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.

An Obsolete Law: Hotel conversion

The new tourism law, widely being referred to as the “hotels’ law” because it is said to concentrate almost exclusively on hotels’ needs, might not be quite as accommodating as the hotels had hoped. They might, for example, not have been expecting to have pay for conversion of obsolete hotel stock over and above what they will pay for the work to be carried out. But the new law has a catch. Two in fact.

The catches apply to hotel buildings that would be converted into apartments for sale. One is that not all the building can be converted for this purpose; 10% would have to be set aside for other purposes, such as shops or restaurants. The other is that a 5% tax will have to be paid on the value of the building, money that would find its way into upgrading the tourist area in which it is located.

Designating a part of the building for other purposes is in line with what happens with the construction of apartment blocks. But it is a regulation that has not been without its critics. It reduces the return on investment on building or conversion and it simply adds to a stock of units that are hard enough to fill as it is. Paying a tax might seem reasonable enough, but whether it would really be allocated for local modernisation, who’s to say.

The obsolete stock that the law has in mind covers two types of current accommodation, one of them being rather vague as it applies to old hotels in “mature tourist areas”, the other being one and two-star/key hotels and apartments. As far as the latter are concerned, there are various possibilities, but they are all aimed at elimination. They can be converted to residential use, upgraded to a minimum of four-star rating or be closed down.

An issue with all of this is just how many hotels might be affected. A further issue is whether conversion to residential use is in fact viable, either because of the cost to the hotel or to a potential market which is in the doldrums as it is.

Hotels, you might think, aren’t short of a bob or two. Many aren’t, but, and as I reported on 12 July this year (“For Sale: Hotel, Needs Work”), there are plenty of hotels that owners would gladly see the back of, if they could sell them, and plenty of hotels for which the cost of conversion would be prohibitive. The solution would be to sell the hotels to developers, but in the current market climate, how likely would this be?

One doesn’t know the number of “obsolete” hotels, but were it to be a significant number and were they actually to be converted and not simply abandoned (thus creating eyesores), to what extent would the overall number of hotel places fall, and especially in the “mature tourist areas”?

There is an argument that a reduction in the number of places would be no bad thing. Indeed the government wants to avoid an “over offer” of hotels, even if a decline in the number of places would be potentially bad PR for governments which love to be able to declare statistics of ever-growing numbers of tourists.

Let’s suppose, however, that these hotels were to be converted. What do potential owners of apartments that these buildings would comprise want from their investment? Not all of them would want to live in them. The alternative is that they want to make a return, and that means renting them out. You can probably see where this is going.

Potentially releasing a whole load of privately-owned apartments in tourist areas smacks of the government not thinking things through. Buyers could rent them out – for residential use. But not for tourism use. Not as holiday lets, because they wouldn’t be legal. Or would they?

The other type of conversion that hotels will be permitted to undertake is to provide condos. But they, too, are subject to market demand. Owners would at least be able to make a return through the apartments being also part of a hotel’s offer; indeed they would think it essential, as they would personally be limited to only two months use a year.

There are, therefore, a number of unknowns lurking in the provisions of the new law. It is a bold law in that it sets out an agenda for modernisation, but in issuing a tourism law that is a law for the hotels, the government needs to be sure that its objectives can be met. The closer you look at the law, the more the questions arise.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

All In A Day’s Lack Of Work

On one day last week, three things happened which, while they may initially seem to be unrelated, aren’t. One was the closure of TV Mallorca, the second was an announcement by the government that financial support for various fairs would not be forthcoming, and the third was a protest by musicians.

TV Mallorca’s demise was inevitable. It was arguably unnecessary and superfluous given the existence of IB3, so the Partido Popular had targeted it for the chop, and chopped it has now been.

But TV Mallorca went beyond being just another broadcaster. It was a source of contracts, employment and encouragement for those in the audiovisual industry, one of the very few areas of activity in Mallorca that has had anything like some sort of growth recently.

