Death Row: Empty units

What do you do with units that have been empty for ten years or so?

Playa de Muro has a number of such units (or “locales” to use the native). They are grouped together. A row of abandoned restaurants, shops and bars with forlorn for sale or for rent signs that have been in their windows for so long that they have pretty much acquired the status of being the units’ names, except that they are all the same and therefore indistinguishable from each other, which is appropriate as none of the units is in any way distinguished.

Who was it who ever gave permission for the type of architectural abominations that were allowed to spring up in the name of commerce? The more contemporary units in resorts such as Playa de Muro are without any character, any atmosphere and any redeeming feature. It is small wonder that they are empty and have, in some instances, been so since the turn of the century.

These are not units that have been solely ravaged by the arrival of the all-inclusive. Some have, but many closed before the all-inclusive really took hold. They have been empty because they are hideous, because there are too many of them and because no one in their right minds would pay the traspasos being asked, let alone the rents.

So unattractive is this line of abandonment that you can understand why tourists might prefer not to go a-strolling at night. Despite the valiant efforts of the Boulevard group which demolished some units and stuck up a glass-faced office building replete with tex-mex, tabacs and a fashion store and which thus gives the impression of at least some life (and light at night), the ugliness of the dark, dingy and long-vacated units deprives this part of the resort of any hint of charm.

It is easy perhaps to suggest that this death row of units is a portend of the ghost-town cliché set to be used for other resorts as a consequence of all-inclusives. It is certainly true that the closure of units is gathering pace elsewhere, but this is only partially explained by the loss of business. The story is often the same. It is one of rents being too high and of irrational landlords being unprepared to lower them. But it is also one of units that are, at best, functional and, at worst, simply unappealing.

The tourism ministry of Carlos Delgado has spoken about the redevelopment of older resorts. Taking the lead from the transformation of Playa de Palma, if it ever happens, this would involve an upgrading of the likes of Magalluf and Alcúdia. Meliá Hotels International’s announcement of its Magalluf megacomplex is perhaps the first stage in this. But the hotels are only one part of the story.

Playa de Muro is not as ancient as other resorts; part of it, yes, but not all of it. Indeed, the resort has been praised for the style in which its coastline was planned with what are modern hotels of a high standard, including three five-star hotels.

Because of the hotels, the resort would be unlikely to feature prominently on any list of resorts due for beautification. Were money no object, a solution would be to demolish the empty units and make green areas. But for different reasons, it wouldn’t happen, one of them being because they are someone’s assets.

And it’s when you come to learn whose assets they are that you begin to understand how such units can be allowed to be left empty for so long. They ultimately belong to a hotel. When I found this out, initially I was shocked. Why would they just leave them like they are?

It’s a good question. It doesn’t, you would think, help any hotel in any resort to have the appearance of abandonment, but should we be surprised? Hotels, in general and increasingly, seem to show scant regard for what goes on outside their grounds, as evidenced by the all-inclusive. Though this particular hotel isn’t all-inclusive, its publicity is almost as good as. What it packs inside its grounds allows it to say that everything is in one place “without leaving the hotel”.

One concludes, therefore, that there is a take it or leave it attitude towards the units. They are assets on a balance sheet that one day might be sold or made productive. It doesn’t really matter. And if there are no competitor restaurants or shops around the corner, then even better.

Take it or leave it. Yes, people have. They have left the units; they left them long ago. And now they are just left to rot.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Two-Way Information: Tourist offices which aren’t

When is a tourist office not a tourist office? When it’s not manned by people with any knowledge that might be useful for a tourist.

Last summer, two tents, boasting tourist information, suddenly appeared in different parts of Playa de Muro. How very sensible I thought. The resort occupies a stretch of three to four kilometres in length. At its outer limits, tourists are a fair old schlep away from the town hall’s municipal building which houses the tourist office.

But there was something not quite right about these tents. They were often unoccupied and there was very little by way of information. To help them out, I took some along to one of the tents, even provided a plastic box, purchased at eleven euros, so that stuff didn’t fly away in the breeze; the tents were more canopies than actual tents.

The box disappeared. I was unimpressed both by this and by the general absence of any personnel or information. It doesn’t reflect well on the town, I thought. But I had made an assumption, always a dangerous thing to do, that these tents were part of Muro town hall’s tourism information provision. They weren’t.

The tents were put up by the local hotel association. Their primary purpose was not the giving out of information but its gathering. The hotels were engaging in market research.

