Have Yourselves A Crisis Little Christmas

The Mallorcans don’t really do Christmas. This is a half truth. They may not go the full-stomached, cloyingly sentimental nine yards of Christmas Day, but Christmas they most certainly do do. The half truth stems, in part, from the fact that the holiday period is that long it’s hard to know what is festive season and what isn’t.

From Constitution Day through to Antoni and Sebastià in January, it is one long series of “puente” breaks, meals out or in, family and social gatherings and one long round of shopping. When there is so much to pack in over such a prolonged period, it’s hardly surprising if Christmas Day itself constitutes something of a day of rest. All this notwithstanding, the Mallorcan Christmas has a bit of a crisis on its hands.

I’m not sure if Mallorcan office workers are issued with advice similar to that which is given to their British counterparts regarding not getting so slaughtered at the Christmas party that you find a P45 slipped inside your Christmas card, having become overly familiar with the boss’s wife, but the local Christmas party is something of a victim of “crisis at Christmas”. There is expected to be a fall of around 60% in terms of Christmas meals out for the staff, and those unlucky enough to have to suffer sitting next to the office bore will also have to suffer a fall in what’s on offer; it’s chicken nuggets this year, rather than a full roast.

Cuts to companies’ Christmas largesse is not confined solely to the staff dinner. Spending on Christmas hampers, by way of gifts to staff, to customers or perhaps to politicians whose favours are being sought, is also way down this year. 15 euros is a sort of going rate for hampers that can cost astronomical sums when they come stuffed with whole hams and fine wines; it’s a bottle of cava and a slab of nougat for the Crisis Christmas “cesta”. It doesn’t sound like there’ll be too many favours being extended, therefore.

One element of a Mallorcan Christmas that isn’t being cut back on is the number of surveys which come out telling everyone how miserable they’re going to be because they’re not spending enough money. Average family spend in the Balearics is estimated to be below the national highs of Madrid and Valencia where money is being tossed around to the tune of 600 euros per household. At 585 euros, this does represent quite a sizable fall in the Balearics. Two years ago, average Balearics spend was said to have been 747 euros, which itself was 11% lower than the year before. Christmases are coming, and the geese are getting progressively thinner.

It’s not all bad news in the Balearics and not all bad news for the restaurants which are finding they are not being called upon to provide the office lunch. Spending on eating out and going out is reckoned to be higher in the Balearics than it is anywhere else in Spain.

And there is certainly one area of economic activity that will be thriving this Christmas. The lottery. The 600 euros in Valencia, for instance, is boosted by a spend of 125 euros. Yes really, 20% of Christmas cheer handed over in the hope that “El Gordo” will come up trumps, but even the Valencians aren’t as extravagant as they have been; they parted with 147 euros on the lottery last year.

In the survey by the unfortunately acronymed FUCI (Federación de Usuarios Consumidores Independientes), the Balearics do at least come near the top when it comes to toys and gifts – 200 euros, only ten under the Spanish league leaders in Madrid – but the survey does just confirm the degree to which Christmas spending has slumped over the past three years in the Balearics and the whole of Spain. Only three regions break the 600 barrier this year; in 2008, all were over or near the 800 euro mark.

Two years ago, a survey by a different organisation, the Mallorca-based Gadeso, indicated not just the overall level of Christmas spend but also the degree to which it varied markedly. Gadeso will doubtless be producing its own new survey for this year, and it would be surprising were it not to show that the divisions had widened. Unemployment up considerably, state assistance not being paid in some instances, small companies not being paid, the variance in 2009 of nearly 1000 euros between highest and lowest-spending categories will surely have increased.

It’s a half truth that the Mallorcans don’t do Christmas, but what is a whole truth is that they are doing it less, and some are doing it hardly at all.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Old Folks At Home (29 November)

I went to the old folks home in Alcúdia yesterday. They had rung me up and asked me to come by. There was a surprise on entering the “residencia”. I remembered it when it was the Alcúdia hospital. The place has been completely transformed. They describe it as not really a hotel and not really a hospital, but it looked and felt more like a hotel.

I said to them that a perception of a residencia, among many Brits at any rate, is probably that of the “old folks home”, one of elderly people sitting around in stiff-backed chairs, staring aimlessly at a television screen, not always smelling of lavender, and waiting for the next trolley of tea to come by. The residencia really isn’t like that.

They wanted to do something about increasing awareness of what the place is really like, but that’s for elsewhere, as there is – along with every other part of Mallorca’s economy – a crisis in the residencia sector.

