The Great Steak Wars: Really real in Playa de Muro

“Real steak.” Not real as in a Spanish football club, but real as in “real” – genuine, authentic, English. When is real steak unreal, do you suppose? When it’s not steak probably. The “real” moniker makes something of a change to those alternatives, especially authentic. Authentic (typical) Mallorcan cuisine, authentic Indian cuisine, authentic, authentic. I wish a restaurant would promote itself as being unauthentic. I might go then.

There is a real steak war emerging. A real steak war as in both the steak being real and there really being a steak war as opposed to a pretend one; well, sort of. The real steak war is also being fought out over real historical claims. Since 19–, apply your own numbers. The steak war is in Las Gaviotas, the area of Playa de Muro that no one really calls Las Gaviotas, if they happen to be a tourist, as equally no tourist really calls it Playa de Muro because they think, or are told, that it is Alcúdia, which it isn’t.

The restaurant S’Albufera has a chalkboard sign outside, declaring the reality of its steak and the years of really having been a steak house. 30 years, it would seem. Why has the restaurant made this move? It is, it would appear, an escalation of the war against a newcomer to the steak battlefield. Where would we be without them? The Dakota restaurants.

Almost next door to S’Albufera and its thirty years of steaking claims is a new Dakota, but not only a tex-mex Dakota. This is a steak house Dakota. A large sign says so. Steak House in big letters with some steak, some flames and a grill just to make sure everyone gets the message. Everywhere a steak house and everywhere a picture of some flaming grill. Flaming on fire and not flaming as a euphemism for “damn”. The flames of the damned though, as the great steak war hots up.

Steak houses have taken over. They are the new, well, tex-mex, except they’re not new, just that everyone seems to want to be a steak house and everyone is promoting steak credentials. It had never really occurred to me that S’Albufera was a real steak house, as it’s always been plain S’Albufera. But when the war is joined, so some realism is chalked onto a blackboard. And when it comes to the Dakotas, the longevity is, how can one put it, rather open to interpretation. Unlike S’Albufera which had also not previously boasted about its generation-plus existence. Or maybe it had; just that no one had noticed.

Do people really want all this steak? Real or not. Maybe they do. There are steak houses, kids newly on blocks, that are doing a roaring and flaming steak trade, albeit mingled in with kebabs and whatever else fills out the menu. Steak house, like pizzeria, has become something of a catch-all. Restaurant We Do Everything. And it’s real.

We should really have a competition. Where is the most real steak? Which is the most real steak house? I can’t honestly help as I rarely eat steak – rare or well done. A friend once said that Los Tamarindos in Puerto Alcúdia did the best steak he had ever eaten. I confess it wasn’t bad. The solomillo at Satyricon in Alcúdia was magnificent, but that’s hardly somewhere you might classify as a steak house. Boy in Playa de Muro’s steak and meat come in the size of a cow, deliciously marinaded, but it calls itself a grill, as does Los Tamarindos. No steak house for either of these places, but they are, just as much as those which say they are real steak houses or steak houses with no statement as to being real or otherwise.

You cannot avoid steak. Whole herds of beef cow cut, sliced, flavoured, spitting, roasting, grilling. And all of it real. Unless it happens not to be.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Somewhere That Is Forever England: And rather better than the football

The St George flags have been taken down. Like a period of official mourning, the flags have not just been lowered, they have been interred, along with the dead body of English football.

Everyone and his dog and mistress has had his or her say. So why shouldn’t I be any different? England’s misfortune may not directly have anything to do with the little part of Mallorca that is forever Albion, but it is still England, our England – transplanted in the Mediterranean, where the arrests mounted and the odd pisshead went on the prowl for some retribution. How little one has to be proud of.

Everyone and his dog and mistress has his or her theory as to the reasons for England going belly-up – on a grand scale, the size of many a belly wobbling with many a Saint Mick in the sun of Mallorca. Perhaps we should toss in the alignment of the planets, as Ted Dexter once madly referred to when a different England team was succumbing horribly.