At the same time as Microsoft and the local audiovisual industry are demonstrating that they can be innovative in coming up with solutions for other parts of the economy, i.e. tourism, it seems somewhat perverse to be undermining this very industry. The government will argue, of course, that it is the private sector, in the form of Microsoft or whoever, which should be the impulse behind innovation and growth, but it does also require governments to stimulate industry. Quite how Josep Aguiló, minister for both finance and business, squares the competing demands is unclear. Or rather, it is clear enough. Finance, or lack of it, wins.

The government’s spokesperson, Rafael Bosch, has hinted that the government has a cunning plan for investment in the audiovisual industry, so those at TV Mallorca who now find themselves on the dole plus the production companies that have lost business can presumably breathe a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, what this cunning plan is, is also unclear.

Within Aguiló’s wide remit is responsibility for fairs and congresses. The body which oversees these has made it clear that events have to be self-financing and that the government is not prepared to lose money on them. Among the fairs is the Palma Boat Show, scheduled to take place from 28 April to 6 May next year. The chances are that it won’t.

The viability of the boat show is open to further question, the government suggests, because the boat show in Barcelona hasn’t, in its words, “worked”. It’s taken a long time to figure this out, if it is the case. 50 years to be precise.

It may be legitimate to question the benefits of the boat show in direct economic terms, but in a wider sense, that of the kudos that comes from a show and its contribution to the reputation of Mallorca’s nautical industry and nautical tourism, one has to wonder whether the government’s attitude isn’t somewhat short-sighted.

Then there are the musicians. Eleven music associations and groups, some of them familiar names at fiesta times and on other occasions, have lobbied the Council of Mallorca over cuts to financial assistance. The Council’s now administration has said that the cuts are all the fault of the previous administration and that it will bring back the funding for traditional Mallorcan music performers in 2012 without, however, being specific. Given the parlous state of the Council’s finances, it is probably wise not to commit to anything.

With the musicians, it is a case not of jobs but of the contribution to local culture which, by extension, means or should mean tourism. It is rather more nebulous than the audiovisual and nautical industries, but an economic case for the musicians can just about be made. As part of the, if you like, “fiesta industry”, which faces even more cuts next year, there is a concern that an erosion of the fiestas may just have a negative impact on tourism.

There is financial support for the musicians from non-governmental sources, as there is finance and sponsorship available for fairs, plus the private sector to fund the audiovisual industry, but this funding isn’t infinite. Understandable it is that the government is seeking cuts where cuts can be made, but it runs a risk of abrogating responsibilities for industries it would wish to develop and for culture it should be supporting.

There again, maybe this is all just a case of realism finally taking hold, a recognition that money, for all sorts of things, was handed out almost willy-nilly without questions being asked as to whether it was wise or not and without any real control. Possibly so. But on one day last week, you had the impression of the seemingly diverse but ultimately interdependent industry and culture of Mallorca, which in turn feed into tourism, just grinding to a halt. Cuts yes, but you can only cut so deep before the bleeding becomes terminal.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Great (Tourism) Reform Act

The new tourism law is still only in draft form. On Monday it was put out for “public exhibition”. What this means in practice is that sectors of the tourism industry can scrutinise it in order to ensure that their interests are being catered for. In theory, anyone can suggest modification, but it will fall only to the loudest and strongest to be heard or to effect amendment. And guess who they are.

Pedro Iriondo, the president of the Mallorca Tourist Board (Fomento del Turismo), while generally applauding the draft law, has also offered some criticism. “Everything is focused on resolving problems of the hotel sector,” he has said. But why should he or anyone be surprised by this?

Iriondo has gone on to say that the law should cover the interests of other sectors of the tourism industry. When pressed on which sectors, however, he mentioned that of the travel agencies. What is Iriondo’s background? Travel agencies. Viajes Kontiki, to be precise.

In calling for other sectors’ interests to be considered (and what, pray, are the concerns of the travel agencies), Iriondo and the tourist board have a credibility problem. It’s true that it, via its “junta” members at any rate, represents different sectors (restaurants, transport, marinas and so on), but of those members, four are senior executives with leading hotel chains. The independence that the tourist board claims, and its values, to include “plurality”, go only so far.

