Source Of Inspiration: On popular tourist destinations

I have a problem with journalists and writers who do not cite sources. It is a problem that has been exacerbated ever since the lazy writer or one desperate to knock off a few hundred words in order to meet a fast-approaching deadline took to using Wikipedia and other sites as get-out-of-jail cards, sometimes using verbatim what can be found on the internet with not a mention of or an acknowledgement as to the source.

Easy it may be to cobble something together with the aid of Google and the cut and paste commands, but it is short-changing not only the reader but also the writer him or herself. Some while ago, I drew attention to the apparent lifting of text from the home page of puertopollensa.com by a journalist writing in “The Sun”. It was bad form and it was also a derogation of the journalistic art. For the journalist or other writers, words – his or her own – are the stock-in-trade. Even paraphrasing shows some attempt at originality, but what amounts to plagiarism is nothing of the sort and “in journalism, plagiarism is considered a breach of journalistic ethics”. Where does this quote come from? Wikipedia of course.

One might argue that recourse to using chunks of text from websites is a way of working “smart”. Really? I’m not sure that there’s anything particularly smart about it. It’s not smart, it’s not big and it’s not clever (and I think Steve Wright was the one who popularised the not big and not clever line, or rather popliarised, as he would have said – I can cite sources till the cows come home; and no, I don’t know who came up with that saying. Look it up if you wish; on Wikipedia).

There is another type of non-acknowledgement, which is the unnamed or vague source. Sometimes this can be understandable, when someone prefers not to be named. Fair enough, and it happens all the time, as in, for example, “government sources said”. But there are times when it is far less understandable, which brings me to where I really want to be today. In “The Bulletin” yesterday, the editorial referred to “an article in a top British newspaper over the weekend”. Apparently this article revealed that Mallorca has slumped to the number eight spot of the “most popular destination(s) with British tourists”. The editorial went on to use this as a means of beating the island’s tourism. It may well indeed need a beating, but this is not the point. What is, is that because the source is not named, there is no way that the reader, myself in this instance, can check where the article came from or, as importantly, the context and rigour of the results. Well, I suppose one could by spending ages going through Google in the hope of unearthing it, which is in fact what I started to do, but to no avail.

Without being able to identify the source, the reader is left with an incomplete and potentially unreliable picture. There are, it may not have escaped your attention, any number of these “top ten” or “top one hundred”-style articles knocking around in the press. Some have a basis in research, e.g. that which is offered by the likes of ABTA, the tour operators and market research companies; others don’t necessarily.

All I did manage to find when a-googling was an article from “The Daily Record”, dated 14 July. This made the observation that western Mediterranean destinations are losing ground to those in the eastern Med and north Africa. But we know this anyway. What the article also revealed, seemingly based on what Co-operative Travel had to say and possibly contrary to the trend, was that the “predicted holiday destination hotspots” for 2011-2012 will be Turkey at number one and at number two … The Balearic Islands. So much for a lack of popularity.

Maybe Mallorca is at number eight, and if so it is less than heartening news, but there can be all sorts of explanations as to why. If one doesn’t know the source or the context, one cannot make a full judgement or at least be given the opportunity to make such a judgement. This is just one reason why sources should be acknowledged.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Pirates Are Here – Again: Fiesta elections

The annual voting season has been and gone. Did you miss it? Had you been in the old town of Pollensa last Friday you wouldn’t have. Had you been in Santa Margalida on Sunday at the Augustine nuns’ convent you wouldn’t have.

The people of the two towns have had their votes. In Pollensa, some 3,500 of them took part in the election. Joan Mas and Dragut in Pollensa; Santa Catalina in Santa Margalida – Christian and Moor; la Beata. The Patrona battle between Moors and Christians will kick off, as normal, on 2 August; the procession of Beata will take place on the first Sunday of September. One Joan Ramon Armengual will be Joan (which seems appropriate – a Joan as a Joan): one Joan, there’s only one Joan. Oh not there isn’t; there are thousands of them, even in a small town like Pollensa. A Jaume Oliver will be the pirate Dragut, and Antònia Socies, la Beata. So now you know.

