rather than just Wednesdays and Saturdays, they are taking place on more occasions. Wish they'd make their minds up.
There has been a comment to the WHAT'S ON BLOG. It was in Spanish, a chap moaning about the Playa de Muro fiesta this weekend serving up little more than a local music band when other fiestas have all sorts of groups and DJs etc. It's a point. Alcúdia and Pollensa can have big events in both the towns and the resorts, why does Muro reserve the special stuff for the town only? So I tend to agree with whoever it was. Anyway, there are times when I take a certain perverse delight in putting Spanish stuff into a machine translator. And I have done so with this comment. This is how Babelfish mangled it. Brilliant stuff:
"Because it fence wall beach celebrations those. Whereas in other municipalities they bring to well-known people for the concerts we dedicated ourselves here to the band because? you will say it to us. Then he will be that Beaches of Wall do not give money enough to the city council not to deserve celebrations in conditions. Then already it is saying, goes celebrations that organize to us."
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Eric Clapton (with some mates at the Albert Hall) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64dUqMxxyjQ. Today's title - who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Friday, August 01, 2008
Behind The Mask
It may not have escaped your attention that town halls' publicity material for fiestas holds a special place in this blog - yesterday for example. While this material ranges from the pretentious and the ludicrously expensive to the downright inadequate, normally it does not convey controversy or comedy. However ... Step forward the material for this year's Mare de Déu d'Agost fiesta season in Can Picafort.
Last year there was an absolutely splendid old rumpus in Can Pic regarding ducks. Just to remind you. On the actual day of Mare de Déu it used to be the tradition that live ducks were released from the boats that take part in a sea-borne procession. This of course was then deemed animally incorrect and so they came up with a fabulously crazy solution - rubber ducks. No more live ducks and anyone letting them go was under threat of a collar-feeling from plod. So, what happened ...? In 2007 some wags donned masks and did indeed let some live ducks flap around. Cue howls of protest and some bemusement as to quite what the fuss was all about; in a country where it is ok to kill bulls as part of a spectator sport, it is deemed cruel to let ducks do a bit of flying and then swimming around. As far as I am aware the miscreants were never apprehended; at the time the chaps in heavy boots were busy directing traffic.
With all this in mind, what have they come up with for this year's publicity? The main image is of two kids with rubber ducks. All very innocent and cutesy. But. One of the kids has a mask on, a Power Rangers mask, similar to that worn by the duck-liberating masked men from last year. Hence the rumpus or at least cries of outrage from opposition politicians at the local (Santa Margalida) town hall. Personally I think it shows a rare line of humour, albeit that it will probably be lost on most visitors who won't have a clue what it's meant to represent. One looks forward with anticipation to this year's ducky event, though something tells me that plod will be instructed to let the traffic grind to a halt.
To see this wonder of publicity, go here:
http://www.diariodemallorca.es/secciones/noticia.jsp?pRef=2008080100_3_381147__PartForana-cartel-fiestas-levanta-polemica
In the port of Alcúdia during August and September there will be a new attraction. On Wednesdays and Saturdays there are to be activities on the Paseo Marítimo which are meant to be a boost to local businesses and especially those engaged in traditional trades. The activities will include craft workshops and the like and presumably also some flogging of wares. They are intended to invigorate a business sector affected by a rubbish season. I am not entirely sure how. But they will be something else for tourists to have a gander at and take some photos, so it all seems fair enough and could well be quite interesting. And you never know maybe those cash-strapped tourists might be willing to part with ready euros. Maybe.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Blue, "If It Takes All Night" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0XkQlNyndM. Today's title - legend; which one?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Last year there was an absolutely splendid old rumpus in Can Pic regarding ducks. Just to remind you. On the actual day of Mare de Déu it used to be the tradition that live ducks were released from the boats that take part in a sea-borne procession. This of course was then deemed animally incorrect and so they came up with a fabulously crazy solution - rubber ducks. No more live ducks and anyone letting them go was under threat of a collar-feeling from plod. So, what happened ...? In 2007 some wags donned masks and did indeed let some live ducks flap around. Cue howls of protest and some bemusement as to quite what the fuss was all about; in a country where it is ok to kill bulls as part of a spectator sport, it is deemed cruel to let ducks do a bit of flying and then swimming around. As far as I am aware the miscreants were never apprehended; at the time the chaps in heavy boots were busy directing traffic.
With all this in mind, what have they come up with for this year's publicity? The main image is of two kids with rubber ducks. All very innocent and cutesy. But. One of the kids has a mask on, a Power Rangers mask, similar to that worn by the duck-liberating masked men from last year. Hence the rumpus or at least cries of outrage from opposition politicians at the local (Santa Margalida) town hall. Personally I think it shows a rare line of humour, albeit that it will probably be lost on most visitors who won't have a clue what it's meant to represent. One looks forward with anticipation to this year's ducky event, though something tells me that plod will be instructed to let the traffic grind to a halt.
To see this wonder of publicity, go here:
http://www.diariodemallorca.es/secciones/noticia.jsp?pRef=2008080100_3_381147__PartForana-cartel-fiestas-levanta-polemica
In the port of Alcúdia during August and September there will be a new attraction. On Wednesdays and Saturdays there are to be activities on the Paseo Marítimo which are meant to be a boost to local businesses and especially those engaged in traditional trades. The activities will include craft workshops and the like and presumably also some flogging of wares. They are intended to invigorate a business sector affected by a rubbish season. I am not entirely sure how. But they will be something else for tourists to have a gander at and take some photos, so it all seems fair enough and could well be quite interesting. And you never know maybe those cash-strapped tourists might be willing to part with ready euros. Maybe.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Blue, "If It Takes All Night" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0XkQlNyndM. Today's title - legend; which one?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Watching And Waiting, Anticipating ...
The anticipation was great. Deliverance might have been hoped for but deliberation was what turned up. Balearic president Francesc Antich came, he spoke and he will have to conquer the guardians of central government's purse-strings. The much-heralded announcement on the islands' economic situation was something of a damp squib in this long, hot and difficult summer. The politicos can pack their bags for their August vacations sure in the knowledge of their own impotence.
Antich presented a 13-point plan. It was politics dressed up as economic expediency. Tax cuts for certain groups buying their first home, some adjustment of capital gains and a whole wedge of moolah for the construction industry. Little of it was new. The relief for the construction sector had already been announced; tax assistance for the young buying a house is yesterday's news. This may be welcome but it is the banks who fund house purchases not tax breaks; mortgages are as scarce as rain at present. The pumping of further cash into the economy relies on Madrid being cajoled into opening its coffers wider. That's the deliberation; the funding arrangements for the Balearics is and has been an ongoing discussion. There's more deliberation - a committee to look at how to reduce property prices and a call for cross-party participation at a time of crisis. At least Antich, unlike President Zapatero, was prepared to refer to a "crisis"; he has his head half raised out of the sand whereas Mr. Shoemaker seems to be buried in it. The only hint as to something new was a vague reference to the fact that the current problems offer the chance for a different economic model - whatever that might be.
It is easy to be critical. The fact is that regional governments, in this case the Balearics, are even more incapable of dealing with global economic difficulties than a national government. It is not really their fault except for the absence of a genuine attempt at a re-modelling of the economy that could smooth some of the harm caused by situations such as the present one. We shouldn't really have anticipated much because there was little to anticipate.
Meanwhile ... In Playa de Muro there is a fine old argument raging. This weekend sees what passes for a fiesta. It is small beer compared with the pint-sized celebrations of, for example, Pollensa's Patrona. This year there are some changes - there is not be a street party while there is to be a fair which will include samples of local cuisine. It is the nosh aspect that has caused hackles to be raised. In the "Diario" no less than Joan Torrens from Restaurant Boy is bemoaning the fact that restaurants in the playa are not among the ranks of restaurants offering samples (all three of them). I know Joan pretty well and can well imagine him in complete disgruntlement mode.
The argument goes thus: the three participating restaurants, all of them from Muro town, will be offering dishes for three euros a pop (actually the publicity brochure says two euros) and these will deprive the local restaurants of diners, while the non-street party this year will reduce the numbers flocking to Playa de Muro and spending their dosh in those local restaurants. Oh, and there is the matter of one of the three restaurants belonging to the councillor responsible for Muro's fiestas. I wouldn't fancy being him on the end of a high-volume tongue-lashing from a riled Joan, which I daresay he has been.
The town hall reckons that all will be ok as people will merely be sampling the dishes not having dinner and also says that one restaurant in the playa was approached but declined as they would have too much work on.