There is no genuinely independent tourism body in Mallorca. Were there, then it might just be prepared to point out that tourism, in terms of its accommodation, is more than simply hotels. But the alleged discrimination shown towards the holiday-let sector would still prevail. No one will stick up for it, because no one dares to.

The outcry from owners of property denied the opportunity to rent it out will ring around the letters pages. Here’s my advice: don’t waste your breath. No one who matters is listening or will listen, unless they are from the tourism ministry inspectorate or the Hacienda, or both.

Of course, the holiday-let sector isn’t discriminated against to quite the extent that is suggested. The new law contemplates an extension of the commercialisation of properties on “rustic” land and of holiday homes which are detached or semi-detached. It is the private apartment which really bears the brunt of the discrimination and of an absence of procedure by which it can be “regularised”.

While the government’s taking up of arms and mounting of a crusade against illegal accommodation is the headliner to grab the attention of the indignant property owner, there are other aspects of the draft law that are worthy of attention as well, and not just the changes of use that the hotels are to be permitted to undertake.

The director of the Mallorca hoteliers federation, Inma Benito, has come out with an intriguing statement. It is one to do with all-inclusives. She has said that the current all-inclusive offer needs to be revised profoundly and a consensus arrived at. What she has also alluded to is the need for spend to reach out to the bars and restaurants in tourism areas. The tourism law says nothing about all-inclusives per se with one indirect exception: that the taking of food and drink outside a hotel will be prohibited.

One presumes this means no more “picnics” being taken out of hotels and a way of tackling the unedifying sight of tourists wandering along streets with plastic glasses of beer or heading off to beaches with plates of food. But how this prohibition will be policed is another matter.

Nevertheless, if the hotels are serious about revising all-inclusives and can work this into the bill, this might just be the best thing to come out of the new law.

I’m speculating, but what they may be referring to, and this would be in line with one of the new law’s main aims of effecting a general upgrading of hotel stock, is the fact that all-inclusive has to mean all-inclusive, i.e. the standard of service would result in many three-star hotels simply not being capable of meeting the standard. There could also be some suggestion that the hotels are contemplating the type of “mixed” all-inclusive whereby local bars and restaurants become a part of the all-inclusive offer. We’ll see, but it is encouraging that the hotels appear finally to recognise that there is an issue.

The new law won’t be to everyone’s liking, but its reform and the reforms it will enable (to misuse “reforms” in the Spanglish sense to apply to building) may just prove to be a part of the strategic plan that the tourism industry has long demanded.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Cruising To Destruction: Posidonia

Nice work if you can get it for electricity companies. They are lining up to get the gig to supply boats coming into port, for which you can read primarily cruise ships coming into Palma. It’s all part of a drive by the European Union to reduce emissions from ships, by which engines would be switched off and energy would be transmitted from land.

The environmental harm caused by cruise ships is something to which I have previously referred. With an increase in the number of ships comes the potential for greater damage, and, as cruising is increasing across the Mediterranean, the EU has moved to try and do something about it.

Cruising has been described as the “bad boy of travel”. A large liner is said to emit higher levels of carbon dioxide than a large, long-haul airplane, though it is commonly argued that ships (of all types) and planes emit the same levels in relative terms. There are, though, other pollutants from a ship’s fuel – sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide.

All forms of transport bring with them costs and benefits. In the case of cruising the environmental costs have been placed at seven times greater than the economic benefits, assuming one accepts that there really are economic benefits, and I have said before that Palma and Mallorca do not benefit as much as is made out.

The equation between environmental costs and economic benefits was one contained in a significant study, the Scarfe Report, into the impact of cruise ships on Victoria in British Columbia. The study, issued earlier this year, is a comprehensive examination of the effects of cruising on a specific community and economy. Scarfe identified, among other things, the costs to health and property values and the costs of marine discharges. The reference in the study to the seven times higher environmental costs wasn’t, however, one that related to Canadian experience; it was to a Mediterranean one, that of the port of Dubrovnik in Croatia.

Citing the Mediterranean has special significance, as shipping has a major effect on marine species that, apart from waters around southern Australia, are only found in the Med – posidonia.

