English Speakers: Mayors and town halls (11 November)

“Mayor Talks To British Community”. This shock-horror headline hasn’t appeared, but should have. A mayor going along and talking to a bunch of Brits in a Brit-owned bar. Whatever next?

The mayor in question was Tommy Cifre. Two Tommy Cifres, there are only two Tommy Cifres present among Pollensa town hall’s cadre of councillors, but only one can be mayor, and it isn’t the one from the Mallorcan socialists. The mayor came, he spoke in a sort of English and conquered those who were concerned about the quality of the tap water.

It’s not, however, that you expect him to be perfect in English. Why should he be? Some Mallorcan politicians can apparently do English reasonably well. President Bauzá, or so it has been reported, impressed tour operators and others at a World Travel Market lunch with the “fluency” of his English. One who didn’t, it would seem, was the Mallorcan Joan Mesquida, who is only of course the national government’s tourism secretary and formerly the tourism minister. You can’t have someone able to communicate effectively with representatives from one of Spain’s principal tourism markets; that would just be pointless.

But it doesn’t matter because there are always interpreters and translators. Mesquida may be able to call on such services, but the town halls can’t necessarily. Take Alcúdia, for instance. A while back I received an email asking if I could put into serviceable English the Spanish description of the Roman town. Sure I could, and did, and sent it back with a note asking where I should send my invoice. Not that I seriously anticipated a positive response; and so I was therefore not disappointed to receive no response.

Though Alcúdia town hall now has a superbly scripted English explanation of Pollentia and the monographic museum, is it right that it should get one gratis and as a favour? Seemingly it is, and I hope all the British and English-speaking tourists are grateful. But is it also right that there appears not to be anyone actually employed or contracted (and paid accordingly) who can do English properly? And I do mean properly and not just in a somewhat better than putting a translation through Google fashion.

I don’t expect mayors to speak English. It was good of Cifre to give it a reasonable crack, therefore. In many Mallorcan municipalities, ability in English or another main foreign language would be almost completely unnecessary, but in towns such as Alcúdia and Pollensa – especially Pollensa – then I do expect some decent English; not by the mayor but through the systems of communication that exist. Ten per cent of Pollensa’s resident population is British; the town has an overwhelmingly British tourism market.

The counter-argument is, of course, that all these Brits should damn well learn the lingo, always assuming we know which lingo is being referred to; and in the now Partido Popular-dominated Pollensa town hall it is still stubbornly Catalan. But dream on; most will never learn the native sufficiently well and certainly not sufficiently well to engage in the political process.

A mayor coming to speak to the British community (and it must be said that it was more than just the Brits) is an aspect of this process. A question about tap water may sound trivial in the scheme of things, but in fact it isn’t; town halls do, after all, have legal responsibilities for sanitation.

But more than this, and this is where the whole argument about voting rights for expatriates tends to founder, is the fact that if communication is not understandable, then how can expatriates ever be expected to be anything like fully engaged in the process over and above a small minority that takes an interest regardless of the language? Ahead of the local elections in May, in which expatriates were entitled to vote, where were the communications in relevant languages? Perhaps there were in certain municipalities, but I was unaware of any.

Depending on municipality, Mallorca should display a multi-lingualism that reflects the realities of its population. English and German, probably French and Arabic; these might be considered the essential additional languages. Such reality is coming to be accepted; in Pollensa I know that local parties, and not just Cifre’s PP, are keen to engage with the English-speaking population. So they should.

It’s easy to dismiss expats as being uninterested in local politics. Many are, but many are not, especially at the local level. For a mayor as engaging as Tommy Cifre to come along and engage the Brits – in English – took some balls. He may have ballsed up his English, but so what? He made the effort.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Voting Rights?: Go to New Zealand

One of the dangers with “burning issues” for the expatriate community is that we end up repeating ourselves, myself included. If not winter flights and tourism or all-inclusives, then voting rights. In addition to repetition, we might also not get a wholly accurate or complete picture.

“Brussels thinks Spain’s stance on non-Spanish voters is undemocratic.” (“The Bulletin”, 15 October.) I’m not sure Brussels does think this. Brussels, or some bureaucrats or politicians lurking within its labyrinths may think, just possibly, that a new decree should be issued regarding voting rights for expatriates in national elections, but if they do, then they would have the whole of the EU in mind. The issue is not a Spanish one but a European one.

Just to remind you. Under terms of the Single Market, provision was made for expatriates (of whatever nationality within the EU) to be able to vote in European and local elections in the country in which they are resident. No provision was made for national elections. That was the agreement, and it still is.

