Quackers In Can Picafort

It is the fate of certain places that they get lumped in with larger ones nearby or are thought to be a part of these neighbours. So it is with Can Picafort. It’s part of Alcúdia, isn’t it? No, it isn’t. It isn’t even a direct neighbour. Playa de Muro intervenes. But that’s part of Alcúdia, isn’t it? Wrong again.

Can Picafort suffers a fate twice over when it comes to what it is a part of. “It’s part of Santa Margalida!?” ask some, incredulously, who do nonetheless know that it isn’t part of Alcúdia. “Well, I never knew that. I always thought it was its own place.”

It’s a simple mistake to make, though. Can Picafort. Santa Margalida. Where’s the name link? There isn’t one. The resort is several kilometres away from the town that owns it: a once wealthy town, birthplace of Franco’s banker, Joan March, he of the Banca March. Its one-time affluence was what led a poor boy of the town to up sticks and find some then more or less worthless coastal land on which to build a home. Mr. Picafort. How he would be laughing nowadays.

The reversal in fortunes of town and resort is not dramatic, however. Can Picafort is, with the greatest respect, the poor man of the tourism-centre trinity of the bay of Alcúdia (you can pretty much discard Artà as a fourth member). Santa Margalida, if not a poor man’s town by any means, is not wealthy in the way that Alcúdia is.

Arguably, Santa Margalida should be better off than it is, if only because of the sheer volume of hotels in Can Picafort. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the benefits of the resort’s tourism have never quite rubbed off on the municipality. It could all simply be down to two quite different cultures that have never found a way to work with each other.

The meeting of these cultures was a feature of the town’s mayoral candidate debate. At present, the Partido Popular (PP) holds the whip-hand in the town. It governs in alliance with something called the CPU. Not a computer’s central processing unit, but the Can Picafort Unit.

One of the candidates, representing an amalgamation of the PSOE socialists and independents under an umbrella party called Suma pel Canvi, lambasted the CPU. It was responsible for “nonsenses” and “sins of management”, said Miguel Cifre. (How many Miguel Cifres are there, do you suppose, in Mallorca? But that’s a side issue.)

The PP and CPU are not responsible for all the sins of Can Picafort. One, the quite appalling state of the marina, has required a judge to arbitrate, giving the company which is meant to look after and develop the marina its marching orders. But the marina is symptomatic, despite an upgrading of the resort’s promenade, of what is widely felt to be neglect.

The bad blood between opposition and town hall government has never been far from the surface over the past four years. At times, it has come pouring out of the wounds inflicted on the PP, such as when the what is now the Convergència published a news-sheet with a front cover showing mocked-up 500 euro notes with an image of mayor Martí Torres. The squandering of public money was the accusation, which you might think was a bit rich coming from what was then the pre-corruption-charges Unió Mallorquina (UM).

The sheer pettiness of Santa Margalida’s politics was no better summed up than by what appeared to be a retaliatory gesture. The CPU’s Can Picafort delegate vetoed the handing out of trophies donated by the UM for a football tournament a day after the news-sheet appeared.

Back at the election debate, though, there was one issue which didn’t get a proper airing. It should have, because in the bizarre world of local politics, there is little more bizarre than the row that has been going on over Can Picafort and its August duck-throwing fiesta.

Can Picafort may be mistaken for being a part of somewhere else or for being a town in its own right, but its greatest claim to fame is that it’s the place where the burning issue is whether live or rubber ducks should be lobbed into the sea. If you think local politics and issues are mad elsewhere, they are positively sensible compared with those of Can Picafort. Absolutely quackers.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Damned If You Do … : Road works

“Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” An expression widely attributed to Bart Simpson, whose familial association seems apt if you side with the critics of the Homer Simpson approach to road works and traffic systems in Mallorca. As Homer once said: “If they think I’m going to stop at that stop sign, they’re sadly mistaken”.