The most evident sign of the existence of posidonia oceanica is in the form of the kiwi fruit-shaped balls that are washed up onto Mallorca’s beaches. The sea grass and underwater meadows it forms around the Balearics are prolific. Off Ibiza, what is reckoned to be the largest and oldest meadow anywhere was discovered in 2006.

The posidonia is important for all sorts of reasons, one of them being that it protects coastlines from erosion, another that it, ironically enough given ships’ emissions, helps to mitigate the effects of CO2. The importance attached to posidonia explains the number of studies that are conducted into its destruction, which, given that it takes long to grow, is, in some instances, close to irreversible.

Official attitudes towards posidonia are contradictory, to say the least. While there is a recognition of its vital role in the local ecology, certain projects, e.g. the extension of the port of Ibiza, have been given the green light despite the official report (in the case of Ibiza) acknowledging the fact that it would harm posidonia meadows. Greenpeace, in a submission to the European Commission in 2009, condemned port infrastructure projects around the Balearics and also condemned Spain for a failure to comply with European law.

Posidonia is affected by all sorts of things. Oil exploration off the Balearics is the latest to be added to the list of destructive influences. The electricity cable from the mainland is another. But shipping is one of the more destructive, and it is so in different ways, such as through anchoring and discharges. A report from 1999 in respect of posidonia around Port-Cros in southern France went so far as to recommend a moratorium on all anchoring for a minimum of five years to allow the sea grass to at least begin to recover from destruction.

The bay of Palma is full of posidonia, as is the bay of Alcúdia into which cruise ships might one day enter. The investment that has been poured into both Palma and Alcúdia has been that of chasing the cruise-ship shilling. But at what cost? Supplying electricity to ships is a recognition that there is a cost, one borne by the environment. There are others, and one might argue that the investment would have been better spent elsewhere. But, for now, electricity is to come to the rescue, and how will they provide for it?

You know, I’ve always thought that those posidonia kiwi-fruit balls might burn quite nicely.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

When Blossom Falls: Mallorca’s almonds

February. In parts of Mallorca there is a familiar and pretty sight. Almond trees in blossom. The tourism they attract may not rival, say, the tulip fields of the Netherlands, but it does attract some. But for how much longer?

In the past five years, the amount of land devoted to almond cultivation has shrunk dramatically. A loss of 33,000 hectares has left the island with less than half the area for almond-growing that it had in 2005; 25,000 hectares remain.

The decline can be attributed not to crisis but to a change in productive agricultural land use. Where once were almond trees are now olive groves. The decline can be attributed also to factors of competition, consumption, markets and to the Common Agricultural Policy.

Almonds are only one example of a shift in agricultural production. One of the more dramatic has been the move to rice and away from potatoes. Less prone to the capriciousness of nature, rice has altered the pattern of agriculture in the traditional potato-growing area in and around Sa Pobla. Yet, the rice is primarily for domestic consumption, whereas the potatoes of Sa Pobla have long had a significant export market.

Export, however, has been highly influential in driving greater olive production. Indeed, most of Mallorca’s olive oil goes overseas. Prized for its quality, it has found new and large markets; China, for instance. Almonds, though also highly valued by these new markets, don’t represent the same opportunity, and this is in no small part due to the competition and the market dominance that comes from California.

In the late 1970s, the US overtook Spain as the leading producer of almonds, or rather California did. Some 80% of the world’s supply of almonds now comes from California. In a manner similar to that of the Californian wine region of the Napa Valley and its inroads into French supremacy in the global wine market, so agricultural technology, way in advance of Spanish methods, secured a position of dominance for the Californian almond from which Spain and Mallorca have never really recovered.

International competition is not confined to American almonds. Imports of other types of nut have altered Mallorcan and Spanish consumption, eroding the demand for the mainstays of Mallorcan nut production, hazelnuts as well as almonds.

Though Spanish production of almonds in 2011/2012 is due to rise by around 11% on a five-year average, this increase is largely down to natural factors; the harvest will have benefited from generally benign conditions. But the vagaries of nature have, as with the potato, occasionally taken their toll. In 2009, Mallorca’s almond production was poor by comparison with other parts of Spain, the result of too much rain and wind inhibiting pollination during the flowering season. And the almond faces another natural threat, in Mallorca and elsewhere: that of worries about the honeybee.

