Mallorca’s Political Formula One (27 November)

While sport for all may be being brought into question because of the lack of financing of Mallorca’s sports facilities, sport for an elite poses its own question: is Mallorca really going to get a Formula One circuit?

Long in the suggestion, the regional government is, as it said it would, giving the proposal a serious once-over. The seriousness of this once-over has to do with the financing of a circuit, the government hoping that, were it a real goer, the money would be mainly or totally private.

When the idea for the circuit was doing the rounds last year, the cost of the project was put at some 90 million euros. A plan has in fact been drawn up, one that would pretty much completely re-develop the Rennarena in Llucmajor, which currently is totally inadequate for F1.

The plan would, for example, require a lengthening of the circuit by almost three kilometres plus creating grandstands capable of holding way more than the existing 1500 spectators. As with any plan for a building project, there are the inevitable procedures. The government says it will look at how this bureaucracy can be tackled, which probably means ignoring any planning issues. Already, one can hear the sound of GOB and other environmental protectors revving up their engines (with bio-fuel) in the protest pit lanes.

But talk of finance and procedures are only partially relevant. The chances of Mallorca’s F1 circuit ever even getting onto the starting-grid of potential grand prix, let alone being shown the green lights, have to be slim.

Bernie Ecclestone has been courted and Bernie has made some encouraging remarks, but then Bernie says all sorts of things. One of them is that he is against there being more than one grand prix per country. This hasn’t stopped Spain from currently having two – the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona and the European Grand Prix around Valencia’s street circuit – but Rome has pretty much given up on staging a street race from 2013 since a letter from Ecclestone in an Italian newspaper said that “no one” wanted two races per country (Italy already has Monza).

It also hasn’t stopped the USA being awarded two grand prix from 2013 – the revived US Grand Prix in Austin, Texas and a so-called Grand Prix of America in New Jersey. However, and despite F1 not being particularly popular in the USA, Ecclestone is largely motivated by commercial opportunities and by a desire to develop F1 geographically.

With these motivations in mind, where does a grand prix in Mallorca fit in? What is being hoped for in Mallorca is that it would replace Valencia as the location for the European Grand Prix. Valencia’s contract lasts until the 2013 race, though it has been rumoured it might be dropped after next year. So there may well be some substance to the Mallorcan hope. But it is one based on an assumption that there will still be a European Grand Prix. Rome probably saw this as its chance, but, and notwithstanding the American contradiction, Ecclestone is opposed to another race in Italy and may well see the end of Valencia as a reason to scrap the European Grand Prix.

There is significant competition from across the globe for circuits to be included in the F1 calendar, some of it from other countries in Europe. Croatia, for example, has its eyes on a grand prix. This competition merely adds to F1’s commercial and global ambitions in raising serious doubts as to whether Mallorca is a realistic option.

Given all this, therefore, should the government really be giving the proposal a serious once-over? The investment, were it to be private, wouldn’t be an issue, although the environmental objections are bound to be. But why would there be investment without any guarantee of success in securing a grand prix? It might be that, were the circuit designed appropriately or flexibly enough, it could also stage MotoGP, which is Spanish-dominated in terms of who runs it and the number of races – four in Spain for next year’s calendar. MotoGP isn’t F1, however; either its cachet or its cash.

The proposal isn’t particularly realistic, and one has the impression that its discussion both before the regional elections and now has been for political consumption. Former president Matas wanted a grand prix as well; one to be held on a Palma street circuit. That was an absurdity. Llucmajor isn’t, but the stewards flags should nevertheless be being waved furiously and warning that all the talk may just be PR and a raising of expectations that cannot be fulfilled.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Sport For All (26 November)

If you are a government minister, let’s say for tourism and sport in the Balearics, you would hope that you would have both some tourism and sport to be in charge of and both some tourism and sport on which you could lavish your ministerial munificence.

Tourism there is, but it has to scrape by on only a few quid for promotion, though when your ministry is in fact 32 million euros in the red, it’s surprising that there is a ministry at all.

Then there’s sport. Or rather, then there isn’t any sport.

Linked to the ministry is one agency from within the Balearic Government’s tourism organisation that has been allowed to escape the axe for being either pointless or up to its neck in misappropriation of funds, or both.

The Fundación Illesport came to public notice recently, as it was invoices to this foundation that first alerted the world to the inconvenience with which the Duke of Palma now has to contend. The foundation was handing over great wads of cash in return for what would appear, allegedly, to have been very little.

But the foundation has long been there, doing something about sport, which mainly seems to have involved spending the tourism ministry’s money, of which there now isn’t any. It’s a reasonable question to ask why a foundation has been needed when presumably they could just as easily have got some secretary in the ministry to prepare cheques, so one has to assume that the foundation has some altogether greater function.