The agreement doesn’t prevent countries from granting a vote in general elections, if they so wish. But only two EU countries – Ireland and Portugal – have come anywhere near to doing so. In Ireland, a proposal to permit voting for the Dáil and for the President has been around for three years, but it remains only a proposal.

There are anomalies with voting rights for foreign nationals, such as Irish citizens (and Commonwealth subjects) being permitted to vote in a British general election and, in parts of the UK, a Spanish or any other EU resident being able to vote for a devolved parliament or assembly, while a Brit in Spain cannot vote in a regional election.

Anomalies aside, the undemocratic aspect of voting rights in the EU lies not with the current restrictions on foreign residents but with disenfranchisement from any national election. The UK 15-year rule is not the only such rule. If you are Danish and have permanently lived outside of Denmark for two years, you lose your right to vote.

Such disenfranchisement, unbalanced by a right to vote in the country of residence (i.e. Spain, for our purposes), is undemocratic, or appears to be, as it goes against the principle of universal suffrage. But suffrage itself is wrapped up in concepts of citizenship and national sovereignty. Limited suffrage can be granted, as with the provisions of the Single Market, but in the most important manifestation of suffrage – that of voting for national parliaments – unless you are a citizen of a country, you cannot vote.

There are countries in which foreigners can vote in national elections. Permanent residents in New Zealand can. In Uruguay, there is a fifteen-year qualification rule. But these are very much the exception. The principle is, overwhelmingly, citizenship equals the right to vote for a national parliament; a national parliament is a supreme expression of sovereignty; and sovereignty is enshrined in national constitutions.

The limited rights to voting within the EU have required constitutional amendments. To extend rights to national elections would require further changes and thus a huge political debate. In Spain, any constitutional amendment does, strictly speaking, require a referendum. The EU might mandate voting rights for foreigners in national elections (though I would personally doubt that it would, certainly not in the current climate with the problems with the Euro), but this would still necessitate constitutional changes.

Just think about it for a moment. Would the British Government go along with such a directive from Europe? Well, would it? Apart from anything else, the right-wing press would be in uproar. The same in Spain. While British residents might press their claims to vote, has anyone asked the Spanish what they would think? Politically, it would be a step too far, and for the EU to mandate such a move would probably signal its own collapse. And were it to, then the whole burning issue of voting rights would cease to be an issue.

I have no disagreement with citizenship being paramount in determining who should be allowed to vote (and please, let’s not have any we’re all Europeans speciousness). Where a change might be made is with respect to the length of time one has been resident, as in Uruguay, but there should also be strings attached, as contemplated by the Irish, one being to pass a language test. After all, if you can’t command the language, how can you have true command of the issues, always assuming of course that you are interested? But that is a different matter entirely.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Feeling British (In Mallorca)

“The Guardian”, not the first newspaper you would associate with rampant nationalism, is running a series on what it means to be British and how British its readers feel. It is asking for videos to demonstrate one’s Britishness. Being “The Guardian”, you would probably not expect a Union flag waving behind a gathering of tattooed gentlemen (and ladies) tucking into plates of fish and chips while a Chas ‘n’ Dave CD plays in the background.

This Britishness thing raises its head periodically and leads absolutely nowhere. Gordon Brown, if one remembers rightly, once proposed that there was a British day. Whatever happened to that? Indeed, whatever happened to Gordon?

Mere mention of the former Prime Minister gives the game away when it comes to feelings of Britishness for those who no longer live in Britain. Feelings of Britishness among the expatriate community are an interesting area for study, and they can also be important in ways over and above simply how one feels.

Gordon Brown, or now David Cameron, would, for most expats, be more relevant than José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Most, you would assume, would know who Cameron was. How many, by comparison, would know that Zapatero was the Spanish Prime Minister?

Knowing that Cameron is Prime Minister isn’t a feeling of being British, but it is an example of identity with Britain, and feelings and identity equate to much the same thing. More than just identity, it is also an expression of where interest lies. I would hazard a guess that ninety-nine out of a hundred expats, were they interested at all (a moot point), would say that they knew more about and took greater interest in British politics than Spanish. Just as they would know more about and took greater interest in the Premier League and British soaps.

“The Guardian”, one supposes, as it is that sort of a newspaper, would be angling for Britishness feelings and assimilation among the world’s diaspora that has ended up in the UK. But what of Britishness that has gone offshore (to Mallorca) and its related topic, that of the big I – integration?