But over and above these different factors, successive reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have probably been most influential.

CAP regulations have been both positive and negative. They brought about a general improvement in the quality of olive oil, but they also, thanks to subsidies and guaranteed minimum prices above world-market prices, brought about a boom in olive-tree plantation. Though the subsidy has changed since the 1980s, the growing of olives has continued to increase, and this despite the adoption of more environmentally sensitive policies in a 2005 reform.

The effects of this reform haven’t necessarily been that environmentally sensitive, notwithstanding CAP criteria that are meant to place environmental issues to the fore. Intensive olive plantations have taken over from what were more traditional crops and, in the process, have reduced biodiversity, and not just in Mallorca.

Allied to this has been a calculation in subsidy known as the coupled payment suppression and its impact on nuts. The outcome of this has been a 13% reduction on margins for Spanish nut farmers and pretty much Spanish nut farmers alone.

Agriculture is only a tiny part of Mallorca’s economy, just a bit over 1% of GDP, but it is being looked at anew for its potential growth. The appointment as environment and agriculture minister in the regional government of Gabriel Company, an independent from agriculture, highlights this renewed attention being given to agriculture. But which priorities are grabbing his attention?

While olive-oil production has clear economic advantages, the minister, in his combined role, will know that almonds, a faltering element in the agricultural mix, contribute also to the natural environment and landscape of Mallorca. And at the current rate of loss, by 2017 there will be no almond growing and no almond blossom.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Most Precious Time Of All

Have you seen the Thomson ad? You must have done. Watch “X Factor” and you can’t miss it, which will probably be why I have. Or had.

The Thomson ad is being given added prominence among the Spanish media for two reasons: one, that Tenerife reckons that it is benefiting from it specifically; two, because Thomson (i.e. TUI) is making as much play as it can out of the travails at Thomas Cook.

The ad is one of the most remarkable pieces of holiday promotion you could wish to see. Unashamedly and gut-wrenchingly sentimental, if it doesn’t move you, then you have no soul. It does everything an advert should do, with an emphasis on playing with the emotions.

Break the ad down and you appreciate just how effective it is. Take the language used. Key words and phrases such as “those close to you”, “share with them”, “cherish”, “the people who mean everything in the world to you”, “holidays are the most precious time of all” make you well up just by reading them; they are the art of a neurolinguistic programmer who has got right inside the heart, head and mind of the audience.

The words are those of a child, just to add greater poignancy to the whole thing, but they are spoken by a child for a hard-nosed reason: children are massively important when it comes to family purchasing decisions and especially where holidays are concerned. Advertisers know this and exploit the fact for all it’s worth.

Then there’s the music, a plaintive reworking of The Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind” with a distinct nod in the direction of Coldplay. It is recognisable without being known.

And finally, there is the imagery: Tenerife, because that’s where the ad was filmed. The island may not be mentioned, but Tenerife is doing all it can to cash in not just in summer but also this winter. Hard luck, Mallorca, the Canaries win again, both because they were the location and because they are open for winter business.

Behind the creativity of the advert, before it was even first worked up and story-boarded, was something much less slushy. BMB (Beattie McGuinness Bungay), the agency which created the ad, was set a “business problem”. From the agency’s website, I quote: “Consumers see little difference between any of the large holiday operators, resulting in low brand preference and attribution”. The “idea” to address this problem was to “remind consumers of the importance of spending quality time with your loved ones and how Thomson truly facilitate this”.

The campaign will end up costing Thomson five million pounds, which equates to over two million euros more than the Balearics have in total for tourism promotion in 2012. But were the tourism ministry to embark on television campaigns in the future, it could learn an awful lot from the Thomson ad.

Look at the business problem again. You can easily substitute “large holiday operators” with “leading holiday destinations”. From this, you can change the idea to “how Mallorca truly facilitates this”.