It is all pretty daft and gloriously representative of how daft things can be here. There again, chatting locally there is support for the playa's restaurants - they pay more than the town's restaurants and there is perhaps a sense in which the town is raining on the playa restaurants' parade. Those ten kilometres between the playa and town are more than just a physical distance; they create two entities with some mutual hostility. Anyway Muro town hall has done quite well with its publicity. The sheet over the main road announcing the "Fira nocturna" which can't actually be read when the wind blows is rather pointless but there are posters and leaflets in four different languages; nothing needlessly expensive like, say, the Puerto Pollensa Virgen del Carmen brochure, but to the point and useful. Info's on the WHAT'S ON BLOG. This does not refer, as the leaflet does, to "peasants" who "will delight us". Whatever.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Dolly Parton - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpKAA2VxWY8. Today's title - who? Boy band. Colour.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Index for July 2008
Airlines - 21 July 2008
All-inclusives - 19 July 2008
Bars - 11 July 2008
Balearic Government - 31 July 2008
BBC Breakfast TV - 29 July 2008
Beaches - 29 July 2008
Blogs - 14 July 2008
Books - 20 July 2008
Bullfighting - 28 July 2008
Construction industry - 27 July 2008
Eroski - 26 July 2008
Fiestas - 13 July 2008, 14 July 2008, 16 July 2008, 18 July 2008, 22 July 2008, 25 July 2008, 31 July 2008
Football - 2 July 2008, 23 July 2008
Hiking - 7 July 2008
Holiday clubs - 1 July 2008
Holiday reading - 20 July 2008
Hotels - 19 July 2008, 27 July 2008
House prices - 23 July 2008
Jazz - 18 July 2008
La Victoria - 7 July 2008
Language - 9 July 2008, 10 July 2008, 14 July 2008
Lucky-lucky men - 5 July 2008, 6 July 2008
Mallorcan companies - 27 July 2008
Mallorcan economy - 19 July 2008, 21 July 2008, 27 July 2008, 31 July 2008
Mallorcans - 4 July 2008, 10 July 2008, 23 July 2008
Names - 13 July 2008
Newspapers - 20 July 2008
Noise - 3 July 2008
Opening hours - 30 July 2008
Patrona 2008 - 13 July 2008, 22 July 2008
Playa de Muro fiesta - 31 July 2008
Police - 15 July 2008
Price controls - 11 July 2008
Property market - 21 July 2008, 23 July 2008
Public relations - 17 July 2008
Public services - 30 July 2008
Real Mallorca - 2 July 2008, 23 July 2008
Restaurants - 14 July 2008
Roundabouts - 15 July 2008
Ryanair - 21 July 2008
Sa Pobla Jazz 2008 - 18 July 2008
Santa Margalida - 14 July 2008
Scratch cards - 1 July 2008, 12 July 2008
Son Real - 24 July 2008
Sport - 29 July 2008
Supermarkets - 26 July 2008
Television - 29 July 2008
Time - 4 July 2008
Toilets, public - 12 July 2008
Tourist information - 8 July 2008, 16 July 2008, 17 July 2008
Tourist offices - 8 July 2008, 17 July 2008
Tourist sites - 24 July 2008
Verge del Carme 2008 - 16 July 2008
Antich presented a 13-point plan. It was politics dressed up as economic expediency. Tax cuts for certain groups buying their first home, some adjustment of capital gains and a whole wedge of moolah for the construction industry. Little of it was new. The relief for the construction sector had already been announced; tax assistance for the young buying a house is yesterday's news. This may be welcome but it is the banks who fund house purchases not tax breaks; mortgages are as scarce as rain at present. The pumping of further cash into the economy relies on Madrid being cajoled into opening its coffers wider. That's the deliberation; the funding arrangements for the Balearics is and has been an ongoing discussion. There's more deliberation - a committee to look at how to reduce property prices and a call for cross-party participation at a time of crisis. At least Antich, unlike President Zapatero, was prepared to refer to a "crisis"; he has his head half raised out of the sand whereas Mr. Shoemaker seems to be buried in it. The only hint as to something new was a vague reference to the fact that the current problems offer the chance for a different economic model - whatever that might be.
It is easy to be critical. The fact is that regional governments, in this case the Balearics, are even more incapable of dealing with global economic difficulties than a national government. It is not really their fault except for the absence of a genuine attempt at a re-modelling of the economy that could smooth some of the harm caused by situations such as the present one. We shouldn't really have anticipated much because there was little to anticipate.
Meanwhile ... In Playa de Muro there is a fine old argument raging. This weekend sees what passes for a fiesta. It is small beer compared with the pint-sized celebrations of, for example, Pollensa's Patrona. This year there are some changes - there is not be a street party while there is to be a fair which will include samples of local cuisine. It is the nosh aspect that has caused hackles to be raised. In the "Diario" no less than Joan Torrens from Restaurant Boy is bemoaning the fact that restaurants in the playa are not among the ranks of restaurants offering samples (all three of them). I know Joan pretty well and can well imagine him in complete disgruntlement mode.
The argument goes thus: the three participating restaurants, all of them from Muro town, will be offering dishes for three euros a pop (actually the publicity brochure says two euros) and these will deprive the local restaurants of diners, while the non-street party this year will reduce the numbers flocking to Playa de Muro and spending their dosh in those local restaurants. Oh, and there is the matter of one of the three restaurants belonging to the councillor responsible for Muro's fiestas. I wouldn't fancy being him on the end of a high-volume tongue-lashing from a riled Joan, which I daresay he has been.
The town hall reckons that all will be ok as people will merely be sampling the dishes not having dinner and also says that one restaurant in the playa was approached but declined as they would have too much work on.
It is all pretty daft and gloriously representative of how daft things can be here. There again, chatting locally there is support for the playa's restaurants - they pay more than the town's restaurants and there is perhaps a sense in which the town is raining on the playa restaurants' parade. Those ten kilometres between the playa and town are more than just a physical distance; they create two entities with some mutual hostility. Anyway Muro town hall has done quite well with its publicity. The sheet over the main road announcing the "Fira nocturna" which can't actually be read when the wind blows is rather pointless but there are posters and leaflets in four different languages; nothing needlessly expensive like, say, the Puerto Pollensa Virgen del Carmen brochure, but to the point and useful. Info's on the WHAT'S ON BLOG. This does not refer, as the leaflet does, to "peasants" who "will delight us". Whatever.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Dolly Parton - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpKAA2VxWY8. Today's title - who? Boy band. Colour.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Index for July 2008
Airlines - 21 July 2008
All-inclusives - 19 July 2008
Bars - 11 July 2008
Balearic Government - 31 July 2008
BBC Breakfast TV - 29 July 2008
Beaches - 29 July 2008
Blogs - 14 July 2008
Books - 20 July 2008
Bullfighting - 28 July 2008
Construction industry - 27 July 2008
Eroski - 26 July 2008
Fiestas - 13 July 2008, 14 July 2008, 16 July 2008, 18 July 2008, 22 July 2008, 25 July 2008, 31 July 2008
Football - 2 July 2008, 23 July 2008
Hiking - 7 July 2008
Holiday clubs - 1 July 2008
Holiday reading - 20 July 2008
Hotels - 19 July 2008, 27 July 2008
House prices - 23 July 2008
Jazz - 18 July 2008
La Victoria - 7 July 2008
Language - 9 July 2008, 10 July 2008, 14 July 2008
Lucky-lucky men - 5 July 2008, 6 July 2008
Mallorcan companies - 27 July 2008
Mallorcan economy - 19 July 2008, 21 July 2008, 27 July 2008, 31 July 2008
Mallorcans - 4 July 2008, 10 July 2008, 23 July 2008
Names - 13 July 2008
Newspapers - 20 July 2008
Noise - 3 July 2008
Opening hours - 30 July 2008
Patrona 2008 - 13 July 2008, 22 July 2008
Playa de Muro fiesta - 31 July 2008
Police - 15 July 2008
Price controls - 11 July 2008
Property market - 21 July 2008, 23 July 2008
Public relations - 17 July 2008
Public services - 30 July 2008
Real Mallorca - 2 July 2008, 23 July 2008
Restaurants - 14 July 2008
Roundabouts - 15 July 2008
Ryanair - 21 July 2008
Sa Pobla Jazz 2008 - 18 July 2008
Santa Margalida - 14 July 2008
Scratch cards - 1 July 2008, 12 July 2008
Son Real - 24 July 2008
Sport - 29 July 2008
Supermarkets - 26 July 2008
Television - 29 July 2008
Time - 4 July 2008
Toilets, public - 12 July 2008
Tourist information - 8 July 2008, 16 July 2008, 17 July 2008
Tourist offices - 8 July 2008, 17 July 2008
Tourist sites - 24 July 2008
Verge del Carme 2008 - 16 July 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Working 9 to 1
A survey has found that 97% feel that the opening hours for public services should be extended. That is 97% of citizens in the Balearics. Not a bunch of moaning foreigners but everyone. It is a heartening statistic.
