Radio Ga Ga: Mallorcan radio

Something that popped up in yesterday’s piece was the Muro councillor who has responsibility for radio and television. It came as news to me because I wasn’t aware that there was either a local radio or television station in Muro. As far as the television is concerned, there is so little reference to it that you wonder which television the councillor is responsible for: the town hall’s plasma screen perhaps? As for radio, there is a Muro radio station, though I would have qualified as one of the 25% of the local population who was unaware of it when a survey was conducted in 2005.

They don’t seem to have repeated the survey exercise. Maybe because the results six years ago were not exactly a ringing endorsement of the station’s existence. Based on interview research with 554 people, the survey discovered that a whopping 6% of the local population said that they listened to the station every day. 75% said that they never listened to it. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the research was the average length of time the small number of listeners actually spent listening. All of eight minutes per day.

Maybe its listening figures are a whole lot better now, or maybe they aren’t. If not, then what is the point of the station?

The station is, obviously enough, one means of local communication and can be a forum for issues specific to the community, but then how many burning topics does a small town like Muro generate? Another finding from the survey suggested that news wasn’t a priority for listening in. 50% said they tuned in to hear music. And you can hear music on any number of other radio stations.

Having different forms of local media is laudable enough, but can they be justified either in terms of listening figures or cost? Are they more a case of me-too media rather than meeting a genuine need?

Alcúdia also has a radio station. It celebrated its twentieth anniversary last week. Unlike Muro, Alcúdia Radio does have a strong presence. Alcúdia is almost three times the size of Muro, so you might hope that it would do, and it makes its presence felt. For example, each year during the Sant Pere fiestas there is an Alcúdia Radio procession. The station is on hand to broadcast from the fiestas and the autumn fair. It is certainly listened to, as you can often hear it on in shops and hear the ads.

Ah yes, the ads. There must be a small studio somewhere with a couple of voiceover artists who try their best to vary their voices over whatever cheesy muzak they dredge out of the archives. It must become extremely difficult to know how to sound enthusiastic when you’re spouting the same “especialista en carne” line for the thousandth time.

Though Alcúdia Radio has become a fixture, it was, in its early days, a thing of some controversy. It had been going only a short time when an issue of the old local magazine “Badia d’Alcúdia” reported: “The municipal radio is losing listeners and will lose more … it is not a municipal station but a partisan radio station which serves only a part of the population.” It was politically biased, in other words.

And it is political bias that has continued to dog local media. It isn’t unusual for the media to adopt a particular political stance, but the bias has manifested itself in a different way; radio and television have been controlled by different parties.

In 2006 Ràdio i Televisió de Mallorca, TV Mallorca as it is commonly known, was created by a Council of Mallorca driven by the Unió Mallorquina. It was a rival to the IB3 radio and television service, at that time “managed” by the Partido Popular. In addition to charges of political bias and interference, these two broadcasters have failed spectacularly to make money and have failed to create wide audiences. President Bauzá suggested before the elections that he would close down TV Mallorca and privatise IB3.

Where was the sense in having two broadcasters? Very little. Arguably, neither was necessary. Which brings you back to the likes of Muro, to its radio and elusive TV and to need. Public broadcasting isn’t solely about profitability, but if it doesn’t address a genuine need then there is no point to it. There are plenty of alternative broadcasters and alternative forms of communication. But without the radio and TV, what would a poor councillor do?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Our Man In … : Resorts’ delegates

Puerto Alcúdia has now got itself a delegate. Lucky old Puerto Alcúdia. The post-election re-organisation at Alcúdia town hall has deemed a delegate to be necessary, when previously it hadn’t been. Does the port need a delegate? Maybe it does, but it has done well enough up until now without one.

Having delegates for towns’ coastal resorts hasn’t exactly been a great success elsewhere. They have been viewed as being toothless or simply lackeys of the mayor. This was the case in Can Picafort, for example, while in Puerto Pollensa the ex-delegate was considered, not to put too fine a point on it, to be a joke. The lack of respect that Francisca Ramon commanded came to a head when she addressed demonstrators in June last year. The volley of abuse that came back made it clear that she was thought to be “stupid”.

