The Battle Of The Beards

Beard is a slang term for a partner who disguises the other partner’s true sexual orientation. Let me say straightaway that I do not suggest for one moment that either Mariano Rajoy or Alfredo Rubalcaba would have a beard (except of course that both of them, in a hair sense, do) and that either is anything other than 100% heterosexual. That said, a touch of gayness might play well with Rubalcaba’s more liberal audience, while it wouldn’t with Rajoy’s conservative constituency.

José Luis Zapatero’s announcement of a November general election ushers forth, earlier than expected, the battle of the beards; the hustings of the hirsute will take place sooner than we had thought.

Zapatero, clean-shaven, will be succeeded by greying facial hair of either the left or right. The good money, at present, is on a right-wing full set, but Rubalcaba could yet take a Gillette to Rajoy, the polls suggesting that he has already started to trim the Partido Popular beard.

With Zapatero’s departure in November, we will lose one of the great comedy characters of European politics. What beckons next for José Luis Bean? A series of “The Thin Blue Line”? Inappropriate perhaps, if only in terms of colour. With his going, we will be deprived of one of the finest lookalikes to ever step onto the world stage, but we could yet get another.

Rubalcaba is a dead ringer for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (in his younger, less beardy days that is). And then there’s his name. Rubal? Ruble? Is there a closet Russian in the PSOE house, an old-time Commie waiting to emerge and lead Spain from its hard-labour Gulag of economic crisis? Or indeed plunge it deeper into crisis?

Unfortunately, we are unlikely to ever know or to ever have the satisfaction of having a former Russian novelist meeting Putin or Medvedev at European leaders’ gatherings. Instead there will be Rajoy, the greyest man of Spanish politics, bereft of charisma and any redeeming comedic features.

But whoever wins the upcoming election will be starting from a position of handicap. Both Rajoy and Rubalcaba can consider themselves already stripped of some support. Why? Because politicians with beards have been shown to poll worse than those without.

Spanish political facial hair has generally been absent since the days of Franco, who sported a sort of Hitler but never a beard. José Maria Aznar brought the moustache back into political fashion, along with hair dye, but Zapatero reverted to the clean-shaven presidential (or prime ministerial, if you prefer) look that had been favoured by Felipe González.

Now, though, the electorate is faced not only by faces with moustaches but those also with beards. It will make for a very difficult choice. On the basis that men with beards cannot be trusted, both may fail to win.

This is not anti-beardism on my behalf but a statement of the fact that politicians with beards don’t go down that well with electorates. And if one considers some of the leading political beards of the generation, you can begin to appreciate why: various Iranian ayatollahs as well as Ahmadineyad, Castro, David Blunkett.

When Europe’s political leaders line up for photos at economic crisis meetings any time after the Spanish elections, there will be one particularly conspicuous leader. Who’s the weird beard, will go the question. All other of Europe’s politicians have engaged the use of the razor. David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel; none of them bearded, or even close to being. Yet, there will be Rajoy (or Rubalcaba) in the glare of the cameras with bits of Euro-leaders’ lunch clinging to the chin. At a time when Moody’s is threatening to downgrade Spain’s credit rating, the last thing Spain needs is a future prime minister who can’t be trusted.

It is the beard factor that makes any prospect of Rajoy turning Spain’s fortunes around to be illusory. The question is, therefore: will he (or Rubalcaba) do the decent thing, in the name of Spanish economic recovery, and have a shave?

But to come back to the beard slang term, there is a definite contrast in style to the two political beards who will be battling it out in November. Rubalcaba’s Solzhenitsyn hints at something vaguely Bohemian and liberal. His beard is in keeping with the social policies that Zapatero has so successfully managed to introduce. It is the beard of a left-wing university lecturer who insists on wearing sandals.

Rajoy’s, on the other hand, is a studious and serious affair, as befits a studious and serious man disinclined to approve of liberal frivolities. It is the beard of a suited management consultant sent in to effect swingeing cuts. Which is exactly what he will do of course.

Bring on November, bring on the beards, and let’s get ready to stubble.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Tradition Industry

There was this flyer in the letter-box. “Traditional Mallorcan cuisine.” The words were in Spanish. You might think that advertising traditional Mallorcan cuisine should demand that the blurb is in Catalan and not in Spanish, but maybe the restaurant is owned by a staunch supporter of the Partido Popular. Anyway, let’s not go there again.

The flyer was less a promotion for the restaurant and more one for a take-away service. “We will cook for you and bring our specialities to your home.” Which is sort of what you expect with a take-away service, but perhaps these things have to be spelt out, as traditional Mallorcan cuisine being ferried around in cardboard containers covered with aluminium on the back of a scooter (or however it is transported) doesn’t sound all that traditional. Contemporary meets the traditional, and it comes on a Honda 125.