After England were dumped out of the last World Cup, Graham Taylor, not someone necessarily associated with Pele’s “beautiful game”, said that England would never win a tournament while the players lacked the technique and nous to compete with others – Portugal then, Germany now. He was merely echoing what has been said for some 50 or more years. If you go back to the 1950s, England were soundly thrashed not once but twice by the Hungarians. Players who participated in those drubbings included famous names of English football – Matthews, Mortensen, Finney, Wright. The team was still wedded to the WM system, one invented by Arsenal in the 1920s. The navel-gazing that followed the conceding of 13 goals in two matches focused on the system and on technique. Both were badly lacking. There is nothing new under a Mallorcan or a South African sun, and as we have come to appreciate over the years, 1966 was an aberration, an apparent injustice, for which the Germans now have goal-line redemption.

During that last World Cup, I happened to stumble across a soccer game on Spanish television that wasn’t from the World Cup. It was a tournament being played in Mallorca. The play was vibrant, with movement, pace and passing. Everything was pretty much to feet; it was a joy to watch. The players were 12 years old. It was a tournament featuring junior German and Spanish teams, playing on a scaled-down pitch, not a full-size one.

Germany, for years a dominant force in world football, had slumped so much that at the 2000 European championship they were even worse than Keegan’s England. They had a re-think, a proper re-think. The structure of the game in Germany is such that most Bundesliga sides play in a similar fashion, and the reason lies in the co-ordinated efforts of the Bundesliga and the German football association, together with a programme that has provided thousands more coaches than exist in England. It has also provided Joachim Löw who was the coaching brains behind Jürgen Klinsmann before he got the top job himself.

That class of 2006 and its Spanish counterpart was representative of a coaching style that is only now starting to be realised in England. The FA reckons its under-17s are outstanding. Perhaps so, but unlike with the Bundesliga, how many will get the opportunity to shine in the Premier League? Again, it all has to do with the structure of the sport.

To hear Chris Waddle on Five Live after the match was to listen to someone who was angry beyond anything one has ever heard from a “pundit”. Waddle may not have been much of a manager, but he was a hell of a player. He was widely attributed as having been the driving force behind getting Bobby Robson to change England’s style in 1990, one that perhaps should have won the tournament with a side blessed with greater talent (Lineker, Beardsley, Gascoigne, Shilton) than the so-called golden generation. Waddle was apoplectic, laying into the FA, into technique, into coaching and systems.

Waddle also played abroad, thus broadening his mind. And broad minds are not what one thinks of with the likes of Potato Head. Waddle’s fellow mullet wearer and partner in Diamond Lights crime, Glenn Hoddle, was another expat in France. Hoddle, had he not been as batty as Ted Dexter (battier in fact), might just have proven to be the England manager who changed things for the better. He was an advocate of the joined-up system that the Germans now have and which is a contemporary version of what propelled the Dutch national side (and Ajax) from international obscurity in the 1970s.

Instead of Hoddle, we got Keegan. Passion, which we are now said to lack. But also clueless, as he pretty much confessed to. And then Eriksson and Capello, mercenaries with short-horizon missions. Neither should be blamed for trying to turn apparently golden dross into real gold. If the FA (or the Premier League if, God forbid, it took over the national side) wants another foreign coach, it should open its coffers to Wenger, one who might have the gumption and organisational ability to create a “project”, alongside visionaries such as Trevor Brooking, that goes beyond just the next qualifying rounds. But then Howard Wilkinson, despite his reputation one of the very few other visionaries, tried something along these lines in the late ’90s, partly to counteract what he saw as the potential drawbacks of the Premier League. It came to nothing.