The delegates for the resorts are at least a recognition by town halls that their resorts do have specific needs. Unfortunately, what has happened is that the very existence of delegates has raised expectations that they might actually do something, when they are hamstrung by having no real authority or responsibility. In Puerto Pollensa the call has long been made for responsibility and also for a separate budget.

The logic of such a call is that the resorts should become their own administrative units. Because of the specific needs, there would be some sense to this, but any sense soon evaporates when you consider the added bureaucracy, costs and potential for duplication.

Were the electoral system to be such that councillors were voted in on the basis of wards, then there would automatically be voices for different parts of a municipality, but this is not how it works. The creation of delegates for the main resorts reflects the absence of such a mechanism, but it is also discriminatory. In Alcúdia, for example, what about Barcarès, Alcanada and Bonaire? Don’t they count?

The lack of geographical representation exacerbates discontent, such as that in Santa Margalida. Son Serra de Marina lies some seven kilometres away from Can Picafort and even further away from the town. Residents have complained that the village has been all but abandoned, and there have been examples – inadequate police presence, the deplorable state of the sports centre – which don’t help to refute their complaints.

At a more general level, there is an issue as to what councillors are responsible for. Depending on its size of population, each town hall is obliged to take care of certain services. These obligations are not mirrored by what councillors are charged with.

Up to a point this is reasonable enough. The towns have a wider responsibility for general welfare than those stipulated by law. There is no legal requirement, for instance, to take responsibility for tourism, but it would be distinctly odd if they didn’t.

Responsibilities such as those for public works and maintenance are clear enough, but some are less so, while the way in which these other responsibilities are jumbled together to form an individual councillor’s portfolio leads you to wonder what process is ever used for arriving at what can seem contradictory.

In Muro, for instance, there is a councillor in charge of education and culture and the town’s music band. Another looks after environment, youth activities, radio and television (what television!?) and transport. Yet another oversees sport, the police and traffic, and relations with the church. Go through this little lot, and there isn’t always a pattern. Is radio and television not culture? Might sport be a youth activity?Would traffic and transport not have some common ground? Indeed, what is meant by transport anyway? School buses? Public transport is not a responsibility of small authorities such as Muro.

It is not as if the responsibilities mirror those higher up the political administration food chain. Regional government has combined agriculture with environment. In Muro agriculture is lumped in with tourism. In Alcudia there is still responsibility for language policy, the regional government having scrapped a specific directorate for it. But what is most evident from the Muro portfolios is what isn’t evident. Unless the mayor has taken on personal responsibility for just about everything the town is really meant to look after – services, building works, finance etc. – and has a particularly hard-working governing commission, then no one appears to be in charge.

You are left with an impression, therefore, that town halls find things for councillors to do. Some are important, some aren’t. But where they all fall down is in the fact that their chief generators of income and employment, the resorts, get, at best, a delegate and not a councillor with real clout.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Wondrous Stories: Muro’s church

One of the beauties of churches is that you don’t have to be religious to find them wondrous. Indeed, not being religious can be a benefit, as you will be more likely to keep your eyes open and your head up so that you can take in their magnificence, rather than closing your eyes and lowering your head in respect to or in hope of heavenly munificence.

Not all of Mallorca’s churches are magnificent. Some are modern, such as that in Puerto Alcúdia. It is truly hideous, something that wouldn’t look out of place on a council estate in Coventry. There aren’t the contemporary horrors of rebuilt cathedrals, such as Coventry’s, just some horrible looking constructions that you could easily fail to realise were churches. There are plenty of people who know Puerto Alcúdia who don’t know there is a church there.

Alcúdia town, on the other hand, has the great pile of Sant Jaume that dominates the landscape to the left as you drive towards Puerto Alcúdia. Sant Jaume is something of a fraud, however. It isn’t anything like as old as you imagine. The previous church all but collapsed in the nineteenth century; the current one is not quite 120 years old.

Nevertheless, the scale of Sant Jaume, most evident as you view it from a distance, is in keeping with the vastness of other older Gothic structures. One of the most imposing of parish churches is that of Muro town.