Take-away is really pizzas, beef chow mein and tikka masala. Pork wrapped in cabbage? It doesn’t quite have the take-away ring about it. Traditional cuisine demands traditional modes of eating, as in sitting down in a restaurant. But there again, what is traditional?

This is a question I have been grappling with. Traditional – Mallorcan traditional – is referred to that often that is hard to know what is a tradition and what isn’t. The word is interchangeable with “typical”. Restaurants do typical/traditional cuisine, troupes perform typical/traditional dance and music, fiestas are typical/traditional. In the case of La Beata in Santa Margalida, this is the most typical of the lot – or so they always say. Girly saint rebuffs the attentions and temptations of the devil, good conquers evil and a whole tradition spawns demons with fire crackers, beasty masks and virgins of the parish parading in white.

The irony of tradition in a Mallorcan style is that it has created something that is distinctly of today – the tradition industry. There is marketing gold to be alchemised from a dry-stone wall, silver to be sold from the singing of a Sibil·la, bronze from coins clattering in the tills of the most ancient of the island’s traditions, the Talayotic.

The blurring of the lines between modernity and antiquity invites a question as to the degree to which tradition is forced and with the express purpose of creating a marketing benefit from the historical. The very promotion of tradition, with its narrative captured in the word itself and in the words typical or authentic, is sloganising. The words themselves are marketing tools, directed at both the native and the visiting markets.

The constant reinforcement of tradition for domestic consumption reflects a society still uneasy with modernity. Traditional Mallorcan society, by which one means that before the tourism industrial revolution of the sixties and one that was far more wedded to the land than it is now, still resides in the collective memory. This is unlike Britain, for example, where there is a general lack of tradition and an accommodation with its absence that doesn’t require an industry with its marketing plans to force it onto the populace or the tourist.

Of course, there are organisations such as English Heritage which maintain a connection with the past, but the promotion of English and British tradition and culture doesn’t have a sense of desperation; that of demanding that the past is held onto.

A key difference, though, between what occurs in long-industrialised countries and an island such as Mallorca where traditional society can be actively remembered lies in the capacity for a tradition industry to flourish. It could never have happened in Britain, for instance, because the wherewithal for such an industry simply didn’t exist. And by the time the wherewithal was discovered, it was far too late. Contemporary Mallorca, on the other hand, has that wherewithal, because the invention and development of marketing, and hence the tradition industry, pretty much coincided with the island’s industrial revolution.

Mallorca’s traditions aren’t invented, thanks to the temporal proximity to when traditional society started its decline, but they are an invention of the marketer who flogs them to a tourist market which has forgotten its own traditions.

Tradition is good. That’s the message, even if what is described as traditional isn’t necessarily exceptional. So it is with much traditional Mallorcan cuisine. Yea, it’s ok, but then so are fish and chips. They’re traditional, but they don’t come with a label attached that demands that they are considered thus. And the constant labelling is the constant reinforcement of a marketing message.

The flyer in the letter-box was selling. But it was also selling, in its curiously contemporary take-away way, that is on behalf of one of Mallorca’s strongest industries, its tradition industry.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Lorenzo’s Foil: The Catalan argument

What’s the difference between Jorge and Chicho Lorenzo? Jorge is world MotoGP champion and Chicho isn’t. Jorge was born in Mallorca and Chicho wasn’t. He is originally from Galicia, which may explain why he has been brandishing the sword of honour in defence of the Castilian language and jabbing at the armour of Catalan. Lorenzo’s foil is just a tip of the épée in the Catalan argument, but it has caused an almighty row.

Lorenzo took to Facebook to attack Catalanists. Facebook took the page down when the insults began to fly. The whole incident has caused a storm mainly because of who Lorenzo is: father of Jorge, one of Mallorca’s favourite sons along with Rafael Nadal. Pity the poor Mallorcan sportsman who has to contend with a father or a relative’s opinions. Nadal had to put up with uncle Toni slagging Parisians off by referring to their stupidity.

Lorenzo’s foil, which I suppose you could say was foiled by Facebook removing it, comes at a time when arms are being taken up in the Catalan cause. And what has brought the swords out of the sheaths, in addition to Chicho’s Facebook campaign, has been the announcement by Bauzá’s Partido Popular government that it is preparing a law that will remove the requirement for public officials to be able to speak Catalan.

To the fore in opposing this law change is the teaching union STEI-i. The Catalan argument is at its most pertinent in the education sector; it is here that the real battle exists and was always likely to become hugely controversial, given the PP’s aggressive and negative stance towards Catalan.