There was nothing at all wrong with this; indeed, it was extremely sensible. But a false impression was given. The girls at the tents were disarmingly pretty and charming, but they didn’t have a clue when it came to local information. Which was probably because they weren’t local.

This is not having a dig at the hotel association, as there should be more research performed of tourists once they are in situ, but if, as a tourist, you see something proclaiming to be for tourist information, then that is what you expect it to provide. It was a case not just of reflecting badly on Muro town hall (which had nothing to do with the tents) as also reflecting badly on the cadre of personnel at the front-line of tourist interaction, the staff at the regular tourist offices.

The tourist information offices rarely seem to get much of a mention in the grand tourism scheme, but, from my experiences with offices in the northern part of Mallorca, their staff are knowledgeable, helpful and patient. I take my hat off to them. They do a fantastic job, often under pressure. You try switching between different languages, confronted by a never-ending queue of tourists seeking out information; doing this, day in, day out for several months, rarely getting the chance to take a breather.

It would be understandable, therefore, if this staff were themselves none too impressed by the wannabe tourist offices and the potential for a reputation for helpfulness and knowledge to be undermined.

The wish on behalf of the hotels to undertake some market research was fair enough. Whether the little that seems to be done has much effect is hard to say. Puerto Pollensa has issued a questionnaire for some time now, yet here is a resort which constantly seems to get in the neck for one reason or another. You fancy the results are carefully filed in some dusty archive room and never again see the light of day.

Approaching tourists under the pretext that market research is being done can, however, not be all it seems. The wretched time-share touts of Alcúdia (who mercifully seem not to be around this season) once used this as a tactic; all part, they said, of promotion of the resort. It was utter rubbish of course.

But however market research is done and by whoever, the key to it all is knowing what it is you really find out and asking the right questions. The questionnaire in Puerto Pollensa had such gems as rating, from one to ten, the “price/quality ratio of installations in your accomodation (accommodation spelt incorrectly)”. How are you supposed to answer this, even if you know what it means? What is the point of asking about staff “professionality” (does such a word exist?) in “non-food shopping facilities”?

Tourism market research. Yes, it’s a good idea, but only if it’s done meaningfully and not behind the guise of something else.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Playground Of The Rich? Mallorca’s luxury tourism

The rich get richer and the tourism of the rich offers ever greater riches. Airtours, TUI’s luxury tourism division, will be increasing the number of wealthy German tourists that it brings to Mallorca by 25% this year. As with the luxury property market – Engel & Völkers having recently issued positive forecasts for its German sales in the 4 to 8 million bracket – so luxury tourism refuses to succumb to the savaging of economic crisis.

Mallorca, despite competition from the likes of Sardinia, continues to hold an appeal to wealthy tourists, Germans in particular. The island is also benefiting from an increase in the niche gay luxury tourism market. The company Mallorca Luxury Gay has added a further element to its offer to gay tourists, that of high-quality dental treatment, in a bid to increase its market on the island for a tourism group that typically spends more significant amounts than the “straight” market.

Positive though this may seem, the luxury market, assuming one can arrive at an exact definition as to what it means, remains small. In Spain as a whole, according to a report in 2008, the luxury tourist, said to spend some 450 euros a day, was catered for by five-star accommodation that amounted to a mere 6% of all hotels. The spend equated to just over 7% of total tourism outlay.

One of the difficulties with increasing this market lies with the costs of creating the right type of hotel and of maintaining it. The prices that can be charged, high though they may be, do not necessarily result in high returns. The profitability of the luxury hotel, compared with other destinations, such as the Caribbean, is weighed down because it is simply that much more expensive to run it. This is exactly the same equation that dogs hotels’ abilities to provide superior-quality all-inclusives such as those in Turkey where there are four individual categories of all-inclusive – from “classic” to “ultra class”.

It is this price-quality-return conundrum which puts into some perspective the desire of the Mallorcan hotel federation to upgrade hotel stock. The luxury market may have deep pockets, but the market itself isn’t so large that it can compensate for the investment needed to attract it. And there is a further issue, one that has to do with where these hotels are located.

To take an example, in Playa de Muro there are 33 hotels, three of which are five star and several more of which are excellent four star. An up-market image of hotels is not, despite a fine beach, matched by what else the resort has to offer, namely parts of it in a state of virtual abandonment and, with the greatest of respect, a lack of genuinely quality restaurants. Rather, you have an almost uniform offer of the standard “grill” and pizzeria.

