The Bars’ Big Day Off

What on earth is everyone going to do? A day with no bars or restaurants. We’ll all have to do some work for once. And re-arrange the location for all our meetings. Where? Nary a café nor bar with its doors open, we’ll have to use things like offices. We’ll have to make our own coffee and, so, rather than complaining about the cost of a café’s cortado, we’ll moan about the price of a packet of molido from the supermarket. Life will simply be unbearable.

The bars and restaurants of the Balearics are planning on taking a day off. All of them. Ha-ha-ha. As if. One day in the not-too-distant future, in an act of protest against the smoking ban, the coffee machines will lie idle, the tapas will be taped up and the cañas will be canned.

One supposes that the bar owners will hope that this decaffeinated day will prompt an uprising of the dislocated populace, wandering aimlessly like the lost tribes of Israel in vain search of a welcoming terrace. Government buildings will be stormed. Riots will ensue. “We need our coffee!” will shout the dispossessed. Spain’s “coffee revolution” will occur.

Will it? Hardly. First problem is going to be getting all bars and restaurants to agree as to the day. What about a Sunday? You must be joking. Busiest day of the week. Erm, so how about a Tuesday? Are you kidding? It’s market day in … (add as applicable). Tell you what. A Saturday. 9 April. You what? It’s the first day of the boat fair in Puerto Alcúdia.

The bar and restaurant owners aren’t totally stupid, unlike the airport workers. They intend to have their day of protest before the tourism season kicks in. Of course they will. They’re not going to close once the punters start streaming in from the easyJets.

But getting agreement or universal support for a day’s closure sounds as unlikely as the local population announcing a collective abstinence from coffee, regardless of whether it’s inspired by bar closure or not. There’s one very good reason why it will be hard to agree to. Self-interest. Takings may, allegedly, be down by 20, 30, 40%, but mass action by a suddenly co-operative union of bar and restaurant owners would reverse the tradition of looking after number one. If this day does go ahead and is a success, I’ll eat my coffee machine.

This is not the first time that a protest of this sort has been considered, albeit that previously it was for an altogether different reason. In Alcúdia, rather than a pointless street demo, the idea was floated of a mass closure – during the tourist season – as a way of voicing discontent with the effects of all-inclusives.

Damaging though this might have been, in various ways, it would have been intended to show the damaging, long-term impact of all-inclusives – a resort with no bars or restaurants open, because they no longer have the business. Over-dramatic perhaps, but, as demonstrations go, it would have been powerful. But it would never have happened and never will happen. It’s all down to self-interest.

If the bar and restaurant owners’ day of inaction does get agreed to, what would happen were some bars to ignore it? Are there going to be pickets flying around, trying to prevent customers getting in?

Assuming that the bars and restaurants are prepared to forego a day’s business, what about effects to other businesses? The hard-pressed ensaïmada industry, sales already generally down, will suffer a day’s loss of fresh lard being scoffed. Newspaper publishers will also suffer, because there will be no bars to buy their papers for the clientele to read, though they might also benefit as said clientele would have to actually fork out for a paper for once.

There would be ripples in the wider economy from a bar’s day of inaction, but these ripples would be nothing compared with the floods that might occur. No bar open. Where the heck do you go for a pee?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Town Without Pity: Pollensa

Pity Pollensa. A town of genuine artistic and cultural heritage. A town of churches and squares, of 365 steps, of the brooding presence of the Puig Maria. A town with a resort, Puerto Pollensa, which holds a place in early Mallorcan tourism of the last century and which has brought out the inner poet in visitors who have stopped to marvel at the bay and who have crowned the port (the “moll”) with the jewels of the grandest majesty among Mallorca’s resorts.

Pity Pollensa. A town of debt, of protest, of division.

Rare is the day when there is not some news of trouble in Pollensa. The latest, that regarding the lack of funds to kit out a day centre or to open a new pre-school nursery, is just another day in Pollensa. Pity Pollensa and pity its poor mayor. Beleaguered is an overused word, but it can apply to the mayor. Literally on occasions. What are alternatives to beleaguered? Beset, harassed, besieged. In June this year the mayor was besieged. He was in an elevated bunker in the town hall building in Puerto Pollensa while demonstrators shouted outside and at one point scaled the rampart steps to the balcony next to the office.