On the eve of the fiesta of Sant Joan (i.e. on 23 June), the Sant Joan Baptista church reached the grand old age of four hundred years. It took forty years to build, the previous church having been deemed too small for a village of some 1500 people. Nowadays Muro has a population of around 7000. Back in the sixteenth century the then bishop of Mallorca might have believed Muro was on the point of massive population growth. More likely he ordered the rebuilding on the grounds that if it was a church it had to be bloody enormous, regardless of how many people it might accommodate.

Sant Joan Baptista is far too big for purpose, and always was. But then the same can be said for most Catholic churches. They were absurd indulgences and are even more so for a contemporary society in which church attendance has dropped so alarmingly.

Nevertheless, we have the egotistical and boastful extravagance of Catholic church building to thank for the colossi that sit bang in the middle of Mallorca’s old towns. And Muro’s is one of the best examples, if only because it is so overwhelmingly obvious with a large empty square in front of it, emphasising its size and urban dominance.

It isn’t because I’m a “murer” that I find the church one of the island’s most appealing. And it isn’t a case of familiarity breeding a familiarity of favouritism. I venture into Muro town relatively infrequently; I am far more exposed to churches in Alcúdia and Pollensa for example. The appeal lies in the fact that it is so self-regardingly and obstinately there. Though Alcúdia’s Sant Jaume looms out of the landscape, close up it is less obtrusive, welded to the walls of the old town and tucked in front of a small plaza. Pollensa’s churches similarly blend in. They are brooding presences, most obviously the ominous parish church in the Plaça Major, but the threat they hold is diluted by surrounding townhouses and narrow lanes. Muro’s church in its isolationist preposterousness simply can’t be avoided.

Moreover, there is something different about it. Gothic in style, it has a feel of the Byzantine, heightened by the presence of palms at its entrance. Is it a trick of the light or is the stonework really rather redder than you would normally expect? This isn’t, or doesn’t appear to be, the golden sandstone of the south-east of the island, that which makes Santanyi such an attractive town and appear to be in a permanent state of mellow sunset as a consequence. The stonework complements the ruddy, red earth to be found around Muro.

It is the physical presence and architecture of the church plus what it represents historically and socially that make it as fascinating as it is. And other churches in Mallorca have their own idiosyncrasies and their own stories to tell.

I’m not sure that they do tours of churches. Probably because it sounds too boring, and it would be if it were just about the religion. But they should do tours as there is way more to a Mallorcan church than prayer. So long as you keep your eyes open and your head up, they are their own not-so-little worlds of times gone by and of being communities’ focal points. And they don’t come any more focal than in Muro.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

 

On Election Day – 2: The polling station

“Surname.” Out come the ID cards, or not as the case may be. The local policeman, organising the queues, confirms who is in the right or wrong line. “Fornes,” some chime. Fornes? I’m not voting for Fornes, yet I appear to be in his queue. It is of course a joke, or maybe it isn’t. F is part of the A-M line. The policeman, one of the local plod at loggerheads with the mayor, smiles at the joke. He’ll be tired of it later in the day no doubt. He’s extremely efficient, ushering with a gentle shove the oldsters who would tarry to enquire after someone’s hip operation as they are exiting the polling station.

I am in a quandary. Who actually do I vote for? I haven’t got my envelopes, so disappear behind a curtain as though I’m meant to undress and get into one of those hospital gowns that they’ve forgotten to make with a back. I go into default mode. PSOE. The habit of a lifetime. It won’t make a scrap of difference, but I do anyway.

A pink voting slip, a blue voting slip; will you vote for me one day? One day maybe. If there is iniquity in the voting system, it is that you don’t actually get the opportunity not to vote directly for Count Dracula of the PP. As for the Council of Mallorca, why would you anyway? It’s a pointless institution.

The Fornes gag is, though, revealing. Why are the locals voting? Yes, they’ll vote for the regional parliament, but it is the mayor that interests them more. This is really why they are here.

The two queues, A-M and N-Z (not many Z’s you’d imagine) are unevenly distributed. There is not so much a quiet mumbling and muttering as a general and loud chit-chat about the length of the A-M queue. Why the unevenness, I wonder? All heavily loaded in favour of Cifres, I conclude. The name-checking against the lists of the electorate must be a thankless task for the party faithful who have been assigned the task. The name is called out, and … It could be any one of hundreds. It’s a problem when everyone in Mallorca has the same name.