Homer, some might suggest, appears to be in control of re-modelling the main road through Can Picafort. How to build a road with no actual road. But he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. It wasn’t in fact Bart who first coined the expression. It was apparently an American preacher by the name of Lorenzo Dow. There are a fair number of Lorenzos knocking around in Can Pic, damning this and damning that, the main road in particular. “Dow!”, or is it “Doh!”? exclaim the Lorenzos in exasperation.

This main road, the Carretera Artà, has long been a joy of an unstable surface, crossings designed to have in mind the propelling of inattentive tourist pedestrians into orbit, and insane side roads some of which you can enter or exit, some of which you can’t. Much like other main roads on the island therefore. Far from unreasonably, the highways department wants to improve it. Something not meeting with everyone’s approval.

The road works are having a negative impact on bars and other businesses. They are making difficult the movement of residents. Thus go the criticisms. They do rather neglect the fact that building what in effect is a whole new road system, and one that is necessary, does require a bit of disruption, even if it does also mean that you can’t quite figure out how you are meant to navigate what is currently the non-road.

Why the fuss? It’s not as though as any drivers used to travelling along the whole stretch of road between Puerto Alcúdia and Can Pic these past few years won’t have already experienced exactly the same issues since the plan to re-model the whole stretch was started back in 2006. The fuss smacks of criticising anything that can be criticised. The fussers are probably the same ones who have been demanding improvements. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Part of the reason for the fuss is the timing. Just as there is a start to the official tourism season (1 May), so also there is a start to the let’s-snarl-everything-up-by-doing-some-building-work season. Usually the first of February. Why so late, enquire the fussers. Budgets normally. Or maybe the chaps just prefer to hang around drinking beers, in a Homer style, until the Mr. Burns’s from highways appear.

What Can Pic will end up with is a system like that which has come into being in Alcúdia and Playa de Muro. Apart from a better road surface, this will mean more roundabouts. Part of the justification for the re-modelling of the main road has been improved traffic circulation. It’s spin of course, because circulation in summer is as bad as it ever was, but at least pedestrians run less risk of being mown down than previously. Well, this is the theory behind all the crossing-points. The practice is rather different, tourists traversing the road wherever is convenient, lightly-held lilos in hand which are caught on sudden gusts and plant themselves across windscreens. But at least you can’t blame the highways people for trying. Except if you’re in Can Picafort and you’re a Lorenzo.

The new roundabouts will have the added advantage of giving Trafico greater work opportunities. Currently, they have limited numbers of roundabouts in Can Pic at which to stand about looking ominous or sheltering under trees when it gets too hot. Once the new road is finished, they’ll be spoilt for choice.

And the finished road will add to the general appearance of Can Pic, just as the re-developed carretera did to Playa de Muro. When its stretch was completed in May 2009, various dignitaries turned up and one, Francina Armengol, the president of the Council of Mallorca, announced that it (the road) was “magnificent and emblematic”. Emblematic of what exactly? Tarmac?

Ah, but what we all failed to appreciate was that this was part of a different strand of tourism. Road tourism. Come to Mallorca and admire our roads. Marvel at how level they are (until a good deluge of rain or two breaks them up again). See how many crossing-points you can ignore. Be inspired by the white lines and markings that fade rapidly and have to be repainted each year (normally in June just to aid more the traffic circulation). Yes, this is it. Road tourism, a whole new type of tourism promotion. Brought to you by Homer Simpson.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

On The Dunes: Can Picafort and Playa de Muro

I am looking at some old photos of Can Picafort. Circa 1960. Two people are walking along what is recognisable as a road but which has no tarmac. It is made of sand. It became the Via Suiza. In the distance you can’t make out the sea. Not because of buildings, because there aren’t any, but because of something else that is obscuring the view. In another photo there is a boy sitting on a deckchair on the beach. You might expect to be able to see, in the background, the Via Suiza from a different angle. But you can’t. Because there is something in the way. Dunes.

Can Picafort, in keeping with much of the bay of Alcúdia and with other stretches of Mallorcan coastline, is made up of dunes. Or rather, it used to be. The only dunes now are at the resort’s eastern Son Bauló end, extending into what is the “rustic” coast past the Son Real finca. The dunes in Can Picafort can no longer be seen. Because they are no longer there.