It does, or did. It was still really only a case of doling out ministry money, but the foundation is (was) responsible, among other things, for sorting out financial assistance to town halls for their sports facilities. An agreement of May this year should have realised the release of 24 million euros to different municipalities, only eight million, therefore, short of the ministry’s total debt for this year.

Should have, because now the foundation says that it hasn’t got any money to meet these grants. A town hall that stands to suffer most from the lack of funding for sports facilities’ improvements is Sa Pobla; to the tune of 338 thousand euros. The mayor is threatening legal action.

There had already been an indication that money for sport was not going to be forthcoming, as a couple of weeks ago Santa Margalida had been told that it was not going to get the quarter of a million it had been promised.

As a consequence, sport, in the case of sport to support the health and welfare of the island, is being allowed to trail in well down the list of all the runners and riders that the government has to feed and nurture.

There are, though, two types of sport: that for the people of Mallorca and that for tourists. The tourism and sport minister, Carlos Delgado, took office with a brief that included giving a new impulse to sport in Mallorca and the Balearics. If there is an impulse, it appears to be directed at sport for tourism. When announcing recently that there was going to be only a negligible amount for tourism promotion, he did also refer to initiatives to further develop three “puertos deportivos”, one being that of Alcúdia.

What this would entail wasn’t made clear, and even though only three “sport ports” are being targeted, the priority for sport, where the ministry is concerned, seems clear enough, and it isn’t sport for the locals.

Sport usually finds itself losing out when governments come to having to make tough decisions. Perhaps we should be grateful that there aren’t proposals to sell off the playing fields and sports areas and hand them over to developers. Yet.

But sport plays a central role in the life of the island’s communities. One only has to scan through pages of the Spanish press on a Monday to get an appreciation of the scale of sport and its organisation in Mallorca. Pages of results, reports and photos of teams for football, basketball, athletics, whatever; men and women, boys and girls.

Sports tourism is one of the Big White Hopes of tourism diversification. It deserves to be prioritised. But for every development of a resort’s watersports, for every possible new golf course or – the new vogue – polo field, and for every route set aside for German oldsters to clack along with Nordic walking poles, sport at the local level should not be neglected.

The tourism ministry and its foundation will know that sport will just carry on without the injection of new money. But nothing lasts without investment. As a slogan once had it, “sport for all”. And not just for tourism.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Death Of A Sporting Hero (20 November)

A rare thing for this blog, but for once something that has nothing to do with Spain or Mallorca.

Basil D’Oliveira has died.

Why, among other deaths, should D’Oliveira’s passing demand that I indulge in a spot of obituary writing? He wasn’t, after all, that great a cricketer. He was a good one but no more than that. The reason lies in his story and in the way it affected me.

A South African Cape coloured, D’Oliveira was denied the opportunity under South Africa’s apartheid system to play cricket at the highest levels. He came to England, took British citizenship and qualified for the test team. His inclusion in the England side set off two momentums – one was the later selection of other South Africans but without the same moral justification; the second was the eventual abandonment of apartheid.

As a nine-year-old, I didn’t appreciate what apartheid meant, but it was as a nine-year-old that I first saw D’Oliveira play. It was the Hastings festival match against the touring Australians, and he was in a team – A.E.R. Gilligan’s XI – with another South African (Eddie Barlow, who was to become a fierce critic of apartheid) as well as a Pakistani, Mushtaq Mohammad.

What stood out from this match was the fact that, in the days when six-hitting was a rarity, D’Oliveira hit two, both out of the ground. For a nine-year-old, he was an exciting and unusual player; only Gary Sobers or Colin Milburn hit sixes.

It was my great uncle, who took me to the match, who explained the situation with D’Oliveira. I’m not sure he particularly approved of “Dolly” possibly playing for England, but for me it was hard to get my head around why he couldn’t play for South Africa. But when he first appeared for England, two years later, I was ecstatic. I had, in my own small way, discovered D’Oliveira at the Hastings match; he was “my” player.

It was a further two years on when the full implications of D’Oliveira’s England test place were to surface. He hadn’t had a particularly good season, but he was chosen for the final test of the summer when Roger Prideaux was declared unfit. I was at that Oval match, one famous for its storm and Derek Underwood bowling England to victory against Australia on a badly rain-affected wicket.

D’Oliveira scored a hundred. 158 to be precise. There seemed to me no reason why he wouldn’t now be selected for the winter tour. To South Africa.

I recall my shock when listening eagerly to the radio as the tour squad was announced. D’Oliveira wasn’t in it. Tom Cartwright, a better bowler but not in D’Oliveira’s league as a batsman, was chosen ahead of him. There could only have been one explanation, as far as I was concerned: politics.

