The Annual They Should Be So Lucky

The Calvia police conducted an operation against “vendedores ambulantes” a couple of nights ago. These vendedores are, of course, better known as “looky-looky” or “lucky-lucky” men. According to a report in “Ultima Hora”, the number of luckies heading for Magaluf of an evening has recently increased, as has the number of complaints. Cue plod.

The luckies are a part of the local scene, in whatever resort. Mostly they are harmless, but like anyone who does some street “selling” – and these can include legitimate PRs where they are permitted outside their own establishments and the scratch-card wretches – they can be a damn nuisance. Apart from the fact that they are selling shit (and sometimes they are selling a type of shit that comes in small wrapped packages), the biggest beef with them concerns the fact that they take away business from shops or others and pay not a cent of tax or social security. None are legal.

That the police in the different resorts often turn a blind eye to them has to do with the sheer numbers, lack of police resources and the fact that even if they get hauled in there isn’t much that can be done with them. The police in Magaluf let all of its 41 catch of luckies go, save for one who’d got stroppy. As was once pointed out by an Alcúdia policeman, take one lucky in and another will replace him. There is a production line that never seems to run out of resources.

By coincidence, “The Diario” had a report on different types of vendedores in Playa de Palma on Sunday. To the luckies can be added the beach vendors selling if not necessarily shit, then highly overpriced fruit or drinks. As one shopowner pointed out, they go to a shop, buy some cans and then go and flog them at four or five times the proper price. Another example of the tourist being ripped-off. Doubly if the shop was already charging over the odds.

The simple solution would lie with tourists not encouraging any of the street sellers by not buying their wares or not being hauled off for a hard-sell pitch for holidays they don’t want or need. The latter can be more difficult to shake off as there are more silver tongues, ones that speak the language well. The luckies can be fobbed off, and many do fob them off. But many do not. Kids are especially susceptible, and so therefore are their parents, because the kids often find the luckies funny and enjoy the game of bartering.

But should we really be so sanctimonious? Who has never bought some shit from a lucky or another seller? Who has never bought a dodgy CD or DVD? There are some, including bar-owners, who are good customers for the luckies and for those who don’t bother with luckies and sell direct their packaged, pirated DVDs by the hold-all load.

The luckies and their nuisance and illegal value are an annual theme. Every year’s the same. Despite the efforts of the police, and the Magaluf operation will probably prove to be isolated, and despite local laws that make it illegal to not only sell but also buy hooky gear (as is the case in Alcúdia), the luckies are not going away. Like the poor, they will always be with us. And there will be some who, strange to report, will be quite happy that they are.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Size Of A Cow: The early-season German tourist

Ah yes, spring. It seems so long. Warmth, that is. The snow and cold have been consigned to the dustbin of the wettest Mallorcan winter since the UK had one of its most severe winters – 1947. The birds are singing, all the other normal twaddle that gets waxed cliché-lyrically at this time of the year is twaddling, and the armies of the north are engaging in early-season Lebensraum. All of a sudden, great hordes have emerged, commandeering the space that is the local Eroski supermarket. These are not, or don’t appear to be, the cycling Saxons; they’re wearing normal clothes and when they walk they don’t make a noise like comedy horses with coconut shells. But they are noisy, gutturally so, and vast. At what point in recent history did the Germans transmogrify into human high-rises? (And the same might be asked of the Dutch of whom there are also any number.)

Concentrate an invasion force into a confined area, e.g. a supermarket, and one is all but overwhelmed not just by its unexpected appearance but also by its sheer size, or rather their size – individually. The Germans, and the Dutch, are bipedal skyscrapers. Even the pre-secondary school ones could pass as England fast bowlers – of the Finn and Harmison variety, as opposed to rotund shortasses like Gough. Hovering high above the typically diminutive Mallorcans, they hoover up a month’s shelf-life of sausage stock in a matter of minutes. Well they’d need to in order to fuel such giantism: the German economy runs not on engineering but on meat consumption. Which is all rather good news, so one would think, for the hard-pressed Mallorcan restaurant sector. Unhindered by the negative impact of a depressed currency rate, the Germans can seamlessly swap a ton of schnitzel in Stuttgart for the size of a cow in an Alcúdia or Muro eating-house.

Well you might think this would be the case, but there are those who would beg to differ. Tourists, or tourist nationalities to be more precise, are often defined according to how extravagantly or not they hand over hard cash in exchange for some marinaded and charcoal-grilled Porky or Ermentrude. For reasons that have long escaped me, the Germans are often viewed as bad spenders. It does, however, depend on what is being sold.