The loss of the dunes along the bay is evident in Alcúdia. But here the beach is wide. Nothing sits on top of the sea. Nor does it in much of adjoining Playa de Muro. Only once past the canal that connects Albufera with the sea does the beach start to become appreciably narrower. This is what has now been lovingly signposted as “Sector 2”. The resort as military installation.

Where the hotels in Playa de Muro finish there is a stretch of some two kilometres of rustic beach, backed by dunes and forest. There are no buildings. They only re-emerge as you come into Can Picafort. The dunes end abruptly. Can Picafort is built on dunes.

The creation of the resort was not so much environmental vandalism as environmental rape and pillage. The dunes were levelled and what was formed was a generally charmless front line of barn-style restaurants only a short distance from the shoreline. The restaurants, for the most part, are unremarkable. And there is probably a good reason. Being so close to the sea and being so undefended, in winter sand and water encroach. Until recently, before some new drainage, there used to be regular and damaging floods. Why create something of beauty if it’s going to be ravaged by nature.

Behind the front line is a town. Shops and hotel after hotel. The dunes and what lay behind them were destroyed in constructing an urban development.

One of the points of contention surrounding the Costas demarcation plan for Playa de Muro is Can Picafort. With no small amount of justification, the murers point to what happened to what was once hardly even a village, just a bit of a fishing harbour and the old fincas of Sr. Picafort. In Playa de Muro, where the environmental destruction has been less extreme, it might just be that the destruction is reversible. In Can Picafort, it can’t be reversed. But the targeting of Playa de Muro by the Costas strikes many as supremely unfair when compared with the wholesale degradation of the natural environment just a few kilometres away.

The language and the actions of the Costas in Playa de Muro have been ratcheted up since the demonstration against the demarcation took place. Celestí Alomar, the boss of the Costas in the Balearics, talks of there being “many people and organisations without any sort of consideration”. He has taken particular exception to the fact that gardens have been created and that volleyball is played on the dunes. But note the words. On the dunes. They are still there. They may be subject to what Alomar calls “degradation”, but they haven’t all been taken away. Unlike in Can Picafort.

Meanwhile, Alomar has been suggesting that the holiday homes of Ses Casetes des Capellans could have a reprieve by their being ceded to Muro town hall and escaping any threat of demolition. Good news perhaps, and aimed at the ordinary people of Muro who own the bungalows. But it smacks of politicking, driving a wedge between the holiday-home owners and the businesses and residents of the resort.

Alomar wants an improvement to the beach in Playa de Muro, one that will create “tourism of more quality” and one that, with greater respect for nature, will offset the seasonality that local hoteliers bemoan. Who is he trying to kid? The nature is now just something to admire from a distance. The Costas has made and is making the dunes no-go areas in Playa de Muro. There may be sound environmental reasons for doing so, but what they are becoming are things to just look at. You can no longer wander in the forest and dunes areas in the way you used to be able to. Yet isn’t this public land? Isn’t there meant to be public access? It’s contradictory, just as much as a short walk along the beach from where dunes do still exist confirms that there is a place where they no longer do.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Número Uno: Can Picafort and occupancy stats

“And at number one in August, it’s Can Picafort!”

The charts for August hotel occupancy in Spain have been topped by Santa Margalida. Can Picafort, in other words. How on earth has this happened?

Back in the middle of August, the Mallorcan hotel federation was indicating that, unlike some resorts which had enjoyed decent Julys, Can Picafort had been on the opposite scale. Rather than number one, it had bombed. What a difference a month makes, especially to a resort often seen as the poor relation within the trinity of conurbation it forms together with Puerto Alcúdia and Playa de Muro.