Workers at residencias across Mallorca have added their voices to the growing number of personnel that is either not being paid or is being paid late. Though the regional government or town halls don’t operate residencias, the companies which do are paid by government and the companies in turn pay staff salaries. Or don’t, as the government is in debt to them, as it is in debt to all manner of providers.

A protest planned for today outside the regional parliament by workers from different residencias adds to one staged by a hundred workers at the residencia in Marratxí on Saturday. It had been announced that November salaries for the staff in Marratxí would not be paid, this coming on top of delays in the past few months.

The residencia workers are far from being the only ones who have suffered because of the inability of government (or town halls) to pay suppliers, but problems with payment at this time of the year are particularly acute, given the proximity of Christmas.

The system of payment for those in the public sector isn’t collapsing, but it is on foundations that seem to be becoming ever more shaky, as is the edifice of the Mallorcan and indeed Spanish welfare state.

The residencias, in addition to their permanent residents, provide an important service through their day centres. These are important especially for the elderly who live alone and/or in conditions that are not much better than destitution.

A misconception that surrounds local society, in addition to one that the welfare state is particularly generous, which it isn’t, is that the family always takes care of its own, the elderly included. The family does of course provide, but not quite to the same extent that it once might have.

The Economic and Social Council for the Balearics has released information regarding the number of people aged 65 or older who live on their own. The percentage in the islands as a whole is just under a third, and one half of these either have no or very little by way of contact with family, while some 22% also have no obvious friends to call upon. Pensions, which Mariano Rajoy says he will safeguard, can be as low as 250 euros a month.

Demands placed on agencies outside the established welfare state have rocketed in the past few years, and not only for help for the elderly. The Cruz Roja and the Catholic charity, Caritas, are just two that have had to step in as a combination of economic crisis and a societal shift that has lessened the strength of the family has left an increasing number of people with little or no safety net; and crisis has itself contributed to undermining the wherewithal of some families to go some way to providing this safety net.

Crisis is not just damaging economically but also socially, and the strain of crisis is such that opposition parties accuse the regional government of stripping away nearly 250 million euros from that part of the budget that includes welfare and the family; a budget described as the “most anti-social” that the Balearics have experienced.

It is against this background, therefore, that the services of the residencias, more important than ever, find themselves also subject to the virus that is crisis and to a cycle of crisis that is vicious and seemingly never-ending.

Alcúdia’s old folks home, and more than just an old folks home, is mightily impressive. Whether the agencies of government are taking much notice of how impressive, however, is another matter entirely.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Mariano And The Mess (23 November)

Who on earth would want to be a Spanish prime minister? Well, Mariano Rajoy for one, though why is anyone’s guess. It says much for political ambition that you would willingly enter the lions’ den unprotected and smelling of dinner. Deficit, highest unemployment rate in Europe, virtually no growth. Presumably, in the words of the election song of a certain former prime minister, things can only get better. Actually, they can’t; they can only get worse, and they already have.

Surprise has been expressed that the markets have reacted with a massive thumbs-down. That’s not how it’s meant to work. Good, right-wing, slash-and-burn politico takes over, and the markets are supposed to cheer at the fall of the squandering, bumbling incompetents from the left. They might have done were it not for the fact that Rajoy has to wait a few weeks before getting his backside onto the prime ministerial seat. There are procedures, you know, post-electoral ones, and the markets are being blamed for not understanding that it takes weeks for the Spanish to sort these procedures out. Perhaps Spanish politicians should try understanding how markets work, though they have shown little evidence that they do.

The hiatus following the election is just one reason why the markets have reacted so negatively. Another is that they really don’t have much confidence in Rajoy and the Partido Popular as they know full well that there is precious little that Rajoy can actually do. Yep, it’s a great time to be taking over as prime minister, knowing that you are totally emasculated and are dead meat even before you start.

If he were allowed into the prime ministerial office now, he would be flashing into the night sky over the Gotham City of Spain the distress image of the Euro and getting Angela and Nicolas racing from the ECB Batcave. “There are only 24 hours to save Spain, Robin.” Which isn’t too far from the truth, as each day brings with it ever more woe. Or perhaps he would be sending out an SOS and hoping that Thunderbird 5 picks it up. “Brains, any ideas as to how we can rescue Spain?” “Er, er, well, er, Mr. Tracy, we’ll have to dig very deep. Cut very deep.” “Right, Brains. Virgil, take Thunderbird 2’s austerity mole pod.” “F.A.B., father.”