You begin to appreciate why there are all the various surnames. No one would have a clue who they were without them. And we go through the surname routine when it’s my turn. No, it’s one surname and two Christian names. One of the chaps moving the white, pink and blue sheets back and forth on the ballot boxes to permit the depositing of the envelopes seems to find this quite amusing. Not as amusing as I find the fact that Mallorcans and Spaniards have that many names they could individually be a football team.

Once the deed is done, I do some more wondering. It has taken around 45 minutes to get to the ballot box. It’s a pleasant, sunny day. There are other things one could be doing. I’ve voted, but what for? And I am meant to be one of those who is quite well-informed. I know well enough the issues as they affect Muro, but by the same token I don’t know them. And you feel like an outsider, which, in truth, is what you are, intruding on someone’s party to which they have reluctantly invited you.

The social gathering of the polling station, entire families swelling the numbers in the queues, the very ancient being wheeled in and being greeted from all quarters, the yap of impenetrable, rural Mallorquín with its sound of a mouth full of potatoes being consumed by a startled cat; these all add to a feeling of being distant, of not really knowing the issues. Because how can you when you are not a part of the networks, the families, the old ties?

There is very little reaching-out. Muro, like so many places in Mallorca, is a closed community. And the local elections reflect this. Fornes, for whom I’ve not voted, contradicts the traditional ruralism of the town. A modern man who did a modern job with a modern company, a representative of a town’s transformation, but one that remains somehow hidden because of the distance between the town itself and the resort of Playa de Muro. But he, for all his modernity, is still a son of this old world.

As I leave the polling station and turn the corner, there is Martí Fornes. He is dressed casually but smartly. His wife, or a woman I take to be his wife, is darkish blonde with some bling. She is rummaging in her handbag. Fornes has stopped to talk to someone. An old farmer-type character on a moped with a box of vegetables strapped to the back. In this one scene, you see everything you need to see.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

On Election Day

There is still something of the Sunday finery about the Mallorcan towns and villages. You notice it less in the resorts, but in the “pueblos” they put on best bib ‘n’ tucker on a Sunday. It’s snobbishness in truth.

There are lady wives of the old farmers or landowners who made good and got lucky by selling out to the tourism shilling or who found themselves, Forrest Gump-like when he was sent his share certificate for Apple Computer, part owners of some tourism empire, thanks to whatever force – family, friendship or something dark – was at work.

Now summer is nearly here, the Sunday firs have been put into mothballs and the dehumidifier will be raging twenty-four hours in their vicinity. The cashmere cardy assumes shoulder position instead, a few inches below a face that permanently betrays the presence of something that smells less than pleasant. It is the face of many an older Mallorcan woman whose man was once showered by all his Christmases in one go: a face contorted in contempt.

On election day, on a Sunday, the finery is finer than ever. The old, got-lucky farmers and even the not so lucky old men don that long-forgotten adornment – the hat. They head first to the polling station, then to church to pray for what they have just done and then argue about what they have done over a luncheon of pork and cabbage.

In Muro town, election day is Sunday and also market day. The unholy trinity of finery days and of making it nigh on impossible to find a parking space.

Of the elderly, especially the farmers, you wonder as to their allegiances. A great nephew may have become the black sheep of some obscure leftist tendency. They will probably assure the parents that their vote is secure, but opt instead for something more conservative. Some of these farmers were part of the old co-operative, the one of the Generalisimo’s era; they did alright by Franco.

The contrast is the “joven” clan, the youth element. Not so much the middle-of-the-road bank workers or hotel employees, but the dreadlocked, art and artisan, fervently Catalan-speaking, wish-they-could-have-been-part-of-the-protests brigade. Muro, like other pueblos, has this clan, graphic or web designers all, some who are teachers and others who are … well, they just are. There is little doubt where they stand. Or for whom they might vote.

At the polling station. The old Guardia building. Alerts have been put out that there will be heightened security. The police hang around, the local police that is. They are a strangely potent symbol of the town’s elections, having fallen out with the mayor and having threatened to denounce him. Their numbers are not great, but you suspect they will have voted for anyone other than Martí Fornes.