What happened next was either fortunate or unfortunate, depending on your point of view. Cartwright developed an injury, couldn’t tour and so D’Oliveira replaced him. It was then that all hell broke out. The South African government claimed it was a political selection, which was a bit rich, the tour was called off, South Africa’s own tour of England in 1970 was cancelled, and eventually sporting sanctions were imposed which did have a profound impact on finally ending apartheid.

What wasn’t known, but now is, was the part that the English cricketing establishment had played in seeking to keep D’Oliveira out of the squad. The journalist and commentator E.W. Swanton was to the fore in doing so, as was Colin Cowdrey, the England captain at the time. On purely cricketing grounds, Cowdrey might have had a reasonable argument, while it also came to be known that Dolly did like a drink. But the politics had initially overriden both D’Oliveira’s credentials as a player and any question as to his fitness.

A further two years on, I sat my English O Level. The exam included the option to write an essay on a sporting hero. Afterwards, I asked a friend, who I knew would have taken the sporting option, who his subject had been: Tommie Smith, the American sprinter who had given the black-gloved fist salute at the 1968 Olympics. I had written about D’Oliveira.

From different sports, we had both come to write about similar things. Through sport, in addition to music of the time as well as the not infrequent news of race issues in America, we had been exposed to the injustice and absurdity of racism. Our education was not that of the classroom but of the sports arena. It was the lesson as to the grotesqueness of racism and apartheid and the effect it could have on one man, not a great cricketer but a good cricketer, that affected me, and one I have never forgotten.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Look Bach In Anger

Where had the Welsh been all summer? At the going down of the season, they suddenly emerged, orange-wristbanded, into Bar Brit (Foxes Arms), which temporarily became Bar Bridgend, Pub Pontypool, Café Cardiff.

A huge Welsh flag partially blocked the entrance, the rest of it was blocked by a huge Welsh front-row forward: Tiny, as he’s known, released from culinary duties to mingle front of house and prop up his compatriots. Was there a special Welsh breakfast on the menu? Laverbread and leek perhaps? Not as such. There was no sign of any Brains having been shipped in specially either.

Prior to the Irish match, an encounter too close to call, a New Zealand newspaper came up with cultural aspects of the two countries to decide the winners. Most were still too close to call, e.g. music (U2 v. The Manics), but one had a clear edge – beer: Guinness v. Brains, a no-brainer, even if it proved to be wrong.

Guinness is usually the de rigueur tipple for the rugby aficionado, even at ten in the morning or perhaps especially at ten in the morning. Not that there was much of it in evidence either. Magners (very Irish) or something soft; a Coke for the teetotal rugby fan, a rare breed, rather like a teetotal rugby player is rare. Such abstinence was appropriate, however, as the main actor, as it was to turn out, is said to be teetotal: Sam Warburton, who sounds like a character from “Emmerdale”.

One had expected the streets of Puerto Alcúdia to be alive with the sound of “Bread Of Heaven”. The only bread was that of a bacon sandwich. The atmosphere was subdued, tense, one of anticipation, of destiny. The French were, after all, rubbish, and indeed, for much of the game, they did little to disprove the idea. Here was a team with the capricious Lièvremont sitting next to an assistant with a mop of hair that made him look alarmingly like the wackily-astrological Raymond Domenech, the French football team’s former coach. What is it with French teams that they get lumbered with coaches that they have no alternative but to completely ignore?

For nearly twenty minutes, all went well. The French had made a clear statement of intent; they were as rubbish as everyone had said they were. And then it happened. From a melee of what seemed merely to be one of those ingredients sadly all too often missing from contemporary rugby – a good old, stand-up fistfight – a forlorn figure trooped off. Sam took up his seat at the pitch-side Woolpack for a glass of non-alcoholic Brains. No one knew the awful truth, least of all the commentator Nick Mullins. Only when the words “sent” and “off” flashed onto the screen did the truth dawn on the myopic Mullins who had managed to miss the red card.

The tense atmosphere turned into an indignant one. Tiny said, more than once, “cheated by an English referee in the first game, cheated by an Irish one now.” What had happened to Celtic solidarity? But what else could have been expected? Monsieur Rolland, Irish by birth but French by name. Fluent in the language. There had been a clue before kick-off, his coming onto the pitch wearing a beret, a string of onions around his neck and whistling “La Marseillaise”.