The rhetoric surrounding the Catalan argument is extreme. Both sides, pro- and anti-Catalanists, accuse the other of being fascists; Lorenzo has, for example. Fascist may be a strong affront in a nation that once had a fascist dictator, but its use just makes it the more difficult to those who look on and observe the argument to be sympathetic to either side. There is something decidedly puerile about the fascist insult.

Bauzá, to continue the connection to the good old days of fascism, is being characterised as being like Franco. Both before and after the May elections, I referred to concerns that a PP administration under Bauzá would create social tensions because of its apparent anti-Catalanism, but to compare Bauzá with El Caudillo is going too far.

Nevertheless, these tensions were always going to come to the surface, and the heat of the rhetoric is being cranked up with Bauzá also being accused of attempting “cultural genocide” (Lorenzo has made the same accusation in the other direction).

The Catalan argument isn’t as simple as just being either for or against Catalan or Castilian as the dominant language. If it were this simple, then it would be easier to comprehend. But language isn’t the main issue.

The fact that Bauzá and the PP (and Chicho Lorenzo, come to that), while favouring Castilian over Catalan, also defend the use of the Catalan dialects of the Balearics adds complexity to what is more an issue of nationhood: Spain as a nation and Catalonia as a wannabe nation. What has been referred to as the “Catalan imposition”, the requirement for speaking Catalan in the public sector, and the one the PP would scrap, is wrapped up in the wider context of Catalonia’s ambitions to be a nation and for there to be a union of Catalan lands, of which the Balearics would be one.

Language equals culture and culture equals language; the two go hand in hand. The genocide charge being levelled at Bauzá is fallacious in the sense that he has no problem with the use of Catalan dialects, and these dialects could be said to be more representative of local cultures than pure Catalan.

But dialects are spoken by minorities, they are not the tongues of nations. To approve of them is to approve of diversity, not of nationalist pretensions. It is approval that can be considered as being tacitly designed to undermine such pretensions and in accord with attitudes of the Partido Popular nationally: those of being equivocal towards regionalism, be it that of the Balearics, Catalonia or anywhere, and of being fierce defenders of the Spanish nation, the whole of the Spanish nation, Catalonia and Catalan speakers included.

The swords are being drawn. There will be plenty more Chicho Lorenzos and plenty more Facebook campaigns and arguments, as there will be campaigns and arguments elsewhere. The worry is that the puerile use of the fascist insults gets more serious and that there is more than just a metaphorical brandishing of foils.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Getting Into A Flap

Good weather for them. Ducks that is. The rain that has been about has been well-timed. We are entering the duck season, or we would be were there any ducks. And in Can Picafort of course, there aren’t. Not officially anyway. In a rare display of unity, however, the warring political parties of Santa Margalida are as one in demanding the return of the ducks.

The town hall is calling for a change to animal-protection law that would legalise the release of live ducks during Can Picafort’s August fiestas. Under this law, or so it would seem, traditions that can be shown to date back more than 100 years from the time of the law’s enactment in 1992 are allowed to continue. The great duck-throwing event of Can Picafort isn’t that old. Consequently, Santa Margalida wants the threshold reduced to 50 years; ducks were first let go into the sea for locals to swim after them and capture them in the 1930s.

The town hall has never truly bought into the law and the banning of live ducks. It was persuaded to comply with it when it was fined for not having complied. Ever since the live ducks were replaced by rubber ones, the town hall has only grudgingly gone along with the law. And by town hall, one means all the parties, whether ruling or opposing.

The unified front that is now being displayed has, though, not always been evident. The former administration proposed a similar change to the law late last year. The opposition didn’t go along with it, yet it, now in power, has made the proposal. Even in unity, the parties can’t avoid having a dig at each other. You didn’t support us, say the Partido Popular. It was our measure. We didn’t support you, respond the combined forces of the Suma pel Canvi and the Convergència, because it wouldn’t have done any good; the former regional administration wouldn’t have approved it.

Though a national law, there would seem to be flexibility for a regional parliament (the Balearics one) to amend it. As the Partido Popular is now in power at regional level, the town hall would reckon that it might get a more sympathetic hearing.

The banning of live ducks, and Santa Margalida finally got round to complying with the law five years ago, has turned the tradition into a new one. The event attracts way more publicity as a consequence of the law being flouted than it ever did when ducks themselves were being released.