It is an absurdity that offices operate such short hours. Try this one - the Trafico place in Palma. It deals with everything to do with cars and vehicles. It is one office. There are no others. It is open Monday to Friday from nine in the morning till one in the afternoon for "customer" service. Four hours for everyone on the island. Go past Trafico at around half eight in the morning and you will see them starting to queue. By nine, that queue stretches well down the street. It's a nonsense. Try also the office for foreign matters not far from Trafico. Go stand in the baking sun in the queue there and then wait for three hours or so inside. If you arrive too late you won't get a ticket for that day and will have to go back the next day. They close at two. Imagine you've schlepped down to Palma from Alcúdia only to be told that you have to do it all over again tomorrow. It is not just foreigners who are treated like something unpleasant on the sole of a shoe; public service here practises little discrimination. There is a tired excuse of "oh that's Spain". It no longer washes. Spain, and therefore Mallorca, joined the grown-ups' party long ago, but much of its administration is still in the kindergarten. It is not just individuals that are impacted; a cruddy system of public administration affects general productivity and efficiency of the economy. I stress again, it is not just foreigners who are dissatisfied; the survey bears that out.
Cliched I know it is to say it, but life and society have changed. People expect convenience. Public offices' opening hours are like shop opening hours - inconvenient. They are, as with much of the tortuous bureaucracy and red tape that they peddle, an up-yours vestige, one of self-interest, union clout and a refusal to countenance a culture that is anything other than that determined by archaic working practices and attitudes. The other day I was griping to my gestor (accountant if you like) about all this and telling him that he and my lawyer (they share a practice) are precisely the people who should be pressurising for change. He told me that the professional associations are not unaware, and that there is some such pressure, but there is also self-interest in these groups and a prevalence of something he demonstrated by raising and lowering a fist - stamping papers in other words. The status quo quite satisfies not only the public services but also the professionals who feed off them.
Hours of opening and bureaucracy apart, there are aspects of one's dealings with the public service and authorities that make no sense. Whose bright idea was it to scrap residency cards for foreigners? I am no lover of ID cards, but if there is a system in place whereby they are obligatory for all Spaniards why not retain a card system for all (albeit that it was not obligatory for foreigners to have one)? The certificate that has replaced the card is of no use as a form of identity. The centralisation of this "service" is also open to question. Perhaps it is still a hangover from the old days of an authoritarian regime; it is not so long ago that everything was centred on Palma when there were no municipal administrations. But another country that had such a regime has managed to decentralise. Germany. Go there to live or work and you can turn up at the local town hall, in places of equivalent size to somewhere like Alcúdia, do the form, give them the photos and the passport and walk out with your residency permit. This sort of thing does not have to be centralised. Except it does if self-preservation is the motive and the "customer" an inconvenience.
The government councillor for "quality of services" seems to accept that there need to be improvements in terms of opening hours, waiting times and bureaucracy. He says that certain moves are already afoot - simplification, the use of the internet for example. Good for him. The Partido Popular locally is calling for a cut in jobs in the Balearic Government as part of an austerity package to deal with the current economic difficulties. It is a political posture, though it may not be without some sense. But it probably misses the point, which is the degree to which the government and the entire system of public administration is subject to scrutiny. That is a pertinent word. It was the one that underpinned the examination of the civil service in the UK by Derek Rayner during the first Thatcher administration. Bloated public services are immune to cultures of service. Perhaps the local public services are staffed at optimum levels, or perhaps they are not, and if not how much will is there to change them and their working practices? When we talk of tourism and construction being the main industries, we forget about the public services and the employment they create. But unlike tourism and construction they don't create value, only take it away or obstruct it through their systems of operation. That 97% might have a long wait and not just in the queues.
Following on from yesterday and the all-important issue of beach cricket, I am very grateful to Colin for a link to the site of a pub in Scotland which has taken the sport to almost Lord's-like heights (well that may be overdoing it). It occurred to me - do they roll the pitch? And lo and behold in the photo for the cricket team, there - in the background - is a roller. Serious boys these. Anyway, here it is - the Ship Inn in Elie and its beach cricket - http://www.ship-elie.com/cricket.php.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Bobby Vee. Don't know when the youtube comes from, certainly quite a few years on from his heyday and, er, it's not that good - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJp_EO2C220. Today's title - it has lost four hours; who was it?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
It is an absurdity that offices operate such short hours. Try this one - the Trafico place in Palma. It deals with everything to do with cars and vehicles. It is one office. There are no others. It is open Monday to Friday from nine in the morning till one in the afternoon for "customer" service. Four hours for everyone on the island. Go past Trafico at around half eight in the morning and you will see them starting to queue. By nine, that queue stretches well down the street. It's a nonsense. Try also the office for foreign matters not far from Trafico. Go stand in the baking sun in the queue there and then wait for three hours or so inside. If you arrive too late you won't get a ticket for that day and will have to go back the next day. They close at two. Imagine you've schlepped down to Palma from Alcúdia only to be told that you have to do it all over again tomorrow. It is not just foreigners who are treated like something unpleasant on the sole of a shoe; public service here practises little discrimination. There is a tired excuse of "oh that's Spain". It no longer washes. Spain, and therefore Mallorca, joined the grown-ups' party long ago, but much of its administration is still in the kindergarten. It is not just individuals that are impacted; a cruddy system of public administration affects general productivity and efficiency of the economy. I stress again, it is not just foreigners who are dissatisfied; the survey bears that out.
Cliched I know it is to say it, but life and society have changed. People expect convenience. Public offices' opening hours are like shop opening hours - inconvenient. They are, as with much of the tortuous bureaucracy and red tape that they peddle, an up-yours vestige, one of self-interest, union clout and a refusal to countenance a culture that is anything other than that determined by archaic working practices and attitudes. The other day I was griping to my gestor (accountant if you like) about all this and telling him that he and my lawyer (they share a practice) are precisely the people who should be pressurising for change. He told me that the professional associations are not unaware, and that there is some such pressure, but there is also self-interest in these groups and a prevalence of something he demonstrated by raising and lowering a fist - stamping papers in other words. The status quo quite satisfies not only the public services but also the professionals who feed off them.
Hours of opening and bureaucracy apart, there are aspects of one's dealings with the public service and authorities that make no sense. Whose bright idea was it to scrap residency cards for foreigners? I am no lover of ID cards, but if there is a system in place whereby they are obligatory for all Spaniards why not retain a card system for all (albeit that it was not obligatory for foreigners to have one)? The certificate that has replaced the card is of no use as a form of identity. The centralisation of this "service" is also open to question. Perhaps it is still a hangover from the old days of an authoritarian regime; it is not so long ago that everything was centred on Palma when there were no municipal administrations. But another country that had such a regime has managed to decentralise. Germany. Go there to live or work and you can turn up at the local town hall, in places of equivalent size to somewhere like Alcúdia, do the form, give them the photos and the passport and walk out with your residency permit. This sort of thing does not have to be centralised. Except it does if self-preservation is the motive and the "customer" an inconvenience.
The government councillor for "quality of services" seems to accept that there need to be improvements in terms of opening hours, waiting times and bureaucracy. He says that certain moves are already afoot - simplification, the use of the internet for example. Good for him. The Partido Popular locally is calling for a cut in jobs in the Balearic Government as part of an austerity package to deal with the current economic difficulties. It is a political posture, though it may not be without some sense. But it probably misses the point, which is the degree to which the government and the entire system of public administration is subject to scrutiny. That is a pertinent word. It was the one that underpinned the examination of the civil service in the UK by Derek Rayner during the first Thatcher administration. Bloated public services are immune to cultures of service. Perhaps the local public services are staffed at optimum levels, or perhaps they are not, and if not how much will is there to change them and their working practices? When we talk of tourism and construction being the main industries, we forget about the public services and the employment they create. But unlike tourism and construction they don't create value, only take it away or obstruct it through their systems of operation. That 97% might have a long wait and not just in the queues.
Following on from yesterday and the all-important issue of beach cricket, I am very grateful to Colin for a link to the site of a pub in Scotland which has taken the sport to almost Lord's-like heights (well that may be overdoing it). It occurred to me - do they roll the pitch? And lo and behold in the photo for the cricket team, there - in the background - is a roller. Serious boys these. Anyway, here it is - the Ship Inn in Elie and its beach cricket - http://www.ship-elie.com/cricket.php.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Bobby Vee. Don't know when the youtube comes from, certainly quite a few years on from his heyday and, er, it's not that good - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJp_EO2C220. Today's title - it has lost four hours; who was it?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Rubber Ball I Come Bouncing Back To You
The BBC came to Puerto Alcúdia yesterday. Well, a Breakfast show reporter and a camera and sound crew did. Wonder where they stayed. Nice work if you can get it I suppose. I didn't see it, but I know someone who did, so this is all second-hand, but I could hardly let such a huge news item pass without mention. Apparently they didn't drag a sofa out onto the beach and interview some local celebs, of which there are very few; in fact none that spring immediately to mind. They did interview some Brit tourists - family of four, couple of old dears and someone engaged in projectile vomiting following an all-night bender; normal sort of thing.