An enormous amount of garbage is spoken about integration, largely by those who labour under the misapprehension that they are integrated and insist on telling those unfortunates who aren’t that they are.

To be fair, the garbage stems from the fact that the term itself is illusory and almost impossible to define. It is also a state of being that is increasingly difficult to achieve. A point I have made on several occasions is that the ease of contemporary communications in different forms (allied to a sizeable British community) militates against integration far more forcibly than might once have been the case.

It is not sufficient, for example, to be able to speak the native. In itself, this proves nothing, other than an ability to speak a different language. Speaking Spanish (and/or, far less likely, Mallorquí) does not amount to integration. Language and culture go hand in hand and are indivisible, but only for those steeped in the culture, which generally means having been born into it. Integration is, therefore, a largely bogus concept, and as such raises the question as to why it is felt to be important.

Well, it can be important, if only in terms of perceptions by the locals. The more Mallorcan one appears to be, the easier things can become. Why? Simple. It means less discrimination, which officially may not exist but most certainly does.

Then there are feelings of Britishness among the second generation, those largely or wholly raised in Mallorca or Spain. And they are feelings which are, for the most part, absent. They ultimately manifest themselves, in practical ways, by a Spanish bar being preferred to a British one, by the reading of a Spanish newspaper and the watching of Spanish telly. Gradually and eventually this results in a lack of cohesion, a dis-integration of whatever the British community might have once been or thought that it was.

But it is also testimony to a British acceptance of integration. Unlike some other cultures, the British do not generally speaking assert their culture (probably because they can’t define it). This may sound peculiar if one considers Brit bars and other examples of Britishness in Mallorca, but it is the case. The second generation is allowed to slip easily into Spanishness. There is no cultural proscription which prevents this, and so the second generation loses its Britishness, despite being British. Does it matter? No. Just as integration for the first generation also doesn’t matter.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The World’s Greatest Newspaper Outrage

When Angus Deayton became the news, his position as presenter of “Have I Got News For You” became untenable. You can’t have a news comedy show in which one major item of news might be skirted around (it wasn’t of course) and in which that major item is squirming as the barbs come in from both sides.

Deayton was caught in a web spun by the “News Of The World”. Like Deayton, when a newspaper becomes news – bad news, really bad news – its position becomes questionable. Newspapers exist to report news, not to be the news. A truism you might think, except that it isn’t true.

Newspapers acquired long ago a sense of their own importance to such a degree that they have made and make their own front pages. But when this self-importance becomes so inflated that it causes a break with reality and becomes so arrogant that it strips away any vestige of moral code, then all respect is lost.

This self-importance witnessed its final, appallingly self-congratulatory act on Sunday. “The world’s greatest newspaper 1843-2011.” How dare it?

Journalists at the “News Of The World” can rightly feel indignant at the paper’s closure – those whose methods have not been underhand, that is – but they have reaped the failed harvest of a culture into which they bought. Taking the “News Of The World” shilling meant living by its moral code, or lack of one. Its fall from grace may have been the product of a small and secretive cadre associated with the paper, but this lack of grace had long existed within the paper’s consciousness and ethic of nastiness, bullying and arguably anti-democracy through abuse of power.

The Brit bars of Mallorca will now be deprived of a paper that, on Sundays and as breakfasts and roasts were consumed, became ever more grease-marked and ketchup-splattered. Many a Brit bar applies a principle of the LCD and provides for its customers the lowest common denominators of “The Sun” and the “News Of The World”. The bars may not have to wait long for a replacement. Rather than titles that have been suggested (and indeed registered two days before the announcement of the closure of the “News Of The World”), why not simply call a new rag “Sunday”. Murdoch has aspired to dominate in other spheres, so taking over the sabbath should pose no great difficulty and thus reinforce the arrogance and self-importance.

The LCD principle and its accompanying salaciousness play well among an expat and tourist audience, just as they play well with the inpat (I’ve invented another new word) back in the UK. This audience no longer has the “News Of The World” to feed its hunger for scandal and the shallow, but it will not cease to have an appetite.

William Rees-Mogg, the former editor of “The Times”, has referred to losing touch with the moral codes of the readership, defined – by him – as common sense, goodwill, help to neighbours and decent conduct in general. However, because the audience’s appetite will never be fully sated, is Rees-Mogg right? Be the audience expat or inpat, what actually is its moral code?

Amidst all the discussion about the goings-on at the “News Of The World”, it was the more sensationalist aspects of the paper’s desire for the sensational, the hacking of the phones of dead servicemen’s families and those of the parents of murdered children or the children themselves, which informed the expat (and inpat) audience debate as it thumbed through the last copy and sipped a cold San Miguel or a warm John Smiths.