That said, before the ban there was the annual ritual of the animal-rights activists getting into an argument with the pro-duck-throwers, a ritual that has now become one of the animal rightists trooping off to make a “denuncia” when the law is broken. And the poor police, who surely have better things to do, have been caught in the middle, both the local police under the command of a town hall whose attitude has been ambiguous, to say the least, and the Guardia who have had to resort to bringing in divers and boats to try and prevent the throwing of live ducks and to try and apprehend the miscreants.

Last year, one town hall official said the police presence was more akin to security for the royal family or an ETA threat. The law may have been likely to have been broken, which it duly was (and no one was caught), but the publicity and the security were absurd for what has always been an absurd occasion, one that became more absurd as soon as they started to use rubber ducks instead. They should have scrapped the whole thing rather than allow it to become the farce it has.

The duck-throwing saga of Can Picafort can be considered an example of what happens when you mess with tradition, but how traditional really is the duck throwing? Establishing a time frame, be it 50 or 100 years, seems pretty arbitrary. Indeed, it seems ridiculous. If it is felt that something requires outlawing, then so be it, regardless of how long it has been going.

The ducks only came about as a bit of sport. Wealthy landowners would make a gift of some ducks, and the young men of the village would compete to capture them. Do 70 or 80 years represent a “tradition”? Maybe they do, or maybe they represent the history of something basically frivolous. Whatever the case, there are enough people, on both sides of the argument, who get into a flap about the ducks. And they will continue to do so, whether the law is changed or not.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Guilty By Associations

How many associations, federations, organisations can one island need? How many such bodies can one industry need? Tourism is hugely important, but the industry is sinking under the sheer weight of its collective organisational body.

Let’s identify, shall we, just some of these organisations. Among those charged with tourism promotion and development are the Balearics Tourism Agency, the Fomento del Turismo (Mallorcan Tourism Board), the Fundación Mallorca Turismo, the Mesa del Turismo and the cluster Balears.t, to which will soon be added “mesas de alcaldes” (literally, mayors’ tables).

The hoteliers, in addition to federations in different towns, have at least two bodies – a federation of hoteliers and an association of hotel chains. Businesses, other than the hotels, are represented by Acotur, Pimeco, the chamber of commerce, and the local confederation of businesses. To all this lot, you can add associations for different niches and whatever the town halls might or might not be up to.

Duplication, triplication, quadruplication are endemic in Mallorca. Why have one organisation when a dozen will do just as well? It all starts at the top of course. At governmental level. President Bauzà is at least trying to address the duplications that exist between regional government, island councils and town halls, but he faces an uphill task in a society which appears to believe in more being better, especially if this means several bodies doing the same as each other.

Is Mallorca’s tourism industry disappearing up its own backside of associations? Or did it disappear there some time ago? What on earth do all these different organisations do? Apart from duplications, the impression is of a multiplicity of talking shops and competing and self-interests.

I’ll give you a test. Tell me this. What is the difference between the Balearics Tourism Agency, the Fomento del Turismo and the Fundación Mallorca Turismo? Give up? The answer is that the first is part of the regional government’s tourism ministry. The second is private with, among others, directors of leading hotel chains on its board. As for the third, this comprises the Council of Mallorca, the Mallorcan hoteliers federation, the chamber of commerce and … and the Fomento del Turismo. And what do they all they do? Pretty much the same things. Twice over in the case of the Fomento, to say nothing of the hoteliers popping up on both the Fomento and separately on the Fundación.

The Mesa del Turismo? Anyone wish to hazard a guess? No? This is the regional government tourism ministry, the local confederation of businesses and the main trades unions. Cluster Balears.t? What in God’s name is this? Hard to say, but it wishes to improve the selling of the Balearics tourism product, which is presumably what all the others want to do as well.

And now we are going to get the mayors’ tables. This is a new nest of tables dreamt up by tourism minister Delgado. The mayors of the Balearics can sit around them and come up with ways to improve the quality of the Balearics brand. To do what!? Yes, to improve the Balearics brand. What’s it got to do with the mayors? And there we were also thinking that Delgado had cottoned onto the idea that you brand what the tourist punter recognises (Mallorca for example) and not the unrecognisable, be it Calvia or the Balearics.

Then you come to the associations for businesses, those for the hotels and those primarily for the complementary offer, i.e. anything to do with tourism which isn’t a hotel.

Acotur, the association of tourist businesses (appropriately enough) has, as an example of its efforts, been talking to Alcúdia’s mayor about pressing concerns in the resort, one of them being the scale of illegal street selling. It has actually (and unsuccessfully) been trying to do something about this for years, producing notices of a “Grange Hill” “just say no” style to ask tourists not to buy from the looky-looky men.