The Spanish national statistics office is the one that has elevated Can Pic to the lofty heights of suddenly being the country’s most successful resort. Does the town get a plaque or something? The town hall should put up a new sign. “Welcome to Can Picafort, number one in Spain”, with August 2010 in small type. 50,630 foreigners and 3,981 Spaniards can’t be wrong. 97.67% occupancy. God, how they love all this junk. And for many it is junk because they don’t believe it. Maybe the chaps at the stats office just stick a pin in a map and then roll some dice to see what numbers they can come up with.

To explain Can Picafort’s ascendancy may have to do with factors like discounts, Germans and the position of the planets. I had wondered if having a fiesta during August, and one with some hugely entertaining duck tossing, might have been a further factor, but under four thousand Spaniards suggests otherwise; foreign tourists are not normally attracted by fiestas per se. Nope, quite why it’s number one is a mystery to me, and will also be to many in a resort who are prone to wearing the long face of “cree-sis” and to letting anyone unfortunate enough to be in earshot to know about it. They will also let you know about the devil’s work of the all-inclusive.

Getting to grips with quite how prevalent all-inclusive is in Can Picafort is difficult. Look at certain hotels’ websites and you will find no mention of it, but go off to an agency’s site and you will. There are hotels in the resort which everyone knows to be all-inclusive and which don’t mind telling the world that they are, but there are others which are a bit coy. Of the approximately 50 hotels (depending on your definition) in the resort, it’s not unreasonable to assume that at least a third of them offer AI; the number is probably higher.

August’s celebratory occupancy figures for Mallorca as a whole, partly attributed to the rain-soaked British who fortuitously found an under-used credit card stashed in the pocket of a hastily retrieved winter overcoat, disguise the real truth – what’s being spent. Despite the positive figures on spend, issued generally rather than per resort, the all-inclusive/spend relationship has been proven. The research at Palma university says it all: an average daily spend by an AI guest that is under half of that of a guest staying B&B. There are plenty who would probably disagree with this, putting it at more like a quarter, if that.

To compensate for this 50% lower spend, you need an awful lot higher than average spend by all the other tourists. With the greatest respect to Can Picafort, it has a reputation for tourism which, how can one put it, is not at the wallet-bulging end of the market. And this is not me saying this; it’s a view often expressed by business owners. Nigh on full occupancy for the peak month of August doesn’t mean a great deal when you place it in the context of the nature of the market.

The statistics which get pumped out may be questioned by many. I’m less inclined to; they aren’t always positive. But more fundamentally, the regularity of their production and the prominence granted to them can create an illusion, or indeed a delusion. They may be correct, but they enable politicians and others to boast of “records” and of tourist seasons being “good” ones (and this one has been, according to Spain’s minister for tourism) and thus fail to appreciate how tourism is working – less at the macro level but more at the micro levels of the individual resorts.

Well done though, Can Picafort, you could do with a break, but you will also know that having a number one can be deceiving. Milli Vanilli, anyone?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Old King Coal: Alcúdia’s power station

In passing yesterday I mentioned that GOB is wishing to have the power station (Es Murterar) in Alcúdia closed. It isn’t so much the closure of the station as putting an end to carbon emissions. The power station runs on a mixture of coal and oil.

GOB has a strong case. By any environmental standards, including those of plain, layman common sense, the power station is something of a nonsense. While the environmental arguments have raged for ages regarding the building of a golf course on one side of Albufera, they are as nothing compared with what goes on on another side, i.e. at the power station.

If you drive along the road to Sa Pobla, past Murterar, you will see the grass verges stained with coal dust. To the back of the station are whole “fields” of ash which is used, decreasingly, in the making of cement. Lorries that move the ash and the coal from the port are in regular motion. There is something that is particularly absurd in having these filth-generators shuttling along the roads of Alcúdia every three minutes.

GOB is calling for, and is apparently getting some support from industry, the elimination of the coal and oil firing and for its replacement by renewables, wind farms most notably. It is not the only ecological power that has been attacking the power station and the use of coal. Greenpeace have, in the past, tried to disrupt the shipping of coal to the port.

Whether the wind alternative makes economic sense will doubtless be open to scrutiny as will the feasibility of changing the generating source. What it might all cost and who might pay for it are other questions. But, for once, GOB are likely to be able to call on widespread support, politically, from business and from anyone who believes that the emissions can make little sense, especially given the location of Murterar.