One of the punters believed that a half-time review would result in the card being rescinded. It wasn’t. The half-time punditry was no less indignant, whipped up by the one-time poor-man’s Des Lynam, Steve Rider, managing to do a passable impression of a presenter who hadn’t the faintest idea about the sport he was presenting. Francois Pienaar abandoned his Afrikaans roots and became an honorary Welshman. Dieu, he was incandescent. Martyn Williams looked stunned, but maybe years of smashing into opposition forwards have left him permanently so.

Sam remained sadly rooted to his seat, as Monsieur Rolland removed the earpiece of his iPod with its collection of Maurice Chevalier tunes, spat out his Gitanes and blew to start the second period. Bar Bridgend needed a burst of “Cwm Rhondda” to lift the spirits. What did raise hopes was the try, but Hooky had kept hooking his kicks, Jones The Boot booted one against the upright and Halfpenny lacked half a yard.

And so the dream died. The Welsh flag came down. Bar Bridgend returned to being regular Bar Brit, Puerto Alcúdia returned to normal and the wristbanded Welsh returned through the barren land of late summer to the all-inclusive to “feed me till I want no more” and to wonder at what should have been.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Basket Case: Sport and tourism promotion

Wherever a successful sportsman or woman or successful sports team is to be found, someone from a Spanish tourism promotion authority will also be found, running behind, puffing and turning puce and brandishing an advertising contract.

If not the Mallorcans Nadal and Lorenzo, then it will be either the Real Madrid football team or the Spanish men’s basketball side. Both Madrid and the basketball players are faces and bodies of tourism promotion.

The contracts are, however, different. Madrid are being paid a million euros. The basketball team is getting nothing. Nada. Not a centimo. European champions, they are worth zilch. How come Madrid can be paid and the basketball team can’t be?

It seems to have to do with the fact that Madrid is a business and that the basketball team is a representative of the state, down to its red and yellow strip. The six players from the championship-winning side depicted in Turespaña’s hastily cobbled-together advert are “ambassadors” for Spain. Does this mean, therefore, that the Madrid players aren’t? No, as they too, according to Turespaña, are ambassadors. If you play in white, though, you get paid; just ask Nadal.

Whatever the ins and outs of the contractual agreement, why is the Spanish tourism promotion agency, Turespaña, so desperate to nail its promotional colours to the masts of successful sports teams? The answer seems pretty simple. Teams with high recognition as well as fame mean high awareness and, you would hope, high numbers of tourists. In Madrid’s case this may be so, but as for the basketball team, the thinking is more questionable. Perhaps this explains why they’re not getting paid.

The ad featuring the basketball players is all part of the Turespaña campaign under the slogan of “I Need Spain”. Yes, that campaign, the one that demands you fill in the missing words. I need Spain like I need a massive budget deficit; this sort of thing. Apparently, the basketball guys not only themselves need Spain, they love it. The ad carries the legend: “There is only one thing they love more than basketball – Spain”. We’ll take their word for it.

Questionable as this ad is in terms of what it might actually achieve for tourism, there is a question mark over whether a national basketball team should be going anywhere near Spanish tourism promotion. The reason for this is that basketball and Spain have form.

There was the unfortunate matter of the Spanish team which won the Paralympics gold medal in Sydney in 2000, but which turned out to have contained some ringers, i.e. players (ten out of the twelve) who were fully mentally able. Then there was the slitty-eyed gesture advert the men and women’s teams participated in during the Beijing Olympics, which might not have caused much of a fuss had Sid Lowe of “The Guardian” not brought it to the world’s attention. Let’s just say that Spanish basketball, in its 2011 incarnation, is more ambassadorial.

But what of Real Madrid? In June, a promotional video popped up with nine players. All good ambassadors for Spain? Only up to a point, as only two of them were Spanish. Otherwise it was a video that would have played well with the German tourism market (Özil and Khedira), the French (Benzema) and the all-important Brazilian (Kaká and Marcelo), Argentinian (Di María) and Portuguese (Ronaldo) markets.

There is a rather obvious question. Why Madrid and not Barcelona? Barça are after all European club champions. At the time of the announcement of the tie-up with Madrid, the minister for industry, tourism and commerce, Miguel Sebastián, said that it had not been possible to come to an agreement with the club that would have allowed the use of the team’s image and that things were rather easier where Madrid was concerned. Barcelona, however, said that there had been no request from the government.

Things being easier with Madrid than Barcelona presumably had nothing to do with Barça being littered with Catalan players and also nothing to do with the fact that the club had an existing agreement with the Catalonia Tourism Agency. The club has said that it is open to an approach from Turespaña so long as it doesn’t conflict with its arrangements with the agency, which it probably almost certainly would.