As usual, the victors can’t quite believe it. It’s the stuff of dreams, as usual. And not just for those heading the cast lists. Joan has his mates, Dragut his co-invaders, Beata her attendants. In Pollensa, there is even voting for members of the “old” town hall. There are any number of jobs for the boys and girls in the two towns, all part of the street theatre that is the battle and the Beata.

One of the unsuccesful Draguts was our old friend Toni, he of the Store Formentor at the Bellesreguard complex in Puerto Pollensa. He and his compatriots came halfway in the voting. He didn’t seem too unhappy with the result. Not that fearsome though. If you’re going to be part of some street theatre, you have, I suppose, to look the part. But simply racing around the old town, engaging in a bit of a bundle is not all there is to it. Joans have some lines to learn. One hopes they never fluff them: “Mare de Déu dels Àngels, assistiu-mos. Pollencins, aixecau-vos, que els pirates ja són aquí.” How many times will the latest Joan be reciting these words over the next few days, in advance of the big moment? One trusts there’ll be no stage fright.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

All That Gas: Butane in Mallorca

The “butanero” delivered the other day. He does so only infrequently in summer, as there is only limited demand for gas. It was red hot, around two in the afternoon. How was he? “Bad,” he replied, with a laugh. Well, you try driving a butane-gas truck around in the heat, getting in and out of the cab, lugging a heavy bottle onto the kerb. Just shifting one bottle will induce a sweat, and he’s doing this time and time again.

One of these days, the butanero may well be no more, as there will be no more the chaps who try and come and check gas installations and who are always frauds. The butanero and butane may still rule the energy roost, but natural gas has now arrived (in Palma at any rate), and oil, solar and (expensive) straightforward mains supply electricity are alternatives. The demand for butane has been falling. A report from “The Diario” yesterday stated that sales have fallen by 20% since 2005. Even the cold winter past saw only a slight increase in sales over the norm.

Nevertheless, Mallorca and the Balearics form one of the most significant markets for butane in Spain. Demand may have fallen, but it is high compared with other regions, a reason being that, despite what can sometimes be very cold spells during the winter, the climate is such that it doesn’t justify the costs of installing other systems of heating. The cost, though, of the gas itself has generally risen over the past decade. It does sometimes go down, but at a current price of 12.50 euros it is at least a third more expensive than it was seven or eight years ago. Only when you go into the inner sanctums of some larger restaurants and see the lines of bottles hooked up, do you begin to appreciate how much the whole economy and not just homes rely on a mode of energy supply that seems ridiculously outdated.

“The Diario” also spoke to one of the chaps who attends the butane collection points. He’s been doing it for 15 years. Like the chap in Puerto Alcúdia, he is well known in his local community in Palma. Everyone knows the butane man, and he knows everyone and the inside of their car boots or the backs of their vans. For anyone who doesn’t know him, he resides, together with his truck of orangey-red bottles, on a road near to the commercial port. In summer he is quiet, but in winter he can attend to whole lines of cars which have to turn around on a road unsuited for such a manoeuvre in order to park up by the truck.

Butane supply is a relic, as is the method of distribution. For all the sophistication of Mallorca, an important part of its energy provision is via something that most Brits will only ever encounter if they go camping. One day it will surely cease to be, but there is something satisfyingly old-fashioned in having such community figures as the butane delivery man and the chap at his collection point.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Lie Back And Think Of … : Ban on sex advertising

So, the Spanish Government is planning to ban the advertising of sex for sale from newspapers. The government is almost certainly right to wish to do so, even if this sounds rather puritanical, a streak I am rarely inclined to display.

There is something of the bizarre about the pages of classifieds for call girls, “massage” and a smattering of rent boys that are to be found in mostly all newspapers locally. The two Spanish dailies in Mallorca have them, as do the nationals, including “El País”, which “The Guardian” points out is of a similar left-leaning nature to itself and thus, you would think, in the PC category, and also “ABC”, a paper with more than a hint of religious righteousness.