Oh that it was as simple as sending out a distress signal and International Rescue comes and makes everything all right. What am I saying? This is pretty much how it is. The IMF or the European Central Bank buying up Spanish debt as quickly as it can be issued in order to give Rajoy some breathing space to stutter his words of reforms before they cart him off to the Papandreou Home For Distressed European Leaders.

There’s the deficit and then there’s employment creation. It’s not going to happen, because JP Morgan says so. Yes you can always rely on what banks say – they got everyone into the mess and now they can gloat at everyone’s misfortune; JP Morgan reckons unemployment in Spain will rise to 27% next year. Rajoy, if and when he can get his scissors out, is going to have to cut so deep that unemployment will continue its upward march and growth its downward slump. Here comes another recession. Not that the first one ever really went away.

In an ideal world, and you may have noticed that the world currently isn’t ideal, Rajoy would set in motion much-needed plans to restructure Spain’s economy and not just its finances. Investment in new industries to break the dependence, certainly in some regions of Spain, on construction and tourism has been demanded for years. But where would the investment come from now? Even if the banks weren’t suffering liquidity problems or weren’t applying a squeeze and even if the government had spare pots of cash lying around, the results would take years to bear fruit. And Rajoy hasn’t got years. He’s barely got days.

Some proposals like tax cuts for smaller businesses could help with stimulating the economy, but what really might would be lowering the burden on social security payments. A reduction in IVA for the tourism industry, however, would be senseless. Tax receipts have gone up this year, thanks in part to the rise in IVA, and they are likely to be up again next year.

Rajoy has inherited a God awful mess. He should demand our sympathy, but then he wanted to be prime minister. So he should get on and sort it. But he can’t, not yet, because procedures don’t allow it. Incredible.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Going Benalup: Unemployment and easy credit (22 November)

There is a town in the province of Cádiz in Andalusia that has the worst unemployment rate in Europe. It is called Benalup (or Benalup-Casas Viejas, to give it its full name). In an article by Giles Tremlett in “The Observer” on Sunday, the collapse of what, for a brief time, had become a boom town is chronicled, and the story of Benalup tells you mostly all you need to know about why Spain is in such a mess and is going to have one hell of a struggle getting out of it.

Benalup is by no means unique, even if it can lay claim to that unwanted unemployment crown. Spain is full of Benalups, and Mallorca shares its problems. To summarise Tremlett’s main points, the Benalup belly-up effect was founded on excessive credit and on a glut of construction jobs that paid well and took teenagers out of education.

It won’t sit well with the La Caixa bank, known also for its Obra Social good works programmes, that it gets fingered as having triggered a lending war among the banks that flooded into the town in search of mortgage customers, many of them young and having turned their backs on school in the knowledge that they could earn handsome wages in the construction industry.

Construction was the first and most obvious victim of economic crisis, and it took its labour force down with it. In Benalup, those who had left school at sixteen and who had embarked on a side career of avaricious material grab are just part of the almost 50% of Spain’s under-25s that are unemployed. This material grab has left Benalup, as Tremlett remarks, “plastered with ‘for sale’ signs”, those of La Caixa’s estate-agency arm, which has been forced to repossess.

Much of the construction was centred on the coastal area. The Benalup story, therefore, is a not unfamiliar one of the two heads of construction and tourism that is the economy of much of Spain, Mallorca included. But Benalup, some kilometres inland, doesn’t have the luxury of the fallback position of tourism. Without the construction on the coast, it doesn’t really have anything.

The dependence on construction and tourism in different parts of Spain is just one factor that has undermined Spain’s economy. Subject to the vagaries of economic cycles, both industries also contribute to a devaluing of the general skills base and of the education system. Easy money can be had, or could, and the state would provide some assistance in the winter for those less inclined to slog around a building site.

The education system is not that great anyway, and in Mallorca it is particularly poor. But through a combination of the system’s inadequacies, a lack of incentive to stay in education and the promise of riches from humping bricks about (now gone), general competitiveness is also undermined.

One solution to the unemployment in Benalup is a state­-funded training course, assuming you can get on it. Not that it necessarily opens up subsequent employment opportunities, as the course is for graphic design. In Mallorca, there are any number of young graphic designers. They are two a penny. Many are good, but where’s the work? Economies do not generate wealth or growth through graphic design. It is a pitiable non-­solution.