The moral code of the audience isn’t offended; rather, it is stripped as bare as that of the perpetrators at the “News Of The World”. The audience laps it up and craves more; it requires being outraged by further news of the actions of a newspaper it relied upon to pander to its own outraged voyeurism.

The “News Of The World” could only have ever gone out in one way: the way it has chosen, through one grand act of self-destruction born out of the uncontrolled pursuit of the sensational, out of its disregard for morality and out of its self-importance and viciousness. The audience was not a participant in this final act, but it was a willing participant in all that went before. It feels let down. Not so much by the actions of the paper but by the disappearance of a source to feed its fix of the drug of being outraged.

Edwina Currie, who knows a thing or two about the salacious exposé, having manufactured one of her own, has placed blame for the paper’s downfall on the audience being voracious consumers of the questionable or the immoral. But then what comes first? The chicken of the public’s prurience or the egg poisoned with the salmonella of journalistic immorality? Both parties are culpable.

The “News Of The World” may have believed that whatever stories might have emerged from its hacking would have had the public on its side. Sadly, it was probably not wrong in believing this. It is the conspiracy between paper and public that is the real moral of this story and how low each will stoop in feeding and consuming the salacious.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Johnny Foreigners

It is fun reading what the British press has to say about expat life. Fun because it can be withering in its damnation. You need to have a thick skin if you live in Mallorca and to accept that you can be the object of satire, and at times vicious satire.

The other day, I mentioned Clarkson and his post office blag gag. There have been others, such as A. A. Gill and his character assassination of the by then ex-Keith Floyd and lampooning of Brits assembling for their all-day benders. The “Daily Mail” whipped up a storm two years ago when it addressed the shallowness of life in Mallorca’s Portals Nous, only for it to be accused, at best, of misinterpretation. But it served a purpose. And with any of this, there is some basis in truth, and the truth can hurt.

The British press takes a certain delight in attacking the collective Aunt Sally that is the Brit expat community and giving her a periodic knocking. Fair enough. I do the same. But there is a difference. One of being here or being there. Distance, you might think, lends a greater objectivity. Perhaps. But it can also generate ignorance or prejudice. Not everyone is, for example, a Portals airhead.

On a tangential note, it was “The Sun” what did it over the fallout from the bombs two summers ago. The paper ran a most extraordinary item in which it reckoned that the bombs could spell the end of tourism in Spain and Mallorca. What was doubly extraordinary was that it was written by the paper’s travel editor. The item wasn’t so much irresponsible as complete drivel.

I treat travel pages in newspapers with great suspicion. Unless the writer is blessed with genius, like Adrian Gill, and demands to be read regardless, I wonder what the agenda is. Generally, and unlike the expat have-a-go, the travel pages are positive towards Mallorca. But there is always the punchline, as in so-and-so travelled with such-or-such a company. And if the writer is not Adrian Gill but, say, Louise Redknapp, then you do really have to wonder, especially when Louise, the boy Jamie in tow, discovered (in “The Mail”) some “authentic” Mallorca. Where? Portals Nous.

All of which brings me to Christina Patterson. She’s a good writer and penned a recent article in “The Independent” that was, notwithstanding the odd dig at some lousy tapas, highly positive. It still came with the punchline caveat, but it didn’t matter. However, Ms. Patterson has some previous.

She once wrote an article about expats, the thrust of which was the old chestnut of integration (expats not speaking the language and all that) and of the expat treating Spain (and therefore also Mallorca) and Johnny Foreigner as though empire still existed and the pith helmet was de rigueur headwear.

I despair of the integration thing, not because it isn’t an interesting topic but because it is used as a term without any attempt being made to define it. Suffice it to say, if expats couldn’t care less about learning the lingo or prefer to spend their evenings watching “Corrie”, then quite frankly who am I, or indeed is anyone, including Ms. Patterson, to say they’re wrong.

But what was particularly galling about her invective was that she implied that people who had found their lives ruined because of what had turned out to be illegal housing pretty much had themselves to blame. She then mocked those who, on discovering they were in such a parlous situation, levelled accusations of corruption without appreciating that this is how things are in Spain.

Up to a point, she was right, but she should also know that plenty of Spaniards and Mallorcans complain about corruption and that they also stand to lose, or have lost, as a consequence of both corruption and illegal housing. Furthermore, another ingredient in the strife caused by buildings near the coasts is the old 1988 law, newly interpreted by the Costas’ authority. A demand from Mallorcan landowners (not expats) means that the Costas now have to explain themselves to the European Parliament.