The government, though, is going to cause itself some problems. The newspaper proprietors are unlikely to take a ban lying down, either on their backs or in any other position you may care to imagine. “El País”, for example, is a natural ally of the Zapatero government, which can do with all the support it can muster at the moment. There is also a view that banning such advertising would be a curb on free speech, which may be a legitimate argument were it not for the censorious nature of the media when it comes to anything to do with the royal family; overstep the mark and it will land a journalist, or a cartoonist, in the dock before a beak. If the press was wishing to seek a free-speech battleground, this might well be it, and not sleazy ads for well-endowed females.

The sheer volume of these ads can be overwhelming. How much sex can actually be sold? Not enough where the papers are concerned, which already derive significant revenues from the advertising. The papers are also at pains to point out that if the government wants to stop the ads, it should make prostitution illegal. But this argument begins to move into rather murkier territory. Were it the case that the ads were just being placed by some local slapper, then there wouldn’t necessarily be much harm in it. However, though a punter calling an ad might indeed end up with the woman of his dreams as opposed to one who might once have appealed to Wayne Rooney, or worse still, looks like Rooney, between that punter and the bed sheets is usually a third-party; pimps of frequently overseas origin – Russian, Nigerian, South American. The anti-ad lobby argues that the ads represent a form of “slavery” for women caught up in the “industry” (and it might add, presumably, some men as well).

The government’s move to initiate a ban comes against a background of what seems like a growing willingness on the behalf of the police to move against some so-called “relax” or “alternative” clubs; prostitution may not be illegal, but exploitation and trafficking are. And there is a further dimension to this – the potential link to organised crime.

In one respect, the adverts reflect a rather reassuringly un-PC element in local society, but it is what lies behind the ads that the government (and police) are right to take an interest in. The papers may not like a ban, but they are probably going to have to learn to live without the income that prostitute advertising brings them.

* I acknowledge the source of some of the above from “The Guardian” – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/16/spain-sex-adverts-newspapers

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

All Night Long: Tourists and nightlife

In “Ultima Hora” yesterday was a report on a survey into nightlife and its “quality” in the Balearics. What is extraordinary about the findings of this survey is not that tourists go to night bars and clubs, but that quite so many do and quite so often.

While the survey, conducted on behalf of the ministry of health and consumption (as in the consumer as opposed to its meaning TB), will lead to implications for matters such as safety and alcohol and drug abuse, what seems truly significant is that over 80% of Brits and over 70% of Germans who come to Mallorca go to a night bar on five or more nights during their stay.

The report is not clear as to which resorts these findings apply to, and one might express some scepticism as to the exact definition of a night bar or club, but assuming this to mean places that are open well into the morning then the findings really are significant. They are significant for different reasons. One, they run counter to a general image of Mallorca as a predominantly “family” destination. Two, they potentially shatter the notion of Mallorca as a destination for so-called alternative tourism; it is hard to reconcile night birds with bird-watchers, for example. Three, they confirm what anyone with an ounce of understanding knows – that for many tourists, nightlife (meaning after midnight) is an important aspect of the holiday mix, despite attempts to neuter it through measures such as terrace curfews.

It is certainly difficult to reconcile the family nature of the Mallorcan holiday with the proclivity to partake in late-night entertainment. Perhaps babysitting services are enjoying boom times, or perhaps there are a lot of elderly relatives who are brought along for this very reason. Not that the elderly are not themselves necessarily out late; the report makes no specific mention of age.

While nightlife is most obviously associated with Magaluf and Palma, it is not as though it doesn’t exist elsewhere; quite the contrary. Alcúdia and Can Picafort are both well-represented in this regard. Puerto Pollensa may not be the night centre it was many years ago, but it still has quite a bit of nightlife, despite the fact that some might prefer to portray the resort as quiet and only family-oriented, which is a fallacy.

If the survey had found that tourists went out on the town once or twice during a stay, then the findings wouldn’t be particularly revealing. But five or more times is a very different scale. Though not a survey under the auspices of the tourism ministry, it, if it has any sense, should be looking at the results with keen interest; instead it’s likely to look at them with alarm as they do not sit easily with its misguided marketing mindset of non-sun and beach and indeed nightlife tourism.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Imitation Of Life: Robbie and Take That

So Robbie is back with Take That. If art imitates life, then there needs to be some readjustment in trib world.