From these chats it would seem that, despite credit crunches, recessions, global warming, plagues of locusts or whatever else might be on the horizon, the tourists will still come because of the British weather - and it was only up around the 30 mark yesterday in parts of the old country. There was also an interview with Bellevue, well not the whole of it but a director. Don't know which one; my mole didn't actually stretch to noting down names. Whoever it was said that people were spending less this year - yes, I think we knew that - but that they were spending what money they had on less frivolous things. What, would that be cartons of cigarettes and bottles of spirits? He also said that bookings were up. Really? Not what I'd heard. Unless last year's were particularly low. A little bird, actually a pretty big one, told me that there was a fair old amount of knock-down being flogged to Spaniards, so perhaps the numbers are indeed up.
But it seems that the BBC showed a number of nice shots of Alcúdia, the beach, the mountains, the promenade etc. Pretty good publicity, reckoned my contact. Yea, it would be, like the publicity when the Holiday programme, a few years back, voted Alcúdia the best beach in the Med. Damn good publicity. Publicity to do something with. Wonder if the town hall knows. Wonder if they ever knew about that Holiday programme vote.
Perhaps it was the BBC crawling all over the beach that put a stop to it, but there was meant to have been a beach handball competition going on at the "sports beach" yesterday. I went along. I quite like handball. There were the stands that sit on the beach at the top of The Mile; there were a couple of games going on; and there was not sight nor sound of a handball player. Maybe they thought it was too hot.
Handball is a mystery game to the Brit, be it on sand or on court. It's all that cricket I suppose, but the British never took to court sports that involved putting balls into nets or over them, except with the aid of a racket or if they were girls at grammar schools. I once partook in a battle of the sexes netball game. It had all looked so easy until it started. Basketball only ever caught on because it was well and truly Niked and given street cred, and afforded the opportunity for lengthy spells of on-court posing and speaking in Americanisms: dee-fence. Other nations can't get enough of these sports. Stick a bunch of Germans on a beach and within five minutes they'll have rigged up a volleyball net.
There was a time when the beach was a relatively sedate place. Not now it isn't. Football started it, and before we knew it every beach was staging a mini-Olympics. The one sport with a strong beach tradition which isn't much played here is cricket. Try getting the ball to lift off a good length on Alcúdia or Muro beach. Sand's too fine. You need some good tidal flats for a game of beach cricket. Preferably, therefore, the ideal beach sport doesn't actually involve the beach. Football is only any good if you can give the ball a firm old welly; otherwise it's that sand again. There are any number of potential beach sports that could avoid the inconvenience of sand - beach javelin, beach hammer throw, beach target shooting. Something tells me though that they might not quite catch on.
There is one "sport", one sport alone that needs to be shown the door of the beach stadium and cast into the wilderness of the utterly irritating - bloody paddle tennis with those wooden rackets. Try getting some beach shut-eye and along come a couple of wannabe Nadalists and ... dock-dock, dock-dock. Stop it.
Anyway, coming back to handball. There is an Alcúdia handball team. Not that you would expect to find its numbers filled with Brits; it is very much the preserve of continental Europeans, such as Frederick at Bistro Bell and Erik from the El Limón estate agency who play for the team. Like the Alcúdia rugby team of which I spoke some months ago, it is not widely known that these teams exist. Perhaps the BBC should come and broadcast their matches.
Finally - there was a comment sent for Sunday's piece from someone who seemed to want some advice on real estate. There was an email address which was bounced back, so who knows, but if the sender reads this, please use the email address below and not the comments facility. Thank you.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Tommy Steele, "Little White Bull". There is a karaoke youtube but it lacks the brilliance of Dimple Diamond who himself should do a version of this Uncle Mac classic. Today's title - who did that bouncing?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
From these chats it would seem that, despite credit crunches, recessions, global warming, plagues of locusts or whatever else might be on the horizon, the tourists will still come because of the British weather - and it was only up around the 30 mark yesterday in parts of the old country. There was also an interview with Bellevue, well not the whole of it but a director. Don't know which one; my mole didn't actually stretch to noting down names. Whoever it was said that people were spending less this year - yes, I think we knew that - but that they were spending what money they had on less frivolous things. What, would that be cartons of cigarettes and bottles of spirits? He also said that bookings were up. Really? Not what I'd heard. Unless last year's were particularly low. A little bird, actually a pretty big one, told me that there was a fair old amount of knock-down being flogged to Spaniards, so perhaps the numbers are indeed up.
But it seems that the BBC showed a number of nice shots of Alcúdia, the beach, the mountains, the promenade etc. Pretty good publicity, reckoned my contact. Yea, it would be, like the publicity when the Holiday programme, a few years back, voted Alcúdia the best beach in the Med. Damn good publicity. Publicity to do something with. Wonder if the town hall knows. Wonder if they ever knew about that Holiday programme vote.
Perhaps it was the BBC crawling all over the beach that put a stop to it, but there was meant to have been a beach handball competition going on at the "sports beach" yesterday. I went along. I quite like handball. There were the stands that sit on the beach at the top of The Mile; there were a couple of games going on; and there was not sight nor sound of a handball player. Maybe they thought it was too hot.
Handball is a mystery game to the Brit, be it on sand or on court. It's all that cricket I suppose, but the British never took to court sports that involved putting balls into nets or over them, except with the aid of a racket or if they were girls at grammar schools. I once partook in a battle of the sexes netball game. It had all looked so easy until it started. Basketball only ever caught on because it was well and truly Niked and given street cred, and afforded the opportunity for lengthy spells of on-court posing and speaking in Americanisms: dee-fence. Other nations can't get enough of these sports. Stick a bunch of Germans on a beach and within five minutes they'll have rigged up a volleyball net.
There was a time when the beach was a relatively sedate place. Not now it isn't. Football started it, and before we knew it every beach was staging a mini-Olympics. The one sport with a strong beach tradition which isn't much played here is cricket. Try getting the ball to lift off a good length on Alcúdia or Muro beach. Sand's too fine. You need some good tidal flats for a game of beach cricket. Preferably, therefore, the ideal beach sport doesn't actually involve the beach. Football is only any good if you can give the ball a firm old welly; otherwise it's that sand again. There are any number of potential beach sports that could avoid the inconvenience of sand - beach javelin, beach hammer throw, beach target shooting. Something tells me though that they might not quite catch on.
There is one "sport", one sport alone that needs to be shown the door of the beach stadium and cast into the wilderness of the utterly irritating - bloody paddle tennis with those wooden rackets. Try getting some beach shut-eye and along come a couple of wannabe Nadalists and ... dock-dock, dock-dock. Stop it.
Anyway, coming back to handball. There is an Alcúdia handball team. Not that you would expect to find its numbers filled with Brits; it is very much the preserve of continental Europeans, such as Frederick at Bistro Bell and Erik from the El Limón estate agency who play for the team. Like the Alcúdia rugby team of which I spoke some months ago, it is not widely known that these teams exist. Perhaps the BBC should come and broadcast their matches.
Finally - there was a comment sent for Sunday's piece from someone who seemed to want some advice on real estate. There was an email address which was bounced back, so who knows, but if the sender reads this, please use the email address below and not the comments facility. Thank you.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Tommy Steele, "Little White Bull". There is a karaoke youtube but it lacks the brilliance of Dimple Diamond who himself should do a version of this Uncle Mac classic. Today's title - who did that bouncing?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Monday, July 28, 2008
Only Black Bulls Fight
There has been a little spat via the letters pages of "The Bulletin" regarding bullfighting. It's a subject prone to spats and indeed rather more heat. The editor of the paper defends the publishing of a piece by arguing that it is a cultural facet of life whether people "like it or not". He also says that he has never been to a bullfight.
I have been to a bullfight. I was taken when I was 14. It was in Palma. Nowadays I doubt that I would be allowed to go; bullfighting is for the over-18s or so I understand. When I went it was just the "men" who attended; the females of our holiday party stayed by the pool, not because they weren't allowed to go but because it was decided that this was a man's event. It was a spectacle, no question; it was also grotesque and I wanted the matador to get it in the neck (or elsewhere). I would, should go again. Not because I want to see a bull humiliated and killed or a matador to be gored, but because it is worth observing the event, the crowd, the formality of the ritual and ceremony through more mature eyes; because it is, as the editor rightly points out, a part of the local culture whether we like it or not.
