Pedestrianisation plan and the Don Pedro

As flagged up on 25 July, Pollensa town hall yesterday approved the plan for a development in the Ullal area of Puerto Pollensa which would also involve the developers undertaking the pedestrianisation of the resort’s “front line”. The town hall has also approved the demolition of the Don Pedro hotel in Cala San Vicente.

Kicking Off Again? Pedestrianisation in Puerto Pollensa

Two years after the scheme to pedestrianise the “front line” of Puerto Pollensa between Llenaire and the centre of the Moll was abandoned, it is about to make a comeback. The impetus for its return is an agreement to develop land in the Ullal area of the town (around and near to the Pollensa Park hotel). As reported in “The Diario”, the town hall will give this plan the go ahead this coming week. The developers will be able to build residential accommodation on some 100,000 square metres of land, in return for which they will also undertake the pedestrianisation scheme. According to the mayor, all parties which were informed of the plan last week, which seem to include the revolutionaries (as referred to yesterday), are in agreement. Given what happened last time the pedestrianisation scheme reared its head though, it’s hard to imagine that there will be unanimity this time round. Apart from anything else, it will mean that all traffic gets diverted along the bypass, which was built as part of the same plan as that for the pedestrianisation, envisaged as far back as the late sixties. Other revolutionaries, notably those of Gotmar who protested loud and long a couple of years ago, will surely not be taking the latest news lying down.

The plan is a potential minefield. Though the building development will be in the vicinity of wetlands deemed of ecological interest, the green light for it has come from the Council of Mallorca which has reclassifed the land as a so-called area of territorial reconversion (ART), which is the same provision that has been applied to areas in Bonaire and Puerto Alcúdia, prompting developments in both instances, the second of which includes what is widely presumed be and largely already built, but mystifyingly unconfirmed, a Lidl supermarket. Despite the Council’s acquiescence, one can yet anticipate objections from the environmental lobby.

What seems curious about this plan is that it doesn’t directly address the tourism problem that was highlighted yesterday. If it is indeed the case that Puerto Pollensa needs more hotel stock, might the development not be better served by sticking up a new hotel or two? This said, the chances are that a number of the new houses will end up as holiday lets. For a resort with a high dependence on residential tourism, this might seem fair enough, though it runs counter to the attitude at government level towards the letting business and would provide far fewer additional tourists than a hotel would.

Meanwhile, the same ART is being invoked to finally put the Don Pedro in Cala San Vicente out of its misery. It’s been a long death, but it would now seem that the demolition is going to occur; just a question as to when. This has been said for years, but now it seems as though it will happen. Much as the demolition might now appear inevitable, nothing ever runs smoothly, least of all in Pollensa; and so it may still also be with Pedestrianisation 2010.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Closest Thing To Heaven: No more – Cala San Vicente

On 11 June last year (It Doesn’t Add Up), I wrote a piece about Cala San Vicente. It started with a quote from someone who was staying at La Moraleja, the charming, high-class hotel as you come into the Cala. “It’s paradise.” “Well, there’s nowhere quite like it.” “Is there?”

Amidst all the pining for the close to the pinewalk Sis Pins in Puerto Pollensa before it reopened, it was easy to overlook the fact that there was another, grander hotel that was closed. Easy to overlook because it’s in the Cala, as indeed it sometimes seems easy to overlook the Cala, full stop. La Moraleja. Paradise it may be. Nowhere else like it, very possibly. But it’s not there, as in it’s not open. The gates are firmly closed and locked. It’s very sad. And it makes three, the number of hotels now not open in the Cala. The Mayol has been shut for … for how long; can’t remember. The Simar is into its second year of closure. And now the Moraleja.

It seems almost an annual thing for me to have to bemoan the fate that has befallen Cala San Vicente. It is such an awful shame. One restaurant owner said yesterday that there is “mucha cree-sis” in CSV. The truth is that there was mucha cree-sis before the cree-sis took hold. The place has been going down the pan for years. But why? Ok, apart from the fact that there’s nothing much to do there, other than relax, lie on Molins cove beach, snorkel, have a drink or a meal, it is still, just about, a little piece of heaven. And it’s not that no one’s interested. Curiously, when I was in the Alcúdia tourist office the other day, not one but two sets of people went to the desk to ask for information as to how to get there. From Alcúdia. People want to go there, and so they should. But the bus schedule isn’t great. You really need a car or take a taxi. The Cala is end-of-the-line Pollensa tourism, backwaters Pollensa.