When I was putting together HOT!, one possible feature was on the local Robbie, Rob Idol. It didn’t happen for reasons I can’t be entirely sure of. But had it, a tack I had thought of taking was for Rob to actually be Robbie. It was perhaps as well it didn’t happen as I might have lost my audience in a confusion of surrealism. Nevertheless, a question would have been about re-joining Take That. Now that Robbie, as opposed to Rob, has teamed up once more with G. Barlow et al, the possibilities for trib imitation of life are increased.

There is fundamentally something rather surreal about trib acts, but to have them mirror real life, as in Rob and the local Take That performing together, would be not only hugely entertaining it would also be hugely bizarre. They must do it. Or you would hope they would. Even now, local TV should be interviewing the reunited fivesome in broken English, and plans should be afoot for a grand reunion concert of the whole of an alternative Take That on Puerto Alcúdia’s promenade. Have these people no imagination? Forget Michael Jackson and his story, forget some sappy alleged Beatles. Give us the reformed and totally tribute TT.

Imitation of life and strange juxtapositions. It goes back a long way. I was probably only six when I was introduced to how art can create the unexpected combination – if the TV Western could have been described as art. But the episode when Bronco Layne crossed over into an episode of “Tenderfoot” (or it might have been the other way round) had, I now appreciate, a profound influence. It has of course happened on many other occasions, such as Kirk and Picard together, but to a small child the insane notion of two cowboys from two cowboy series appearing opposite each other on a black and white screen with a bad signal was sufficient to inform him that normal rules don’t always apply, that the strange can and should happen. Which is why the doppelgänger Robbie and Take That must perform together this summer. And, moreover, mean it.

A Load of Balls – On Water
And word up for Mark and Andrea and their Walk On Water Balls next to the Las Palmeras tennis centre in Puerto Alcúdia. This looks, and is, huge fun. The set-up at WOWB is rather different to what can also be experienced at hotel swimming-pools. Firstly, it is sheltered, which means there is no direct sun onto the über-PVC balls (I’ve forgotten what Mark said was the exact material). Secondly, it is open all day, so no restrictions to a couple of hours here or there.

It’s all very safe, and the pool being shallow makes it doubly so. Five euros a roll, or however one wants to describe it. From midday to around 22:30.

But if you’re looking for a bizarre angle in this, then think “The Prisoner”, think Rover.

(In the photo: a couple of kids enjoying the water balls while Mark watches on.)

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Annual They Should Be So Lucky

The Calvia police conducted an operation against “vendedores ambulantes” a couple of nights ago. These vendedores are, of course, better known as “looky-looky” or “lucky-lucky” men. According to a report in “Ultima Hora”, the number of luckies heading for Magaluf of an evening has recently increased, as has the number of complaints. Cue plod.

The luckies are a part of the local scene, in whatever resort. Mostly they are harmless, but like anyone who does some street “selling” – and these can include legitimate PRs where they are permitted outside their own establishments and the scratch-card wretches – they can be a damn nuisance. Apart from the fact that they are selling shit (and sometimes they are selling a type of shit that comes in small wrapped packages), the biggest beef with them concerns the fact that they take away business from shops or others and pay not a cent of tax or social security. None are legal.

That the police in the different resorts often turn a blind eye to them has to do with the sheer numbers, lack of police resources and the fact that even if they get hauled in there isn’t much that can be done with them. The police in Magaluf let all of its 41 catch of luckies go, save for one who’d got stroppy. As was once pointed out by an Alcúdia policeman, take one lucky in and another will replace him. There is a production line that never seems to run out of resources.

By coincidence, “The Diario” had a report on different types of vendedores in Playa de Palma on Sunday. To the luckies can be added the beach vendors selling if not necessarily shit, then highly overpriced fruit or drinks. As one shopowner pointed out, they go to a shop, buy some cans and then go and flog them at four or five times the proper price. Another example of the tourist being ripped-off. Doubly if the shop was already charging over the odds.

The simple solution would lie with tourists not encouraging any of the street sellers by not buying their wares or not being hauled off for a hard-sell pitch for holidays they don’t want or need. The latter can be more difficult to shake off as there are more silver tongues, ones that speak the language well. The luckies can be fobbed off, and many do fob them off. But many do not. Kids are especially susceptible, and so therefore are their parents, because the kids often find the luckies funny and enjoy the game of bartering.