The what-ifs, the Terry incidents, Capello and his various failings, player tiredness, Rio Ferdinand’s injury; the list of reasons is endless. Some of them may well have played a part, but the fault lies at a much more basic level, and it is a fault that has been known about for years. Yet little has been done to address it. From Italy, also humiliated in this World Cup, there is talk of a need to examine the structure of the game there. You wouldn’t bet against the Italians doing something about the failure in 2010. Whether England do, who knows.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Smoke And Mirrors: Why friendliness is spurious

Alcúdia friendly, so it was said on 16 June. It’s not the only resort in Mallorca that is friendly and not the only resort where tourists can expect excellent hospitality. “The Diario”, as it did when interviewing tourists in Alcúdia, following tour operators’ arguments that greater friendliness needed to be shown to visitors, has gone on another walkabout – to different places across the island. Again the impetus was what tour operators were saying about service and that all-important friendliness, or the lack of them. And what they have again discovered is a situation quite removed from what the tour operators have been alleging.

While one has to get into perspective a few sources being cited in a couple of articles, the paper’s findings – including the fact that tourists come back year after year – does make one wonder quite what has been behind the tour operators’ suggestions as to a lack of friendliness or poor service. Maybe, just maybe, they’re using them as a smoke-screen.

There was an interesting letter in “The Bulletin” yesterday. The points it raised were well-made, and it came from someone who was behind a movement in Calvia to correct the problems faced by bars and others. Among the points was the fact that tour operators are saying that were bars and restaurants to stay open – in winter – and support hotels that get their prices right, then they would arrange packages. Yet they also say that Mallorca needs more all-inclusive, as the market wants it.

Forget the winter tourism element, the point about all-inclusive says it all. Bars and restaurants staying open while all-inclusive gets cranked up are mutually exclusive. The tour operators’ line of thinking is thoroughly illogical – and they surely know it to be so. Which is why they may be raising that smoke-screen of friendliness and service; it’s a red herring.

It is the tour operators that have caused the problems with Mallorca’s tourism, just as – for the most part – they also brought about the success. True though it may be that bars and restaurants had it easy, thanks to the benevolence of hotels and yes the tour operators, but as the letter-writer points out these bars and restaurants were needed, encouraged. Not now they aren’t. Saying that bars and restaurants should stay open, while simultaneously taking away their business because of a growth in all-inclusive is a fatuous and idiotic argument.

England’s humiliation
It was embarrassing. It was quieter than Slovenia. Of course it was. And now the bars will be lamenting the defeat. No great troupes of Rooneys and Gerrards. No great sales of foamy. Sadly I feel I may have been prescient when I said on 17 June that “England will prove to be rubbish, and Germany will win it.”

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

I Did It Moll Way: All-inclusive in Puerto Pollensa

Now here, you might think, would be something that would send tremors coursing through the shaky old bones of the Puerto Pollensa indignant. Tagged on to the end of reports about Mayor Cerdà forming a “table”, around which other indignants and he can sit and talk about dog shit, is this little old mention, as in the one from “Ultima Hora” – “the possible repercussions of all-inclusive in the Moll (port)”. Has there not yet been a call for a great protest to storm the fortresses of hotel chains? People should be careful what they wish for. When the revolutionaries took to the streets on 2 June, one complaint was that no new hotels had been built down Moll way. Maybe there will be. Club Mac comes to Puerto Pollensa. God forbid. Tattoos and karaoke follow. Even more than now in the already dumbed-down PP. The perverse streak in me says “bring it on”, but that is utterly ludicrous, as is the entire discussion as to hotel development – Moll way.

They don’t need to sit around a table and discuss the repercussions. They can stand up, anywhere they like, and shout them out loud. Any fool could tell them.

Puerto Pollensa has been spared the ravages of the all-inclusive war that have razed much of Alcúdia, Playa de Muro and Can Picafort. But it is probably only a question of time. What tour operators want, they normally get, and they are doubtless eyeing up Moll way as the next big all the Saint Mick and pizza you can get through location. Or there might, instead, be the superior class style AI, the one with real drinks and without Johnny Vegas. But AI’s AI, however you want to spin it. Don’t think, by the way, that the town hall can do anything to stop the march of AI. It can’t. Tour operators. Tourism ministry. Hoteliers. These are what you need to be aware of; forget the town hall, except when they’re taking in the taxes.