There are plenty of expats who do bring upon themselves the ridicule of the stereotype, and it is great fun to indulge in such ridiculing, but sometimes their lot is no laughing matter, especially when there is an issue of natural justice at stake; one that affects expats and also plenty of Spaniards and Mallorcans.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Twin Towns

Leicester City Council does not have any specific plans to deal with a zombie invasion.

This item of news registered with me, partly because the council is clearly failing in its duty of care (the zombie attack is due any time now), and also because there is a misconception as to my own links with the city. It is one that arose from an explanation in the pages of “The Bulletin” as to how I was to spend last Christmas. I can confirm that I have only once been to Leicester. Quite some years ago, and the visit involved the moving from one pub to another along darkened streets that may or may not have been hiding zombies.

Nevertheless, I do have Leicester associations. These are primarily because of a further misconception – that I live in Alcúdia, when I don’t. Being branded with the Leicester association is understandable, given that Alcúdia’s expatriate English population comprises only people from Leicester. Or Hull. I have been to Hull only once as well, and how beautifully monochrome the Humber and the mud to both sides of it were.

There is yet another misconception. That Alcúdia is like Blackpool. When everyone should be aware that it is like Leicester or Hull.

Why is it that Mallorcan towns and resorts end up being repositories for expats from certain cities or even countries? If you can call Scotland a country. And I suppose you can; indeed, should. Take Puerto Pollensa. It feels as though it should be inhabited by the whole of Eastbourne, but instead it is awash with Jocks.

If you said to me that, rather than Alcúdia being like Blackpool, Puerto Pollensa is like Morecambe, then I’d initially think you were talking rubbish. However, unlike Leicester, I did for a time live in Morecambe. The Scottish fortnight was a phenomenon anticipated with both joy (for the pubs which made more money in two weeks than the whole of the rest of the year) and fear. Anyone with any sense would go into protect-and-survive mode, hide under a table and cover themselves with whitewash, as though they were zombies.

Puerto Pollensa’s Jockist tendency isn’t of course quite like the Morecambe invasion. It is far more genteel Jockism. All accountants and presbyterian ministers. Getting bladdered on a tank load of McEwan’s is not the form, even were McEwan’s available; rather, it is getting legless on gallonage G&T’s or a box of Blanc de Blancs from the nearest bodega.

Jeremy Clarkson once defined the British expatriate in terms of where he or she had gravitated to. Spain, for example, was the destination for any Brit who had done the blag at the Walthamstow post office. Personally, while I have some history with Walthamstow as well, I have not committed a post office blag either there or indeed anywhere. I rather suspect this is the case for many who reside in Mallorca. But not all.

It might uncharitably be thought that all post office ex- or current cons have pitched up in Magalluf, when, as anyone can tell you, its entire Brit population has been uprooted from Liverpool. So, unless they drove a considerable distance in order to do the Walthamstow blag, it’s a safe bet to assume they are not now in Magalluf. Rather, of course, they are the ones who enjoy the fruits of their deeds in the likes of Camp de Mar and Bendinat and who accompany their brown-wrinkly wives to Portals where their good ladies totter on non-sensible heels and topple over under the sheer weight of the bling.

The concentration of people from parts of England and the UK in Mallorcan towns made me wonder if there was some sort of twinning going on. Not so. In 2008, a list of UK towns that were twinned with places across the globe was published. There were 2,527 such twinning arrangements. Out of this lot, there are hundreds in France and Germany, but how many in Spain? Fifteen. And not one in Mallorca. Far from a twinning agreement having produced those from Leicester or Hull, there are instead towns in Bulgaria, Nicaragua and China that are full of people from Leicester and even one in Sierra Leone that’s packed with those from Hull.

There might be a serious conclusion to be drawn from this. Why is no place in Mallorca twinned with anywhere in the UK? Were it to be, and were the UK town of any size, then might this not be a useful little exercise in dragging some extra visitors over? Indeed, from what I can find there is no place in Mallorca that is twinned with anywhere, other than Petra with a town in Mexico and Palma with eight, including Düsseldorf and Naples.

But maybe this twinning reluctance can be explained by a fear. That of who or what might turn up. You can never tell where the next zombie invasion might come from or where it might occur.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Not Just A Single Issue: Local elections

(My apologies if the following is seemingly only directed at a Mallorcan audience.)