Several years ago, a colossal error was made. It was when the Don Pedro went all-inclusive. It could be argued that a place out of the way, like the Cala, is more suited to all-inclusive than bustling resorts with everything immediately to hand. But it wasn’t suited, because it changed the nature of the small resort and also began to undermine the businesses there. Elitist this may sound, but the appeal of the Cala was its very sleepiness and its quaint, quasi-colonial exclusivity, one that La Moraleja has, or had, in abundance. Its appeal was also to be found in the semi-mystical reverence in which the place is held by Mallorcans, the consequence of a reputation, part-Bohemian, part-intellectual as an oasis for artists and free thinkers.

It still has an air of exclusivity, granted, for example. by the eponymous Cala San Vicente hotel, and the refinement of the Molins hotel. But the fault, the fault-line if you like, in Cala San Vicente is that it wasn’t somehow ring-fenced and preserved in its own time warp of days of the Raj in back-of-beyond Pollensa. And that it wasn’t spared the development that has taken away some of its character.

The building of the apartments by Molins cove was the last straw for some and became the subject of a rallying cry from the environmentalists. The apartments, I think, look ok, so long as you approve of the trend towards somewhat anonymous and formulaic neutral-coloured blockettes of apartments. No, in themselves they are far from offensive; just that they really aren’t in the right place.

The nostalgia of the Cala, for me, remains the vision looking down to Molins cove and to Bar Mallorca and to what was once a dustbowl behind it. When the resort still had a shambolic appearance, one of a grand old dame, shuffling around under a wide-brimmed straw hat, taking a gin on the verandah or a sangria and fish supper in one of the still unpretentious restaurants, it had its barmy exclusivity. It’s gone I’m afraid, and it ain’t coming back. But one might hope that the Moraleja will return. If anyone still cares.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Hills Are Alive: The beach alternative

Matt Rudd is a humorous geezer. Pity, therefore, the unfortunate resort in Mallorca that might take his acerbic fancy. Take Cala San Vicente. Poor old CSV; it can’t seem to get anything right. If it’s not Poles on the rampage, then it’s Rudd slagging it off for having a “seaweedy” beach or one made of concrete. Or having an “enormous coach park, some high-rise apartments (and) a big hotel.”

I confess to not being intimate with all the coves in the Cala. Molins is the one I know best; it’s ok. Not great but ok. As for the rest. An enormous coach park? Is there? High-rise apartments? Apartments, yes, but high-rise? A big hotel? Well, I suppose the Don Pedro is fairly big, though it won’t be if they ever finally get round to demolishing it. But one might also add Niu or La Moraleja, which are not big but are very clever in being utterly charming.

Rudd was writing in “The Sunday Times” at the weekend. The Mallorcan tourism worthies would be apoplectic if they read his piece, or could understand it. The beaches of Mallorca, and not just those of CSV, are not “half as fabulous as everyone says they are”; indeed they’re not much cop, according to Rudd. Keep the “Med in the distance”; take to the hills and a villa in the interior is his advice. The worthies may wish alternatives to “sun and beach” holidays, but they don’t want “The Sunday Times” telling holidaymakers to give the resorts a wide berth. At least, one assumes not.

The northerly route to CSV had been indicated by means of a “gnarly finger” pointed by a local in an unnamed resort. To the Mallorcans, well some, the Cala is treated with a certain reverence. Or put it this way, a restaurant owner in the Cala once told me that this was the case. A gnarly finger might well indeed be waggled with a recommendation to go north, young man, even if the owner of the digit had not been near the place for years, if he had been there at all. It is a Pollensa backwater that some love and some find hard to comprehend; I myself have vacillated between these two positions.

The criticism of the island’s beaches started, however, with a questionable premise – that somehow the beaches have all been cleared of any offending concrete in their vicinity. Rudd says that this “this isn’t entirely true”. And it isn’t, because it hasn’t happened. I don’t quite know where the idea comes from that it might have. Take a trip to Can Picafort, for example, and you have a perfectly unlovely line of buildings just a short walk from the water’s edge. Even the cherished, by some, smaller beach in Puerto Pollensa, the one that peters out at the pinewalk, is backed  not just by concrete but also by innumerable passers-by. It is far too small and far too claustrophobic for my liking.