The more ancient “murers” tackle the process of voting as they do an encounter in a chemists. The explanation needs to be given several times, and there are still further questions, while the whole encounter is prolonged by dutiful enquiries as to the health and welfare of the polling station personnel’s family, extended family, extended family’s friends … .

Bars and restaurants become temporary HQs for the political parties. This is a phenomenon you can witness on other occasions. I did so during the cuttlefish fair in Puerto Alcúdia. One restaurant was the mayor’s, his supporters, his family’s and his extended family’s, his extended family’s friends and their friends – and relatives.

The mayor’s party, the Convergència Democràtica Murera, might be thought to be reeling from the announcement, two days before the election, that the order to protect birds had been officially adopted. It extends the area of protection from the Albufera nature park to parts of the Son Bosc finca. As such, it makes the golf course untenable for a party which might as easily be called the Golf Union of Grupotel.

But the local election is not solely about a golf course. It’s not really about anything much, other than the day itself. In the town, in the finery. Like all events in Mallorca, it is a social occasion. The result? Well, it does matter, but there are more important things to worry about, such as getting a table for the pork and cabbage.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Ordinary People: Muro

How many of you know the town of Muro? Not the Playa de Muro resort that is mistakenly believed by many to be part of Alcúdia, but the town itself, some ten kilometres inland.

In common with other old towns in Mallorca, Muro is distinctly old. Roman in origin, its name (the wall) dates back to this time. The Moors, strangely for them, didn’t re-name it, but instead monikered the vast wetlands to one side of the town as Al Buhayra – Albufera. The town church is one of the most impressive and forbidding of all the island’s religious colossi. It is the imposing focal point for a town centre to which relatively few tourists venture. One reason for this is that there is no bus route that connects town to resort. The lack of direct public transport is symptomatic of an affliction that Playa de Muro shares with some other resorts, that of distance from the centre of local power, the town hall, and of perceived and possibly even real neglect.

Like other towns on the island, Muro’s past was one of agriculture. Its ruralism is re-created in the fine museum in the town, and the role of its co-operative during the earlier years of Franco has been assiduously documented by the town’s archivist in creating an outstanding source of original, historical material. Current-day Muro retains its association with the land. Together with its neighbour, Sa Pobla, it is the centre of much of the island’s vegetable growing.

The growth of Playa de Muro and a process of economic diversification away from agriculture owes much to one hotel chain. Grupotel. The chain is identifiable with the town, and so it is also identifiable with the town hall. Grupotel’s president is a former mayor. The current mayor, Martí Fornes, is a former director.

The accusation that is made regarding the apparent neglect of the resort doesn’t quite square with this town hall representation, while the one big tourism issue for the resort, the building of the golf course on the Son Bosc finca, is one in which Grupotel is a significant player; in fact, the most significant. It is the major shareholder, along with other hotel groups, of the development company.

Inevitably, given the opposing camps and controversy that surrounds Son Bosc, the golf course was a matter up for discussion when the town’s mayoral candidates gathered in the municipal theatre for their public grilling on Wednesday. There were seven of them in all, including Fornes. His party is the Convergència Democrática Murera, essentially an offshoot of the Partido Popular, and one founded by … the president of Grupotel.

Fornes has not enjoyed the smoothest of rides since replacing Jaume Perelló, he who has been obliged to take a holiday on account of vote-rigging in the late 1990s. While Son Bosc has dominated the headlines, he has been confronted, in addition to a parlous financial position that has left town hall suppliers unpaid, with the threat of being denounced by the local police for alleged harassment, with consternation at the decision to acquire the town’s bullring at a cost of some 450,000 euros and with the threat to property on the coast under new demarcation plans emanating from the Costas authority.

The most public example of this threat to coastal property has been the case of the bizarre enclave of Ses Casetes des Capellans, an urbanisation of former church cottages that reach into forest land and which sit right on land that has clearly been influenced by the sea, a key determinant where the Costas are concerned for sending in the bulldozers.

For reasons of sheer oddness and uniqueness, Ses Casetes must be preserved. And there is another reason. The cottages, for the most part, belong to ordinary people of the town who use them as holiday and weekending homes. It is the clash between ordinariness and the long march of tourism development that goes to the heart of the Muro debate, both politically and socially. There was no clearer an expression of this than a banner that was unfurled during a protest against demolition. “A golf course is for the rich, Capellans is for the people.”