And so the age-old Madrid versus Barcelona, Spain versus Catalonia El Clásico national division persists and with it so tourism promotion becomes political. The basketball players love Spain and together with Real Madrid, the team with all its historical connotations of Spanishness, they form the faces of Spain. I need Spain. I need Spain like I need the eternal row between Castile and Catalonia.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Drinking World Cup

When Saturday comes. This Saturday it will be all-day pinting. Footy in the afternoon, but before comes England’s first match in the Rugby World Cup. All-day pinting for Bar Brits.

A 10.30 local time kick-off. Too early for pinting? Not on your life. The rugby fan has a prodigious capacity for alcohol. Any time, day or night, it matters nought. Cometh the rugby, cometh the drinking. A match lasting eighty minutes. A game of two halves, and a game of at least four pints.

I became truly aware of the industrial amounts of beer that can be consumed in the name of rugby in 1978. Wales versus the All Blacks at Cardiff Arms Park. A match that ended in controversy, which was about the last thing I remembered before waking up the next morning in a bedroom that was unknown to me, in a house that was unknown to me, and in a house that wasn’t in Cardiff. It was in fact somewhere in Somerset.

The obsessiveness of the true rugby devotee is as great if not greater than that of the most myopic of football fan. A then house mate of mine (who also happened to be captain of Wimbledon 1st XV) used to rise uncommonly early for him on a Saturday morning in order to watch the Lions tests against New Zealand in 1983. The early rise was doubly necessary; one, to watch the match and two, to prepare and then consume the entire contents of a supermarket by way of breakfast, liberally washed down with cans of Guinness.

For Bar Brits, the opportunities await during the World Cup. Other matches may start at eight local time, but there will be hordes of thirsty and hungry rugby aficionados banging on the shutters demanding extra full breakfasts and several large, foaming drinks. It should be rugby gold for the next few weeks.

This said, not every bar benefits from a rugby audience. During the 2007 competition, one particular bar, no longer with us (and not particularly surprising) seemed determined to do everything it could to deter the rugby watcher. An England game was suddenly switched off and the dual TV system went over to some God-forsaken Championship football match and the racing from Haydock. “No one’s interested,” came the explanation from the misery of the bar owner, which came as a shock to those who were. He was left, studying the form for the racing in his copy of “The Sun”, as the rugby deprived trooped off to find another bar.

Rugby, like cricket but unlike football, requires an intimate acquaintance with rules that not even the true fan, let alone the players, really understands. Furthermore, it is such a whirr of big blokes smashing into each other, that no one has much idea what is actually going on, and no one can follow the ball, which seems at times to be largely incidental to the game itself.

But for the completely uninitiated, suddenly captivated by the possibility and excitement of England winning something, it is a total mystery, which nevertheless demands a running commentary of incomprehension interspersed by matters unrelated to what’s happening on the plasma screen. I give you, therefore, the ladies’ view of rugby, as it was during the 2007 final, with occasional male interjections to offer a correction or information:

“Ooh-ooh, come on, push them. That’s good, ooh-ooh, what’s happened? He’s good, who’s he? Tait. Ooh-ooh, come on guys, what was that for? Too many tackles? No that’s League. I am trying you know. Ooh-ooh, that was good. Who’s he? Robinson. I like him. That was good. What’s happening now? Did you breast feed? That was a try. Who was that? Ooh-ooh, Steyn, he’s good. But he’s not one of ours. Isn’t he? Oh no, come on guys, well, George got this allergic reaction to eggs. What’s happened now? Who’s this referee? He’s Argentinian. Ooh-ooh, push him. Oh look he’s pushed him into that camera. England are better. Ooh-ooh. Oh, is it over?”

Sadly of course, England failed in their attempt to win the last World Cup. But four years before. Four years before. Matt Dawson’s incursions, Jonny Wilkinson’s drop goal, Mike Catt’s boot into the terraces. England had won, and a bar in Puerto Pollensa erupted. It must have been, I guess, one o’clock or later, thanks to the extra time. The pinting had been going on since mid-morning, and by the time that Catt kicked to touch, few could really make out what they were meant to be watching. All they could make out was that England had won, and it was therefore time for yet more pinting.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Tender Trap

Trains don’t have tenders as such any longer. What they do have are tenders of a different type; public ones to arrive at which firm gets the contract for this or that. Or to not arrive at. The tender for the train now arriving at Sa Pobla station has been delayed. We are sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused.

The trains operated by SFM (Serveis Ferroviaris de Mallorca) and the railway stations on the lines to Sa Pobla and Manacor from Palma are not being cleaned. The contract ran out at the end of June. The new tendering process has not been completed; indeed it seems to have all but run out of steam. As a consequence, the trains and stations are gathering litter and at Inca station the loos are shut because there is no hygiene service.

How is it that there can be such a break in continuity of service? Did someone fail to notice that a new contract was due? The answer is probably down to a failure of bureaucracy.