Will you be voting? If yes, it’s probably because you are interested and know what and for whom you will be voting. But you might also vote according to how it was and is in Britain. Traditionally Conservative, and you go PP; traditionally Labour, and you opt for PSOE. As for the other parties, well what are they about anyway?

Much has been made in the lead-up to the elections, except by the Spanish media of course, about issues as they affect the foreign community (and for our purposes, this means Brits) and the need for this community to vote as a way of registering an interest that would demand a vote in national elections.

I simply don’t get it. Yes, I understand full well the arguments about you pays your taxes, you should have your vote, and I understand the ruling (by Britain) which ultimately excludes British nationals in Mallorca from voting in British elections. But a national election is, and should be, for citizens of a specific country. It is an expression of nationhood and is for its citizens, not for others; the Single Market agreement in 1992 made it clear enough where the lines were drawn in respect of voting rights.

Then you have these so-called issues. The residence certificate, in other words. Again, I don’t get it. Yes, it’s an inconvenience, but there is more than a smattering of double standards about the demand for getting the card back. The brouhaha regarding the British ID card, whipped up not by the left but by the libertarian right, and especially David Davis, was perfectly legitimate in the objections raised. The British card did not have anything like overwhelming public support, so why should it be different here?

As an issue, for the local elections, it is a non-issue. For any party, i.e. the PP, to make it one by suggesting they will somehow bring pressure to bear for a change is cynical opportunism; the PP are playing to a British audience they suspect, rightly probably, will support them anyway.

On both these matters, national voting and the residence card, turn it around. Uppity Spaniards in Britain demanding the vote in a British national election and suggesting that they will vote locally for a party which might grant them the wish for an ID card. How would you react? The card issue, in the great scheme of things here in Mallorca, is an irrelevance. A single issue for a minority; the age-old tyranny of democracy.

Setting aside these matters, though, should you be interested enough to vote? That’s up to you. There are those who are interested, and I am one of them, but my interest is more in a role as an observer of the social phenomenon of Mallorca’s politics, of its more than occasional battiness, of the enduring strength of networks, tribalism and communities in influencing voter support. It is, if you like, the culture that interests, as much as if not more than the issues and whether so-or-so politician has been caught with his fingers in the till.

Will I vote? Probably. If, that is, I can be bothered to drive the ten kilometres and back to Muro town in order to do so. Who will I vote for? I really don’t know. In the town, I could vote for the current mayor and for maintaining Grupotel’s hold on the town hall, or maybe I’ll vote for Entesa, purely because they’ve hung a poster up on the lamppost outside.

It is what happens in Palma and in the Consulat de Mar, though, that will hold the greatest interest. The PP and José Bauzá should walk the regional election. If they don’t, something very odd will have happened; perhaps because the British had seen through their promises.

Bauzá may prove to be any good as president, but it is not the economy, employment, tourism, transport, health and all the rest that concern me about Bauzá; it is the social and cultural aspect. He has already proven himself capable of being divisive within his own party, and it is the wider divisions that he might cause which worry me.

Mallorcans aren’t a naturally radical people. They are conservative. There is a reassurance in this, in that it would prevail over what could be unleashed, namely a rejection of Bauzá’s anti-Catalanism in favour of a growth in radicalism and even extremism. But there again, it might not.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Zoo Time: El Clásico

It was El Clásico on Wednesday night. Again. You couldn’t avoid it or the boards that were chalked up outside bars. If there is one Spanish football match that tourists would know about and might want to watch, it is Real Madrid and Barcelona.

The regularity with which the two sides are meeting at present does not diminish the status of the match. Rangers and Celtic may play each other every other week and may also be able to command the attention of far more than just regular football-goers, but they do so because of absurdities far removed from a football pitch.

Barça and Real Madrid are also both an awful lot better than their Glasgow counterparts. They are, along with certain other clubs, such as Manchester United, a fashion item, and not just because of the wearing of a Messi or a Ronaldo shirt. They are football accessory, one to be worn on the chest like a famous brand name, a sporting superficiality for the marketing-manipulated, the johnnies-come-lately of soccer sophistication that brandish boastful awareness of major teams, or worse still, allegiance, as they would brandish a Gucci mark.

When did El Clásico become El Clásico? For the British, at any rate. It never used to be, but now it is, to the extent that Barça and Real merge into one. They are not separate teams, but a combined entity, and it is classic. They are distinguishable only by red and blue and white. Which isn’t of course true, but they may as well be.

The marketing of El Clásico has now informed the previously uninformed as to the historical significance of the match and of the two clubs. Barça has long claimed to be more than just a club, but so also is Real Madrid. They are more than just clubs, because the marketing says so.