All-inclusive in Puerto Pollensa, from what one can make out, is currently confined to Club Sol. Partial AI, maybe. AI that falls short of the full-on AI. Maybe it is full-on. You have to actually be a guest to know for sure. And that is how it is with AI. You don’t quite know. Many a hotel is engaging in some quasi-AI arrangement or other, designed to make the punter part with some in-hotel dosh. Yet it is absurd. The full-on all-inclusive not only doesn’t want to be all-inclusive, it also doesn’t want the punters anywhere near the free drink, or around the pool – if it can help it. Get ’em out; that’s the motif. Unlike the half-board or other non-AI hotels. They do everything they can to keep the punter strapped to the poolside bar or watching the World Cup (and the chances to watch the footy are limited in AI’s – why do you think that is).

All-inclusive in Puerto Pollensa? Repercussions of AI in Puerto Pollensa? It doesn’t bear thinking about, but it is easy to think about. Rather than the revolutionaries taking to clean the beach – as they’re meant to be in the next “protest”, and which will do even more to alert the hadn’t-ever-noticed-the-shit tourist than the march in early June – they should be shouting out loud about those repercussions. Trouble is that they may have brought them upon themselves. Go figure.

* Just in case you don’t get the title – the pronunciation of “moll” is “moy”; think rural English.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Closest Thing To Heaven: No more – Cala San Vicente

On 11 June last year (It Doesn’t Add Up), I wrote a piece about Cala San Vicente. It started with a quote from someone who was staying at La Moraleja, the charming, high-class hotel as you come into the Cala. “It’s paradise.” “Well, there’s nowhere quite like it.” “Is there?”

Amidst all the pining for the close to the pinewalk Sis Pins in Puerto Pollensa before it reopened, it was easy to overlook the fact that there was another, grander hotel that was closed. Easy to overlook because it’s in the Cala, as indeed it sometimes seems easy to overlook the Cala, full stop. La Moraleja. Paradise it may be. Nowhere else like it, very possibly. But it’s not there, as in it’s not open. The gates are firmly closed and locked. It’s very sad. And it makes three, the number of hotels now not open in the Cala. The Mayol has been shut for … for how long; can’t remember. The Simar is into its second year of closure. And now the Moraleja.

It seems almost an annual thing for me to have to bemoan the fate that has befallen Cala San Vicente. It is such an awful shame. One restaurant owner said yesterday that there is “mucha cree-sis” in CSV. The truth is that there was mucha cree-sis before the cree-sis took hold. The place has been going down the pan for years. But why? Ok, apart from the fact that there’s nothing much to do there, other than relax, lie on Molins cove beach, snorkel, have a drink or a meal, it is still, just about, a little piece of heaven. And it’s not that no one’s interested. Curiously, when I was in the Alcúdia tourist office the other day, not one but two sets of people went to the desk to ask for information as to how to get there. From Alcúdia. People want to go there, and so they should. But the bus schedule isn’t great. You really need a car or take a taxi. The Cala is end-of-the-line Pollensa tourism, backwaters Pollensa.

Several years ago, a colossal error was made. It was when the Don Pedro went all-inclusive. It could be argued that a place out of the way, like the Cala, is more suited to all-inclusive than bustling resorts with everything immediately to hand. But it wasn’t suited, because it changed the nature of the small resort and also began to undermine the businesses there. Elitist this may sound, but the appeal of the Cala was its very sleepiness and its quaint, quasi-colonial exclusivity, one that La Moraleja has, or had, in abundance. Its appeal was also to be found in the semi-mystical reverence in which the place is held by Mallorcans, the consequence of a reputation, part-Bohemian, part-intellectual as an oasis for artists and free thinkers.

It still has an air of exclusivity, granted, for example. by the eponymous Cala San Vicente hotel, and the refinement of the Molins hotel. But the fault, the fault-line if you like, in Cala San Vicente is that it wasn’t somehow ring-fenced and preserved in its own time warp of days of the Raj in back-of-beyond Pollensa. And that it wasn’t spared the development that has taken away some of its character.