The restaurants are caught in a dilemma. They may wish to invest, may wish to change their cuisine, but to what end? They have come to realise full well that the image of all-inclusive being exclusively for the economy-class tourist is something of a myth. It only partially applies in Playa de Muro, and in a wider context it is applying less and less; demand for all-inclusive within the higher, 4-star end of the market has increased and is likely to go on increasing if what exists outside hotels is unable to match this market’s more sophisticated tastes, assuming that the hotels can actually deliver the required service. But do the restaurants adapt to try and capture this market when they fear that such effort will be undermined by the all-inclusive offer?

What is on offer in restaurants is, though, an important ingredient when it comes to the luxury market. All the attention that is paid to some of the “alternative” tourism offers, notably gastronomy and golf, is understandable if this market is to grow significantly. Both these are cited as important aspects of attracting the luxury market. In Playa de Muro, the obstacles to the building of the golf course on the Son Bosc finca are seen as detrimental to the expansion of the market.

Crucially, however, the question is whether this luxury market will grow significantly and whether the investment to make it grow will be matched by results. There is, and has long been, an element of wishful thinking, some of which is now being turned towards the nouveau riche of Russia and eastern Europe. Nevertheless, if TUI is increasing the number of its minted Germans, then there is cause for some gentle optimism.

The issue will be whether Mallorca has the quality of hotel and, as importantly, quality of resort to make anything like a quantum leap. And, as has been seen with Playa de Palma, the hoteliers, pressing for upgrades and the removal of bureaucratic hoops that would facilitate them, contradict themselves by insisting (not unreasonably) that the bread and butter remains the 3-star mass tourist.

And there is lurking perhaps an additional issue, a social one. Mention of Sardinia as a competitor to Mallorca in the luxury market is a reminder of what surfaced there back in 2008. Wealthy and celebrity tourists being greeted with barrages of wet sand and cries of “louts, go home” as their motorised dinghies came ashore.

Wealth is very welcome, but in times of deprivation, more of it, ostentatiously on show, does not guarantee a welcome.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Fade Away

How long ago was it? Forty years. More maybe. No one ever seems to be able to say for certain. It’s their age catching up with them. Memory playing tricks, disappearing or revolving in circles of confusion. Let’s say it was around 1970, shall we. Exactitude isn’t necessary.

Back then, towards the far end of Playa de Muro, an area sometimes misleadingly referred to as Alcúdia Pins which is further on, was all but uninhabited. What lay by the sea was sand, dunes’ scrub, reeds and grass from Albufera. Not far away a hotel was being put up. It was to be the Esperanza. The story goes that the hotel was named after the daughter of the man whose family owned much of the land that stretched from what became Alcúdia’s Bellevue and Mile area down to the forest that separates current-day Playa de Muro from Can Picafort.

There were plenty of stones and bricks that went into the building of the hotel. So many that there were a lot spare. They went much of the way to the building of two houses, one a bungalow, the other a grander affair on two levels. There was an absence of utilities and no road as such. A machete was a useful tool to hack away at the scrub and grass.

The two houses took shape and became the first of an urbanization. The bungalow had to be all but re-built some years later; there were no proper foundations. The house was that much more solid. It was, still is just about, the seaside home of a couple from the hinterland. Not rich people. Straightforward, regular Mallorcans, but they were not stand-offish. They might once have been where foreigners were concerned, but they have known many over all these years and have become friends, such as with the German woman who owned the bungalow but who died a couple of years ago.

I hadn’t seen the old man for quite some time. In summer it was usual for him to be there, tending the garden. His wife, rather shaky, pottered around inside or stood on the roof terrace and shouted at neighbours, as was her preferred form of communication. It was never unfriendly, just that, in a far from untypical Mallorcan manner, volume outweighed content. The conversation, such as it was, tended to revolve around the not infrequent “desastres” involving “clientes”, those who rented two flats in the house.

I saw the old man the other day. It was a bit of a shock. He has gone downhill quite suddenly. I asked him how he was, but didn’t tarry long. I didn’t want to embarrass him. I could see how he was, and the words of another German neighbour, one who has had a chalet there for almost as long as the original two, came into my mind. “He was crying. He said that he knew that he was dying.”

There had been tears when the German woman had passed away. The old lady, the wife of the old man, had taken my arm as we had gone to spread the word. Standing in the road, heads shaking, kind words being spoken. She, the old lady, was grateful for the gifts, such as the geranium pots. They would remind her of her long-time German friend.