The mayor will probably do nothing, other than say that the police are looking into it and to remind everyone that there is a local by-law that outlaws street selling (and indeed the purchase of illegally traded products), which does raise the question as to why an individual town hall needs to have a separate law or to act unilaterally, a point which Pimeco (small to medium businesses association), and not Acotur, wishes to address by getting all 53 local councils to unify in a grand anti-looky action.

I apologise. I can well imagine that you are totally lost by now. It is small wonder though. So many bodies, so many doing the same things, and so many failing to achieve anything. Mallorca. Guilty by associations.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Flick When You’re Winning

Spain have failed to add a further World Cup title to the nation’s list of footballing honours. They were knocked out in the semi-finals, going down three-one (on aggregate) to Belgium who then succumbed to Italy in the final, the home nation being crowned the 2011 Subbuteo World Cup champions.

The World Cup was played over the last weekend in Palermo. It has fallen in the midst of Mallorca’s fiesta season during which all manner of table games are played. Pollensa’s Patrona, for instance, has more or less a whole day of such games.

Table football games, eclipsed by PlayStation and what have you, still hold a place in nations’ affections, and the Spanish are one of these nations. The most obvious of the games is table football itself, a crash-bang-wallop of wrist action and toe-ended attempts on goal. Though some finesse is required, as in the manoeuvring of the ball under close control in order to set up the shot, it is a deeply unsatisfactory game. It is inflexible, a rod of players that can only ever move in formation, square across the pitch, as though they were Ray Wilkinses on a steel pole.

Table football, though, is a survivor. It is still with us in bars in Mallorca and elsewhere. And here, as with with the full English breakfast tradition, is an opportunity for Bar Brits. International table football tournaments. Put them on over a few days in a resort like Alcúdia and they would be a recipe for fierce national pride and considerable drinking among any number of nationalities.

But more sophisticated, more refined, more skilful would be the Subbuteo tournament. Though there is greater potential for harm to be caused to Subbuteo players than to those on a rod of iron, there is a code of conduct that is applied by the Federation of International Sports Table Football, of which the Spanish Association Española de Jugadores de Futbol de Mesa is a member. Anyone guilty of snapping an arm or the legs of a Subbuteo player is subject to disciplinary procedures (I’m not kidding, you can have a look for yourselves on the federation’s website).

Subbuteo was always the Barcelona of table football to the hard-working, long-ball, huff-and-puff of table football itself. The spin around an opposing player to effect a deft touch on the ball, a push to the right with a gentle flick by the index finger and, in seemingly one movement, the unleashing of a shot past a despairing goalkeeper, skewered like a kebab on the end of a thin metal rod of his own (or in more modern versions, a plastic controller).

My own Subbuteo career spanned some fourteen years. I was only 25 when I decided to hang up my plastic men on plastic domes. It was not an injury that caused my retirement, it was not that I had been unable to cope with the stardom and had gone off the rails in a George Best style (and Subbuteo never produced a drunken George as such). I called it a day because I knew I had reached my peak.

In 1980 I played the perfect Subbuteo game, one of high tempo, fabulous flicking, slick spinning and passing. It was the enactment of the Everton-West Ham FA Cup semi-final. My hapless Hammers opponent was brushed aside; he was given a Subbuteo footballing lesson. It was his Hidegkuti and Puskas moment. Brian Kidd bagged five, and the result was 11-0.

In the World Cup just played, Spain had a player called Flores. He was the one to register the one in the 3-1 aggregate loss to Belgium. In an otherwise dull encounter (2-0, 1-0, 2-1 to the Belgians in the three other match-ups), Flores trounced Dehur 10-2. Subbuteo has flowered thanks to the Spaniard Flores, just as it had 31 years ago. And despite going out in the semis, it proved that Subbuteo is alive and flicking in Spain.

With this in mind, I propose a grand Subbuteo bar tournament, one to bring the nations of Mallorca together. But I would only be a spectator. I’ve had my day. It’s a young man’s sport now, demanding highly trained index fingers as opposed to those whose training was mainly confined to curling around a pint glass. But I would hope that an English champion could emerge, one who could be encouraged by our singing “flick when you’re winning, you only flick when you’re winning”. Because in Subbuteo, if you are not flicking then you cannot be winning.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

From Russia Without Love

At the end of the last century a mere 8,000 or so Russian tourists came to the Balearics. By 2010 the number had climbed to over 34,000. This year the total (taking in also visitors from the Ukraine) has been projected to rise to 90,000. It is still not an enormous number, but such growth has implications for all manner of reasons, not least for the demographic melting-pot that is the holidaymaking collective in Mallorca.

There are other implications, such as what the heck the Mallorcans will make of attempting to put everything into Cyrillic script and inevitably getting it wrong. And they are surely bound to get it wrong.