The Zapatero administration presided over the end-game of the great Spanish boom. It deserves to be criticised, but it is not alone. Successive governments have perpetuated an aspirational dream for a country that was in the economic dark ages only half a century ago. One mistake, aided by the banks, was to break with a traditional cash­-based society and replace it with one based on credit, and very easy and loose credit at that. The country’s richness, as evident from a lofty position in the IMF GDP league table, obscures a reality of over­dependence on certain industries and a lack of competitiveness.

There is fortunately some realism coming from the newly elected government, an acceptance that Spain isn’t that rich and that the mechanisms for granting the population the trappings of aspirational wealth were largely built on sand. Within a framework of this new realism, how, though, can Rajoy set about realising his election promises, such as that to reduce unemployment?

I’ll have a look at that in a further article. But for now, and notwithstanding the fact that the Spanish electorate does appear to “get it” where the country’s parlous position is concerned, I’ll leave you with a piece of history. In 1933, Benalup was the centre of an anarchist uprising and a police massacre. Thank God it’s not 1933.

The original “Observer” article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/20/spain-benalup-unemployment-euro-crisis

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Long Hello And Goodbye (15 November)

In the final week before the national election, no polls can be published; they might distort public opinion, or so the theory goes. Come the final 24 hours before the election, and everyone has to shut up and allow themselves a period of reflection before heading to the polls on Sunday to do the awful deed.

Putting a block on more polls is unnecessary; there hasn’t been a need for polls for months. PSOE’s long goodbye should go into the Guinness Book of Records for the most time it has been known that a political party would lose the next election. And badly.

Nothing has altered the path to the inevitable Partido Popular victory: not a Rubalcaba bounce when Zapatero confirmed that he knew the way the wind was blowing; not a surge of support from the right when PSOE carved up the constitution and committed the deficit requirement to law; not a wave of thanks to PSOE when ETA called it a day.

The eclipse of PSOE on Sunday will be the culmination of the process started by the credit crunch and Zapatero’s attempts to calm a nation’s fears. By saying there was no crisis, he was whistling in the dark; his delusion, a fiddling of inaction while capitalism burned. He responded too slowly, but he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. The game was up as soon as crisis raised its unlovely head. The story would have been the same had the PP been in government – and they know it.

Mariano Rajoy will be the next president of Spain, and president, by title and tradition going back to the nineteenth century, it is; calling him prime minister is in line with how titles normally work in a parliamentary monarchy. Rajoy’s ascendancy has been the long hello, so long in fact it is difficult to understand how he comes to still figure. Beaten by Zapatero in 2008, long dismissed as inadequate by many commentators and even members of his own party, one of them being the former PM José Maria Aznar, it is a mystery what he is doing about to take office.

Rajoy is becoming prime minister (president) by default. He has had to do nothing and say nothing. The prize has been his ever since the flames from Lehman and utterances regarding the previously unheard of subprime market first flickered across dealers’ screens. Prime minister by default and prime minister by superior force and direction. Just as the Balearics Bauzá is a puppet on a long string stretching from PP central office, so Rajoy dances to the tune of his own master. And if Rubalcaba is to be believed, that is Aznar; Aznar who has been contemptuous of his successor and now treats him as the dummy to his ventriloquism.

The electoral slogan for Rajoy is both simple and simplistic. “Súmate al cambio”. Join the change, more or less. When all else fails, and it normally does, politicians bring out the change word. It is the default slogan for a default prime minister; vote for me, I’m not the other lot. But what will Rajoy change? More pain and more austerity are not change; they are more pain and more austerity, and the electorate is heading to the polling stations to vote for masochism.

“Masoquismo” and “machismo”. Macho politics with which to confront the unions and employment conditions. Mariano as Margaret, tackling the enemy within. Change is necessary, but at what cost socially (and industrially), as Thatcher stubbornly ignored. The unions, though, have been but one part of the collusive complacency of Spain’s social capitalism model; they have been a loveably roguish pantomime villain to the Prince Charmings of successive governments of both blue and red who have flaunted the glass slippers of boom-time politics.

It was Zapatero’s misfortune to be the shoemaker who couldn’t repair the slipper. He can be accused of a lack of foresight, but foresight with hindsight is a wonderful thing; he danced to his own tune, as had previous Spanish leaders, one with an exciting boom-boom beat, but he ended up a busted flush and a boom-time rat.

Yet for all this, Zapatero helped to mould a Spain far more at ease with itself. The pain that Rajoy is about to inflict, and it is going to be painful, might just be acceptable, though by no means to all, but if he insists on a change that is a back to the future in terms of cultural, social and religious policies, he may not find the populace so willing to support him.