I am neither in favour of nor against bullfighting. Were it to be banned tomorrow though, I would not be in favour. In terms of animal cruelty it is hard to defend, but I defend many things from the self-righteousness of the "ban". Fox-hunting was similarly open to attack, but its outlawing was - in my view - symptomatic of a societal and political culture of banning anything that does not meet with majority approval. Such though, one might say, is the will of democracy. Other cruel animal "sports", dog-fighting for instance, have no defence and are rightly outlawed. The bullfight retains a defence in terms of tradition, but this is slowly being undermined by shifts in opinion. The bullfight may still attract large audiences, but it has been removed from national television in Spain and it has - as was the case with fox-hunting - become more of a political issue. The Zapatero administration is not wildly enthusiastic, but it may well have observed the reaction of Labour's rural England in deciding it is not worth a political fight. There are bullfighting strongholds round the country that the PSOE does not wish to antagonise. There is a further political dimension; as so often it has to do with Franco. The Generalissimo was very much in favour of the bullfight, given its symbolic "Spanishness". There are those who seek to justify a ban by reference to Franco's support. By the same logic Real Madrid should be banned.
The bullfight is not really analogous with fox-hunting though. Sport is a bad word to use, but it is a spectator "sport"; fox-hunting was never that. Bullfighting is also not identifiable with some form of class or demographic, even if its matador roots go back to the nobility. Its very act, while repulsing many, requires human bravery and skill. It is also emblematic. The image of the matador is one of the strongest to be associated with Spain.
You can go to the bullfight here if you wish. The fiesta weeks of Sant Joan in Muro and Sant Jaume in Alcúdia include bullfights. There is still popular support despite the regular protests that appear to be gathering momentum. In Puerto Alcúdia there is a restaurant that is a shrine to the bullfight. Its walls are adorned with bulls' heads and other paraphernalia of the bullring. The owner, Antonio, used to be a bullfighter, a matador. Quite a well-known one, it would seem. He once pressed my fingers into the gore holes in his back. He is proud of his bullfighting past, as the photos and all the rest demonstrate. Though discretion stops me from naming the restaurant, many of you may well know it or may have eaten there, as I have. Antonio has told me that he would like to open a bullfighting school. Was there the interest or demand, I asked. Oh yes, said he. And he would like his small son to follow in the tradition.
When you talk to someone as close to bullfighting as he has been, you come to realise that not only is there the tradition there is also the sense of honour. To be or to have been a matador is an honourable distinction in a country where honour runs deep in the national psyche. You might well argue that there is little honour in slaying an animal, but that is where cultures collide, while the bull itself - hard to rationalise I know - is also granted honour especially if it has fought hard.
To defend the bullfight by reference to culture or tradition can be too simplistic, but that culture does exist, albeit that it is being eroded. It is the culture of the old and increasingly the culture of the new Spain that are clashing over bullfighting. It is a debate into which foreigners should intrude with caution, as it is one for the Spanish to decide for themselves.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Robin Williamson, one-time half of The Incredible String Band. Today's title - this is a line from something by which English singer popular in the late '50s and early '60s?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
I have been to a bullfight. I was taken when I was 14. It was in Palma. Nowadays I doubt that I would be allowed to go; bullfighting is for the over-18s or so I understand. When I went it was just the "men" who attended; the females of our holiday party stayed by the pool, not because they weren't allowed to go but because it was decided that this was a man's event. It was a spectacle, no question; it was also grotesque and I wanted the matador to get it in the neck (or elsewhere). I would, should go again. Not because I want to see a bull humiliated and killed or a matador to be gored, but because it is worth observing the event, the crowd, the formality of the ritual and ceremony through more mature eyes; because it is, as the editor rightly points out, a part of the local culture whether we like it or not.
I am neither in favour of nor against bullfighting. Were it to be banned tomorrow though, I would not be in favour. In terms of animal cruelty it is hard to defend, but I defend many things from the self-righteousness of the "ban". Fox-hunting was similarly open to attack, but its outlawing was - in my view - symptomatic of a societal and political culture of banning anything that does not meet with majority approval. Such though, one might say, is the will of democracy. Other cruel animal "sports", dog-fighting for instance, have no defence and are rightly outlawed. The bullfight retains a defence in terms of tradition, but this is slowly being undermined by shifts in opinion. The bullfight may still attract large audiences, but it has been removed from national television in Spain and it has - as was the case with fox-hunting - become more of a political issue. The Zapatero administration is not wildly enthusiastic, but it may well have observed the reaction of Labour's rural England in deciding it is not worth a political fight. There are bullfighting strongholds round the country that the PSOE does not wish to antagonise. There is a further political dimension; as so often it has to do with Franco. The Generalissimo was very much in favour of the bullfight, given its symbolic "Spanishness". There are those who seek to justify a ban by reference to Franco's support. By the same logic Real Madrid should be banned.
The bullfight is not really analogous with fox-hunting though. Sport is a bad word to use, but it is a spectator "sport"; fox-hunting was never that. Bullfighting is also not identifiable with some form of class or demographic, even if its matador roots go back to the nobility. Its very act, while repulsing many, requires human bravery and skill. It is also emblematic. The image of the matador is one of the strongest to be associated with Spain.
You can go to the bullfight here if you wish. The fiesta weeks of Sant Joan in Muro and Sant Jaume in Alcúdia include bullfights. There is still popular support despite the regular protests that appear to be gathering momentum. In Puerto Alcúdia there is a restaurant that is a shrine to the bullfight. Its walls are adorned with bulls' heads and other paraphernalia of the bullring. The owner, Antonio, used to be a bullfighter, a matador. Quite a well-known one, it would seem. He once pressed my fingers into the gore holes in his back. He is proud of his bullfighting past, as the photos and all the rest demonstrate. Though discretion stops me from naming the restaurant, many of you may well know it or may have eaten there, as I have. Antonio has told me that he would like to open a bullfighting school. Was there the interest or demand, I asked. Oh yes, said he. And he would like his small son to follow in the tradition.
When you talk to someone as close to bullfighting as he has been, you come to realise that not only is there the tradition there is also the sense of honour. To be or to have been a matador is an honourable distinction in a country where honour runs deep in the national psyche. You might well argue that there is little honour in slaying an animal, but that is where cultures collide, while the bull itself - hard to rationalise I know - is also granted honour especially if it has fought hard.
To defend the bullfight by reference to culture or tradition can be too simplistic, but that culture does exist, albeit that it is being eroded. It is the culture of the old and increasingly the culture of the new Spain that are clashing over bullfighting. It is a debate into which foreigners should intrude with caution, as it is one for the Spanish to decide for themselves.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Robin Williamson, one-time half of The Incredible String Band. Today's title - this is a line from something by which English singer popular in the late '50s and early '60s?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Sunday, July 27, 2008
With Good Company
Which are the great Mallorcan companies? Great in terms of size, profit or renown? Go on - name them. Outside of Mallorca, the Balearics or Spain, you might be hard pushed. Yet there are some. Which company is the most profitable (for the year to the end of 2006 anyway)? Iberostar, a hotel chain with an international presence and generally a byword for immaculate quality. Its profits in 2006 were skewed somewhat by the sale of various businesses, such as the Viajes Iberia travel agencies, but it stands some distance ahead of the second placed concern, the energy company GESA. Another hotel business - Riusa - occupies third place.
There may be problems at Spanair, but the airline registered the highest sales figures for a single company, though the three business comprising Globalia, which include Air Europa, were ahead of them. Yet another hotel chain, Sol Meliá, employed the most people.
These then are the crème of the Mallorcan corporate crème. You can add some other names, such as Barceló, also a hotel organisation, and in so doing a pretty clear picture emerges. Hotels and airlines - tourism. It is not exactly surprising for islands that are built on tourism and built with hotels that such businesses should be at the top of the pile. But a strength can as easily be a weakness; wealth-creation within the economy as a whole is dependent on a clutch of companies performing well. If there is a downturn, they just go to emphasise where the weakness resides in that whole economy. Spanair is a current example.
Strip away the hotels and airlines (and it is perhaps interesting that construction firms do not register at the very top) and, internationally at any rate, Mallorca and the Balearics are virtual non-players. I say virtual, as there are other businesses that have forged something of an international reputation - the Inca-based Camper shoes company is an example. Leather is a not unimportant sector of the Mallorcan economy but one often overlooked.
But to come back to construction. This sector is littered with companies, most of them family concerns. Many grew on the back of the drive towards modernisation and tourism. They were the vital suppliers of skills to creating the Mallorca of today, one far removed from the tracks and decrepit infrastructure of the sixties. Yet their proliferation is, in the current climate, something of an anachronism. Just as businesses pass through life cycles, so do whole sectors of business. The Mallorcan construction industry is well into its mature phase, but it is still structured as though it were in its youth. The sector could do with some rationalisation, which means (or can mean) merger and takeover. A trimmed-down, leaner to use the business term, construction industry may be able to take advantage of size and economies of scale. As importantly, perhaps, this may lead to governance that can help to prevent the mess that the sector is currently in. There is rationalisation by default, caused by bankruptcy, but this is not how to manage a business, an industry sector or an economy. Company collapse is a kind of Malthusian principle of population applied to business. For Malthus, war, famine and the rest were inevitable and necessary forms of correction. There is no such inevitability, or need not be, in a soundly functioning economy. Rationalisation through combination is an antidote to the Malthusian apocalypse.
