Demolition Man

Following on from yesterday and the chiringuito demolition story …

I went to the Alcúdia chiringuito concerned. It is the Café Playero Club, aka the Boccaccio Snack Bar, and is next to where the canal comes out into the sea in Puerto Alcúdia. It is, essentially, the terrace of the Boccaccio apartments that are located just by the beach. Staff who I spoke to were fairly blunt in their appraisal of the situation. Why is to be demolished (and it will be at the end of October)? “Costas”, came the retort. The Costas and the town hall can’t agree, was another view. It’s all politics, said another. The town hall’s chiringuitos are actually on the beach; this one isn’t.

This latter view is indeed true, though the Playero may well be sitting on what was once beach. Whatever the in’s and out’s, the chiringuito (and we are talking quite a substantial area here) is deemed to be illegal, and so it will have to go. It’s a shame, and quite what good its demolition will do is open to serious question. There is another chiringuito some 200 metres along the beach, but the regularity of beach bars is what beach users want, not a walk in the heat. They want something convenient, close to where they might be able to keep an eye on their stuff, that is just a short way away for a refreshing beer or a snack lunch. Moreover, the Playero has made itself into something of a chill-out place. When I once enquired at the tourist office as to the chill-out zone on the beach, I was shown the publicity for the Playero. It was not what I was looking for, but it does seem slightly ironic that the café’s business cards were piled up in the town hall-run tourist office.

And talking of that chill-out zone on the beach, unless it’s been relocated, it is no longer. It certainly isn’t where it was, which was just along from the Playero. Frankly, it was faintly ludicrous, and maybe someone at the town hall came to the same conclusion.

Bar noises
There are rumblings from Alcúdia’s bars. To add to the “famous-five” fandango, I had yesterday. There is to be a meeting today, the aim of which is to get something into “The Bulletin” (and maybe elsewhere). The thrust of this seems to be our old friend the all-inclusive and the impact on bar trade, but there is almost certainly more to it, and some of that “more” may well include this new definition of what constitutes the “night”. As mentioned previously, this has affected bars in Magaluf, which now have to stop music on their terraces at eleven and not midnight.

As so often with local laws, no-one really knows what’s going on. Let me try and help. On 30 May, there was a modification to a law of 2007 in respect of “noise contamination”, one emanating from the Balearic Government’s environment ministry. What this has done is to re-define what is meant by daytime, evening and night. The important one is “evening”, as it states – quite clearly – that this is now between “las veinte y las veintitrés horas”. God knows why you need to state in law what this means, but the practical aspect is that, in the context of noise contamination, noise has to cease at 11 in the evening. It is this that has led to the problems in Magaluf, and it is this that could cause problems elsewhere. Questions: does this also apply to hotels, where is it going to be applied, are they going to shut Bellevue’s Show Garden down at 11, does it apply to your own private party at home on the terrace? The answers are probably yes, everywhere, yes and yes. Whatever they are, the law is an ass. The wider motivation behind the new laws was to add dynamism to the economy. How on earth does this do that?

And The Nominations Are …

Oh dear, oh dear. One does have to be so careful.

The bar owners and bar staff of Alcúdia form a close community; they are a community within a community. Competition there may be, but mostly everyone knows each other, and many are good friends. This sub-community is alive with what has reached, absurdly you might think, the status of a cause célèbre (actually it hasn’t, but do excuse a touch of hyperbole). It all stems from what, at first reading, seemed a pretty innocent piece in “Talk Of The North”. If you’re not up to speed with this, and many of you will be of course, the piece was in response to a question as to whether there were any good bar staff and waiters in the British bars and restaurants of Alcúdia. Yes, came the answer, and five bars and five bar owners/staff were named. It was at this point that levels of umbrage began to be taken.

There has been, in my opinion, some selective reading of this piece. What it actually says is “here’s 5 of the best” (and then names them). What it does not say is “here are the five best”. The implication is that the best amount to more than five. Six, seven, twenty, fifty, however many. The piece concluded by asking “who would you nominate?”. On the face of it, therefore, here was a positive expression of examples of good service (but not exclusively these five) together with a request for the readership to name their own good servants. All good participative stuff, you might think.

However, selective reading notwithstanding, the interpretation placed on this by some is that other bar staff/owners/whoever are not good, or as good. To compound this apparent affront, the piece is headlined and footed with the words “watch and learn”, which mean, one supposes, that the others should draw lessons from the (by-now) famous five. That is certainly an interpretation doing the rounds, one made, for example, and in a measured and perfectly reasonable way, by John Santana on the Barfly blog (and John, as many will attest, has a deservedly good reputation).