Though the rail service in Mallorca is pretty reasonable and inexpensive, there is something distinctly not right with it. Apart from the collapse of the extension to Alcúdia from Sa Pobla, it took ten months to get the line between Manacor and Sineu up and running again following an accident which occurred in May last year, and then you have the situation regarding the re-development of the old line between Manacor and Artà. When will it be completed? Will it be completed?

The new track and other facilities were due to have been completed some time between May and September this year. They won’t be. They might be completed by the end of next year. Or they might not be. There is, and you might have guessed it, an issue with financing. However, that there is this issue with financing is a slight surprise.

When the Alcúdia extension was scrapped, funding from Madrid was meant to have been transferred to the Manacor-Artà line. If it was, then where is it? Or was there always going to be a shortfall on the budget that has now gone up to 150 million euros? Construction firms involved in the project are being left unpaid, indicative of a general malaise in the island’s public sector of non-payment of suppliers, and one that President Bauzà is meant to be tackling.

Coming back to the breakdown in the tendering process for SFM’s cleaning service, this highlights an issue as to how well or not the bureaucracy works in making the process happen smoothly. Putting out to tender makes contracts more transparent, but it doesn’t always go to plan and indeed you wonder why it is really necessary.

As ever, we can rely on events in Puerto Pollensa to shed some light on the strange world of tendering in a Mallorcan style. Firstly, an example of when there is no tender. This occurred with the granting of a contract (later rescinded) to a firm charged with coming up with a general transport plan for the resort. The firm which was awarded it just so happened to have a family connection with the then town hall delegate for Puerto Pollensa. Something seemed a bit fishy, or so thought a number of people, especially as the firm in question had not previously undertaken such a project.

So much for transparency, something that the new mayor is planning to address. And being transparent and being seen to do the right thing was probably behind the mayor’s demand that Sail and Surf should cease operations, only for him to say a couple of days later they could continue.

The story of Sail and Surf is bizarre. The sailing school has been in Puerto Pollensa for 40 years. What happened was that the school wanted a reduction in what it paid to the town hall. It was agreed that there would be a reduction, but, and despite having an annual concession with a four-year extension, the town hall reckoned that this demanded a new contract and therefore a new tender process.

Why such an established business should need to go through the rigmarole was anyone’s guess. But the rigmarole was started and then got lost. As a result, the school started up again this year, someone found that everything wasn’t quite in order, and the mayor, as I say, probably needing to be seen to be acting correctly, said the school had to stop. Then they could carry on, and an emergency tender notice for the “lot” that Sail and Surf has was posted onto the town hall’s website. And the result of all this will be?

Not getting round to a new tendering process, not doing it all, or doing it but then forgetting that it was being done, when it was pointless doing it at all. The tender traps of Mallorca.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Any Old Iron: The triathlon

“You look neat. Talk about a treat. You look so dapper from your napper to your feet.”

The words of Harry Champion’s music hall song, “Any Old Iron”. There will be any old number of athletes looking neat, from their nappers to their feet, in their helmets, vests, speedos, shorts and shoes when three thousand of them take to the waters and streets of Alcúdia and other parts of northern Majorca in just over a week’s time. The first Ironman 70.3 triathlon will be staged on 14 May.

Three thousand participants, 1500 helpers, 20,000 visitors. Of these, perhaps only the first will be accurate. They are having trouble attracting helpers, and as for the visitors. Well, possibly. But if there are 20,000, where will they come from? Day-trippers from elsewhere on the island, one imagines. Assuming they can get anywhere near the place.

The triathlon will last from eight in the morning till five in the evening. The professionals will not need anything like this length of time, but some will. As a result, for much of the day the town and resort of Alcúdia will be in virtual lockdown. The main roads will be closed, as will be the back streets of residential areas. Very little will be able to move unless it has two feet or a bike and looks dapper in its any old Ironman attire.

For a week leading up to the event, one part of the main carretera into the port of Alcúdia will also be shut. They need to prepare, in order to house the athletes and their bikes, in order to put up temporary structures, such as showers. Getting around Alcúdia in the lead-up to the day and on the day itself is going to be difficult, which is putting it mildly. And on the day, with so many roads closed, how are these visitors meant to make their way in?

The Ironman is a huge boost for Alcúdia, not necessarily because of tourists coming to watch the event itself, as these, in any number, would seem unlikely, but more because it puts the resort on the map of sports tourism, an ambition the town, together with adjoining resorts on the bay of Alcúdia, has harboured for some time. In terms of publicity alone, it is a thoroughly worthwhile event.