Come Sunday, the electorate of turkeys will vote for Christmas, and after Sunday, things will change. Just don’t expect them to be very pleasant.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Paradise Lost: Mallorca and economic pain

So the IMF has issued another warning about Spain’s economy. And called for reforms to the country’s labour laws, making it, among other things, easier to fire workers.

That it has taken so long.

The chickens are coming home to roost. In all manner of ways. The problems of the bankrupt Spanish economy are mirrored – several-fold – in Mallorca. Easy money of different sorts – that from grants, the banks and, oh, the tourists – has become very much more difficult. Complacency of this easy money has given way to a panic. It all used to just fall into people’s laps. Just like the Spanish Government, over years and in different political guises, sat back and trousered Europe’s benefaction and careered headlong into growth on the back of the always-likely-to-shift sand of credit, so the local tourism industry (in its different manifestations) sat back and trousered the contents of the tourist purse while barely having to lift a finger or a fat arse off a bar stool while puffing on a grand Havana and slurping on a fine brandy.

The IMF, and the government (though it will try and avoid the issue), know full well what is needed. One thing is employment law. Making it easier to sack freeloading employees is one aspect. They should, but of course won’t, slash the burden of social security payments. It is these, more than tax, that are a baulk where it comes to employment and to badly-needed entrepreneurship. They’ll probably do the reverse, and increase them, just like they’re increasing IVA (VAT). It’s the economics of the mad house, but the mad are desperate, and so is the government, though you might hope that the government is about to grow up and join the real world. Likewise, many businesses in Mallorca who are having to appreciate that the days of the playground are over and are having to join the real world.

So much of what passes for the local economy is untenable, and has been for years. It is what gives rise to the obscenity of the dole queues in November. If Mallorca were a business, one with a plan for six months’ trade (if it’s lucky), then any half-decent consultant, or anyone with an ounce of sense, would say that it’s not much of a business model. And it isn’t. That it has been allowed to persist for so long is all down to that complacency.

Let’s itemise some of the problems and responses: tourism down by 20% in April (admittedly the volcano didn’t help); unemployment at 20%; banks starting to come under strain because of their bad debts, despite the provision for these that the Bank of Spain imposes; town halls told they can’t have any credit; public works slashed. You could go on. The problems may not be unique to Mallorca and Spain, but they are exacerbated because of the fundamental flaws in the economy, especially the local one and because of that awful complacency.

Sad I am to say that I feel vindicated. I have said much of the foregoing for years on this blog. B.C. Before Crisis. I feel angry because it was all too easy to predict. The crisis just hastened the problems. The centre was never going to be able to hold when it was built on such shaky foundations.

I feel angry, but I want to relax. I have just heard The Fleet Foxes “Mykonos” on the radio. It has mellowed me. For a moment. And I remember Mykonos in 1973. When I wasn’t in the real world. I wish to hell I was back there, in Mykonos 1973, on Paradise beach. A place where Paradise actually existed, rather than being monikered thus by fatuous tourism authorities and companies and their parrots in brochures and everywhere else. The Paradise Island, what they insist on calling Mallorca, is crumbling into the sea.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Blind Faith

The Germans go big on Mallorca. Watch German TV and most evenings there will be something about the island, even if it’s just the weather forecast. And most evenings there will be an announcer referring to the “paradise island”. This comes from the same lexicon of blind faith that gives us all those “beautifuls” and “lovelys” to which I referred the other day. There’s nothing wrong with blind faith, except blindness. It’s another day for you and me in paradise. Paradise lost, paradise to be regained – some time. Sir, can you help me? Or help others. Those in unparadise. 

 

The economic crisis was always likely to cause some tensions. It’s just a question of how tense. The CCOO union puts an estimate on the number of workers unlikely to qualify for benefits this winter – 80,000, more than half of them from the hotel sector. That’s getting on for ten per cent of the population of the archipelago, to which can be added a similar percentage on the dole. The union is concerned that there will be a winter of discontent, or one of social conflicts, to use its words. 

 

The crisis has also made even more apparent the deep flaw in Mallorca’s economy, that of seasonality. Generally it works, just about, but when the season is shorter and workers do not have employment long enough to qualify for winter payments, the flaw, the fault line grows ever wider. As does the gap between the haves and have-nots. The gap becomes a gorge, a vast canyon. And there is no bottom to the canyon, no cement to fill this great gap of unemployment and societal disconnection, especially as the construction industry is right down in the hole as well.  