More on ducks
Well, pity a poor old duck in Albufera which finds itself covered in coal dust. It needs to go and have a swim in the clean waters of Can Picafort. The fallout from Sunday’s shenanigans continues, “The Bulletin” drawing attention to the fact that Can Picafort council is not taking the actions of the illegal duck tossers lightly. Unfortunately, there is no Can Picafort council. Ho hum. But what of Santa Margalida council?

While it is obliged to set plod off in pursuit of the miscreants, it is open to question quite how determined Santa Margalida town hall is. “The Bulletin” would have it that its actions are “another example of how the local authorities are cracking down on local custom involving animals”. Of course they are. The same actions that inspired the sympathetic Power Rangers poster for the 2008 fiestas, that prompted the head of fiestas to declare, after this year’s tossing, that “there always have been ducks and always will be” (and he wasn’t referring to rubber ducks) and that suggested to the town hall’s delegate in Can Picafort that he should be photographed with duck supporters.

The town hall opted for rubber ducks only reluctantly and only after it had been fined for allowing the live ducks to continue to be used. Its attitude now is equivocal. “The Bulletin” devotes little attention to matters Can Picafort or northern, and it’s a shame that when it does it can manage to get things wrong and to fail to understand what the situation really is. Poor.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Dirty Duckers: Alcúdia corruption and Can Picafort mischief

If you had been inclined to think that all the corruption hoo-ha had gone quiet because of the summer hols, you would have been incorrect. Investigations are ongoing and they have just got very much closer to home. Home, in this instance, being Alcúdia town hall. There was I saying that, Can Ramis apart, Alcúdia was a less turbulent administration than others. I should know better.

As part of the IBATUR (Balearics tourism agency) case, there is a sub-investigation, one that involves a company called Trui. No, not TUI. Trui. You don’t need to know the ins and outs, and you are probably not interested anyway, but there may be some painful truths coming out of the Trui troubles. Painful, that is, for the town hall, the Unió Mallorquina party (yep, them again) and ex-mayor Miguel Ferrer, himself a leading figure in the UM.

To cut to the chase, as reported in “The Diario”, anti-corruption prosecutors suspect that money from the town hall was used to fund the UM’s electoral campaign in 2007. Fingered in all this – potentially – are Ferrer, who was mayor at the time, and his right-hand man, Francesc Cladera, who – it is being alleged – could have arranged for payments, in black, from the town hall’s coffers.

Coming on the back of the opposition Partido Popular’s desire to re-open the case into alleged irregularities in respect of the Can Ramis building, things have suddenly become murky in what had been, so we had thought, the clearer waters of Alcúdia politics.

And while on the subject of water, and moving on from yesterday’s swimming pool fiasco, the annual mischief in Can Picafort duly resulted in a few live ducks going for a dip in the sea during the duck toss on Sunday. Did we ever expect that they wouldn’t?

The local press found both residents and the head of fiestas “surprised” by the level of police vigilance for the event. Not sure they should have been surprised. The naughty boys have been extracting the Miguel for a few years now, and the Guardia seemed determined to prevent any more Carry On Quacking. The police presence was at a level, so it was said, for the royal family putting in an appearance. Helicopters, a sub-aqua team plus the beachside patrols. And still they let some ducks go.

It is all utterly ridiculous. The event has always been ridiculous, but the ban was and is ridiculous, as is what has replaced it, i.e. rubber ducks. The thumbing of noses to authority is ridiculous, but so is the response. What can we expect next year? Submarines rather than a sub-aqua crew? Might be right given that subs used to launch dummy torpedoes at the towers on the beach, such as the one in Can Pic on which the naughties had graffiti-ed a “pope”, announcing their intention to flout the duck law again. Maybe they should just ban the whole thing. Or stage it in a swimming pool instead. Assuming one can be found that’s not been closed.