The building of the apartments by Molins cove was the last straw for some and became the subject of a rallying cry from the environmentalists. The apartments, I think, look ok, so long as you approve of the trend towards somewhat anonymous and formulaic neutral-coloured blockettes of apartments. No, in themselves they are far from offensive; just that they really aren’t in the right place.

The nostalgia of the Cala, for me, remains the vision looking down to Molins cove and to Bar Mallorca and to what was once a dustbowl behind it. When the resort still had a shambolic appearance, one of a grand old dame, shuffling around under a wide-brimmed straw hat, taking a gin on the verandah or a sangria and fish supper in one of the still unpretentious restaurants, it had its barmy exclusivity. It’s gone I’m afraid, and it ain’t coming back. But one might hope that the Moraleja will return. If anyone still cares.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Too Much Information: Customer service at tourist offices

My original business mentor was my first boss, as in the owner of the first company I worked for after university. He was a hard task master, but he was one of a handful of exceptional people who I worked for or with. He wrote the definitive, early tome on the application of work study to office tasks.

One of the problems of applying an essentially scientific approach to office work (in its widest sense, to mean customer encounters as well) is how you factor in that service element. I’m not sure that anyone has ever really come up with a good solution.

Why do I mention this? Yesterday I was at the tourist information office in Alcúdia. I have long been impressed with the time, attention and care that are given by staff at information offices, but it is the first of these – time – that I wonder about. I was in the queue, sort of. Was I in a hurry? I was asked. No, no. I had only come to ask whether they wanted a further delivery of HOT! I could wait. And so I did.

The couple in front of me – Catalan speakers – asked for a guide to Alcúdia. This they were given. They didn’t ask for anything else. But what they got was a lengthy explanation as to all manner of aspects of Alcúdia. You could see that they were wanting to edge away, but the information kept on coming. The queue was getting longer.

When they finally left, I was left wearing a perplexed expression. Why had this encounter taken so long? I’m sure they were grateful, or were they? Those behind in the queue might not have been so grateful.

This is far from a criticism. On the contrary, the attention was exemplary. When one hears criticisms of attitudes to tourists in Mallorca, you couldn’t fault it, as rarely can you fault the attention of the tourist offices. But I couldn’t help thinking of days going through the work study textbooks.

An answer, you might think, would be to automate some of the information giving. Or to simply have sheets of information, in different languages, that can be picked up. But both have drawbacks. Not everyone wants to use a terminal. Not everyone realises that there are sheets to pick up. Not everyone doesn’t want direct personal service. Which is, I guess, the crux of the issue. Then there is also the tourist offices’ own “scientific” need – that of registering the number of enquirers and from which country they come. What they ever do with this statistics gathering, I don’t know. If not very much, then you wonder why. That old boss of mine once told me, in no uncertain terms, to stop wasting time on gathering information that was of no practical use. But maybe it is put to practical use.

There was, I felt, a sense of being too helpful. Again not a bad thing. Of course not. But being too helpful, in spending a significant amount of time in one encounter does, and you could see it, place the officer under certain stress. From being very or too helpful, it is not such a big step to becoming less helpful because you are under too much strain, caused by the degree of attention given.

The other factor though is the level of resourcing. Alcúdia is under-staffed. And they know it. There just isn’t the budget. It’s a similar story elsewhere. Playa de Muro for example. One officer, super helpful and super giving of information. Lots of it. But she needs the occasional day off. Result? Office closed. Only Pollensa seems to have sufficient numbers of staff, though you wonder for how much longer given the need to cut costs*.

Service is vital, and the tourist offices are in the front line. What they do is generally excellent, but maybe a rather more pragmatic approach is needed. The staff are placed under a good deal of pressure, and sometimes perhaps heap it upon themselves. Time and motion have long been dirty words in a service environment, but some sensitive application might not go amiss – for everyone’s benefit.