The Balearic president, Francesc Antich, is due to announce measures to support and stimulate the economy. There needs to be some blue sky amongst the short-term. Recently, there was a suggestion that the tourism sector will be able to absorb the job losses in the construction industry. How? Especially in winter. More fundamentally though, we just seek the comfort of the mother industry to see us through the dark nights. It cannot continue indefinitely. Antich is being pressed to demand more handouts from Madrid. There may indeed be the hand of parsimony when it comes to those central funds, but a deserving request for more simply helps to paper over the cracks of the half-built properties and other faultlines in the local economy - or it would were the monies to be forthcoming. A quick glance at those company-performance figures tells all that is needed to be known. The economy is top heavy. And that is its weakness.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Justin Timberlake - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKXm3Qg7sBo. Today's title - you couldn't probably get further away from Justin Timberlake than this folk musician: Scottish and "incredible".
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
There may be problems at Spanair, but the airline registered the highest sales figures for a single company, though the three business comprising Globalia, which include Air Europa, were ahead of them. Yet another hotel chain, Sol Meliá, employed the most people.
These then are the crème of the Mallorcan corporate crème. You can add some other names, such as Barceló, also a hotel organisation, and in so doing a pretty clear picture emerges. Hotels and airlines - tourism. It is not exactly surprising for islands that are built on tourism and built with hotels that such businesses should be at the top of the pile. But a strength can as easily be a weakness; wealth-creation within the economy as a whole is dependent on a clutch of companies performing well. If there is a downturn, they just go to emphasise where the weakness resides in that whole economy. Spanair is a current example.
Strip away the hotels and airlines (and it is perhaps interesting that construction firms do not register at the very top) and, internationally at any rate, Mallorca and the Balearics are virtual non-players. I say virtual, as there are other businesses that have forged something of an international reputation - the Inca-based Camper shoes company is an example. Leather is a not unimportant sector of the Mallorcan economy but one often overlooked.
But to come back to construction. This sector is littered with companies, most of them family concerns. Many grew on the back of the drive towards modernisation and tourism. They were the vital suppliers of skills to creating the Mallorca of today, one far removed from the tracks and decrepit infrastructure of the sixties. Yet their proliferation is, in the current climate, something of an anachronism. Just as businesses pass through life cycles, so do whole sectors of business. The Mallorcan construction industry is well into its mature phase, but it is still structured as though it were in its youth. The sector could do with some rationalisation, which means (or can mean) merger and takeover. A trimmed-down, leaner to use the business term, construction industry may be able to take advantage of size and economies of scale. As importantly, perhaps, this may lead to governance that can help to prevent the mess that the sector is currently in. There is rationalisation by default, caused by bankruptcy, but this is not how to manage a business, an industry sector or an economy. Company collapse is a kind of Malthusian principle of population applied to business. For Malthus, war, famine and the rest were inevitable and necessary forms of correction. There is no such inevitability, or need not be, in a soundly functioning economy. Rationalisation through combination is an antidote to the Malthusian apocalypse.
The Balearic president, Francesc Antich, is due to announce measures to support and stimulate the economy. There needs to be some blue sky amongst the short-term. Recently, there was a suggestion that the tourism sector will be able to absorb the job losses in the construction industry. How? Especially in winter. More fundamentally though, we just seek the comfort of the mother industry to see us through the dark nights. It cannot continue indefinitely. Antich is being pressed to demand more handouts from Madrid. There may indeed be the hand of parsimony when it comes to those central funds, but a deserving request for more simply helps to paper over the cracks of the half-built properties and other faultlines in the local economy - or it would were the monies to be forthcoming. A quick glance at those company-performance figures tells all that is needed to be known. The economy is top heavy. And that is its weakness.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Justin Timberlake - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKXm3Qg7sBo. Today's title - you couldn't probably get further away from Justin Timberlake than this folk musician: Scottish and "incredible".
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Saturday, July 26, 2008
What Goes Around ...
Faffing around. It is a phrasal verb and an excellent one to boot. Let me conjugate. I faff around. You faff around. The shopper in the Mallorcan supermarket faffs around. You will notice that in the third person the normal he, she or it is replaced. There is a possible alternative which substitutes "supermarket" with "chemist's", but I don't wish to confuse matters.
The supermarket faff is partly the consequence of things like credit cards not quite having registered as a means of payment except among foreigners who attempt to do so minus the requisite identity, the prolonged search for which ... And the queue grows longer. No, cash remains the payment means of choice. But it is not all the fault of the shopper. The supermarket is equally culpable. Go to pay with cash, let's say the amount comes to 28 euros and 36 centimos, and invariably you are asked if you have the 36 or 6 or some eccentric combination of coins and notes. Cue another prolonged search - into the depths of a wallet or purse ... And the queue grows longer and longer. If you're British and unused to the euro and centimo, the queue grows longer, longer and longer. If you're Mallorcan and still operating in pesetas, the queue starts to stretch out the door.
For reasons that still mystify, Eroski has always been the first supermarket off the trolley rank. The Mercadona lobby grows louder by the day, joined by the cries in favour of the Budgen-like Bip and Hiper. (Do they still have Budgens by the way, does anyone know?) It can only be some Eroski inertia groove thing that makes its delightful red exteriors so attracting. Or maybe it is the periodic incentive promotion. Like the current one. Spend X and you get a number of points that go towards some towels. Fabulous. You also need a degree to understand which products qualify for how many points. Pigs' trotters rate the equivalent of a whole bathroom full; a six-pack of Saint Mick not a sausage. And then when you pay, it is you who invariably has to do the asking. "Any points?" you ask, stupidly, as it says so on the receipt. It's not that the checkout girls are pocketing them, they just want you to bugger off, because tearing off the stamps that equate to the points is an arduous task when they forget to perforate them. Mind you, it has its advantage. A measly two points can easily become a whole sheet as it is just so much quicker, as that queue is now down the road.
Having acquired these stamps and stuck them onto your towel-prize grid (those that you can get the back off, otherwise you have to stick on the stamps - "sellos" as they say here - with sellotape; ho, ho), you go to get your towel. 100 stamps plus a centimo shy of a whole five euros for a bath towel. The transaction is performed separately to the main purchase. And the queue is now in Can Picafort. Then it turns out ... Why is there one euro and one centimo change? It should be one centimo. Don't understand. And you drive home past the riot police controlling the queue.
"Wasn't it meant to be a bath towel?" "It is." "No it's not, it's a they - two hand towels, sort of." "Is it? Are they? That'll be why the one euro and one centimo. Know something? I owe them 40 stamps. Two hand towels are 140 stamps." "But why not the bath towel?" "I don't know. It was on the bath towel shelf. If it says bath towel on the shelf, then it should be a bath towel. And it doesn't actually say anything on the packaging." "Yes it does. Laura Ashley Home." "Laura Ashley Home for what? Wayward towels and strays?" "What's that noise?" "That'll be the police opening fire." "On what?" "The queue. Supermarket queue." "Oh." Faffing around.
BATLEY TOWNSWOMEN'S GUILD
Harking back to 22 July, I have been emailed by Alastair who points out that the Batley Townswomen's Guild re-enacted Pearl Harbor and not Agincourt. So much for historical accuracy, albeit one related to old comedy programmes. Now I was aware of the Pearl Harbor angle, but, and it is strange how time, memory and imagination intrude, I was sure that the Guild engaged in a series of battles, Agincourt being one of them. Wrong. I have even checked the whole list of Python sketches. The women of Batley appeared but twice - Pearl Harbor and the first heart transplant operation. I shall go away and do my lines.
Alastair has also discovered a youtube of Pearl Harbor. Brilliant. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vMqSmiC_xHg.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Jam - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGsyL6DhgPU. Today's title - who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The supermarket faff is partly the consequence of things like credit cards not quite having registered as a means of payment except among foreigners who attempt to do so minus the requisite identity, the prolonged search for which ... And the queue grows longer. No, cash remains the payment means of choice. But it is not all the fault of the shopper. The supermarket is equally culpable. Go to pay with cash, let's say the amount comes to 28 euros and 36 centimos, and invariably you are asked if you have the 36 or 6 or some eccentric combination of coins and notes. Cue another prolonged search - into the depths of a wallet or purse ... And the queue grows longer and longer. If you're British and unused to the euro and centimo, the queue grows longer, longer and longer. If you're Mallorcan and still operating in pesetas, the queue starts to stretch out the door.