I asked a born-and-bred Can Picafort resident whether he would be attending the “suelta”. No, he said. He used to, and used to be one of those who swam after the live ducks. But what was the point now? He’s right. There is no point. It’s plain daft, but it always was plain daft, which is why of course it should continue.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Aw Phooey: Duck nonsense in Can Picafort

The decks of Carl Cox quietened, the people of Can Picafort can return to more traditional fiesta matters, namely ducks. A week from today the annual duck liberation will take place. The duck liberation front (DLF) is on the move once more. It wishes to liberate real ducks and not stupid rubber ones, to have swimmers pursue a quacking, flapping Donald and not a mute bath-time bobber.

Although the ban on live ducks is ridiculous, and it is when it is placed in the context of the treatment of other animals, the pro-duck lobby is equally as ridiculous: in its sheer pretentiousness and self-importance. It argues in favour of a tradition, but the tradition itself is pretty stupid: toss some ducks into the water and then see who can be the first to catch them. All a bit of fun but ultimately pointless.

The DLF, and I’ve made this up by the way, has issued a video as part of a warning that live ducks will feature once more this year. For sheer pomposity, it takes some beating.

The duck tossing goes back some 75 years. Quite why it ever came about, who knows. It was officially banned in 1999, but it took fines issued against Santa Margalida town hall for the ban to complied with. These came from the agriculture ministry. One fancies that the town hall has never quite accepted the ban. That it sanctioned the fiesta poster in 2008 which featured children with Power Rangers masks (as worn by the DLF when letting live ducks go the year before) suggested either just a streak of humour or a sympathy with the DLF cause.

What can be sure is that this year there will be more security and more scrutiny of what happens on the sea in front of the hotel Mar y Paz. And what can also be sure is that there will be huge numbers who turn up in the anticipation of the ban being flouted once more. It’s now become a game, a new tradition as much as the one of chucking ducks into the sea.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

A Load Of Cox: Why event tourism marketing is wrong

There will have been some weary souls wending their way from Can Picafort this morning. Dawn will have dawned before the decks were put to sleep. Decks and not ducks, for once during the Can Picafort fiestas.

The Carl Cox extravaganza was far from being the first time the DJ had played Can Pic. But the buzz that it created suggested that it could have been. The buzz was perceptible. Cox got people talking in a way that the fiestas rarely get people talking. Partly this was because of rarity value. A question should be – why is it so rare? So rare for international performers to head north, to the north of Mallorca.

The tourism ministry’s teaming-up with the promoters to push the Elton John-Andrea Bocelli event in Palma spoke volumes. Spoke volumes for Palma and southern-Mallorca-centricity. Spoke volumes for the fact that if the event cannot be sold out, it might indicate that Mallorca cannot stage a big gig. Spoke volumes for something “safe”, something not so much middle-of-the-road but lurching along in the slow lane or coming to a halt on the hard shoulder. And no one has been speaking in loud volume about the event. It has no buzz factor. Carl Cox, on the other hand … .

A justification for the belated promotion of the Elton John show is that apparently tour operators have been calling for events around which they can mould packages. It’s a reasonable enough point, but it ignores the fact that there are “events” which can, or could, form the focus of packages. It also ignores the fact that whatever tourists might be attracted will end up in or around Palma.

What it also ignores is an underlying cynical aspect to such events. Ancient “stars” and the punter will roll up, hopefully coughing up three figures for something that presents Mallorca as a venue for the old hat. The island needs none of this. It needs to project freshness, newness. Tourism and event tourism is going down an antiquated drain inhabited, down, down, deeper and down by other geriatrics – Status Quo, for example.

The tourist market is anything but homogeneous, but this is largely how it is conceived by those who should know better, namely those charged with tourism promotion. It is straight-line thinking. Elton may not conform to all definitions of straight, and a current push for the pink tourist may suggest a broader appreciation of diverse markets, but there remains a lack of innovation and niching when it comes to an appreciation of lifestyle and age-group demographics as well as a lack of “branding ” for individual resorts or areas. Segmentation is performed on national and geographic lines – Brits, Germans etc. – rather than on personal motivation.

