The Charm Offence: Sóller and resort development

When you’re about to spend the best part of two and a half million euros on a construction project, you might hope that someone had first checked that the whole thing wouldn’t collapse or be inundated with water. What am I saying? The recent history of great Mallorcan civil engineering success stories is awash with water. The Palma Metro for example.

Along now comes another rail fiasco which we can all rail against. “The tram now standing at platform …” Sorry, there is no platform. As also there are no proper foundations, other than sand, or adequate drainage. As for the tram, well you can forget that anyway, as they’ve forgotten about the supports for the power cables. Oh, and that bike lane, the one that would have been vital because the tramline had been knackered … .? Nope, they haven’t remembered that either.

Work on the re-development of the paseo marítimo in Port de Sóller, tram and all, is due to start in October. Somewhat belatedly, the technical chaps have had a peek at the plans. What plans, you might ask. There are “deficiencies”, they say. Just ever so slightly there are. One of the companies contracted to undertake the work states on its website: “development is a reality”. As far as Sóller is concerned, that should read, “will be” – with any luck. When though is another matter.

The Sóller promenade development can be viewed in a wider context than just the apparent deficiencies with the project. Bar and restaurant owners in the resort are none too impressed with the scheme. Ditto the on-off and now maybe on again re-development of Puerto Pollensa’s frontline. Pedestrianisation may seem like a way of beautifying Mallorca’s resorts, but strange to report there are plenty of people who would disagree.

An editorial in “The Bulletin” referred to a loss of charm, the consequence of resort developments. One aspect of this charm is that some tourists quite enjoy the bustle that having a road right next to a bar or restaurant can create. So too the owners. It may seem odd to wish to breathe in the fumes of a bus that has mysteriously passed its MOT, but who am I to question what anyone finds charming?

Some years ago Puerto Alcúdia’s prom was pedestrianised. What was created was a spacious strolling boulevard, wide enough to house the capricious folly of a bridge that goes nowhere, an Escher-like impossible reality. The development wasn’t a reality in Alcúdia, it was surrealistic, while the spaciousness is not to everyone’s liking; visitors still talk of that “bustle” and charm which existed previously. There will probably be those who reject the Playa de Palma re-development on the same grounds, though how somewhere lacking charm can lose it is a moot point.

Playa de Palma, though, is a specific case, one in which there is now a collision between civil engineers, town planners and architects like no other resort. This was where the architectural vandals once scaled the ramparts and sacked the place before anyone was any the wiser. What comes now is important. The New Turkey perhaps? A resort for today’s competitive age? One of dome and semi-circular five-star opulence would be in keeping with a Moorish inheritance, and would be an appropriate artifice for an artificial resort, which is exactly what it is. Everything in its place.

But this is the problem. Not everything is in its place, especially building design. It’s not just the resorts. The Can Ramis monstrosity in Alcúdia town is an example of how bad unsympathetic architecture can be. It was the misfortune of the little Ramis houses that they were situated only metres from the sanctuary of the town’s walls, behind which is a heritage law that would have stopped their functionalist conversion in its tracks.

The argument goes, of course, that Mallorca has to upgrade to compete. It’s a fair argument, but only up to a point. The pedestrianisation dogma is not the same as creating new four- or five-star hotels. In Puerto Alcúdia’s case, has the paseo made any difference to tourism competitiveness? Doubtful. But over and above a prom in this or that resort is an orthodoxy of today’s school of architecture which has, for example, succeeded in undermining the ramshackle appeal of Cala San Vicente.

Sóller, Pollensa, Andratx, you can name others. They have thrived on their individual, idiosyncratic charms. But they face the offence of the “new” charm. In Sóller, maybe a botched project wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Tiddly-Om-Pom-Pom

Strolling along the prom, the brass bands playing tiddly-om-pom-pom.

Funnily enough, you do get brass bands, sort of, on the proms. During fiestas the local music bands are dragged out – lots of brass, lots of bugles and banging of drums. They’re not quite the prom of British summers past, but they’ll do.

Proms. As in promenades and not the last night thereof. Elsewhere, on Holiday Truths to be precise, someone was asking about proms. Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa were mentioned.

First things first. Why is that people rarely refer to Puerto Alcúdia? It’s always just Alcúdia. They are, strictly speaking, two different places. Hardly anyone ever refers to Puerto Pollensa as Pollensa, correctly making the distinction. I suppose it’s all down to the distance factor, or the absence of distance where Alcúdia and its port are concerned.

But to return to proms, someone replied that while Alcúdia has a flat prom (aren’t all proms flat?), it is more “Englished” by comparison with Puerto Pollensa. Whether the Englished referred to the prom or to the whole of Alcúdia was not clear, but let’s just consider this English angle, which I will expand to be British.

If you take the proms alone, those of Puertos Alcúdia and Pollensa, can either be described as British (or Englished)? Go on, can they? Between the two of them I can think of only very few establishments that are British or quasi-British. Oceano in Puerto Alcúdia, but slip an “o” on the end of ocean and you get something un-British. No Frills in Puerto Pollensa possibly, but that’s half-Mallorcan, while Seamus is from Donegal; not a lot of Britishness there, except in terms of British Isles.

No, there is little or nothing British/Englished about either prom.

Broaden the concept to embrace the whole of the resorts, and what does one then get? In the ports of Alcúdia and Pollensa, there are similar numbers of British bars. There are similar numbers of British supermarkets – one per port. Only as you head off Mile way, does the Britishness really start to kick in. But hang on a minute. Granted there are a whole load of Brit tourists, granted there are a number of Brit bars, but there are an awful lot of non-Brits. Alcúdia is extraordinarily cosmopolitan; its tourism profile is that diverse that most of Europe is represented. The same cannot be said for Puerto Pollensa. What can be said is, for example, that “Bild” once famously warned its German readership from going anywhere near Puerto Pollensa because it was a “well-known English holiday citadel” (4 June 2008, “Hans Plays With Lotte”). It didn’t say anything about Alcúdia, or even Puerto Alcúdia. Puerto Pollensa is so British, it has acquired the flavour of an Eastbourne. There should be more brass bands on the prom, prom, prom in Puerto P.

Ok, I know what was meant, and at least the weak old Alcúdia is like Blackpool line wasn’t hauled out again. But let’s compare like for like, which means comparing port with port. There’s very little difference, except for the fact that Puerto Pollensa is vastly more British – one can’t say “Englished” because of all the Jocks – but more British it most certainly is.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.