 

One can overstate the situation, and the union might well be guilty of exaggeration, but it may well also be right. You can also take into account the fact that citizens of the Balearics have slipped from a prosperity in the ’90s to one of being poorer than the Spanish average in terms of disposable income. This may be across the board, but that board is broad. One man’s lower spending power on luxury items is another one’s breadline. 

 

The truth is that many workers receive not a great deal more than subsistence wages even during the summer. At least the paradise delusion of hot days and nights can divert attention from impoverishment. And the safety net of the state has, until now, been there for the colder days and nights of winter. It won’t be for many this winter.

 

The deep flaw in the economy is mirrored by the deep flaw in island society: the extremes in terms of wealth or not. Few societies are immune from such a gulf, but the compactness of Mallorcan geography makes it more apparent, more inescapable, unless you retain that blindness of blind faith. 

 

The lateness – the 1960s – with which an industrial revolution arrived in Mallorca, at a time of a regime only starting to come to terms with true economics, provided little or no preparation for greater diversity. And that revolution was predicated on an industry far removed from the grit of manufacturing. The Mallorcan economy is something of an unreal economy. Rightly so perhaps. Paradise is a state of unreality. Unparadise, however, is the reality confronting many. And some of the wealth that was and has been accrued has an unreality as well. It was as if it was magicked, the consequence of being there, of luck, and of the benevolence of tour operators and visitors from the first days of mass tourism. 

 

One can overstate the situation, and I hope I am, and that the union is as well. But the ingredients for discontent exist, and I keep in mind the actions of those Sardinians, around the time that the crisis broke, who bombarded luxury yachts with wet sand in disgust at displays of ostentatious wealth. There might be more than wet sand this winter in Mallorca. Paradise, anyone?

Palmanova Bombing / Day By Day

And so ETA has brought its bombs to the tourist areas of Mallorca. It is not the first time that ETA has committed an outrage on the island; the bomb today in Palmanova coincided with the eighteenth anniversary of two car bombings in Palma. It is also fifty years since ETA was formed, a fact that was “celebrated” by the bomb in Burgos. 

 

Two Guardia Civil officers lost their lives in Palmanova; the bomb appears to have been placed under their Nissan Patrol vehicle. The incident occurred outside the offices that serve as post office, local police station and Guardia office – just like in Playa de Muro. The Guardia acted swifty; hotels were closed, residents told not to leave their homes, the airport and ports put on the highest levels of security, i.e. closed, and helicopter and coastal patrols put into full action. While the outrage was a direct attack on the forces of law – as was the case also in Burgos – it was also in a tourist area. That is not a normal modus operandi for ETA; or it had previously had not been. 

 

One supposes that this will all lead some to question whether it is safe to come on holiday. It might be understandable, but it would not make sense. There is no suggestion at all that tourists are targets; indeed the very notion is both extremely remote and extremely unlikely. ETA has a beef with the Spanish state, and the Guardia Civil is a personification of the state as well as being ETA’s “enemy”. The Guardia and the National Police are highly skilled anti-terrorist bodies. Alongside their British police counterparts, they rank as the most adept anti-terrorist forces in Europe; they, like the British security forces, have had a lot of practice.

 

 

Day by day

One of those what-are-we-supposed-to-make-of-these statistical moments, courtesy of the Balearics part of the “El Mundo” website. Tourism spend in the Balearics during June was down four per cent on last June; it equated to 993 euros per person. In the whole of Spain, the two most prominent tourism groups – the British and the Germans – spent on average 773 euros and 974 euros respectively; quite a difference. But as ever with these figures, the reaction is something of a so what. At least these figures do not inspire an incredulous reaction, as they were doing last summer when they seemed to be increasing. If those were genuine, then a 4% slump in the context of the current economic situation doesn’t sound too bad. The trouble with any of them, however, is making sense of what they mean, how they are compiled, what differences there may be between different resorts and so on. Recently, some friends staying in Puerto Alcúdia told me that a daily spend of 100 euros per person was about par for the course. Setting aside costs of accommodation and travel, which one assumes are never included in these spend calculations, 100 per day is probably about right if one spends fairly liberally. At a more basic level of subsistence for food and drink on a daily basis, assuming one meal out at an inexpensive restaurant and a fair amount of alcohol, I would offer you the following:

 

From a main supermarket: bread (freshly-baked) 50 cents, fruit and vegetables 1.50 euros, ham and cheese 1 euro, drinks (2 litres of water, 1 litre of cola, juice, 1 litre of beer, 1 bottle of wine) 10 euros, milk, cereals, margarine and eggs 1.50 euros. 