Go to a resort and there are buildings close to the beaches. Inevitably there are. It’s why they are resorts. In Puerto Alcúdia, a resort which has a beach once voted the best in the Med, some of the concrete is shielded by trees; little of it feels as if it is on top of you. But if one wants to escape the hotels and apartments, there are always close-by alternatives, such as the coves in Mal Pas. Mallorca is a mix of beaches, just as it is a mix of holidaymakers.

Rudd is a “holiday snob” and admits to being so, belittling the “flabby pink people” of the resorts (oh, my stupid fat white men of this blog years ago). Non-resort is his preference, and away from the coast, he says that the island has been transformed, that it is “gorgeous”. But has it really been transformed? The interior is not fundamentally different now to what it has ever been. What is different, what has been transformed, is that there are properties for the type of holidaymaker who reads “The Sunday Times”; the type of holidaymaker who eschews Coronation Street and “pubs serving roast beef” in favour of some octopus on the poolside barbecue of a villa that is out of the reach of the holidaymaker hoi polloi.

Nevertheless, Rudd makes an argument for a type of holiday and indeed holiday accommodation which encapsulates a dichotomy that the tourism worthies cannot reconcile. They want nice middle-class families with spending power to enjoy the “other” island, and not just the sun and beach, but they also devote time and energy in seeking to deny to this tourist the accommodation he or she desires; not the hotels of the resorts, but the private villas or apartments. And they do this by being beholden to the hotel lobby and doing whatever they can to disrupt the holiday-let market. This is not what Rudd intended to write about or indeed has, but inadvertently he has done so. The tourism authorities should read and digest, but they probably wouldn’t understand.

** For the full article, go to: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/destinations/spain/article7059836.ece

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Burning In My Heart

Who turned on the oven? It had been forecast that the worst heatwave of summer would be experienced this week; they hadn’t said quite how bad. Temperatures of 44 degrees had been anticipated yesterday afternoon; that’s around 111 in old money. Sa Pobla is the place that is taken as representative for the interior in the north, and Sa Pobla is where this record high was expected. It is fifteen years since a 43 was recorded there. As it turned out, the temperature was only 42 – only 42. The interior temperatures are higher than those around the coast, by a factor of some five or six degrees very often, but you don’t have to go very far inland to get the full effects of that interior heat. In the old town of Alcúdia at midday yesterday, it was unbearable, but back down in the port it was cooler – all things being relative. The weather centre had issued a red alert for the interior, the north and the north-east.

 

The extreme highs are the result of air being sucked up from Africa. You can feel the heat of the wind or breeze – it grips you, encloses you. This African wind can sometimes just come out of seemingly nowhere and last for only a relatively short period, but when it does spring up it has the ferocity of old red nose giving the hairdryer treatment.

 

These are dangerous temperatures, ones to be respected. The advice to avoid dehydration is crucial; to not take on liquid is to run the risk of heatstroke or to suffer diarrhoea or worse. Ever had heatstroke – the full dose, that is? I have. I don’t much recommend it. The question is, though, what liquid. Much as the thinking is to just take on water, this is not enough. The best drinks are the non-caffeine sports drinks. Eroski does a lemon one. Tastes ok and it has the salts, minerals and vitamins that are as important in preventing the worst affects of the heat. Yet, despite all the advice, you will still see those quaffing back great pints of beer during the day or tucking into a full English or a vast plate of meat and chips. None of this makes any sense. Ok, let’s not get too sanctimonious, a freezing Saint Mick of an evening is hugely tempting, and rightly so, just so long as it’s not the whole gallon.

 

 

What’s Cracowing-off in the Cala

Are the Poles the new Brits? Last summer there was something of a street battle involving plod and some youthful Polish holidaymakers in Magaluf. There is now a report of trouble involving some younger Poles in – of all places – Cala San Vicente, but this is all-inclusive Cala, not the genteel old-colonialism of the Moraleja: the Don Pedro in other words. Perhaps it could have been predicted. Put British families together with the nouveau holidaymaking classes of young Poland and it was maybe bound to end in tears. But put them together Thomas Cook have done.