The Russians, as a rule, don’t speak Spanish and they’re not much better when it comes to English. And no one speaks Russian. Communication is going to be a big challenge, but not the biggest; and this brings you to the melting-pot, one that might just have the potential to boil over.

Let’s cut to the chase. The Russians are not exactly well liked. Years of antagonism between different nationalities on holiday will draw to a close as a united, western European front is formed against the Russian invasion. Remarkably, the British are likely to be brought into a grand holidaymaker alliance, with their old foes the Germans calling on their one-time enemy to join in a whole new battle of the sunbeds.

The Germans have a deep-rooted dislike of the Russians, and the feeling is entirely mutual; Stalingrad and all that. Russian paranoia, a national trait and the one that for centuries has caused the Russians to be constantly seeking ways of repelling enemies, imagined or real, is now being reinforced by treatment that the Russian tourist receives.

Tensions with the Germanic peoples, and let us not forget that a certain German was actually born in Austria, has been evident in the Austrian ski resort of Kitzbühel, which decided to limit the number of Russian visitors to 10% of the whole. The decision was taken because of the Russians’ loud and brash behaviour.

Anti-Russian feeling is certainly not limited to the Germans and Austrians. The British have been taking as hard a line, as can be seen in some comments emanating from Trip Advisor. Take these two for a hotel in Marmaris in Turkey. “Ignorant Russians can spoil the mood.” “If you want to punch a Russian clap your hands.” On another internet forum, someone wrote: “The problem is that they are not ordinary, decent Russians but crooks and apparatchiks who have come into money without doing an honest day’s work.”

The Dutch have a dislike of the Russians almost as strong as an historic loathing of the Germans, so much so that following huge numbers of complaints from Dutch tourists there is now such a thing as “tours without Russians” being promoted.

The mixing of cultures in Mallorca’s resorts has not always gone smoothly, but for the most part there has been a tolerance bred from familiarity. Brits and Germans may have their differences but they have reached an accommodation over the years. They might even actually like each other now, and one would hope so. On the principle that travel broadens the mind, then going on holiday should break down the stereoptyping and the antagonisms. Which ultimately will be the case with the Russians, but for now, in addition to accusations of rudeness and ignorance, there is more than a suggestion that much of the negativity towards the Russians comes from resentment; that they have acquired wealth where they previously didn’t have it and are not shy in flaunting it, especially the women.

The generalisation as to how this wealth has come about gives rise to the type of comment quoted above and to jibes of mafia and oligarchs. Put Russians together with Germans in Arenal, and the Germans will not like it not just because they simply can’t stand the Russians but also because they know that an Abramovich could, were he minded to, come along and buy Arenal. It is the shifting of Europe’s economic tectonic plates, however the money has been acquired, that lies behind the resentment.

The widening of Mallorca’s tourism base should be welcomed by everyone, but such a development adds to the peculiar social phenomenon associated with holidays, that of nationalism and territorialism. The “old world” of western Europe’s tourism – the Brits, the Dutch, the Germans and so on – have, grudgingly in many instances, come to accept each other, but acceptance of the “new world” of eastern Europe and of Russia in particular is going to take some doing. Mallorca’s tourism industry should understand what it’s letting itself in for.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Gas Man Shouldn’t Cometh

Insult to injury. The injury has been the inexorable rise in price of energy, both gas and electricity. At least with electricity you don’t have to do anything, other than inspect your bills for the latest little stunt that Endesa is trying to pull. Gas, on the other hand, and by which in a Mallorcan context mainly means butane, is a different matter.

The insult to the injury of a bottle of butane now setting you back just shy of 15 euros is the antediluvian nature of the service. It is one which places the onus largely on the consumer. There are doubtless those who consider the fact that you, as a consumer, have to do the fetching and carrying as quaintly reassuring of a Mallorcan bygone era that is otherwise being lost amidst the other inexorable rise – that of development – but I am not one of them. You have to go and get the damn gas.

The further insult is the organisation, or lack of it, that currently obtains at the gas-collection “station” in Puerto Alcúdia.

The gas truck is located in a residential street near to the commercial port. It always has been located there. The organisation has tended to work reasonably enough, insofar as one accepts that one should have to even bend to the demand of this organisation of supply. But not since vehicles came to be parked all along what is a fairly narrow street.

For those unfamiliar with the routine, let me explain. You drive into the road, go past the gas truck, turn round and then come back and queue behind other cars. This is how it normally works. But the parking which has suddenly occurred makes the turning around a virtual impossibility. It can be done, but it ain’t easy, and is made less easy by the fact that one pavement is raised that high that you risk smashing your car front or back as you perform a twenty-three point turn.