Meal out with a glass of wine and water – main course and sweet 15 euros, two coffees out 3 euros, four large beers out 12 euros. Total: 44.50 euros.  

 

There are many ways to skin the food and drink cat, but the above might not be unrepresentative. 

 

Elsewhere, i.e. “The Diario”, there is a feature that points to the “alarm” among some hoteliers as to the lack of spend within the hotels themselves. It does support much of what is being said, and makes one rather question the official spend figures. These hoteliers talk of guests buying from supermarkets and making up their lunch snacks in their rooms (and why, pray, shouldn’t they?) or of helping themselves to excessive amounts from the morning buffets for later consumption (hardly a new phenomenon, one would have said). Perhaps more scandalous are those tourists staying all-inclusive who get drinks and then go and sell them on the beach. Nothing like a bit of entrepreneurship, but it is decidedly naughty. Then there is what the tourists have actually spent on their accommodation, very low in some instances with rooms packed with four or five people. And it hacks some hoteliers off that some guests forget that they have paid very little and yet demand a level of quality way beyond that for which they have forked out. 

 

All this and August yet to come, a month of high season but one traditionally that results in a lower relative spend because of the generally higher costs of the original holiday. Overall, it doesn’t sound very clever, does it. And finally, from the Holiday Truths site, one contributor – all-inclusive – says that he spent, get this, 20 euros during his week’s stay. Twenty of your whole euros, everybody. Or 2.01% of that tourism spend figure. Go figure. 

 

 

Without contracts?

And here we go again … The Alternative in Pollensa is to press for the creation of a commission to study what he believes to be a state of chaos at the town hall. This stems, says “The Diario”, from the fact that some half a million euros worth of services provided to the town hall is not actually contracted, or so says Pepe Garcia, who is having this all checked out by his lawyer apparently. He argues that those firms without contracts have not submitted the correct documentation or bona fides; they include, for example, the company that maintains lighting in the port. The mayor naturally begs to differ, saying that there may be some instances of not all work being covered by contracts, but that all is overseen and supervised by council technical staff.

Nothing Lasts Forever

So, that article did not appear in “The Bulletin” – Michael Jackson got in the way it would seem – but it left some sufficiently hacked off because there was another piece about the Calvia bar association. Always Calvia, never Alcúdia – not my view, but what I hear. It is now meant to appear today. Ho hum.

This Calvia association. The desire is to get bar owners to become members and then act in some form of pressure capacity. I get a sinking feeling about it. The mover behind it is one of those who was involved in the ill-fated (Calvia-originated) British and Irish Business and Residents Association. It collapsed through lack of funding that was not forthcoming from the Mallorca Council; at least that’s my understanding. There was probably also an element of here’s an association, here’s some publicity and here is then massive indifference. Which is not to say that these things spring up without good intentions; but it is to say that people, for a variety of reasons, do not wish to get involved. Those reasons include the fact that they do not wish to be identified, that they don’t have the time and that they are just not interested. The only association that has ever truly established itself is ESRA (English Speaking Residents’ Association). It exists primarily for one reason – English speaking. There is no real agenda, which probably explains why it’s successful. People feel comfortable with an essentially benign group of fellow expats which courts neither controversy nor publicity. Plenty others feel uncomfortable if they are not straw-hatters, prefer not to wear black ties and attend dinner and dance functions or prefer not to play bowls; hence they do not join. ESRA goes about its admirable charity efforts and good works, its committees and gardening contests with all the gentility of an English shire country fête. Why, when I think of ESRA, can I never get out of my head the image of Matt Lucas and David Walliams as Judy and Maggie judging the marmalade?

It’s all a bit last days of the Raj, and to hear some of what is currently being said one might well form the impression that ESRA – and every other association as well as agency of government – is bearing witness to the last rites of things as they are known in Mallorca. I was given a right old ear-bashing by a (Mallorcan) restaurant owner in Playa de Muro the other day. “What do I do?” he kept asking. “What’s the solution?” he demanded of me. As if I know. Why not get all the owners together and put on some sort of protest, suggested I. It won’t happen. But there is some sense in associations, that do represent interests, coming together to voice their legitimate concerns as to the direction in which the tourism economy (the summer one) is heading – or more accurately, has gone. Recession is temporary, but the underlying decline has been there for some years, a combination of competition, reduced spend, over-supply and all-inclusives. The depressing fact is that complacency has prevented more or less everyone – government, local authorities and yes bar and restaurant owners – from recognising or at least admitting the trend. It has taken the “crisis” to finally wake everyone up. But having had some choice words for Muro town hall, this particular owner said, “so we protest and then the tourists all end up going to Turkey”. It’s an exaggeration, but it contains some truth in that there is a general impotence in the face of tour operator power and tourist choice.