The old man said that his wife was well, but I know she isn’t. She doesn’t come to the house now. She doesn’t go with her husband for their little trip to the sea. They would do this on most occasions when they came to the house in winter. He would drive to the beach’s edge and might forage for some bits of wood. She would hobble to the wooden sand-break, stare at the sea and then shout a bit.

And afterwards they would go to the house where there were no winter clients to be “un desastre”, just the overwhelmingly musty smell and the icebox interior before the fire started to crackle and the rooms would fill with the sweet essence of woodsmoke. Incongruous amidst the antique and dark furniture that cluttered up their flat was a flat-screen telly chirping in generally incomprehensible Mallorquín.

The old man had come with a nephew, a cheery fellow who once chatted with me in the street and explained his prostate problem and, more alarmingly, his erectile dysfunction. I didn’t exactly know him that well. So much for stand-offishness. You wonder, at times, why the Mallorcans have this reputation. The old man and he, even the summer before last, used to go together for their Sunday morning swim in the sea. The nephew was his usual happy self, unlike the old man who lowered himself uneasily into the passenger seat of the car he used to drive.

He’s fading away, as is his wife. The German neighbour has already faded away. And their fading will end a chapter of Playa de Muro’s history. Because they are its history in this particular part of the resort. They were the first, the pioneers if you like, they who tamed the wild east of Alcúdia all those years ago. It seems almost appropriate. The resort is not dying of course, but has it, like other parts of Mallorca that developed from little or nothing at around the same time, run out of the vigour, the life that took it so far? The resort is now no youngster. It has matured, along with the industry that created it. Life cycles are real enough. For resorts, for industries. And for people.

I don’t know if I’ll see him again.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

On The Dunes: Can Picafort and Playa de Muro

I am looking at some old photos of Can Picafort. Circa 1960. Two people are walking along what is recognisable as a road but which has no tarmac. It is made of sand. It became the Via Suiza. In the distance you can’t make out the sea. Not because of buildings, because there aren’t any, but because of something else that is obscuring the view. In another photo there is a boy sitting on a deckchair on the beach. You might expect to be able to see, in the background, the Via Suiza from a different angle. But you can’t. Because there is something in the way. Dunes.

Can Picafort, in keeping with much of the bay of Alcúdia and with other stretches of Mallorcan coastline, is made up of dunes. Or rather, it used to be. The only dunes now are at the resort’s eastern Son Bauló end, extending into what is the “rustic” coast past the Son Real finca. The dunes in Can Picafort can no longer be seen. Because they are no longer there.

The loss of the dunes along the bay is evident in Alcúdia. But here the beach is wide. Nothing sits on top of the sea. Nor does it in much of adjoining Playa de Muro. Only once past the canal that connects Albufera with the sea does the beach start to become appreciably narrower. This is what has now been lovingly signposted as “Sector 2”. The resort as military installation.

Where the hotels in Playa de Muro finish there is a stretch of some two kilometres of rustic beach, backed by dunes and forest. There are no buildings. They only re-emerge as you come into Can Picafort. The dunes end abruptly. Can Picafort is built on dunes.

The creation of the resort was not so much environmental vandalism as environmental rape and pillage. The dunes were levelled and what was formed was a generally charmless front line of barn-style restaurants only a short distance from the shoreline. The restaurants, for the most part, are unremarkable. And there is probably a good reason. Being so close to the sea and being so undefended, in winter sand and water encroach. Until recently, before some new drainage, there used to be regular and damaging floods. Why create something of beauty if it’s going to be ravaged by nature.

Behind the front line is a town. Shops and hotel after hotel. The dunes and what lay behind them were destroyed in constructing an urban development.

One of the points of contention surrounding the Costas demarcation plan for Playa de Muro is Can Picafort. With no small amount of justification, the murers point to what happened to what was once hardly even a village, just a bit of a fishing harbour and the old fincas of Sr. Picafort. In Playa de Muro, where the environmental destruction has been less extreme, it might just be that the destruction is reversible. In Can Picafort, it can’t be reversed. But the targeting of Playa de Muro by the Costas strikes many as supremely unfair when compared with the wholesale degradation of the natural environment just a few kilometres away.