For reasons that still mystify, Eroski has always been the first supermarket off the trolley rank. The Mercadona lobby grows louder by the day, joined by the cries in favour of the Budgen-like Bip and Hiper. (Do they still have Budgens by the way, does anyone know?) It can only be some Eroski inertia groove thing that makes its delightful red exteriors so attracting. Or maybe it is the periodic incentive promotion. Like the current one. Spend X and you get a number of points that go towards some towels. Fabulous. You also need a degree to understand which products qualify for how many points. Pigs' trotters rate the equivalent of a whole bathroom full; a six-pack of Saint Mick not a sausage. And then when you pay, it is you who invariably has to do the asking. "Any points?" you ask, stupidly, as it says so on the receipt. It's not that the checkout girls are pocketing them, they just want you to bugger off, because tearing off the stamps that equate to the points is an arduous task when they forget to perforate them. Mind you, it has its advantage. A measly two points can easily become a whole sheet as it is just so much quicker, as that queue is now down the road.
Having acquired these stamps and stuck them onto your towel-prize grid (those that you can get the back off, otherwise you have to stick on the stamps - "sellos" as they say here - with sellotape; ho, ho), you go to get your towel. 100 stamps plus a centimo shy of a whole five euros for a bath towel. The transaction is performed separately to the main purchase. And the queue is now in Can Picafort. Then it turns out ... Why is there one euro and one centimo change? It should be one centimo. Don't understand. And you drive home past the riot police controlling the queue.
"Wasn't it meant to be a bath towel?" "It is." "No it's not, it's a they - two hand towels, sort of." "Is it? Are they? That'll be why the one euro and one centimo. Know something? I owe them 40 stamps. Two hand towels are 140 stamps." "But why not the bath towel?" "I don't know. It was on the bath towel shelf. If it says bath towel on the shelf, then it should be a bath towel. And it doesn't actually say anything on the packaging." "Yes it does. Laura Ashley Home." "Laura Ashley Home for what? Wayward towels and strays?" "What's that noise?" "That'll be the police opening fire." "On what?" "The queue. Supermarket queue." "Oh." Faffing around.
BATLEY TOWNSWOMEN'S GUILD
Harking back to 22 July, I have been emailed by Alastair who points out that the Batley Townswomen's Guild re-enacted Pearl Harbor and not Agincourt. So much for historical accuracy, albeit one related to old comedy programmes. Now I was aware of the Pearl Harbor angle, but, and it is strange how time, memory and imagination intrude, I was sure that the Guild engaged in a series of battles, Agincourt being one of them. Wrong. I have even checked the whole list of Python sketches. The women of Batley appeared but twice - Pearl Harbor and the first heart transplant operation. I shall go away and do my lines.
Alastair has also discovered a youtube of Pearl Harbor. Brilliant. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vMqSmiC_xHg.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Jam - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGsyL6DhgPU. Today's title - who?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Friday, July 25, 2008
Down In The Tube Station At Midnight
Almost a year after it was closed, the Palma metro is set to re-open on Monday. Let's pray there isn't a huge storm on Tuesday, or maybe we should pray that there is in order to test that the subways are indeed no longer liable to flooding. The whole fiasco has resulted in an over-run on budget, to the tune of some 50%, albeit that repair costs account for a mere - a mere - 28 million euros, which presumably takes no account of lost revenue. The net is now being cast to try and trawl in those responsible in a probably vain attempt at recouping the repair costs.
The metro should have been a prestige development; it may still be. Some have sought to question the wisdom of there being a metro at all, but anyone who knows about the traffic in Palma will say that it is worth it. Moreover, it is a further stage in creating what might eventually be something of an integrated public transport system. The planned rail extension to Alcúdia combined with a metro in the capital would, for example, obviate the need for many car journeys, which can't be a bad thing. And public transport is cheap, perhaps too cheap. A journey on the metro will be less than a euro. Not normally one to take buses, I was staggered, when I did, to find that the bus between Alcúdia and Palma cost under five euros.
When the metro was closed indefinitely last September, there was a vox pop in one of the papers to gauge reaction. "Makes us seem Third World," was one such. Perhaps so, but public works in other places and other countries are not always things of total efficiency within budget - in Britain for instance. However, a metro system in a city by the sea with its natural underground water table and one prone to massive deluges of rain was always going to be a project that required expertise and a watertight (as it were) specification. The fact that, apparently, some of that spec was changed - the diameter of tubing, for example, was reduced, or so it was reported - may well have contributed to the problems caused by inundations and the inability of whatever pumping systems were in place to cope with them.
But what, I wonder, does it all say about the island's construction industry, the one that is so important to the local economy? Maybe it says very little, but seven temporary companies having been formed from 18 companies in order to carry out the project smacks of too many jobs for the boys. The now Minister of Transport has acknowledged this, though not in quite these words. Looking to extract some reparations from individuals is understandable if only as a form of compensation for lost prestige; the structuring of the project in the first place might be a wiser subject for investigation and for learning lessons rather than protracted court proceedings and lawyer job opportunities.
BEEN HERE BEFORE
There is a danger of déjà vu, of repetitiousness, of annual visits to the same stories with much the same description. I can do it you want. They're coming back, they're on their way, watch out, get out of the water. The "Jaws" theme would be inappropriate but it is the only musical accompaniment that comes into the mind when faced with the terror of the story of ... jellyfish. I can do it another way if you want. The Playa de Muro sunbed wars may not have erupted like last year, but the excessive numbers of sunbeds and parasols is the same story as last year's, and the fines are there as they were before. The only thing new is the use of satellite positioning to check on them. Or I can do it in this way. It's fiesta time and there are the photos. The photos like last year's and the year before, filling the same publication space together with the same bland copy. Fiestas are integral to the Mallorcan summer season (they're also integral to the winter season, but be that as it may). I don't ignore them; of course not. But they are annual constants. Same as it ever was, save for changes to the bands performing (and many of these are the same). There is, or perhaps was, a freebie knocking around, the purpose of which seemed to be to present a bunch of photos of fiestas. I don't really understand it. I know one of the people involved and should ask him, assuming it is still doing the rounds. They're only really news or different if there is actually something new or an alternative take or angle to be sought - perhaps like the angle of dangle implicit in the piece about Patrona. Still, never let it be said ... Tonight after midnight there will be the grand fireworks display for Sant Jaume in Alcúdia. For all that the fireworks and the fiestas themselves may feel like Groundhog Day, they are always worth seeing and visiting.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Saint Etienne. In the absence of a youtube, here is another - the great, touched-by-Telstar, supremely retro "You're In A Bad Way" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF7uxhcGF8s. Today's title - who? Pretty easy stuff.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The metro should have been a prestige development; it may still be. Some have sought to question the wisdom of there being a metro at all, but anyone who knows about the traffic in Palma will say that it is worth it. Moreover, it is a further stage in creating what might eventually be something of an integrated public transport system. The planned rail extension to Alcúdia combined with a metro in the capital would, for example, obviate the need for many car journeys, which can't be a bad thing. And public transport is cheap, perhaps too cheap. A journey on the metro will be less than a euro. Not normally one to take buses, I was staggered, when I did, to find that the bus between Alcúdia and Palma cost under five euros.
When the metro was closed indefinitely last September, there was a vox pop in one of the papers to gauge reaction. "Makes us seem Third World," was one such. Perhaps so, but public works in other places and other countries are not always things of total efficiency within budget - in Britain for instance. However, a metro system in a city by the sea with its natural underground water table and one prone to massive deluges of rain was always going to be a project that required expertise and a watertight (as it were) specification. The fact that, apparently, some of that spec was changed - the diameter of tubing, for example, was reduced, or so it was reported - may well have contributed to the problems caused by inundations and the inability of whatever pumping systems were in place to cope with them.
But what, I wonder, does it all say about the island's construction industry, the one that is so important to the local economy? Maybe it says very little, but seven temporary companies having been formed from 18 companies in order to carry out the project smacks of too many jobs for the boys. The now Minister of Transport has acknowledged this, though not in quite these words. Looking to extract some reparations from individuals is understandable if only as a form of compensation for lost prestige; the structuring of the project in the first place might be a wiser subject for investigation and for learning lessons rather than protracted court proceedings and lawyer job opportunities.