The classicism of the contest, that which it has now unavoidably assumed, is in the tradition of football puffery, one that Real itself did much to elevate to the heights of hyperbole with its galácticos. Like El Clásico, the term seeped into and then burst out into the consciousness of the distant football fan or nouveau fan, thanks to the compliance of a media that, with the fashionista pretension of a foreign word here or there, granted the match and the two teams an exoticism for the brigades of Roy Keane’s prawn-sandwich eaters.

Barça v. Real Madrid has assumed a position of football tourism. Even for the tourist with only passing interest in the game, to be present at El Clásico, in a bar, and especially a Spanish bar, has become an attraction in its own right. It has become de rigueur. The match itself can be unimportant, a largely irrelevant blur of action on a large plasma screen with a commentary that is unintelligible. What is important is the being there. And the being able to say that you had been there.

It may happen that Spanish tourists to England have desires to seek out a pub and sample the atmosphere of a Premier League equivalent, but I somewhat doubt it. Certainly not to the extent that El Clásico would be sought out by a British visitor. But were that Spanish tourist to do so, one would also doubt that there might be quite the same propensity for patronisation, voyeurism, the visit to the zoo; watching the locals wrapped up in the match and smiling inanely and uncomprehendingly at a new best friend who has just exploded as the ball hits a post. “Oh, it was amazing, so passionate, so atmospheric.” El Clásico is the new quaint.

But of course, it is passionate. Despite the marketing, despite the pretensions, it does mean a great deal. And there is no Premier League equivalent. Not really. In Scotland, Rangers and Celtic might be, but what it and any major English match does not possess is a quality that makes it culturally correct to be a bar witness not just to the match but also to the natives as they shout, scream and hug each other. And this is the real point about El Clásico. The marketing has reinforced and emphasised its cultural importance. It is more than just a football match, and the clubs are both more than just clubs. The football match as culture.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Nostalgia Trip: The wedding

Sadly, I was not wrong. I had hoped that I might have been, but had known that this would be a forlorn hope. My solace is that I had been right.

Street parties there will be. Union flag bunting there will be. The inevitable charity event will coincide. The British at play, doing what the British do, which is to organise, so long as the organisation involves tea and cake, probably a tombola and the imploring of God to save the Queen and to wish the newly-weds a long life.

I am not anti-monarchist. I am royalist agnostic and royalist apathetic. The British royal family means little, except as the source of occasional amusement. The Queen, who has now assumed the role of the British nation’s favourite grandmother, one handed down in true hereditary fashion from the previous holder of the title, has always been there. Of the royals, she offers a certain comfort. I have never not known there to be The Queen. Like some old LP disc, you know she’s around somewhere, stashed in the loft, gathering dust, but she can always be dragged out in some act of nostalgia.

The Queen and the royals and I go back a long way. When I was small, we used to be ushered to the end of the school lane once a year so that we could wave our little flags as Her Majesty rode past in the royal Bentley en route to the passing-out parade at Sandhurst. Mothers would wear flowery summer frocks and hats, as though they were attending the village fête, rather than standing on a roadside for a few seconds of Liz in her limo.

Some years later, I found myself in the inner sanctums of royalty, the palaces of Kensington and Buckingham. On leaving school, I worked for Johnson Wax, which was by appointment and which had the gig for polishing the floors. Of the various royals who I encountered, only one – who wasn’t really a royal anyway – seemed to have a lot going for him. Snowdon. He was grounded enough to take the time to explain the workings of his glass-blowing that had created a phantasmagorical peacock that hung from one wall of his workshop and also to insist that the head-housekeeper gave the “men” Fremlins beer to drink, rather than tea.

But this was all a long time ago. It is nostalgic, like the royal family itself. And with time has come an indifference, one that is so profound that I have no particular feelings about the merits or not of having a royal family. They’re all generally harmless enough, and a proneness to wackiness makes them, on balance, an institution worth persevering with.

Except, of course, Kate and Wills aren’t wacky. Well, not yet anyway. They are unremarkable enough that I can’t even manage to form an impression of Kate in my mind. I don’t know what she looks like. It was never like this with Diana. As a couple, they are bland and distinctly middle of the road. They are royalty that has been focus-grouped; uncontroversial and uncontentious, the New Labour of a “Daily Mail” brand of monarchy.