The language and the actions of the Costas in Playa de Muro have been ratcheted up since the demonstration against the demarcation took place. Celestí Alomar, the boss of the Costas in the Balearics, talks of there being “many people and organisations without any sort of consideration”. He has taken particular exception to the fact that gardens have been created and that volleyball is played on the dunes. But note the words. On the dunes. They are still there. They may be subject to what Alomar calls “degradation”, but they haven’t all been taken away. Unlike in Can Picafort.

Meanwhile, Alomar has been suggesting that the holiday homes of Ses Casetes des Capellans could have a reprieve by their being ceded to Muro town hall and escaping any threat of demolition. Good news perhaps, and aimed at the ordinary people of Muro who own the bungalows. But it smacks of politicking, driving a wedge between the holiday-home owners and the businesses and residents of the resort.

Alomar wants an improvement to the beach in Playa de Muro, one that will create “tourism of more quality” and one that, with greater respect for nature, will offset the seasonality that local hoteliers bemoan. Who is he trying to kid? The nature is now just something to admire from a distance. The Costas has made and is making the dunes no-go areas in Playa de Muro. There may be sound environmental reasons for doing so, but what they are becoming are things to just look at. You can no longer wander in the forest and dunes areas in the way you used to be able to. Yet isn’t this public land? Isn’t there meant to be public access? It’s contradictory, just as much as a short walk along the beach from where dunes do still exist confirms that there is a place where they no longer do.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Nowhere To Go: Playa de Muro and Costas’ demarcation

A year on from a demonstration against the threat of demolition of the old church bungalows of Ses Casetes des Capellans, there was another demonstration in Playa de Muro this past weekend. Unlike that of the owners of what are now holiday homes in Ses Casetes, this one was corporate; led by the big beasts of the hotel trade in the resort. The target, though, was the same – the Costas authority.

The Costas is a division of the national government’s environment ministry, but such a seemingly subordinate function disguises its power. The name alone commands anxiety; it has acquired a reputation akin to the Inquisition. It scours the coastlines of Mallorca and Spain, handing out decrees that, many will argue, seem arbitrary and unfair. It appears to make things up as it goes along, applying interpretations to the law on the demarcation of coasts.

The law itself is not unreasonable. It is an attempt to right the wrongs of coastal building and environmental destruction and to maintain public access. The problems occur with interpretations as to what is “public domain”, what is urban, what is legal, what is illegal, what is land “influenced” by the sea, what falls within one distance from the shorelines, within another one and then yet another. To all this can be added a history of unregulated building and dubious practice as well as the demands of tourism and of business.

The job of untangling the mess in Mallorca is that of the boss of the Costas in the Balearics. His name is Celestí Alomar. You might remember him from some years ago. It was he who fronted the eco-tax debacle when he was tourism minister in the previous Antich administration. He’s no great friend to the hotels who were the ones expected to collect the eco-tax. When Antich became president again in 2007, Alomar was conspicuous by his absence from the list of new ministers. The reason was that he had fallen out so badly with business.

In Playa de Muro, there are indeed some big beasts of the hotel industry. They don’t come much more respected than Iberostar. It has five hotels in the resort. They don’t come much more representative of Muro business than Grupotel. This chain virtually is Muro. Its president is a former mayor, and the current mayor, Martí Fornes, is a former director of the company. The problem for Playa de Muro, though, is that it has been, along with parts of the coastlines in Pollensa and Son Servera, the target of the “new” law of demarcation in Mallorca, the determination of which has sped up considerably under Alomar’s direction.

The other problem for the resort is its geography. It is essentially a strip of land with the sea to one side and the Albufera wetlands nature park to the other. The distance between shoreline and wetlands, at its shortest, is only some 200 metres, if that. In terms of “influence” by the sea, there is no land in Playa de Muro that hasn’t been influenced. Last year, Alomar set the alarm bells ringing by referring to dried-out “salinas” (salt deposit/marsh). Natural, and they are evidence of influence by the sea. The interpretation is that they are public domain. And that means much of the resort. Playa de Muro was a totally artificial creation on top of what were dunes, scrub, forest and lagoon.

According to the “platform” leading the protests, some two million square metres of land are set to be reclassified as public domain, reversing the provisional demarcation made as a consequence of the law of 1988. Playa de Muro barely existed forty years ago. Much of it has been built since the late ’80s, and that which was built before, even many years before, i.e. the bungalows of Ses Casetes, falls foul of that 1988 law on land demarcation, now being pursued with vigour.