It is the obsessing over the golf course that has created the town’s divisions. Not because it’s widely unwanted, because it isn’t, but because of what is seen as being a wrong priority.

Whoever wins the election in Muro, and perhaps more importantly who wins the regional election, will determine the fate not just of the ordinary people and their “casetes” but also that – finally – of Son Bosc. And the outcome is unlikely to be one that sits easily with many of those ordinary people.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Making Peace With The Devil: Sant Antoni

The lights dim. The theatre is about to begin.

Trays of flames and pots of fire hanging from palm trees play shadows onto the brooding enormity of the church. Organ music, a phantom of the opera, a Hammer house of horrors, throbs menacingly. A disconnected voice, deep, sombre and threatening, a Vincent Price of Catalan, warns of “foc” and “dimonis” that await the “mureres”. Then a sybil-like lullaby from within an aura of bright white and silver seeks to calm fears before …

The fires crack into life, lit by spears of tridents. They explode, whizz and bang. Now it is the demons’ time. The fire time. The spooks and ghouls are roaming, racing, pressing their grotesque faces into those of the innocent, the witnesses to this ritual, this paganism. They brandish their tridents, whirl them like hammer throwers in this Hammer horror, spitting burning rain.

Primal screams and spirits, awakened from a permanent living death, collide in this maelstrom caused by the most basic element, this hell of fire. Their horrid masks that glare unseeingly into the awed expressions of the innocent are looking nevertheless. They seek the innocents and find them, spiriting them away into their purgatorial, incendiary orgy.

The beating of drums. Incessant. Rhythmic. Calling out to the living to pass over into the world of the satanic majesty of the profane acolytes of the devil, calling them to jump, writhe and be blessed with the showers of accursed droplets of flame. An innocent is grabbed, he is taken, then another. And then others, entranced by the pulsation and the offers of fiery temptation, come forward and leap and dance under firefalls.

The children have been taken! They have become one with the demons. But have they? Some taunt the devils, mocking their horns, stabbing towards them, making them dance ever more and chase with their burning prongs. We are witnesses to this, but suddenly we look elsewhere. For the church is aflame.

From its towers tumble hailstones of white flamelets. As Muro church falls, so falls Muro church in sheets of sheer pureness, a purging and exorcism of the devilry below. The drums cease, the demons are still. It is over.

This was Muro on the eve of Sant Antoni, an intimate spectacular of Mallorcan tradition at its most extreme, its most bestial and its finest. There is more than just a slight sense of the macabre about Sant Antoni, a feeling of “The Wicker Man”, of folkloric degeneracy. And Muro does it well, better perhaps than its neighbour Sa Pobla. The event is more confined, more focussed, but no less frightening.

Once the demons have gone, there is the folk music. And the “ballada popular” of all ages raising their arms and legs in the gentility of the ball de bot. Small children, older children, adults, young and old, all together, unashamedly moving in time to the chords of musicians, themselves of different generations, dancing in front of the church and town hall in a communal expression of tradition. These different generations, such as with the kids who dance with the demons. Can there be anything more magical, more imagination-inspiring than to jump around under the falling flames of the demons while the drummers beat? Can there be anything more determined than Sant Antoni to prolong local traditions?

The kids will want to be demons when they are older, they will want to be the musicians inspiring the ball de bot. It is perpetuation. Of tradition. You hope that it doesn’t stop. The permanent living death of the demons of Sant Antoni is a permanency that is never disrupted as part of tradition.

And perhaps in older age, these kids might become “glosadors”, such as the old woman with her frankly male-masturbatory style of penetrating her ximbomba instrument and issuing a most God-awful caterwaul as she relates some raunchy tale, incomprehensible to anyone but the most Mallorcan of aficionado. She is one of the side-shows of Sant Antoni, on one of the many squares that later give way to the less traditional – the rock, the indie, the hip-hop.