Which brings me to another tribe that has suddenly become quite evident. It would be falling into the stereotyping trap to assume that all the newly arrived Africans are “lookies” (aka “luckies”), but this might not be an unfair assumption. Like tour reps gather pre-season for what is comically referred to as “training” in venues such as Alcúdia’s auditorium, so the lookies convene for their own learning experience – motivational speeches, sales techniques demonstrated with the aid of some ancient John Cleese Video Arts training videos (pirated of course), and so on. Or maybe they are programmed with some bird-like homing instinct to simply flock in a week or so prior to Easter. But some training aid might not go amiss. Approach a German woman at a café table and wave in front of her a CD compilation from the Spanish “X-Factor” equivalent is only likely to result in reinforcing the notion that Germans are not big spenders. It should all be about target marketing. The lookies should invest – or rather not invest, as I’m sure you see what I mean – in some Roger Whittaker downloads and they would be euros-in with a German market that has an unfathomable penchant for the weird-bearded-one’s warbles. Possibly.

Ah yes, warbles. Warblers. Birds singing. Spring is here. And so are the first German tourists and illegal street-sellers of the phoney season. It’s starting again.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Illegal

Alcúdia town hall has started a campaign to raise awareness of the harmful effects of illegal street selling and to instruct as to the consequences of buying stuff from the looky-looky men (and for the most part it is they against whom this campaign is directed). 

 

It may be recalled that Alcúdia passed additional laws a year ago, designed to stamp out street selling. The campaign presumably serves as a reminder of the fines that can be levied not only on those doing the selling but also on bars where it might occur and on those who purchase the DVDs and all the rest. The campaign also suggests that those laws have not had the desired effect, and a wander around The Mile only goes to reinforce that view. Quite why it has taken till September to initiate a poster campaign, who knows. 

 

The ineffectiveness of the laws lies to a large part in the lack of policing and also in what the police can actually do. Take one looky off the streets and another one takes his place. There’s a looky factory somewhere, churning out guys and fake Gucci glasses. Fine a looky and look where it gets you. Keep on looking for the looky. So fine the bars instead; bars, many of them, which now want nothing to do with the trade. However, some certainly of the bigger bars would need to employ someone specifically to stop the lookies coming onto terraces. There seem at times that many of them that the bars cannot keep stop serving in order to deal with another illegal seller. So fine the purchasers instead. Yep, and cop a load of bad publicity when some hapless and unaware tourists fork out for a crap watch or some duff Lady Gaga. I’ve not actually seen any of the posters that form part of this campaign, but the reports say that it goes under the title – “Tots contra la venda il-legal”. Catalan. Maybe there should be more effort directed at tourists.

 

But whatever sort of campaign is instituted, a problem is that the punters don’t see this illegal trade as any big deal. For many it is a bit of fun (though there are also tourists who get hacked off with the harassment). For many it is a cheap way of buying CDs and the rest. There was a recent radio report regarding a campaign by trading standards somewhere in England. The reporter spoke to a few of the purchasers. Aware they may have been that the trade was illegal, but it didn’t bother them. The amounts being spent were not great – indeed they were low – and there was little concern that some of the products might be of inferior quality and that there was no comeback. What does it matter when what you’re spending is so low? Trading standards, and no doubt the Alcúdia authorities also, can point to the losses that are incurred by rights holders because of counterfeiting, but they are of minor consequence to most people – just consider also the level of illegal downloading. Even the money that can be made from the big piracy operations probably don’t bother people either. There was another report recently in England about police action that netted the producers of illegal DVDs whose “business” was said to be worth several million pounds. 

 

Fining purchasers might sound like a strong deterrent, but only if people are aware of such fines and are also unwilling to take the risk. It doesn’t deter. Some friends who visited Alcúdia earlier this summer were surprised to see what they took to be a bar owner going through a whole bunch of CDs and DVDs and sorting out what he wanted. As ever with illegal trades, and the lookies also deal in contraband of a more serious nature, it is attacking the sources of supply that can limit the trade. However, though successful interventions by the police have indeed been reported in Mallorca, the trade still carries on. It isn’t that difficult to replicate, or at least one imagines it isn’t. 

 

And then there is the illegal trade that does not rely on the wretched lookies. But let’s not go there.