What this all means is that property – of all types – is subject to the thirty year rule. It can remain, but it can’t be sold. Any development, either new or additional, would be most unlikely to be approved (not of course that this always stops it being done). After the thirty years, there is the likelihood, as the land would revert to state ownership, of having to pay for the privilege to keep the property: an illogical outcome. If the buildings are environmentally harmful, then no amount of handing over money to the government makes them less so.

On the face of it, the Costas decision is madness. But whether the authority would see it through must be open to doubt. The feeling is that there will be some “horse-trading”, while the big beasts, together with Muro town hall, will not take the ruling lying down.

There is, however, a different scenario. The Costas decision could well be seen as hypothetical, because thirty, forty or fifty years from now, the threat of rising sea levels will have done its work for them. It isn’t a threat that should be ignored. But for Playa de Muro, for its hotels and residences, there is nowhere to go other than further inland. And further inland means one thing and one thing alone – a damn great legally protected wetlands nature park. There is nowhere to go.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Adopting Positions: Chopin should have played golf

Chopin is to be made an adoptive son of Mallorca. No doubt he’ll be rubato-ing with contentment in his Parisian grave, well away from where his interred non-missus, Amandine Dupin (aka George Sand), will be cursing the fact of his joining her in adoption but rejoicing in her having secured the gig before him; she was made an adoptive daughter of Mallorca some years ago. Beat yer to it, Freddie, you sexual inadequate.

Chopin and Sand were simultaneously enchanted and appalled by Mallorca, and specifically Valldemossa. It’s the enchantment that gets hyper-brochured, alongside mentions of Chopin’s output while in his mountain retreat and of Sand’s legacy to the island, commemorated in the annual Winter in Mallorca cultural programme, named after her book. The selective writing of the history of the Chopin-Sand stay in Mallorca disguises the brevity of that stay and the deterioration in Chopin’s health during it, a consequence of a miserable and cold winter. How he actually managed to play the piano, rubato or otherwise, is a mystery. Or perhaps he was blessed with warm extremities. Well, a couple if not one other, if George is to be taken at her word.

Chopin was from Poland. It’s a happy coincidence. Name some of the “new” markets from which Mallorca hopes to attract more tourists, and Poland will appear high on the list. Having an adoptive son to boast about doesn’t presumably harm that objective: the tourism juan-ies should be frantically casting around for a few Russians or Chinese who might have some adoption credentials, other than members of the Russki Mafia or owners of shops in a Mallorcan McDonald’s style – the Chinese bazar; one on every street.

While Chopin and the not-missus Chopin are invoked as part of the island’s cultural and winter tourism, they might have greater contemporary impact had they played golf. Perhaps someone could conveniently unearth a 170-year-old pitch ‘n’ putt in Valldemossa; it would do wonders for the golf tourism project. Possibly. Golf, though, holds the key to greater off-season riches than piano playing. Or that’s what they would have you believe.

It’s doubtful that Chopin ever made it as far as Muro or the north of the island. But it is here that the battle for golf tourism is being waged – as if you weren’t aware of this already. Muro’s golf course development is going through yet another eighteen holes of it’s on, then it’s off; the promoters threatening to sue is the latest. Not, I imagine, that you care. No one much does any longer, except the main protagonists, one of which is the enviro doom merchants GOB.

The pressure group has been playing its own statistics game. What it has found, it reckons, are figures which “prove” that golf doesn’t do anything to bolster tourism off-seasonality. I had hoped that the figures would be proof, as at least it would have been evidence of someone making a hard case one way or the other as to whether the Muro course, or indeed others, are of any significant tourism value.

The statistics show that in the lower months of the “summer” season, i.e. April and October, occupation in hotels in Muro and Santa Margalida (for which, read Playa de Muro and Can Picafort) is higher than those in Alcúdia and Pollensa. From this, GOB argues that golf does not benefit either of the latter two resorts, ones where there are golf courses extant, while it also argues that Muro and Can Picafort are already doing nicely thank you by comparison, and therefore, by dubious extrapolation, don’t need a golf course (or courses). It then goes on to extol what are the highly limited business virtues of small niche tourism in the resorts, e.g. bird-watching.

What this argument overlooks is the fact that the early-season occupancy of hotels in Playa de Muro and Can Picafort can be explained by these resorts being centres of cycling tourism, more so than the other two resorts. By concentrating on hotel occupancy figures, it also neglects the fact that Pollensa has a far lower number of hotel places by comparison with the other resorts. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the fact that golfers might stay in other types of accommodation (and GOB doesn’t take this into account), the findings do underline a point that I have made in the past, which is precisely the one that GOB is implying. Were there real tourist demand for golf in Alcúdia and Pollensa, then more hotels would open. Wouldn’t they?