But should we really be so sanctimonious? Who has never bought some shit from a lucky or another seller? Who has never bought a dodgy CD or DVD? There are some, including bar-owners, who are good customers for the luckies and for those who don’t bother with luckies and sell direct their packaged, pirated DVDs by the hold-all load.

The luckies and their nuisance and illegal value are an annual theme. Every year’s the same. Despite the efforts of the police, and the Magaluf operation will probably prove to be isolated, and despite local laws that make it illegal to not only sell but also buy hooky gear (as is the case in Alcúdia), the luckies are not going away. Like the poor, they will always be with us. And there will be some who, strange to report, will be quite happy that they are.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

For Another Euro More: Prices that take you for a ride

You may or may not appreciate what a grind it can be, hacking around hotels and other places – on a daily basis – distributing copies of HOT! Especially when it is as warm as it is now. Not that I complain. That’s how it is. And it can also be highly illuminating. Stop and talk to the receptionists about how things are. Many an insight is to be gained from a few moments snatched with hotel personnel.

But when it is hot, one has to either take oneself off to a bar for some liquid or – on the hoof – get some from a shop. And so it was, at the peak of yesterday’s afternoon temperature, I went into a tourist supermarket. Water, no. It’s always overpriced in these places, and it’s not what you really need, which is either fruit juice or a sports drink – water’s fine, but you’ve got to get your vitamins, minerals and salts as well. So I choose a sports drink. There is a sticker on the cool cabinet – across the row of drinks from which I take an orange half litre. 1.95. The “botellas” (bottles) are 1.95. Ok, bit over the top, but I can live with it. What I can’t live with is when I go to the checkout and the girl says 2.95. No it’s not, says I (and this is all in Spanish). It’s 1.95. That’s what the sticker says. I pick up the bottle and point out the 500ml – half litre, and then I head over to the cabinet, and she comes with me. She removes the sticker. Rumbled.

The supermarket has encountered someone who isn’t a tourist, who speaks Spanish, who’s damned if he’s going to pay a euro more than what is clearly stated – or was, before the sticker was peeled off. I pay 1.95. The girl and her companion look somewhat pissed off. It’s not really their problem; they only work there. But they have to deal with it. Deal with a little example of attempting to rip-off.

When we get all the Mallorca’s expensive anecdotes, some are related to the cost of items in tourist supermarkets. I have some sympathy. They try it on. And it gives a bad impression. Like, for example, this nonsense with upping the price of newspapers – a twenty cents here, a thirty cents there. It’s wrong. Its legality is also a moot point. But the deal is that the supermarket, or whatever, assumes you’ll be prepared to swallow the added tariff because it’s convenient to do so. Oh, that the practice were confined only to the less-than-official outlets. Because it isn’t. I was going to buy a copy of “The Observer” last Sunday from a “tabacs” (which double as official outlets for newspapers). Not when I saw the sticker with the added cents. They’re having a laugh. One of these days I will look to buy a paper with its inflated price and insist on paying the price quoted – in print – on the paper. Again, it won’t be the problem of the shop assistant, and he or she shouldn’t be placed in the position of having to be confronted by a stroppy non-tourist, such as myself. But it’s poor. It niggles. Niggles tourists and niggles me. They should stop trying to make fools out of people, which is why I do – sometimes – have every sympathy with those who complain about prices.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Wacky Races: The Alcúdia-Puerto Pollensa coast road

The Wacky Department’s at it again. It seems to be the only department in the Spanish Government that’s expanding during the “cree-sis”. What it has now dragged out, courtesy of the dreaded Costas and their “demarcation”, is a revival of an old tune – the elimination of the coast road between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa. This was something that had gone ominously quiet since being given plenty of airplay a couple of years ago (for example, 9 May 2008, Road To Nowhere). But it’s back on the playlist – and racing up the charts.

The idea that the coast road should be removed and nature allowed to reclaim the coastal area is one that goes back some years, but it has never really attracted serious attention. This is about to change. The Costas, as reported in “The Diario” yesterday, are embarking on two studies – one into the socioeconomic implications of getting rid of the road, the other a technical proposal for doing so.