In this more contemporary vein, however, there is, at an event such as Muro’s Sant Antoni Eve, the local television. IB3. They spoke to me but presumably didn’t reckon on an interview that wasn’t going to be given in Catalan. But they did film us. We Brits. With our sobrassadas being toasted on the embers of one of the fires in front of the church. Later, we had a beer in a bar by the church square, and there it was – coverage of Muro’s Sant Antoni on the telly, replete with us, twelve, fourteen of us.

We didn’t really count though. And that is the sadness of Sant Antoni. The most astonishing of the fiestas, but it is one for the Mallorcans. No one else.

 

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Oh Well (Or Not): Bienestar Activo and Ironman

Three months are a long time in tourism promotion. 20 June – “All Being Well”. Now – all’s not so well. Strategies are meant to be long-term, but not if they don’t even get off the ground.

“Bienestar Activo” is – was – the brand name for a four-year strategic plan unveiled back in June. The plan was for the municipalities of Alcúdia, Muro and Santa Margalida, together with the local hotel associations and the tourism ministries at both central and local government levels, to promote various sporting activities in the resorts as a means of bolstering off-season tourism. The plan envisaged the spending of a tad under 4.5 million euros over the next four years. Annually, the central ministry would have provided 371,000 euros, a sum matched by the local ministry and also by the three town halls between them. The scheme has collapsed.

Soon after the plan was announced, I contacted the Alcúdia-Can Picafort hotel association, looking for an interview. There was an email exchange, Alcúdia’s tourism councillor was also contacted, a date provisionally established, and then nothing. At the time I found this slightly strange. As it turns out, maybe it wasn’t.

What I wanted to know was the exact nature of the plan, given that the activities – cycling, Nordic walking, hiking, canoeing – were already established. What was the 4.5 million meant to be spent on? I guess that I – we – will never find out. There are no funds to be forthcoming from the ministries.

There was some inkling as to how the money would have been doled out – in general. There were four, vague elements – organisation, specialisation of the destination (whatever that meant), improvement of competitiveness and marketing. But at the presentation which “launched” the project, amongst those attending – mayors, councillors and those as ever hoping for some benefit without actually putting their hands in their pockets, i.e. hoteliers and restaurant owners – there were no representatives of the ministries. The absence of government may tell a story. Had the ministries actually signed up to the whole thing? Or maybe they were going to, and then thought, as I had done, well, what is this all about? Those four aims seemed ill-defined; they may well also have been ill-conceived.

Of course, another explanation is more straightforward, namely government cuts, both nationally and local. Three months in tourism promotion isn’t a long time when it is already known that money is tight, so much so that the tourism ministries at regional and central levels have been merged with others as a way of saving money. Was this plan ever a goer or was it just some sort of PR stunt, and a poor one at that, given that it was unclear what it actually entailed?

The mayors, explaining the plan’s abandonment, say that they will look at it differently in the hope of bringing it back, which is probably a euphemism for saying that it will be quietly forgotten about. Maybe it should be. And maybe it would have been better had they never gone public, because this is a further embarrassment, certainly where Alcúdia is concerned, in terms of grandish tourism promotional schemes. The estación náutica concept has been quietly forgotten about, despite the fanfare that was blown when it surfaced a year and a half ago.

Fortunately for Alcúdia, something rather more concrete has emerged. Some good news with which to hopefully bury the less good news of the bienestar debacle. Thomas Cook and the regional tourism ministry have announced that an Ironman 70.3 triathlon is to be staged in Alcúdia on 14 May next year and also in 2012. Apart from some 2,500 anticipated competitors, the tour operator reckons the event will attract 20,000 visitors. I’m sceptical, but I’ll bow to the company’s knowledge. Nevertheless, the triathlon could well prove to be positive, and perhaps its potential does have something to do with the bienestar falling by the wayside. If you want to attract sports tourism, then better to go with a flagship-style event, rather than the vagueness of what was on offer. Relief for Alcúdia then, but what Muro and Santa Margalida make of it, who knows.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Legend Of The Stones: The de Abarca murder case

In the garden there are a number of stones, some of them quite big stones, more like small rocks. There are also a whole load of small stones, observable on the surface of what would normally be called a lawn were it not for it having been divested of the usual grass and having turned the colour of a German tourist. What all these stones have in common is that, for some time now, they have all remained unturned, something that leaves me baffled, as the Balearics delegate, an old friend of this blog Ramon Socias, has said that no stone is being left unturned in the search for crazed murderer Alejandro de Abarca. I say “crazed” because one is expected to use such a word, even if I have no evidence as to his mental state. I also say “murderer” though he has not only not been caught he also not been charged or convicted. But to say anything else wouldn’t have quite the same impact. Like saying that no stone is being left unturned.