GOB’s argument is persuasive up to a point, but there is one big hole in it – there are no figures for the months of November to March. The seasonality issue is a twelve-month affair. Winter tourism, or the lack of it, cannot be defined in terms of April and October. Which brings us back to Chopin and Sand. Has anyone ever attempted to prove a link between Winter in Mallorca and winter tourism? Maybe they have, and they’re keeping schtum. GOB’s claims are based on some science, but they seem post-hoc. However, they are not without a dash of merit. There ought to be more science, but one suspects that certain vested interests would rather there weren’t.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

White Stripes: Why did the tourist cross the road?

Sledging in cricket has produced some fine moments of insult. One of the most famous exchanges went along these lines … Bowler inciting batsman who was not hitting the ball: “it’s red, round, in case you were wondering”; batsman responding, having hit the next ball out of the ground: “you know what it looks like, now go and find it”. The true origins of sledges have tended to become confused. This one is sometimes attributed to South Africa’s Shaun Pollock and Australia’s Ricky Ponting, which is almost certainly wrong. More commonly, it is attributed to Greg Thomas of Glamorgan and the West Indies’ Viv Richards. Not that it really matters. This is not an article on sledging.

The sledge has, though, occurred to me when driving along the local main roads. It would be something like: “it’s white, striped, now walk on it.”

The re-modelling of the main road (Carretera Arta) through Puerto Alcúdia and Playa de Muro and ever eastwards is to enter its third phase in October when the grotty thoroughfare in Can Picafort is given a similar makeover. The whole scheme has been about giving priority to pedestrians, and to a large extent it has been successful in this aim. What has not been wholly successful has been convincing pedestrians to use the white stripes and the non-striped islands as the means of crossing the road.

Bone idleness, especially while on holiday, is pretty much a given, but the planners have failed to comprehend this. True, it might bring traffic to a complete halt were there to be crossings every ten metres – you can have only so many of them, and doubtless they’d still be ignored anyway – but there are some points along the road where the non-crossing is glaring and potentially dangerous. One of the most striking is near to the Palma roundabout on the Playa de Muro-Alcúdia boundary. The Marítimo hotel is just before this roundabout. There is an island a few metres to the left where one comes out of the hotel to cross the road. Who uses it? No one. It’s in the wrong place, assuming one accepts the bone idleness theory, and I am who subscribes to it. I don’t use the crossing either. Another example is given by the hordes who head out of the Delfin Azul and Port d’Alcudia hotels. The straight line to the beach is halfway between two islands. Consequently, they are also unused.

Why did they undertake the road remodelling in the first place? It was to make the road safer. But how can it be described thus, when there are pedestrians, centre road, waving damn great lilos around and attached to the ubiquitous baby-buggy? The buggy has become that de rigueur that one wonders whether it is used solely for the transporting of infants or whether it houses all the other paraphernalia without which no day on the beach would be complete. Whatever. I am uneasy as I pass a family or several in mid road whilst a truck or coach approaches in the opposite direction. And woe betide if you stop to allow them to cross. Inevitably it takes an age for them to appreciate the fact that you have stopped for that purpose, and meanwhile matey-boy behind is getting into a strop.

When they re-do the road in Can Picafort, they’ll probably make the same mistakes, such as the beautification of the Playa de Muro stretch with its crossings where emerging pedestrians are obscured from drivers’ vision by parked cars, hedges and palm trees and the failure to prevent the inner roads parallel to the carretera from being used as rapid rat runs. One can but hope, though. The current system of Can Picafort crossings and side roads into which or out of which you can neither enter nor exit is confusing enough as it is, without having to contend with the lilo-flapping jaywalkers. Least they can do is get a new walk, don’t walk system: it’s white, it’s striped, now use it.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Still Waters: The beach and great heat

When Africa blows northwards. It’s not the sort of scirocco or “xaloc” that can whip up gales, but a sharp and engulfing Saharan electric blanket of wind that lashes the interior and which, mysteriously, leaves the beach and sea serene and becalmed. When Africa blows northwards, the hundred mark is nudged and sometimes tipped over.