BEEN HERE BEFORE
There is a danger of déjà vu, of repetitiousness, of annual visits to the same stories with much the same description. I can do it you want. They're coming back, they're on their way, watch out, get out of the water. The "Jaws" theme would be inappropriate but it is the only musical accompaniment that comes into the mind when faced with the terror of the story of ... jellyfish. I can do it another way if you want. The Playa de Muro sunbed wars may not have erupted like last year, but the excessive numbers of sunbeds and parasols is the same story as last year's, and the fines are there as they were before. The only thing new is the use of satellite positioning to check on them. Or I can do it in this way. It's fiesta time and there are the photos. The photos like last year's and the year before, filling the same publication space together with the same bland copy. Fiestas are integral to the Mallorcan summer season (they're also integral to the winter season, but be that as it may). I don't ignore them; of course not. But they are annual constants. Same as it ever was, save for changes to the bands performing (and many of these are the same). There is, or perhaps was, a freebie knocking around, the purpose of which seemed to be to present a bunch of photos of fiestas. I don't really understand it. I know one of the people involved and should ask him, assuming it is still doing the rounds. They're only really news or different if there is actually something new or an alternative take or angle to be sought - perhaps like the angle of dangle implicit in the piece about Patrona. Still, never let it be said ... Tonight after midnight there will be the grand fireworks display for Sant Jaume in Alcúdia. For all that the fireworks and the fiestas themselves may feel like Groundhog Day, they are always worth seeing and visiting.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Saint Etienne. In the absence of a youtube, here is another - the great, touched-by-Telstar, supremely retro "You're In A Bad Way" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF7uxhcGF8s. Today's title - who? Pretty easy stuff.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Thursday, July 24, 2008
People Get Real
There was this thing on Five Live the other day. It was about disappointing or overrated tourist sites. Stonehenge - a few rocks in a field; that was the sort of condemnatory comment. It made me think. What are the overrated tourist sites here? There are some which are not. The Calvari walk in Pollensa, if you can take it, is worth it if only for the view once at the top. Albufera, if you like tranquility and bird and wildlife, is a treat of nature, but one not on your average tourist's list of must-sees. Across the island there are many sites - Palma Cathedral is inspiring as are the mountains of the Tramuntana and the run from Soller to Deia and Valldemossa or the arch over the cove at Sa Calobra. But there are places that are overrated or not as interesting as you might have thought. I feel treacherous in saying it, but the Roman ruins of Pollentia are not something you would rush back to see. As chance would have it, there was a recent piece in the "Diario" about a local tourist site that is not only a schlep to get to but is also likely to inspire the question once you get there - "is that it, then?"
Son Real, the necropolis along the coast going away from Son Bauló in Can Picafort, is a not unimportant historical site. There had been a plan to put a golf course on the finca area of Son Real, but the enviros held sway and the local town hall (Santa Margalida) accepted this with what seemed like somewhat grudging approval. The council's endorsement of the tourist potential of Son Real was underwhelming, or that was how it appeared. One suspects they might have quite liked the golf course. Still it is the Balearic Foundation for Sustainable Development that now has control of Son Real and a centre is due to open before the end of the summer. Fantastic. Perhaps it will be as unremarkable as the centre in Albufera; the nature park is wonderful but the centre is not much to brag about.
The necropolis is but one small part of Son Real, all 395 hectares of it, but it is the best-known feature. Its sheer antiquity, further back in time than Pollentia, should afford it a reverential status, but a few rocks by the sea might be an appropriate if Philistine description. The whole of Son Real may have more than just the necropolis and its "prehistoric funeral sites", but is it really going to attract that much hoped-for different type of tourist? How many visitors have there been to Son Real this year? 4,500. How many visitors have there been to Can Picafort and Son Bauló so far this year? I don't know the answer, but take into account that there are nigh on 50 hotels. Are they all trekking off to Son Real? No, I don't think so either. The tourism councillor reckons that there will be 20,000 visitors a year. I also don't know what he bases this on. Perhaps they will include all those school trips, if Son Real is anything like Albufera.
The preservation of Son Real is admirable. I shall doubtless visit - in winter when there is nothing better to do. The golf course idea was ridiculous, not for the environmental reasons but because, like the mooted course on Son Bosc in Muro is unnecessary, it was not needed. But we return to the delusion of the "different" tourist and therefore to the unreality surrounding Son Real. It's good, it's laudable, it's surely right, and it's not going to make any difference. 20,000 visitors. I wonder how many Marineland get in a week?
On a totally different and totally personal note. One of my neighbours died two days ago. Carina. She was one of the first to inhabit the urbanisation. Her house had taken years to make perfect. Her garden was a thing for sightseers. She had first come to the island with her mother who owned a house in Can Picafort. This was at least 50 years ago. The mother's house is still there, something of a ruin, but still in the family. Carina and her husband, who died in the late '80s, bought the plot in Playa de Muro in the sixties when there were no proper roads, no utilities and plenty of sand and scrub. I have seen the photos, the history of Can Picafort when there was barely anything there, when the likes of the Via Suissa were sand tracks to the almost empty beach. I have seen the photos, the history of Playa de Muro, of her house, of her family. Carina's history equates to the transformation of this part of the island, from the complete lack of development to the current-day luxury of the villas and the hotels.
Two days before the stroke that ultimately led to her death, she had done me a favour and driven me to collect my car from its service. It was a filthy day in May. As I got out of her car, I gave her a little kiss and she smiled almost coyly, almost like a child. Apart from seeing her pass in the car the following day, that was the last time I saw her. She was taken back to Germany, leaving the house that she loved and all that history. And yesterday her boyfriend rang me with the news. It fell to me to be the one to break the news to the neighbourhood. Sad news always brings close communities together, but - as an incomer - you don't always appreciate how close that is. And perhaps some will say that Mallorcans do not always embrace those from outside. Not these Mallorcan neighbours. "Buena persona. Buena amiga." For Carina.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Pet Shop Boys, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnMiwRj_C7Y. Today's title - a lesser-known song by another of this blog's favourites; named after a French football team.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Son Real, the necropolis along the coast going away from Son Bauló in Can Picafort, is a not unimportant historical site. There had been a plan to put a golf course on the finca area of Son Real, but the enviros held sway and the local town hall (Santa Margalida) accepted this with what seemed like somewhat grudging approval. The council's endorsement of the tourist potential of Son Real was underwhelming, or that was how it appeared. One suspects they might have quite liked the golf course. Still it is the Balearic Foundation for Sustainable Development that now has control of Son Real and a centre is due to open before the end of the summer. Fantastic. Perhaps it will be as unremarkable as the centre in Albufera; the nature park is wonderful but the centre is not much to brag about.
The necropolis is but one small part of Son Real, all 395 hectares of it, but it is the best-known feature. Its sheer antiquity, further back in time than Pollentia, should afford it a reverential status, but a few rocks by the sea might be an appropriate if Philistine description. The whole of Son Real may have more than just the necropolis and its "prehistoric funeral sites", but is it really going to attract that much hoped-for different type of tourist? How many visitors have there been to Son Real this year? 4,500. How many visitors have there been to Can Picafort and Son Bauló so far this year? I don't know the answer, but take into account that there are nigh on 50 hotels. Are they all trekking off to Son Real? No, I don't think so either. The tourism councillor reckons that there will be 20,000 visitors a year. I also don't know what he bases this on. Perhaps they will include all those school trips, if Son Real is anything like Albufera.
The preservation of Son Real is admirable. I shall doubtless visit - in winter when there is nothing better to do. The golf course idea was ridiculous, not for the environmental reasons but because, like the mooted course on Son Bosc in Muro is unnecessary, it was not needed. But we return to the delusion of the "different" tourist and therefore to the unreality surrounding Son Real. It's good, it's laudable, it's surely right, and it's not going to make any difference. 20,000 visitors. I wonder how many Marineland get in a week?
On a totally different and totally personal note. One of my neighbours died two days ago. Carina. She was one of the first to inhabit the urbanisation. Her house had taken years to make perfect. Her garden was a thing for sightseers. She had first come to the island with her mother who owned a house in Can Picafort. This was at least 50 years ago. The mother's house is still there, something of a ruin, but still in the family. Carina and her husband, who died in the late '80s, bought the plot in Playa de Muro in the sixties when there were no proper roads, no utilities and plenty of sand and scrub. I have seen the photos, the history of Can Picafort when there was barely anything there, when the likes of the Via Suissa were sand tracks to the almost empty beach. I have seen the photos, the history of Playa de Muro, of her house, of her family. Carina's history equates to the transformation of this part of the island, from the complete lack of development to the current-day luxury of the villas and the hotels.
Two days before the stroke that ultimately led to her death, she had done me a favour and driven me to collect my car from its service. It was a filthy day in May. As I got out of her car, I gave her a little kiss and she smiled almost coyly, almost like a child. Apart from seeing her pass in the car the following day, that was the last time I saw her. She was taken back to Germany, leaving the house that she loved and all that history. And yesterday her boyfriend rang me with the news. It fell to me to be the one to break the news to the neighbourhood. Sad news always brings close communities together, but - as an incomer - you don't always appreciate how close that is. And perhaps some will say that Mallorcans do not always embrace those from outside. Not these Mallorcan neighbours. "Buena persona. Buena amiga." For Carina.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Pet Shop Boys, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnMiwRj_C7Y. Today's title - a lesser-known song by another of this blog's favourites; named after a French football team.
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