But because of the cars that are parked, there is barely enough room to get past firstly the gas truck and secondly the line of cars that has managed to turn round. The result of all this, as I discovered yesterday, is chaos. It needs a copper, or some Repsol official, to be on traffic duty.

This gas “station” serves a pretty wide area. Years ago I made a foolish assumption that every town would have one, but this isn’t so. The demand on the Alcúdia station, and the truck has been known to run out, merely adds to what chaos can ensue.

There are of course other ways of getting the butane. Some petrol stations sell it, and then there is the home delivery. But this is also adding insult. You can no longer be sure when the truck’s going to turn up. You know the day, but as to the time?

In that quaint bygone era, you could leave your empty bottle out, put the money with it and the chap would perform the swap without your having to be there. Not now. You can try it, but chances are that while the money might have been accepted by the “butanero” and the bottle indeed swapped, someone will have come along and nicked the new, full bottle. So, to avoid the risk you have to make sure you’re in. And therefore wait until whatever time the chap appears. And it has also not been unknown for him to run out.

The point about all this is that the increases in price of butane take no account of the inconvenience to the consumer who also, never let it be forgotten, risks hernia or back injury when lifting the damn bottles. The service, such as it is, is a two-fingers-up, take-it-or-leave-it throwback to an era when you didn’t complain, when the consumer was expected to be meekly compliant.

The diffusion of natural gas cannot come quickly enough. The butane system is archaic and anachronistic. It is not a service for a modern economy and a modern society. Yes, there will be parts of Mallorca which will retain a reliance on butane, just as there are parts of the UK which demand butane or propane supply, but the persistence of the current system reinforces the fact that Mallorca’s infrastructure, woefully inadequate for years, has improved in leaps and bounds to the extent that modern systems of supply are now expected and should no longer be tolerated.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

De Do Do Doggy Doo Doos

It’s one of those nice dogs. On the small side, distinctly scatty and mongrelish, with blond woolly hair that hints vaguely of poodle, it isn’t in the least bit precious or snooty as poodles can be. It has a jolly old time this dog. It does a fair bit of spontaneous barking for no obvious reason, indulges in some car worrying, takes itself off for merry little trots around the neighbourhood.

Yes, merry little trots around the neighbourhood. Minus a chaperone. The neighbourhood is by the beach. The dog came romping across the sand, wearing one of those looks that dogs have which suggest they’ve been up to no good. It stopped, had a gander, woofed at a lilo and then promptly urinated by the beach fence, a fence used as a touchline for kids’ beach football games.

Beaches are meant to be no-go areas for dogs. They are go areas in winter when no one much takes any notice and when no one much is rolling around in or lying on the sand. In summer, however, whether with a chaperone or not, dogs should give a beach a wide berth. The trouble is that when a dog is flying solo, it has a habit of going where the hell it likes.

Dogs are incredibly stupid animals. They can of course be trained and conditioned. They can demonstrate some “intelligence”, but their innate stupidity governs their inability to appreciate the fact that they are perambulating and indiscriminating toilets. The dog exists, as with other animals, for one purpose. Sorry, two purposes. One is to micturate, the other is to defecate. Were a dog capable of a Descartian “cogito ergo sum”, it would be expressed as “I crap, therefore I am (a dog)”. And more to the point, I crap wherever takes my fancy. Such as the beach.

The dog question is one that seems always to be with us. Along with inflated prices, it is a sine qua non on the list of tourist complaints (and not just tourists, it must be said). I myself have developed over the years a demeanour akin to David Carradine in “Kung Fu”. Head permanently bowed, not in humility but in the constant look-out for Rover’s message from a bottom.

I don’t normally do requests, but recently someone said to me that I should do something about the dog question. So, here it is. But of course, I fall into the trap myself. This piece has started with the abysmally meaningless word “nice”. There again, dogs are often nice. They look nice. They act in a nicely ridiculous fashion, and so we all love man’s best friend.

Man’s best friend. It’s a tag that does disguise the true nature of the man-dog symbiosis. The dog looks upon man not as his mate but as his meal ticket; it has at least had the nous to work this out. And man isn’t and wasn’t daft. Had he not started to feed the dog, he wouldn’t have been the meal ticket, he would have been the meal. Thus began the relationship, one in which, because of the provision of the meal, has simply added to the dog question. It eats, therefore it must defecate.

The British have long been guilty of sentimental anthropomorphism where it comes to dogs. The Spanish, on the other hand, have a hard-earned reputation as dog and animal abusers, one they haven’t completely shaken off. They are, though, becoming as guilty as the Brits in assigning human values to the dog.