Though there can be sympathy for bar and restaurant owners, it is also in limited supply for some, especially, I’m sorry to have to say, the Mallorcan families who have enjoyed the benefits of and reaped the rewards from tourism. The hardships tend more to be confined to newcomers, often foreign. Many of these families, some of them doing the moaning now, are sitting on significant wealth, or at least the potential to release wealth. Mallorca grew fat and made many Mallorcans wealthy thanks to various factors that dropped into the laps of these Mallorcans: first, perhaps the only sensible policy that the Franco regime had (to develop mass tourism); second, the tourist benevolence of tour operators, airlines and the tourists themselves; third, the benevolence of Europe in creating a modern economy for Spain and the island. Nothing lasts. That is the real point and the real problem. The tourist is spread far more thinly, he has more options. He, the tourist, and the tour operator can give and have given; they can also take away.

Sympathy there is, but there needs to also be a serious dose of realism. One detects a sense by which some of these owners believe that tourists continue to owe them; that they most certainly do not.

Turn Back Time

One of the nice things about this blog is that “blogotees” make contact and want to meet up. And so it was that I met Captain and Mrs. Haddock, Alan and Sheila, fishily named as it was they who told me about bringing the frozen haddock with them. I missed a trick, I should have had the camera in order to photo some of the old photos they showed me. Perhaps I’ll ask if they can scan one or two and send them.

There is a tremendous interest in the history of resorts, and yet these histories are ill-served. There is also a tremendous amount of archival material – photos, postcards, whatever – as well as anecdotes that, were they to be brought together, would create something of genuine value as a record of the past. The photos of the port of Alcúdia from the early ’80s show the emergence of what one knows today. From the Condes, then standing in some isolation, the view was unobstructed. There were no Carabelas, for instance. What is Alcúdiamar was there, but just as a sort of harbour pier and wall, with no buildings or road on it. The old Miramar hotel was also still there. It can be seen from the fishermen’s pier, as it can be seen from the same location in those very old black-and-white postcards of photos dating from the early part of the last century. A road sign declaring Artà 33 kilometres speaks of the road that ran along the front before the Paseo Marítimo and was truncated at what is now the Dakota to one side and El Yate to the other in order to form the paseo. The old Casablanca disco; the building that looked like a small Moorish temple but was itself a club; Tony’s bar by the Condes that remains to this day; Bar Bamboo from way back then.

The history. I really must do it.

The other side of the story
Amidst all the talk of the impact of all-inclusives and this season’s economic difficulties, how does one quite square all that with what was said to me by a bar owner in the port? Food and drink sales up, more than just reasonably; the place so full that people are stopping, seeing it is “rammed” and moving on. To what could this be attributed? I’m disinclined to say what the answer was or to say which bar. The Famous Five fall-out favours discretion in all things bar identification and even quoting what is said. Of course, there can be a tendency to say things are better than they really are, but I happen to believe that this is not the case with this unnamed example.

The port, the Magic halfway house and The Mile are different, but the port still has its all-inclusives, it is as affected by pound weakness and recession. Is it the case that, away from the port, the effects are more profound? One might be tempted to say that the port is different in one respect, in that it is somewhere that people go to, but The Mile is not the sole preserve of those staying there; it attracts people from further afield as well. Or perhaps it is as simple as there being certain bars and restaurants which perform better than others, whatever the circumstances.

The Bellevue fire
I hadn’t anticipated that there would be anything to add to what seemed a minor incident (4 June: Paris Is Calling). However … A comment came in from someone who was staying in Minerva 1. It makes alarming reading. He says that the smoke was so thick that he and his family (with two youngsters of two and five) were barely able to breathe. “An absolute nightmare” are his words.

I had been inclined to not repeat all that was said in this comment, and I have not. But then I looked at the various sites – Trip Advisor, Travel Republic. There you have the confirmation. The alarms did not sound. Go google these sites and the comments for yourselves. They make pretty awful reading. They also go to show that the internet cannot be underestimated. Different people have gone to different sites to express what happened. I can understand that maybe the alarms get let off as a prank, but this could have been far, far worse than it was. Had it been, the news would have been far, far worse, and far, far worse in terms of bad publicity. The hotel really needs to offer an explanation. It could have had to offer something far, far more …