I would feel the same wherever I was, but in Mallorca there is an additional feeling. It is a sense of unease at displays of overt Britishness or Englishness, of nationhood in a foreign land that comes no more assertively than through Rule Britannia or God Save The Queen and scattering her enemies and making them fall, confounding their politics and frustrating their knavish tricks. The wedding and the street parties are the nationalistic refinement of the British to the more common lack of refinement of the football shirt and “England till I die”.

There is a further sense of unease. That the street party is all an act of nostalgia, one of Brooke, the church clock at ten to three and there still being honey for tea. The meadows of Grantchester on the tarmac or terraces of Mallorca. Like a village fête transported hundreds of miles and transported through time with little union flags and mothers in flowery dresses.

But then, in years to come, some will look back and remember the street party for His Royal Baldness and the woman whose face I don’t know. They will remember a knees-up and standing to attention. How wonderful it all was. A little bit of Britain in Mallorca; and they will look back with nostalgia. And, you know, it might even be fond.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Vive La Différence: It’s all in the mind

“They come and expect a load of money. They work one day, and then the next, they can’t be bothered to get up. They’ve been out till late, at a club or somewhere. Drinking or, you know, other stuff. Tell me, how many make a success of their businesses? Only a few. It’s the mentality. That’s the problem.”

Fancy taking a guess as to who this is about and who said it?

Give up? Then I’ll tell you. It was a Mallorcan who said it, and he was talking about the British and specifically British business owners. The mentality is one, I have to presume, of idleness and a proneness to hedonism before graft.

I did argue the point, but it wasn’t really worth it. Once the mind is made up, it is made up. One, two, maybe three examples from the past that fit the argument, and the argument is won. That’s how it works. From small examples, whole generalisations are made. Mallorcans do it. The British do it. We all do it. I can turn the argument around, cite examples of exactly what he was complaining of in the British and apply them to Mallorcans. But what would be the point?

It was unfair. Yes, there probably are, in fact I know there are, cases that confirm his argument, but I know an awful lot of cases which don’t. Bar owners (and this was really all about bar owners) may not be making massive successes of things at present, but they are doing ok, working long hours, not going to clubs. Who can honestly say they are making massive successes of things just now? Mallorcans included, especially the ones who complain endlessly of the effects of the “crisis” and all-inclusives.

Why did this even come up? It was apropos of very little. Just going off on one. Or maybe it was indicative of something more deep-seated, more inclined not to usually be stated. And if it was, then it raises a question. What do the Mallorcans really think about the British? Not tourists so much as the British who live in Mallorca and especially those who make their livings in Mallorca.

From one example, I could make a case for saying that they don’t rate the British very highly. But this would be to fall into the generalisation trap. The answer to my own question is that I have no real idea.

I have been trying to figure it all out, though. Was this outburst somehow representative of a tendency that has been perceptible over the recent past of crisis? One of a closing of Mallorcan ranks, one that has not been entirely surprising as a reaction to difficult times? But even if it were, it still doesn’t explain the outburst. If a business owner, British or anyone, decides not to work hard and to not make a success of his or her business, then why should a Mallorcan care? Unless they’re expecting the rent to be paid perhaps.

Is it that there is a more fundamental division? While plenty of British people have “crossed over” through marriage or through business partnership, while there are plenty of British people who have been so long on the island that they even speak Mallorquín, are the British a breed apart? If the answer to this is yes (and it almost certainly is), then it raises, and hardly for the first time, the whole issue as to how well or not the British integrate.

Yet, integration is a largely illusory state of being, especially for more recent comers, assuming you can actually define integration adequately, and I defy anyone to do so, given a contemporary society in which communications, media and other factors conspire to maintain and reinforce cultural, linguistic and social differences rather than break them down.

Ghettoisation exists not just in a physical way through proximity. It exists through social contact and, as importantly, in the head. It’s for this reason, more than any other, that integration is such a specious concept. Barriers reside through a state of mind. My Mallorcan friend was right in one respect when he referred to mentality.

But of course, the reverse applies. The indigenous population is its own ghetto of supremacy, a state that was alluded to in Guy de Forestier’s definitive “Beloved Majorcans”, and one that exerts supremacy over mainlanders and the British and which has recaptured its resonance recently, following the years of encroaching cosmopolitanism. Mallorcans, obviously, have no need to go native, because they already are. And like any native population, they assume the birthright of primacy, just as the British do in their own land. And their own mental and social ghettoes are those of looking after their own. ‘Twas ever thus, wherever you care to think of.

Own land, foreigners in a foreign land. Is that what this was all about? Maybe. Vive la différence? Is there long life to difference anywhere? Probably not.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.