 

“Talk Of The North” got the story, and it should appear in greater detail in the next issue. From what Graeme tells me it has all been rather unpleasant, a group of Poles effectively terrorising the Brits and causing general mayhem. The boys in green were eventually called, after the Brits demanded that something be done. In addition to “TOTN”, you can probably also expect that the forums will be given a bashing by very unhappy Brits, to say nothing of the complaints that will land in the in-tray of Thomas Cook. 

It Doesn’t Add Up

“It’s paradise.” “Well, there’s nowhere quite like it.” “Is there?”

He was a gentleman in his seventies, a copy of “The Telegraph” in his hands. He was sitting in a straight-backed, pink-patterned chair in the reception. I looked around, and nodded. It had never really occurred to me that there was nowhere quite like it – the hotel, that is. “Like your own home. Your own villa.” Not my home or my villa, but maybe his. I bade him good day and drove down to the front. Unusually, it was easy to park in front of Niu. Unusually, it was easy to park anywhere in the Cala.

There is a disconnect between the garden-ornamentalism and old-world elegance of La Moraleja, and the on-top-of-each-other contrast between the homely manners of Niu and the kid-splashing, kid-noisy Don Pedro just over the fence. If Niu has had a reception makeover to a one-time feel of antiquity, the Moraleja has a continuing colonial splendour.

Nothing seems to quite add up in the Cala. The new ubiquity of greys and neutrals that appears to have been taken as a template from some bible of contemporary architectural conformity has spawned the aluminium and non-colour of the Windsurf; steel chatters and clatters as they wash down the tables and the austere pipework of the chairs. And so also the silver, white and monotones of the Riusech edifice. Glance out at the Cala Barques – or is it Clara? – and there is the familiar turquoise and fade to green; then look back at this black and white image, this greyscale building, and wonder at the enormity of the absence of blues or yellows that might complement the visual environment.

At Marinas, an ageing couple are on the terrace with solitary beers; someone is at the bar. It’s “muy flojo” and Tomas is nowhere to be seen. Then glance across at the empty pool area of the abandoned Simar. Maybe it was just imagination, but the pool seemed to have been given over to algae. Back on the street, a body-builder struts by with flippers and a wetsuit and calls out in Polish to someone by the doors to the Don Pedro.

The doors to the eponymous Cala San Vicente are closed, as though they don’t anticipate anyone. They are wooden barriers that fail to invite, but it’s probably just to keep in the air-conditioning. A sexagenarian lady is wearing a white jump-suit and matching, sharp-cornered, white-framed glasses. She has the eager expression of one used to racing rally cars; she bears an attitude of female rakishness, a Dick or Davina Dastardly hugging the wheel tightly. Perhaps she has been male-monikered. “Dicky, old stick”, you could imagine. But she is a lady. As with the Telegraph reader of the Moraleja – ex-City I’d be bound – here are ladies and gentlemen. Not a “luv” or a “mate” to be heard. Here is a certain civility among the decline and fall; a Nero-esque blindness to the invisible flames of the encroaching Vandalism. The piano music is perhaps too loud; it is trying too hard to scale its descant of cocking-a-snook refinement. The Moraleja wouldn’t have that. Just silence save for the birdsong and the breeze rustling the bracts of the bougainvillaea and the sheets of an English broadsheet.

The Poli pizza place is still neglected, but Cafe Art has stumbled back into some resemblance of life across from the incongruous Irishness. And then tumble down to the lower level and the Oriola, the repository of ancientness, shows an equal incongruity; a young man and woman with a laptop on the terrace. There is a conspicuous absence of the usual; the musty smell inside is not there.

And you then wonder what happened to that law which revoked the previous law about the extension to building works. The controversial development by the Molins cove is being worked on still; only another four days now, you guess. But they were meant to have stopped, weren’t they? The indeterminacy of politics. So it is also with a banner by the car park. Bedraggled, tossed by the winds, who is it for? PP? PSOE? Doesn’t really matter, days past the elections. In front of the Molins hotel, unusually, it would have been easy to park. There is no-one in reception, not even a tubercular straw-hatter arriving for what would probably be his last visit. The Mayol is now looking a ruin, and you stop and stare out at that view to the horse promontory, then to the half-built apartments and up to the Pinos hostel with its old-time sign of a Western movie. Back and forth – the gentility of the Moraleja, the decibels of the Don Pedro, the dereliction of the Mayol, the whites and greys of expensive real estate. Cala San Vicente – nothing quite adds up.