At Alcúdia’s Sant Jaume fiesta, there is something called the “Puppy Party”. Such cutesiness has echoes of the way in which the British managed to make nice (that word again) what dogs do, when the Poop Scoop was introduced. Make it all sound like the kindergarten and we can gloss over what is really going on, except when the kindergarten is struck down with toxicariasis, having had a day out on the beach.

This puppy party is in fact some sort of dog training event. It is organised by the Balearics centre for dog psychology.

A scientific starting-point for human psychology is a study of the brain. Perception, the link between the eye and brain, is crucial. Consequently, dog or any other animal psychology is a form of anthropomorphism, as we express how dogs perceive something in human terms. It isn’t a pointless exercise, despite dogs’ stupidly small brains, but more meaningful would be a puppy party for dog owners. For those who let their dogs go for merry little trots around the neighbourhood and to go onto beaches full of tourists and do what all dogs do. Doggy doo doos.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Sick Man Of Mallorca: Chemists

The chap who runs my local pharmacy, who I suppose I should therefore refer to as the pharmacist, habitually wears a resigned expression. It is one that has been forlornly chiselled from years of what happens over the counter.

This sufferance is at its most patient when he has been on the receiving end of a German interrogation. “They ask so many questions,” he once sighed. Observing a German tourist in full chemist-shop inquisition mode confirms what he says. The boxes of creams, pills, sprays are first examined and the leaflet then removed and gone through item by item, a difficult enough process if you can read and speak Spanish but considerably more so if you can’t.

Get in a chemist shop queue behind a bunch of Germans and you are most likely to die before it comes to your turn. However, as I pointed out to the pharmacist, his fellow island men and women could test the patience of any saintly Joan, Jaume or Cati the chemist. His resigned expression can swiftly turn to a laugh.

Mallorcans have an unnerving habit of repeating everything you say to them. In the pharmacy, such parrotting results in delays that not even German hypochondriacs could cause (and trust me when I say that Germans are hypochondriacs; it’s a consequence of their health system).

Another unnerving Mallorcan habit, one especially among older Mallorcan stock, is to stare blankly at an interlocutor once the exchange has supposedly ended. The blankness demands that the whole exchange is then repeated. Not once more but at least twice more. An ingrained and conditioned compliance with Spanish bureaucracy demands that any encounter is done in triplicate, and the chemist shop encounter is no different.

The British tourist, on the other hand, is unlikely to delay the pharmacist for too long. Indeed, the encounter can be over very swiftly if the Brit tourist senses he or she might not be being understood and so leaves in embarrassment. But actually verbalising symptoms is rarely necessary. Pointing is a universal language, as in pointing at a violent sunburn, at a throbbing head and a green tinge to the gills, at a Vesuvian mosquito eruption.

Ask yourselves this. What is the most important service required by a tourist? A bar, a supermarket, a taxi? No, none of these. It’s the chemists. It’s why I am full of admiration of my pharmacist, his fellow pharmassistants, and indeed all other pharmacy personnel in Mallorca’s tourist areas. Just think what they have to put up with. Next time you see Helga from Hamburg dissecting the meaning of all the “uso de otros medicamentos” etc., then you’ll begin to understand why I am sympathetic to their cause.

And this cause is all the greater because they don’t get paid what they should get paid.

Publicity that has been given to the rotten state of finances at the tourism ministry has tended to overshadow the fact that IB-Salut, the regional health authority, is also on the critical list. It is IB-Salut that is meant to divvy up to the pharmacies, and it hasn’t. For May and June, some 36 million euros remain unpaid. The chemists are threatening to pull down the shutters on 29 July and it is uncertain how long they might keep them down.

There would still be a chemist in a local area that stays open, but the convenience of having five chemists, which, as an example, is the case in Puerto Alcúdia, would go.

Shutting the shop might seem like cutting off the chemist’s nose to spite his face, but unlike the pathetic attempt by bars to protest against the effects of the smoking ban by closing for a few hours (a protest only undertaken by a collection of bars in Palma and one that had absolutely no impact), this lockout is potentially far more serious and far more meaningful.

Everything in Mallorca pretty much links in with tourism, and the chemists are no exception. They are, as I suggest, one of the most important tourism services. There is going to be some major inconvenience if the chemists go ahead with their threat and if it is observed with anything like solidarity. Idiot barowners closing for a couple of hours is irrelevant, airport workers striking can be put down to bolshy unions, but chemists effectively going on strike is a very different matter. When people’s health comes into the equation, the potential harm to reputation and image is way greater than anything that baggage handlers or air-traffic control can conjure up.

It needs sorting out, and it needs sorting out pretty damn quick.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.