The advert is generic, not that it has prevented Tenerife from working it to its advantage, but there are important lessons. Firstly, the ad is believable, and this, unlike Mallorcan (Balearics) attempts, is partly because there are no celebrities, which has been a Mallorcan obsession for too long. Secondly, though the imagery of Tenerife is obviously integral, it is also incidental. Shots of landscape and what have you, another usual obsession, do not sell like emotion sells, especially when you want to grab a television audience by the throat.

I have been highly dismissive of adverts such as the Nadal one. They have been ineffective in all sorts of ways, which is why the small promotion spend for 2012 is a blessing in disguise, as it stops the same mistakes being made; mistakes that have centred on a belief that you sell through “place”, which translates as landscape scenes. Yes, you can, but not initially. You sell, most powerfully, through emotion, which is exactly what BMB have done for Thomson. They have taken the simple concept of the family holiday and the simple and familiar representation of the family on holiday and come up with something really rather wonderful.

I am not suggesting that Mallorca should imitate the Thomson ad, even if it had the money to do so, but if an appreciation can be made of the power of emotion then future promotion might just become more effective and might also go some way to demonstrating how Mallorca can truly facilitate the spending of quality time and can differentiate itself from other leading holiday destinations.

 

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Biggest Wave: Tourism and climate

Periodically the issue of climate change and its impact on Mallorca’s tourism raises its head. And when it does, it is usually accompanied by the sight of an entire industry and a host of politicians preferring to bury their own heads in the sand. They should be careful and not tarry long or they might be washed away by the rising seas.

Even if one is a disbeliever in the human element in climate change, a great deal of evidence has been cobbled together over the past few years that should make the tourism industry (and not just the tourism industry) stop and think for a moment. Unfortunately, there has been an absence of any sort of long-term thinking, and some of this thinking doesn’t even have to project that far into the future.

It is just conceivable – actually, more than just conceivable – that plans for tourism and indeed much else on Mallorca could be rendered irrelevant, if more extreme predictions of the consequences of climate change were to manifest themselves.

A problem, though, lies with a not unreasonable scepticism when questionable predictions are made. I’ll give you just one. In 2007, a Nobel Prize winner, Professor Martin Beniston, argued that south-west Europe (to include Mallorca) would experience average temperature rises of six degrees over the following six years. Well, it’s now 2011 and the prediction has some way to go yet.

Far less dramatic and far less speculative are what are said to be the actual increases in temperature. Playa de Palma, for example, has experienced an each-decade increase of 0.6 of a degree compared with a global 0.7 average each century. So says Professor Sergio Alonso from the Universitat de les Illes Balears. What time frame he refers to isn’t totally clear, but he considers human intervention to be the main cause of climate change since the eighteenth century and, in particular, since the middle of the last century.

The relatively far greater increase in Mallorca’s temperature may well be evidence of what is said about the island, which is that its location at just about 40 degrees latitude makes it particularly susceptible to the impact of climate change. Whether it is or not, Professor Alonso is one of those who is trying to address this impact on tourism, and today there is a conference in Palma which does just that.

One of the more obvious impacts is likely to be beneficial. Alonso isn’t the only one to have suggested that it could be positive in reducing seasonality. Warmer off-seasons would bring more off-season tourism. The same point was made by another Mallorca-based professor, Carlos Duarte of the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies, a couple of years ago.

However, there is the issue of just how hot it might get in summer. Current heatwaves which push the temperature up to a point where the heat becomes dangerous will begin to become the norm. It’s a question of when rather than if and also of whether this would deter summer tourism. It probably would to an extent, but if there were benefits for the off-season, the sooner the higher temperatures really kick in the better.

The negatives, though, are potentially far more profound. The loss of 20 metres of beach and a 20 centimetre increase in sea levels will cause a fundamental alteration of the coastlines, and they are on the cards by the middle of this century. It is the effect on the coastlines which, more than other aspects of climate change, threatens to undermine both current and future plans for resorts, but it is an effect which seems to be studiously ignored.

More damaging, though, is the potential for extreme natural events, tsunamis especially. Last year, the university issued a report warning of greater tsunami risk and a few days ago another report, by the Institute of Environmental Hydraulics in Cantabria, gave its own warning – that of a potentially devastating tsunami, one worsened in its effects by the lack of adequate alert and emergency systems in Spain as a whole.

