Unfinished Symphony: Albufera

Two in the morning. Save for the Saturday-into-Sunday night birds that swoop along the main road to and from the clubs and bars of the north and who create their sampling of engine rush and techno from the in-car system, the nights are quiet. With the arrival of May, the music of the machines will start to become unrelenting. But for now, there is motor silence. Not that there is silence.

During the day, it is hard to tell what noises come from Albufera. Those which there are, are usually drowned out by the incessant traffic. At night, it is a different matter. Amidst the quietness of the road, there is only one man-made sound that comes intermittently; the throb and sometimes roar of the Es Murterar power station, a rumbling synthesizer that conveys a mood music of mystery, an industrial electronica that is aurally surreal when set against the other sounds – those of the nature park. In April, in springtime, the sounds of Albufera build up, they are constant, always changing; they are their own unfinished symphonies.

In the mix of sound and limited vision, to the fore there is the sight of the puff monsters of pines silhouetted against moonlight or the distant lights of Muro and Sa Pobla. They are the maestros, the mute conductors of the orchestras that they hide. Unseen, in the pit of Albufera, whole string, horn and percussion sections stay up all night and play for a sleeping audience. They are the phantoms of an opera that the puff monsters mask.

It is too early for the crickets. In summer, they come to dominate, with their drum-box rhythms. For now, it is the marsh frogs that are the main percussion. It is subdued, understated at present. As the weeks pass, the frogs’ chorus reaches a crescendo before being supplanted by the crickets in this unending and cyclical opus.

The music of the wetlands is variously symphonic, jazz orchestra or an ambient soundscape dreamt from the imagination of Brian Eno or Philip Glass. The syncopation of the frogs is a rapid chatter of scat drumming over which wails an improvised, viola screech of a startled barn owl or over which is the high-pitched piping blast of a scops owl. This jam session with its shifting members can bring the single, irregular hoot of a different owl, a sonic bleep that rises and falls as though it were being spun around on a radar screen.

The counterpoint to the melodies of nightingales and even robins are the crow-like bursts of a night heron on its discordant Ornette Coleman sax or the comedic intermezzo of a duck disturbed into a deranged trumpeting. The party animals that fly-dance to the tunes of the Albufera night club are the bats, darting and diving and ignoring the admonitory stares of the puff monster conductors.

You can sit and listen to all this. You can have a front-row seat for an astonishing concert that costs nothing. But you can’t sit too long. Not before there is a different sound, one of a sawing buzz by the ear. The mosquitoes are alive again and they are giants in spring. The bats are hungry, thankfully. They do their best, but there are only so many mosquitoes they can eat as though they were chomping on their equivalent of popcorn taken into the auditorium for the Albufera concert.

As the night orchestra quietens around dawn, so a different shift takes over. There are over hundred different types of bird in Albufera at present, some that are there all the time, like the hoopoe which joins with the bats in being a natural destroyer of the nasty. For the hoopoe, it is the moth of the processionary caterpillar. Other birds are passing through, one or two are there by accident, such as the golden eagle. And most announce themselves as dawn comes, when they can be heard because the road is nearly always silent. Just at the moment.

The sights of Albufera, during the daytime when it can be seen, are what attracts, but there is a different attraction. What can’t be seen but can only be heard. At night. The unfinished symphony of Albufera.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Huntin’, Shootin’, Fishin’: Mallorca and hunting

“Madonna has opened up this world for us now, sweetheart. She’s made it stylish. Re-invented it.”
“So you’re going to kill things because of Madonna.”

The “Absolutely Fabulous” take on huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’. Mallorca’s winter tourism industry is missing a trick by not appealing to the Notting Hill/Holland Park set and shipping them in for a bit of wildlife slaughter. A fine rural hotel, a touch of agrotourism, evenings in the spa and then in the morning out into the Tramuntana range or onto a finca and give some fauna a good seeing-to with a high-powered rifle. If you’re lucky, you might get it served up. Fancy some goat? How about some partridge? Rather plumper than a thrush or a starling.

To the north of Alcúdia old town, in the mountains of La Victoria, the quality of goat is first-rate. It was awarded a certification a couple of years ago. The excellence of the catch, promoted as such, was partly designed to bag an overseas hunter tourist.

Hunting isn’t exactly big when it comes to Mallorcan tourism, but it is pretty big in Spain as a whole. An organisation known as Ibex Hunt Spain (“the taste of professionals”, says its website) can help with the hunting of the Balear goat. It can help in other ways: “you will enjoy hunting our wild animals in a natural and rugged environment … another outstanding feature is our rich and varied gastronomy … we can also offer you a variety of accommodations (sic)”. What did I tell you? A country hotel and you can wolf down the catch. That’s the taste of the professional presumably.

Cue dramatic music. Mountainous terrain. The poignant plucking of a guitar. The sighting of the gun. The falling of the goat. The huntsman with his trophy. This describes a video from Ibex Hunt that you can see on YouTube – “Hunting Balear Goat”. Tasteful and professional. Not, one imagines, that everyone would agree.

Oh dear, the sensibilities of anthropomorphisising homo sapiens. Personally, while I find the stabbing to death of a bull less than completely agreeable, I have no qualms with hunting. No, this isn’t quite accurate. I have no qualms because it’s not something I ever think about. The subject only looms into gun sight once the local hunting seasons get underway. Even then, until the transposition of human attributes onto dumb animals is given an airing by the outraged, it all passes me by, despite the sounds of gun shot that ring out daily from Albufera.

It can all be reconciled by invoking our inner hunter-gatherer. Where the anti-hunting lobby may have a point is the rather less equal contest nowadays. Our forebears lacked a Winchester semi-automatic or a silver-engraved Browning, but rest assured that if the technology had been available, they would have used it. A further difference is that those ancient ancestors would have removed the head and eaten it and taken to wearing the horns rather than mounting the head on the living-room wall, a singularly peculiar thing to do. But if someone wants to, then who am I to say they shouldn’t.

Local hunting falls into two distinct categories. One is for sport, as with the goat, the other is for control. Blasting birds out of the skies or trees does have a reason, such as ensuring that those with animal-centric sensibilities can be guaranteed their olive oil or wine. Birds quite like some of Mallorca’s produce as well, which is one reason for the culls. Wildlife management isn’t only about keeping the wildlife alive, it’s also about killing it.

Mallorca’s hunting tradition is part and parcel of the island’s ruralism. It may not be as strong as it was for the obvious reason that Mallorcan rural life doesn’t exist in the same way that it did before mass tourism. But it’s still very much there. It is celebrated each year at the hunters’ fairs. For example, in 2009 this was in Pollensa, for which they had the Council of Mallorca to thank for stumping up over a hundred grand to stage it. Money well spent no doubt in helping to preserve Mallorca’s alternative tourism as well as the cadre of licensed hunters on the island, of which there are over 25,000. Which sounds like an awful lot.

It isn’t only the animal-rightists who get into a tiz about hunting, there is also the environmental group GOB. It has made the not entirely stupid point that it does seem somewhat contradictory to have reserves where birds flock in, only to go and start taking a pop at them. But you come back to that management, of both flora and fauna. It’s all done in the best interests of nature, so be thankful that Mallorca’s countryside hasn’t been overrun by Barbour-wearing Madonnas or Eddys and Patsys. Yet.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.