My guess is that Sr. Socias didn’t use these precise words, but we are led to believe that he did. Maybe the phrase is in common usage among police forces across Europe and among politicians who must attempt to reassure a nervous public. But the assiduous or otherwise turning of stones appears to be unnecessary in setting the public’s mind at ease. Despite the fact that de Abarca may or may not be holed up in the vicinity, following the discovery of the burnt-out car in Muro with the body of Ana Niculai, his unfortunate victim – or rather, alleged victim – no one is taking much notice. Yet for all we know, he could be only a short distance away in Albufera, hiding under the nearest water buffalo. As he is nicknamed The Dwarf, this is not as far-fetched as it might sound.

Now just think about this for a moment. Killer on the loose. Massive manhunt. Sounds a bit familiar doesn’t it. What isn’t, to a British audience, is that there is a complete absence of hysteria. There is also an absence of British media, wandering along streets with sincere expressions saying that things like this don’t happen here and that this is a tight-knit community. Delegates may resort to clichés but they are the only ones who do. There is also likely to be an absence of any Facebook pages devoted to the “legend”, or “leyenda” if you prefer, of de Abarca. Tempting though it may be to apply a touch of expat snobbery in believing that the British have sole claim on complete stupidity, one finds it hard to think that there is lurking a Spaniard who would make Shannon Matthews’ mother appear to possess an intellect akin to Wittgenstein’s by comparison with the absurd woman behind the Raoul Moat Facebook (and if you’ve not seen/heard it, I implore you to go to You Tube for the interview with Talk Sport’s Ian Collins).

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Protect The Birds: End of the line for the golf course?

Have we come to the end of the Muro golf course saga? Almost certainly not, but the latest development is intended to put an end to it, once and for all. Or so it would seem.

The Balearic Government has approved the widening of a zone of special protection for birds, currently applied to the Albufera nature park, which will take in the Son Bosc finca where the golf development is planned. There is still a suggestion that this is not definitive, though it’s hard to see how it isn’t. From the reports, the word “inviable” stands out. Swap an “in” for an “un” and you have the English.

Ever since the change at governmental level which saw the environment ministry pass to the Mallorcan socialists, putting a stop to the golf course has been high on the agenda. A previous order seems not to have done the trick. Now comes the protection of birds one.

One can, with a degree of certainty, predict that those in favour of the course – the developers (i.e. Muro hoteliers) and the town hall – won’t take this lying down. It could well end up in the courts.

There is nothing in the least bit wrong with the extension of this protection, but the move smacks of finding anything behind which can be hidden what is surely the real impulse – that of politics. Why is this extension being sought now? The politics of, essentially, right versus left are so transparent as to be laughable. But if this is to be the end, then for God’s sake let it be the end. It won’t be.

Elsewhere in Muro, down on the playa, two vivid lime-green t-shirts loomed amongst the sunbathers the other day. They were being worn by two chaps who tramped across the sand up to where there are chalets by the beach, one of which has been abandoned for some years (a photo of which is on the HOT! Facebook page). One chap stayed in front of the abandoned building, just looking at it, while the other walked on a bit, looked at the other chalets, walked back, took his mobile from his pocket and gestured to his companion. They walked away. On the back of their t-shirts were the words “Demarcación de costas”.

What did it all mean? Maybe nothing, but the Costas have had their eye on Playa de Muro for a while and on buildings that may or may not have the right to be where they are.

Finally. Greatly removed, but the Moat thing has been given only little prominence by the Spanish media. Compare this with the coverage by the UK media. Rather extraordinary, rather like unfolding events during wars, listening – at a distance – to Five Live as the man on the riverside holds his gun and is surrounded by police. How extraordinary the analysis of when nothing much happens, the analysis of the situation and of the man himself. And how extraordinary that Gazza turned up. Which brings us back to the World Cup. Sunday will be mental. Like Gazza.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.