Serene. When Africa blows northwards, the beach and sea are an s-word of the sublime, the soporific, the sensational, the sensuous and sensorial. Contrast this with when elsewhere blows, and the sea is all of a “t”, turbulent, tumbling and troubling. Our moods are determined by the senses, and the beach and sea play games with us. Surf is up, and it leaves us agitated, buffeted by movement into fretfulness or a pressure towards activity. Waves bring noise and turmoil. The “ventus” of marine energetics creates a hyperventilation of both mind and soul. We cannot rest or relax.

Serene and still. Much as we might pit ourselves against force, much as we might even enjoy doing so, when the sea ceases to move we are consumed by the dream-world consciousness it creates, a sensorial state of being heightened by the sensuousness of the sensational drifts from blues to greens, of the sheer statics, of the caress of discreetly lapping water on the sand. Of all colour combinations, no others hold greater symbolism than the conjoining of the largely imagined blue and yellow of sea and beach. They are imagined, because they aren’t quite that simple. And only when all is serene and still – on the beach – do we really begin to appreciate the complexity of colour that gives rise to this imagination.

There are times, as there will have been times these past couple of days, when Africa has blown northwards, when the chatter and babble of the beach evaporate. It is a soporiferous and collective will of quiet, one induced by the barely audible lullaby of waves and the mass hypnosis of observing a sea without movement.

Wrapped in this colossal heat, but soothed by the maternal and gentle strokes of breeze, we are aware as to how perfect, or rather perfection, came to be a word, and if it’s the case that it is one we strive to attain or at least be party to, then when Africa blows northwards and the beach and sea play a quiet game of somnolence, we might just have realised it.

Playa de Muro, late August.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Summer’s Off: Albufera’s information centre

‘Tis the season to be closed. A while ago we had the museum in Alcúdia shut because of lack of staff. The swimming pool in Puerto Pollensa you know about. And to add to this we also have the information centre in the Albufera nature park. It has in fact been closed since the beginning of June.

The “centro de interpretación”, as opposed to the reception, which remains open, is intended to offer audiovisual information, posters and other material related to the flora and fauna of Albufera. It is also intended to allow visitors who have coughed up for the “tarjeta verde” (green card) the chance to hire bikes and binoculars. There have been, apparently, complaints from tourists who, card in hand, find neither an information centre nor a bike.

So why is it closed? Good question. It would seem that it’s all the fault of the tourism ministry or maybe it’s the fault of our old mates the Fundación Balears Sostenible which is meant to run the centre. This is the same foundation which, to the horror of the new director when he was installed, was found to have somehow managed to have “leaked” the minor matter of three million euros. It’s not the fault of the environment ministry which blames the tourism ministry which in turn blames the foundation which in turn blames political reasons. And on and on we go. The environment ministry staffs the reception centre and wants to be allowed to run the information centre. Not to be left out, enviro watchdogs GOB have attacked the foundation for its management of the centre, which does rather suggest that the fault does indeed lie with them. (GOB, incidentally, is wanting something else closed – the power station in Alcúdia, but this is a whole other story.)

The foundation is not directly part of the tourism ministry, but it is linked and is meant to be being wrapped up into an über-agency. Its main purpose in life is operating the green card, something that is likely to be abandoned through lack of interest, except to a few saps in Playa de Muro who get one, only to find it’s of no use. You may recall that the money the card was planned to raise has been singularly unforthcoming, partly because hotels have, allegedly, been pocketing it all.

What we seem to have here is a case of too many cooks unable to gather the ingredients to make a broth. Why does it appear to be so difficult? Albufera, and all aspects of its management, should be under one authority alone. But no. We get competing bodies who conspire to balls things up. It’s a metaphor for much of Mallorcan public administration.

Underlying this is the fact that nature parks such as Albufera, bird-watching and wildlife are all supposed to be part of tourism diversification, especially in the north of the island. The tourism bods keep banging on about it, but they – and other agencies – can’t even organise a look-up centre in a watery briery. So what chance, therefore, of any of this “new” tourism succeeding? Very little, if Albufera is anything to go by.

Weather
Meanwhile. Tenuous link, I suppose, but Albufera houses the local Alcúdia/Muro weather station. And weather has been a tad unusual this summer. Forget all the pony you may come across about excessive temperatures, as it is usually pony. The official take from the Met boys is that there have been no real heatwaves this summer and that the highest temperature – anywhere on the islands – has been 36. So no repeat of last year’s 42.7 (Sa Pobla) or Albufera’s high in July last year of 39.9. But it can still crank up again.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.