The downside of it is the level of disruption and inconvenience. But does this matter? It’s only one day, after all, unless you include that bit of the main road that is affected for several days.

In the scale of sporting events that require some streets, the Ironman is a drop in the bay of Alcúdia. It is hardly a London Marathon or a Monaco Grand Prix. But complaints there will be and complaints there are.

In strictly productive terms, any disruption to road systems is negative. When you have a town to all intents and purposes shut for a whole day, even if it is a Saturday, then there is a loss of productivity. Whether gains will be made from those visitors who do manage to break through the cordons and which compensate for any losses, real or imagined, we will find out. But the moaning is less rational than this. It is just a case of being put out.

The Ironman is not the only sporting event to disrupt local traffic. Two cycling races in the space of three weeks caused roads to be closed. But not for long. The delays were perhaps half an hour at most. An inconvenience, yes, but unless it’s a matter of life or death (and there is admittedly an issue with this), it should be tolerable in the wider scheme of things.

Alcúdia, Playa de Muro and other resorts want the type of sports tourism that Ironman brings. If they want it, then there has to be an acceptance that there will be some disruption. You can’t have it both ways.

The key issue, though, is whether such tourism does in fact translate into more business for local bars and restaurants in addition to hotels which will accommodate athletes. And there will be plenty who will say that it doesn’t. For the longer term, however, the first Ironman could be the start of future opportunities that will be real enough. Then they might be talking about a treat.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Going Swimmingly: Mallorca’s pools

What is it with swimming-pools? Not swimming-pools and the mercifully only occasional outbreak of cryptosporidium or swimming-pools of all-inclusives and the legends that are the stories of defecatory deposits which are left in them. No, not these, but swimming-pools of the local authority variety.

The Rebecca Adlington gold award, were there such a thing, would long ago have been claimed by Puerto Pollensa’s indoor pool for its services to public amusement. See that roof. It’s on the wrong way round. Well, it isn’t now, but it once was. A splendidly pre-fabricated upside down cake. How about someone paying the electricity bill? Not we, said the pool’s operators, Algaillasport. Endesa were none too amused. Not that we should really care what Endesa think, but when they’re owed 20 grand or so, we know what they are going to think. Finally, an agreement was brokered with the town hall, and the pool did not close once more, as it has been prone to since it first opened.

Joining Puerto Pollensa on the winner’s rostrum and clutching its own medal, we now have Alcúdia’s swimming-pool. For five years since it opened, relationships between the operator, Gesport Balear, and the town hall haven’t always gone swimmingly. Now, they’ve got a bad case of cramp in the deep end and are foundering. And why? It’ll be electricity again, or the cost of heating the pool to be more accurate. We’re switching off the boiler, say Gesport, unless we get some 300 grand. The town hall isn’t prepared to play water polo and has taken its ball home. No heating, no swimming, unless you’re mad.

Oh that the two northern rival towns were isolated examples of the curious swimming-pool management art of Mallorca, but they are not. Santa Margalida, just down the bay from Alcúdia, has been doing its best to claim the gold medal. Keeping itself closed for a couple of years and then still managing to leak itself. Not to be outdone, Inca came roaring along in the final stretch with its over-budget of 600,000 euros, a vigorous butterfly of profligacy to beat off the more sedate breaststroke of Alcúdia’s lost thousands.

When the plunge was taken to improve the island’s health and build proper swimming-pools in various of Mallorca’s municipalities, there would appear to have been less than sufficient attention paid to how they would actually operate. All very good it may be in theory, but the idea of contracting-out has hardly been a great success; indeed it has been about as unsuccessful as some of the actual building.

And how successful have the pools been in terms of their usage? Doubtless, there are statistics to prove that they have been, as there always are statistics, but they’ve tried hard for them to not be. Alcúdia again …

Not long after it opened, a local British woman, who speaks perfectly serviceable Spanish, went along to the pool and asked for a list of services and prices. It was in Catalan. Did they not have a list in Castilian? She received short shrift for having the temerity to suggest that they might. How long had she been living here and why couldn’t she speak Catalan? Yep, you can use the swimming-pool, so long as you pass a language test.

I once suggested to the pool’s director that they could do with letting more people know of its existence. Publicity perhaps. For tourists maybe. I think I was speaking a different language. It was Spanish admittedly. But then when there is publicity, it is of a singularly strange variety. When Puerto Pollensa’s pool announced its re-opening, now that the roof was as a roof should be, i.e. the right way round, there was a poster of splashy-happy kiddies. Nothing wrong in attracting children to the pool, but as it was a summery outdoor scene and the indoor pool was re-opening in March, the message didn’t quite fit. Nor did it with the fact that the municipal pools are, oddly enough, meant for swimming and not cavorting around on giant rubber ducks.