* And talking of cutting costs in Pollensa, this year’s admittedly always minor Sant Pere fiesta in Puerto Pollensa has been combined with the Fira de la Mar that had previously occurred in September and which was, in terms of timing, a pretty daft event as one could, with some degree of certainty, predict that there would be the mid-September deluge to rain on its parade – which is exactly what happened last year. Information on the WHAT’S ON BLOG – http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com – but it’s not in anything like the same league as the Puerto Alcúdia Sant Pere.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Oh What An Atmosphere: Football on holiday

Football on holiday. There is this thing that baffles me slightly. Chanting support for our boys. In bars. Outside bars. Does it somehow permeate the plasma and filter across global satellite communication systems to be relayed above the noise of the vuvuzelas in a South African stadium? Probably not.

“England till I die.” At the clinic next to Foxes, the lady in charge was getting anxious. The noise was such that she couldn’t hear someone on the phone. So she said. “England till I die,” and someone on the end of the phone gagging his or her last. Maybe she should be grateful that the clinic is not next door to a Spanish bar, though possibly she was unnerved by the raucousness of those feared English footy fans – and their ancient reputation. A police car passed, just as a Rooney was launching himself into a one-man Peter Kay conga. “Are you on your way to Yellow, sir?” The police might have asked. “Yellow?” He was English, after all, and a Rooney, to boot. The clinic Oberführerfrau, arms sternly crossed, watched as the police car kept going and watched as it came back and kept going.

Rooneys, Gerrards, the odd (very odd) Crouch, the occasional, nostalgic Beckham, an absence of Heskeys. England versus Slovenia. I felt possibly under-dressed in a sky-blue Man City reminiscent Karl Hogan. Not a red or white for me. “I am the only Slovenian in Alcúdia,” said I in my best Slovenian accent. I used the gag, if you could call it such, once. Unlike the gag from the Rooneys and Gerrards. “Well held,” every time James caught the ball. Ho-de-ho-ho.

Then there are the pints. Hundreds, thousands. Has anyone ever measured the peaks of pint purchase as a game progresses? A graph with game time on one axis and pints on the other, superimposed by another – pints purchased in the immediate aftermath of an England goal. Someone should. I will, if I’m given the grant to do so.

Around The Mile. A party on the Goodfellas terrace, or what looked like a party. Some mascoty beings, wrapped in St George, a white with red cross sun shade over a baby buggy. The passage way by Linekers packed like Wembley Way. Wayne with a mini-Gazza blond look, lacking only a lob, a goal and a dentist’s chair. And a multitude of Rooneys; a potato field of Rooneys.

Football on holiday. Football on holiday in the afternoon sun in Puerto Alcúdia. “Oh what an atmosphere.”

And it was only Slovenia. And it was brilliant.

* Some photos on the HOT Alcudia Pollensa Facebook page.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Conflicting Evidence: Car rental in Mallorca

The car-rental situation continues to cause the occasional apoplexy and disgusted of Tunbridge Wells letters to you know what. And if one is minded to be selective in terms of what one reads, then one can argue the case both ways – that there is a problem or there isn’t. Take yesterday. In “Ultima Hora” there was a piece which quoted the views of one agency – Goldcar. This said that 30,000 tourists, mainly German, would not be coming to Mallorca because of a lack of supply of cars, and that they would be going elsewhere, where presumably they can get a car.

A point about this is that the circumstances which might be causing a shortage of cars in Mallorca are the same in other countries – recession and lack of credit. The apparent car scarcity is not unique to the island. But then there was another article, one from “The Diario”, which painted a somewhat different picture. Far from there being a shortage of cars, the problem it was portraying was a shortage of customers. Perhaps those 30,000 Germans, or whoever they are, have indeed not chosen Mallorca. If so, they have left agencies with excess stock on their hands. According to this second article, some 40% of the total rent-a-car fleet in Mallorca is garaged up because of insufficient demand, and that only in the very high season (end July and August) is there likely to be anything approaching full supply.