This may not have reached the levels it has were it not for another factor, and that is that the author of this piece is “John Nelson”. I put the name in inverted commas, unsure as I am if this is actually a nom de plume. Whatever the case, herein lies perhaps the greatest problem. People do not know who John Nelson is. I am told that only a handful of people do. This anonymity has led to the creation of a Facebook entry asking “who the hell is John Nelson?”.

“Talk Of The North” acts as a sort-of community newsletter. The word “community” is important, and the community is not that big. Its very smallness and tight-knit nature give rise to the rapid dissemination of rumour, of information (both correct and incorrect), and of pleasure or annoyance. And the internet has made this dissemination that much more rapid and the information more available; indeed without it, one could argue that the “famous five” case would not have developed a certain momentum.

A counter view, and one expressed to me, is that perhaps there are not that many who have taken umbrage at the piece; it is recourse to the internet that generates more heat than might have been the case and conveys the impression of something more important than it actually is.

Whatever the real situation, and setting aside what may be construed as some good publicity for certain bars over others – especially in the current climate – the crux of all this does perhaps boil down to two things. One. As nature abhors a vacuum, so communities abhor not knowing – in this case, the vacuum of anonymity, i.e. who the author is. The author may be of the wider community, but he appears to be apart from it as well. Two. The mere fact of naming people and bars makes the whole thing personal. Though it was not intended to be personal in a different sense, that of implying criticism of others, this is how it has been perceived. And within the small community of Alcúdia’s British bars and bar staff, to be seen to be taking sides with certain bars and staff, even if this was not intended, is almost bound to have repercussions. One should not lose sight of the fact, however, that this was one person’s opinion, and it is an opinion he is entitled to offer. Perhaps it could have been couched differently and, if so, therein lies the fault of the piece, nothing more. Let it not be denied, furthermore, that reaction has been provoked. Negative some of it, but not necessarily a totally bad thing.

One does have to be careful. Praise for some is criticism for others. There again, let’s not get carried away. Had this been about the five worst, then there really would have been grounds for a stink. Who would you nominate?

Money For Nothing?

Anyone going to the old town of Muro these past few months will have been aware that they have been busy digging the centre up and re-doing it. Finally, it has all come to an end. And the result is a general beautification of this ancient pueblo. Not that they did all they had intended, which may come as a relief to all those who had to contend with the inconvenience of the work that they did do. Money. Ran out, basically. Nevertheless, the improvements have cost close on 2 million euros, the town hall coughing up a third and the government (the tourism ministry to be specific) the rest. So it was, therefore, that the government, in the form of tourism minister Nadal, pitched up to celebrate the conclusion of the project.

Muro. Now here is a town that lies some ten kilometres from its playa, as in Playa de Muro. It is to the latter that tourists flock in summer; it is to the latter that elements in the town hall would rather they also flocked at all times of the year in order to play golf on the as-yet undeveloped course; it is the former – the town of Muro – that, were you a tourist minded to go and visit the old town that gives the playa its name, does not have a direct bus service from this same playa; it is the former that the tourism bods singularly fail to make any great play of, save some brochures at the Playa de Muro tourism office; it is to the former that no-one probably would be inclined to go, save to admire its vast church or to trek around a museum.

When, therefore, Sr. Nadal says that this upgrading of the old town centre is all a facet of the de-seasonalisation of tourism and of the tourism offer by the interior towns (in this case Muro), what tourism is he actually referring to? Are there great hordes of tourists flooding into the town? No, I don’t think so either. Even when there is something going on in Muro, as there will be with the fiesta later this month, will there be a big tourism promotion? I somewhat doubt it.

The point is that it is the playa of Muro that generates the town’s tourism, not the town. There is absolutely nothing wrong of course in upgrading the centre, but what about upgrading the playa? Those awful eyesores that are the empty units along the main road could, should, be given some serious attention. Some money might well have been diverted towards creating something that Playa de Muro badly lacks – a focal point. But no, the old town has got nigh on two millions worth of folding notes, and for what?

Turn the music off
There has been a bit of an old rumpus cracking off in Magaluf. This relates to the application of a new law emanating from the environment ministry which states that nights start not at 24:00 but at 23:00. What this means is that bars have to stop music on their terraces at 11 o’clock at night. Moreover, the bars have had to reduce the decibel levels by a further ten points. Bar owners have protested. And how? By closing, which does seem a bit like cutting your nose off to spite your face, but they have a legitimate gripe. Bear in mind, this is a law from the government, it isn’t just a local thing, though the decibel levels have been cut following a “denuncia”. Magaluf is not the only place affected.

The bar owners, and this means bar owners everywhere, have been getting it in the neck for years. Twelve o’clock curfew, now an hour earlier; sound limiters and now lower decibel levels. You can add in the colossally petty way in which the size of terraces are policed and numerous other things. And now of course there is the sheer difficulty caused by recession. Yes, noise is an issue. But these are holiday resorts. This latest attack on bar owners is ridiculous.