The environmental context for the road’s elimination is clear: the road runs right by a line of coast that is “rustic”, i.e. not made up, and by the Albufereta wetlands and finca of Can Cullerassa, itself recently cleaned up after years of neglect following the abandonment of a building project that dated back to the seventies. The non-environmental ramifications of eliminating the road are also obvious – Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa would in effect, unless there were an alternative road, be cut off from each other. And quite what the owners of the Club Pollentia Resort, the Club Sol Apartments, the Can Cuarassa restaurant and various fincas make of the idea, God alone knows.

Pollensa’s mayor Joan Cerdà, for his part, has expressed his scepticism regarding the plan and is also concerned as to what an alternative road might mean for finca owners and for the virgin land that exists beyond the Albufereta. Any new road, and there would surely have to be one, would have to cut across this land while probably also having to have feeder roads. Solving one environmental problem would merely create a different one, to which would be added the costs of expropriation and the inevitable legal challenges.

What needs to be established, above all else, is whether the continued existence of the current road represents genuine potential for long-term environmental harm. If not, then one would have to conclude, and not for the first time with the Costas’ diktats on demarcation, that the road’s elimination would be an example of over-zealous application of that demarcation. The project demands an independent enquiry, not one under the auspices of the Costas.

There are other issues to be taken into account. The current road can be dangerous and also a nightmare when the weather is bad and stones are being hurled onto it. It might be no bad thing if there were an alternative road, but the existing road is also important for tourism, a point that Mayor Cerdà has made.

The logic of the Costas’ position would, one might think, place the continued existence of the hotels and the restaurant in peril. Leave them, but without the coast road and with a new one to their rear, and that logic would be undermined; they are as much a part of the environmental issue along the coast road as the road itself.

But there may also be another factor, one lurking in the background, and that is the European Union. The recuperation of Can Cullerassa was part of what the EU had determined to be a priority in terms of environmental regeneration.

While common sense would suggest that Cerdà is right to be sceptical as to whether the project will happen, there are sufficient forces potentially lining up that might just make it happen.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Spain Win The World Cup: The view from Alcúdia

In the end, Iniesta. In the end it didn’t matter that it was no great final. In the end it didn’t matter to the millions who will have spilled out onto the streets across Spain, just as they did in Puerto Alcúdia.

The car horns had been going off well before the match started. Is it possible that car horns can lose their horn? If they can, they will have by now. In the end and at the end it was not just the street sides that were full of flag-waving, so were the roads, right down the middle, right around the roundabouts. I came close to ending up in hospital, or worse, as I crossed the road by the Magic roundabout and a motorbike came haring around at high speed, seemingly the only road user unaware that something remarkable had happened.

And it was remarkable. Even for anyone with no interest in football, he or she could surely not have been overtaken by the outpouring of joy and euphoria. It was the greatest fiesta of all, and one not programmed by an organising committee. Fireworks went off, wherever; the people’s party.

The Mile was packed. A cavalcade of flag-waving, horn-blowing cars jammed the road, as did the onlookers, cheering and crying with ecstasy. Near to Magic, the customised chainsaw with its loudhailing amplifier was roaring, being played like a guitar to passing cars and behind a police bike rider. The lorry that doubled as a float was getting more and more loaded. Kids, with no obvious sign of parents, were throwing themselves onto the dewy grass of the roundabout in an abandon of happiness. Everyone was going mental.

Yet amidst all this, bizarrely other life was going on. A group of tourists outside the Delfin Azul with their suitcases, waiting for their transfer coach; a late-night supermarket, moving the lilos inside. It is at times like a World Cup final, a World Cup final in a Spanish town, that it is hard to believe that anything else could actually matter.

In the end it didn’t matter that De Jong should have been sent off, it didn’t matter that Spain never really played that well throughout the whole tournament. What did matter was that Spain won. And to have been amongst it was astonishing. There was a sense of gatecrashing someone else’s party, but it didn’t matter; far from it, as Germans, Brits, Swedes and others joined in and revelled in one of the greatest nights most will ever experience.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.