So how does one reconcile these two conflicting points? The answer is that one doesn’t. Or one probably plumps for the Ultima Hora version, if it lends support to one’s claims of shortages and excessive prices. And on prices, the “Diario” goes on to say that, at present, typical daily rates are between 25 and 30 euros for a small car and between 40 and 45 for a medium-sized vehicle, and that these will rise to around 45-50 and 60, respectively, when demand really kicks in during high season. If so, then these prices are hardly in the category of some of the more outlandish claims that have been made about the cost of car hire, including of course the what one has to presume was a typo when “The Bulletin” quoted Harry Goodman as paying 7000 euros for a week’s hire; even at 700 that would probably be for something pretty grand (7 April: She Bangs: Car-hire prices).

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Smoking Law Passed

The Spanish Congress has today passed unanimously the law that will ban smoking in public places, such as bars and restaurants. The ban is due to be introduced on 1 January 2011. Local pressure in Mallorca had attempted to get a re-think, arguing that there will be a 12% loss of customers in bars and restaurants and a 25% loss in night bars and also arguing that recession is not the time to be introducing such a ban.

Something’s A Bit Fishy: Alcúdia and San Pedro

The San Pedro (Sant Pere / Saint Peter) fiestas kick off in Puerto Alcúdia tomorrow. The programme has a familiar feel to it – giants dancing, humans towering, demons running, San Pedro an-imaging and a-floating. The less familiar will be a “pirates” night party and Michael Jackson, or someone like him. It is, though, the very familiarity that makes one wonder as to the “brochure” that has been produced. Not for the first time, I have to question the expense of this promotion. I had questioned it B.C., but A.C. or D.C. if you prefer (after or during crisis), it should be questioned even more.

A fish. That’s the brochure. Pages sprung together in the shape of a fish. Inevitably, it’s only in Catalan. There may only be 15 pages of it, but the process of cutting it into the shape of a fish doesn’t do a lot to limit costs. (I’m presuming it’s been done with a custom die-cutter, and anything with the word “custom” when it comes to printing brings with it a premium.)

The result may well be different, but what’s the point of it? If you are local, and especially local Mallorcan, who lives in Alcúdia or Puerto Alcúdia, you know full well when San Pedro occurs; you also know pretty much, with some exceptions, what the programme will comprise. Much of it is the same every year; same “events”, same time, same day, same place. If you are local, but non-Catalan-speaking local, then the fish doesn’t really address itself to you. If you are not local, but a visitor who hasn’t a clue about Catalan, then you are deep-fried and battered into incomprehension. Always assuming you ever see a fish, which is unlikely.

At the tourist office in the port, they had a fish yesterday. One fish. Not several. Not a whole load. One. What they also had, and have had for about a week is a couple of A4 sheets in English, giving the programme. I should know because I did it for them. The tourist offices across Alcúdia and Pollensa and in Playa de Muro and Can Picafort also have these English sheets. The fish only appeared in the flesh, so to speak, yesterday.

I struggle to understand the impulse, especially during a period when belts are meant to be being tightened, to go to the trouble and expense of a fish. It’s clever, of course it is. It’s also well done. But this is not the point. And if you think that they haven’t actually printed many, given that the tourist office had but one fish, then think again. A waiter at a nearby restaurant said there were a whole load of fish tossed into the entrance of his block of flats. Aimed at locals, but not visitors, one has to conclude. Perhaps if the tourist office had two fish, it could feed, via some miracle, the information appetite of a multitude of five thousand tourists. There again, I’m not sure if Saint Peter was involved in that particular gig.

Meanwhile in Muro, the bullfight on Sunday having been rained off, there is talk of hurriedly having to do a replacement poster for the re-arranged bull-off this coming Sunday. Bullfight posters, as much as the fight itself, have a symbolic power, but might they not just stick something over the existing one giving the new time. Not that they would need to, because anyone who plans on going will surely know anyway. Daft.

If you want to see the fish, you can download it here: http://www.ajalcudia.net/documents/santpere010.pdf. The English version is available on http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.