In addition to the tsunami threat, there is also that of drought. A marked decline in rainfall, added to the greater heat, would place a burden on resources that Mallorca couldn’t cope with. Plans for the supply of water and for energy for ever more air-conditioning are just one element of where long-term thinking should be taking local industry and politicians. Are they thinking, though?

Get your heads out of the sand, fellas, because here comes a damn great wave.

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.

A Real Farce (28 November)

Put the words “real” and “farce” together and the potential references are all but endless. What’s today’s real farce? Iñaki Urdangarín perhaps. A real, as in royal(ish), Brian Rix character, and now presumably, thanks to the farcical goings-on at Palma town hall, referred to as the Duke of Palma de Mallorca, where he had been merely “of Palma” until a few days ago.

If not dukey, then what about Real Mallorca? So committed to farce, it’s the only thing the club’s any good at. They can’t even manage to find themselves caught up in a decent bit of old-fashioned fan hooliganism; only an accident.

Real and farce could apply to a host of things in Mallorca. Every day of every year. Not all, though, have real inscribed onto the farce. But there is one other which does. Just what on earth is going on at Son Real near Can Picafort? Or maybe we should call it Son Unreal.

If you have never been to Son Unreal, and the chances are that you haven’t, as I’m none too sure many people actually go there, you may be unaware of the fact that it is arguably the single most important historic site in Mallorca. It isn’t just any old bit of finca, and at getting on for 400 hectares you probably wouldn’t expect it to be.

Its provenance either is or almost prehistoric. And just part of this prehistory, the necropolis burial site, is under threat from nature, i.e. the sea, and from man, who tramples over it (those men who do in fact go there), because there is a lack of preservation and a lack of control.

The necropolis isn’t the only part of Son Real that is suffering. With the exception of the restoration of old houses and the creation of a visitors’ centre, the story of Son Real has been one of neglect for years.

The finca was acquired by the then government nine years ago. Prior to the acquisition and then for some time afterwards, Son Real was paid scant attention to. So little did it seem to register that there was a serious proposal to turn the finca into a golf course. Yes, really, a golf course. When common sense prevailed and the proposal was ditched, leaving Santa Margalida town hall making somewhat ambiguous statements, as it seemed to be in favour of the course, some attention was finally paid. And it cost three million euros.

This was the price tag put on the restoration and the visitors’ centre. A whole bunch of dignitaries turned up at the start of September 2008 to celebrate the spending of three million, partook of the tapas and wine and, like any freeloader who goes to a restaurant inauguration, promptly forgot about the place, along with everyone else.

Among those who forgot about it, or so the town hall reckons, are the local hotels, which do precious little or nothing to publicise Son Real. The town hall isn’t much impressed by the efforts of the tourism ministry either, though the ministry is finally putting the Foundation for Sustainable Development, which supposedly runs the place, out of its misery and scrapping it.

The town hall wants to knock heads together in making improvements to the maintenance, management and promotion of Son Real. It represents something of an about turn for an administration, admittedly of a different make-up, that not so long ago quite fancied the necropolis being turned into a series of bunkers.

Its enthusiasm in wanting to see something being done may not be completely without some other motivation. For sure, it would like there to be more tourists coming into Can Picafort in order to visit Son Real, but it has had its spats with the foundation and so may see the opportunity to join in with kicking it while it is down and on its way out, to say nothing of perhaps eyeing up a possible involvement in running the finca, despite the fact that it is meant to now come under the environment ministry.

Whatever the motivation, the town hall isn’t wrong to highlight the problems at Son Real, and these aren’t simply confined to deterioration to the historic remains; rubbish, broken signs, these are just other examples of the lack of care.

The real story of Son Real and its neglect, though, is one of questions arising as to quite how serious are the desires to preserve Mallorca’s heritage and to promote it to tourists. Tourism bodies bang on about heritage and culture, everyone bangs on about it, but at Son Real no one does much about it. Farce? Really, it is.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.