The Dead Time

There can be no more appropriate fiesta than that of 1 November. The day of the dead, or one of them anyway. It’s a surprise fiesta for the unsuspecting Brit, for whom All Saints means a girl group. The Brits pour themselves another cup of black coffee, assuming they can find anywhere open to sell it, and freeze the moment. For, from 1 November, time is frozen. It is suspended. In hibernation. The dead time.

Cemetery slabs and stones are swept and cleaned in advance of the laying of flowers on All Saints. While the homes of the dead are spruced up, the resorts, overnight acquiring their winter status as their own cemeteries, suddenly become inundated with the detritus of the dead time, the entrances to the grand hotel mausolea – their windows shuttered out of respect with whitewash – swept by the fallen leaves of the now fallen season.

Each year the dead time becomes more pronounced, more inevitable and more poignant. It is the dead time of an island and its resorts growing old, its advancing years rendering it incapable of renewal, muddling and confusing it as it tries to remember how it once was before the dead time took hold. It is the infirmity of maturity, the malady of being overcome by the youth of destinations only now enjoying their days in the sun. At the rapidly emptying airport, airliners conduct a fly-past and fly-away, drooping their wings in honour of the dead time.

The frantic scramble for places on the last flights out leaves behind the refugees who shuffle in never-ending and slow-moving queues towards the dole office. Over 100,000 unemployed – before the season has finally come to an end – 18% of the Balearics working population. Higher than last year. Time was, not so long ago, when 80,000 was said to be the psychological barrier. No one seems to take much notice now. The collective psychology has been shattered, its self-esteem in tatters; there is a resignation to fate. For the 40% said to be unable to live on what wages or savings they might have, fate has dealt a heavy blow.

The dead time is not the consequence of crisis. It has crept ever closer over years. It is the consequence of lack of foresight, of a failure to appreciate the shifting sands of the island’s vital tourism market as it now gets sand in its shoes in lands far away. It is the consequence of complacency, not just that of politicians or employers but also of the employed, those who have colluded with an unbending acceptance that the dead time will come around each year. It is the consequence of the riches acquired by the owners of the grand hotel mausolea, wringing every last cent out of the summer and then escaping to foreign fields to open lavish palaces – the new Columbuses colonising the Dominican Republic all over again.

Without tourism, Mallorca is an empty shell, one all washed up and left on a beach beaten by the turbulence of autumn waves, tossed by Tramuntana winds that scoop it up with the sand and hurl it onto streets. It is neglected through the dead time by municipalities holding out their begging bowls for a handful of coins that might pay for the cleaning machines.

But the dead time arises because of the antithesis of the alive time, the dream time of summer, of tourism thronging to the beaches, beading bracelets from the shells caressed onto the shores by gently lapping and deep-blue waves. The dream time causes an unreality, it provokes the lyricism of the paradisal isle, the lulling into the illusion of ideality. As the dream time comes to its end, it emits a deceptively malevolent lullaby to send the island to sleep, to enter the dead time of what suddenly turns into a nightmare.

The day of the dead marks the end of summer. It is a fiesta of regret, of passing. And with each year the sense of bereavement, rather than diminishing, grows stronger. The mourning starts on the first of every November, a black armband wrapping itself around the island’s psyche. But on the day of the dead this year, not even the dead can be honoured as they once were. The florists expect lower sales. Rather than a wreath or a spray, one single rose and its thorns. And through an accident of the calendar and an accidental prick of the thorn, Mallorca’s nervous system in winter is consumed by tetanic spasms, throwing it into its now annual intensive care and desperate for the palliative of spring. But a palliative is not a cure, and so the cycle repeats itself. Each year.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Walls Come Tumbling Down

Twenty years ago – on 9 November – the wall came tumbling down. The Berlin Wall. It was an event that had all manner of consequences. The East German football team, needing only a point to qualify for the World Cup, lost 3-0 against Austria on 15 November, the players’ minds on other things, it is said. And so the bizarre prospect of the newly liberated East Germans meeting West Germany in the final never came to pass, and West Germany, of course, went on to win.

But more importantly, the fall of the Wall meant that Ossies could travel abroad freely, and not only those playing for the national football team and athletes pumped full of steroids by the Stasi-controlled coaching regime at the likes of the Berlin performance centre. And what was the first destination for many? You guessed it, Mallorca. The people of the later to be reunified country were reunited even before official reunification took place – on the beaches of Playa de Palma. 

In April 1990, the first tourists from the DDR came to Mallorca. Ten thousand of them were invited – free of charge. Hotels and full board were provided by the Balearic Government, while the flights were paid for by the tour operators – TUI and Neckermann. Of course April was not high season, so finding the rooms was probably not too difficult, but it was still a considerable gesture, especially if it meant that a new market in the east of Germany was going to be forged over the following years. Perhaps it wasn’t a completely altruistic exercise.

There is a fascinating article about this in the “Diario”, one that refers to the fact that the visitors, used to being controlled and having to seek permission, couldn’t quite come to terms with being able to come and go as they pleased from the hotels. They also, apparently, couldn’t get enough of the oranges. Like Brits who pack their suitcases with sleeves of Lambert & Butler, so the original Ossie tourists went back, bags bulging with fruit.

Ten thousand holidays – free. Maybe they should think of something similar now, and not just for east Germans.

 

Yesterday was, depending on how you prefer to call it, All Saints, the day of the witches or the day of the dead. On 1 November, the cemeteries are packed with those taking their tributes. The florists of Mallorca do a roaring trade the day before All Saints. Day of the dead, though, seems somewhat apt. 1 November is also the first day after the season finishes. Being both a holiday, a Sunday and the morning after Hallowe’en festivities, had you been venturing out in the morning, you might have been shocked at just how quiet, nay dead, it all seemed. The season ends, and they celebrate it with the day of the dead.