No, if you want fun in water, you can go in the sea or to a waterpark. Leave the municipal pools to the geriatric speedo set with their goggles and their morning’s twenty lengths. Yes, you can have fun at a waterpark, so long as you don’t try and take your own water in, to one particular waterpark at any rate. Enjoy being searched and having your bottle taken off you. I pointed out to the waterpark’s director that the internet was incandescent with rage at the practice, as indeed were real-life tourists in the vicinity. Has it stopped? Will it have stopped this summer? It damn well should have.

Swimming and Mallorca should be somehow synonymous, but they are not because ways are found to prevent this being so. Best perhaps to forget the pools and just head to the sea. But then there are always the jellyfish. Still, no one has to worry about switching the boiler on or getting the roof on the right way.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Dreams And Illusions: Palma and the Youth Olympics

You can’t keep a good city down. Having so spectacularly failed to even get to the starting-line of the selection procedure for the city of culture in 2016, Palma now fancies getting egg on its face by bidding for the Youth Olympics in 2018. Palma is becoming the Yosser Hughes of publicity-hungry cities. “Giss’ an event. We can do that.” Doesn’t much matter what it is. Anything old thing’ll do.

The Youth Olympics. The first was held in Singapore last year. The budget for this was $75 million. It ended up costing $284 million. A drop in the South China Sea for an island economy that is currently racing along at 18% growth. Mallorca, on the other hand.

Palma’s lady mayor, Aina Calvo, fearing being tailed off in this spring’s race for re-election, has gone into full proactive mode. Here an event candidature, there an event candidature. Here a re-development of the GESA carbuncle, there a sudden discovery of funds to press ahead with the Palacio de Congresos. The threat of the ballot box has a remarkable capacity to put a spring in the step of even the most lethargic of political athletes.

For Aina, the youth games would be a “dream”. President Antich, not slow now in declaring how marvellous this summer’s tourism will be and himself staring down the barrel of the election’s starter gun, has assured anyone inclined to listen that Palma has “all the requirements” to stage the games. It would be “difficult,” says President Frantic, to find an area the size of the islands with so much “sporting quality”. The games would be an “ilusión” for the president, meaning in this sense a “hope” as opposed to an illusion, as well as also being his dream. Trouble is that dreams can turn into nightmares.

There is just one little problem with referring to the “islands”. It was just one that went to screwing up the city of culture nomination. Note the word “city”. While the publicity for that bid waxed lyrically about the islands and their poetry, beauty and all the other guff, it did rather overlook the fact that Ibiza, Menorca, Formentera and indeed the rest of Mallorca were completely irrelevant. In fact invoking the rest of the Balearics represented a gaffe. The same applies with the Youth Olympics. Everything has to be staged within a city, i.e. Palma. Not Alcúdia, not even Magalluf, though a gathering of the world’s youth might fancy Maga rather more than it does Palma.

Still, the good news, sort of, is that Palma would have many of the facilities to stage the Youth Olympics. There is none of the absurd legacy malarkey attached to these games of the type that has turned the future of London’s Olympic stadium into such a farce. Nevertheless, the presidential delegate for sport has pointed out that Palma would need to “optimise” infrastructures that already exist and that central government might have to dip into its empty coffers to stump up for a bit of remodelling here or there, such as to the Son Moix stadium.

Despite the fact that the games would probably end up costing several arms and legs that no one possesses and would probably also usher in investigations into “irregularities” that would keep prosecutors in gainful employment well into the 2020s (never forget the Palma Arena velodrome affair), there might actually be some benefits. Given that Palma couldn’t stage the main Olympics (though God knows this is likely to be the next “dream”), a youth olympics doesn’t sound like a bad alternative. It would certainly fit with the creation of an image of a youthful, cosmopolitan and sporty city and island. In this respect, it makes some sense. And you never know, it might even be beneficial to tourism. Singapore apparently attracted 370,000 spectators, though it’s not clear if these were just all Singaporeans and those living on the island.

The bid for the games and therefore the fulfilment of the “dream” or not does have some way to go. As with the city of culture, a decision as to the candidate city will be taken at national level and then forwarded for the international competition, with the final selection being made in 2014. Palma is likely, therefore, to be just one Spanish city that is in the mix, and Valencia is lurking as a competitor; Valencia, which has proved in the past to be a city that has dashed Palma’s hopes, as was the case with the America’s Cup.

The current political unity behind the bid, that at any rate between Calvo and Antich, gives a solid front, but things may well change in May. One can’t help but feel that this unity is a display of the PSOE socialist party engaging in politicking. Dreams or no dreams, Palma’s Youth Olympics may prove to be simply an illusion.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.