Carl Cox is not leading-edge in the dance world, but he’s as close as it comes in Mallorcan terms. He is also a “name”, one that should be shouted very loudly in connection with Can Picafort. There is no reason why a youthful market cannot co-exist alongside the generic family market: witness Magaluf, for example, with which, through BCM, Cox has been closely associated.

All the resorts (and their towns) lend themselves to specific marketing, that which goes beyond the normal and bland. Pollensa and Puerto Pollensa, for example, should be by-words for high sophistication and culture, as evidenced by the Pollensa Music Festival. But it should be a music festival of “real” international importance, as should other events. Can Picafort should be a by-word for dance, for a more youthful market. Don’t stop at one event – Cox at the Auba. Do it through the season.

You’ll say, ah but they can’t afford it. Up to a point, they can’t, but there are cover charges for the likes of the music festival and Carl Cox and, as importantly, there is the colossal squandering of money that goes on. Santa Margalida town hall, as with Pollensa town hall, should not have to underwrite its events. It should be done centrally, and when you have the tourism promotion agency in the Balearics (IBATUR) currently under investigation for – get this – forty million euros of questionable spend, you can understand the amount of money that sloshes around and ends up in the wrong pockets that could be used to create highly dynamic, local events and highly dynamic, local marketing.

But they won’t, because rather than bolstering the resorts, the spend will end up in Palma and on the crocodile rock of Elton. I don’t dislike Elton, I don’t dislike Andrea Bocelli, but I couldn’t care less about either of them appearing in Palma. Carl Cox on the other hand …

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Our House – Someone’s Living In Our House

In Can Picafort there is an old house. It has been there for fifty years. It was one of the first “new ones” to be built, before the hotels came, along with the bars and even roads. It belongs to a family who can’t agree what to do with it. No one has lived there for some twenty years. At least, that’s what was thought.

The house has not been completely abandoned, just that it’s not habitable – or so it was thought. There are no utilities, that’s for certain; no electricity, no water. Someone had been given permission, for some reason, to store certain things in the garden. That was … how long ago? Then someone else said, not so long ago, that there was a person living in the house. This someone is a little crazy, people say. He is, but he doesn’t imagine things. He had spoken to this person, he had been inside the house, this house that belongs to his family, to this family who can’t agree and mainly don’t speak to each other. He, this someone who is a little crazy, had gone with the key, the key to the front door. It didn’t work, he said. That’s impossible, others thought. So these others went themselves, some time later. They had not been to the house for … how long could it have been?

The key didn’t work. He had been right. They looked around, tried to see inside, and then he appeared. Another he, a little crazy maybe. The alcohol on his breath could be smelt. Who are you? They asked of each other. We are the owners, some of them, they said. What are you doing here? I live here, he said. Live here!? That’s not possible. Yes. For how long …? Ah yes, he remembered. Six years it had been. Six years he had been living in this house. But how, they asked. He had been allowed to. By whom? By the man with the key, the one with the stuff in the house. The man with the key? Who is he? A man, the one who puts the stuff in the house.

They went inside. They could only just get in. There was furniture and junk everywhere. Piled as high as the ceiling. He lived upstairs. He didn’t want to show them. They didn’t really want to see. But there is no water, no electricity. It’s ok, he said. I have friends where I can wash. And in the mornings I take a coffee and go to the toilet, and then again in the evenings. Where are you from? Not from here. He wasn’t. He was from another country, from their country. He has been in Mallorca for how long? Fifteen, sixteen years perhaps. But in this house for six. He cannot go, go back, well not unless he gets some sort of papers. No passport, no anything. He is from nowhere now, except this house. He can work, yes, he does work, now and then, but only nearby. No car, no bike. The bike is no good when it rains, he says. Before, years ago. How long ago? Years ago, he worked elsewhere. In Alcúdia. That’s impossible now.

Are you selling the house? No. We can’t. No one can agree, not everyone speaks to each other. What do you want of me? Nothing. Not of you. It’s ok. You can stay here. In this house. Ok. Then he remembered some more. The lady, he said, the lady who is one of the owners. Which lady? He couldn’t really recall her, but she had been there with a man and she had this car, it was distinctive, yes he could remember the car well. But she never said anything to us. She knew you were living here? Yes.

They left, left behind the man in their house, the man who had lived there for six years. Did she ever tell you about the man in the house? Me? No, never. She spoke about the house quite often, but never said anything about someone living there, only that it was in a poor state now, only that none of you could agree as to what to do with it. Does it matter though? He lives there, he stops the house being taken over by kids having a party or something. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing. Maybe. But, even so, how can someone live in that way? And how has our house come to be like this? When we think of how it was, our summer home from those years ago. How long ago?

Say I’m Your Number One

More demolition. What was that bar called? Did it have a name, or was it just British Pub? I know, it was the No. 1 Pub, wasn’t it? You were able to still see remnants of Union Jack signs, but little else. Three workmen, one on a mini-dozer, the other two attacking stubborn fittings and bits of concrete. It is, was, around the corner from Café Paris and the tobacconists in Can Picafort, on the beachside extension of Josep Trias. Workmen, for some reason, always seem to look suspicious when someone stops and takes more than just a passing interest in their destruction. I moved on. To the front itself. On the low wall that forms the barrier between promenade and beach was a man of ideas, dishevelled, lost in thoughts, waiting for a drink. He moved on as well, shambling back up Josep Trias, past the wreckage of the No. 1 Pub. 

The beach has been partially taken over by the seaweed of winter. The promenade itself was empty, empty of people. Is it here that they are meant to be upgrading the front, or is it further down? There was no evidence of any work, except the bashing in the pub and the endless digging up of side roads, adding new cables, taking away old ones, laying new pipes, taking away old ones. 

All the units on the promenade are wide. As wide as they are cavernous inside. All are shuttered down in winter, not with shutters, but with vast glass panels or perhaps they are of perspex, bending against the wind. The prom has a uniformity of reflection when the sun is still to the north and glowing as it continues to do. The buildings behind and above are blocks placed at angles with balconies, antennae and dishes. There is little of any charm, anything vaguely unusual if you study the low sky line from the Can Picafort paseo, save the muddy, purple-blue of what’s it called? Why can one never remember the names of bars and hotels in Can Picafort? No, I know, Blue Bay Hotel, or something like that. Yes, I’m sure it is, but it’s less a hotel, more a hostel with its own cave-like bar leading onto the vacant promenade. 

Can Picafort in winter may be quiet, but it is not without some life, most of it German. Gutteral voices can be heard above the pounding of a Kango drill. There is a billboard advert for a German publication, “available in your book shop” it says in translation. The best restaurants in Mallorca. Nine euros, eighty. Does anyone actually ever buy these things? Presumably they do, if they’re German. 

Along the Paseo Colon that runs parallel to the promenade, shops are open – some of them. A souvenir shop seems forlorn. Who is there to buy souvenirs? Why would they? Four taxis are lined up by, what’s the hotel called. Gran Bahía? In the fourth cab on the rank, the driver is listening to the radio and reading a newspaper. And if one were to return in an hour or so, he would probably still be doing so. In Café Paris, the only bar you can remember the name of, owing to its longevity, there is a German with a half-eaten croissant reading a copy of “Bild”. There is no-one else at one of the few street terrace tables, yet it is a fine day, despite the breeze. 

There is, though, other life, it’s just that much of it is passing through, along the main coast road that they are also meant to be improving – finally. They put up new lights some time back, but the town hall threw a hissy fit because the road itself was not earmarked for improvement, unlike the sections in Playa de Muro and Alcúdia. Now, some time, they will do, so it will be easier on drivers who stop at Mercadona or who are heading either for Artà or Alcúdia, encountering the familiar traffic control at the Capellans-Eroski roundabout. The officers seem disinterested. Nothing much happens in Can Picafort in winter, even the patrol checks.