Pity the poor mayor. He has the look of someone beset by problems. He carries a sense of awkwardness, gaucheness perhaps, in a body he doesn’t seem to quite fit. It’s not his fault, like many of Pollensa’s problems aren’t actually his fault, but no one seems much inclined to excuse him. I passed him one day in Pollensa town and said hello. He smiled cautiously. Perhaps he was just happy, surprised even, that someone had given him the time of day. He had his hands in his pockets, labouring on the incline up to the town hall building, newly restored at a cost of over two million euros. He wouldn’t have remembered me, or maybe he had, as the one who had taken a photo of him in that Puerto Pollensa bunker, one that had hinted at anxiety. Or the photo of him as he had laughed when confronting the demonstrators on the balcony. A militant next to me said, “look, he’s laughing, laughing at us”. I didn’t think so. It was the laugh of nervousness.

The awkwardness of Joan Cerdà, as much as the awkwardness of the difficulties Pollensa has been encountering, contrasts with the assertive tallness of the basketball-playing mayor of Alcúdia, a neighbouring town which, to the bemusement of many in Pollensa, appears to benefit from infrastructure improvements and political calm, notwithstanding some awkward “questions” regarding the construction of the new Can Ramis building. Alcúdia’s advance rankles with the backward-stepping pollencins.

The mayor inherited problems when he came into office in 2007. Go back to a period soon after he had first plonked himself in the mayoral seat and you will find that the newly opposition Partido Popular was denouncing the state of cleanliness and maintenance of streets in Puerto Pollensa. This was one of the grievances of the protesters of early summer. It’s an old problem, one that the mayor is actually seeking to rectify with a new cleaning contract.

This might sound as if I am acting as an apologist for the mayor. Not so. He hasn’t helped himself. He didn’t help himself by a failure to consult when attempting to push through a pedestrianisation scheme in 2008, one that had to be abandoned. He didn’t help himself earlier this summer, after the protest, by seemingly seeking to create division amongst associations in the port, each with a competing agenda that he successfully exposed.

Inadvertently though, he has also succeeded in creating a realisation that consensus, rather than division, is necessary amongst those in the port who represent opposition to the town hall’s failings. La Veu d’eu Moll (voice of the port) is a new association and campaign that will hope to bring consensus to bear on the mayor. Its website will invite participation, but, in so doing, it too runs the risk of division. A Facebook campaign, highlighting examples of uncleanliness, rubbish and other issues in the port and in the town, has not met with universal approval. It has been accused of creating a negative image, just as this article might meet with the same accusation or the new website be similarly criticised.

Such defensiveness, such protectiveness of the refulgent splendour of Pollensa and the port is understandable. But some of those who do the defending will have been on the protest in June, a protest that was hardly the best image for the port, one that may be repeated at the end of the season, doubtless with the same dual-standard protesters. Moreover, presented with what is portrayed, rightly or wrongly, as an inept town hall administration, what should people who care for their town do, especially if they perceive inertia or intransigence? The directness of internet campaigning can be persuasive in a way that a caveat-loaded denial – “I know there are problems but” – is not.

Pollensa is not unique in Mallorca in being indebted and in being confronted with issues of faltering tourism, anti-social behaviour, inadequate provision of services. Perhaps the problems it faces, as in other towns, are too big for the local politicians to handle, too demanding of an old style of local nepotistic politics to solve. The issue for those who may or may not protesteth too much is what they would do that would be any better. Faced with certain realities, it might seem a whole lot less straightforward. Pity Pollensa.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Having A Mare: The mayor and the Puerto Pollensa revolution

Who would be mayor of a local town hall? Especially Pollensa.

There must have been a point, many years ago, when Joan Cerdà thought, if only I could be mayor of Pollensa. The people would look up to me. I would represent them all fairly and justly, always seeking to put their wishes into action. At some time in the past, the mayors of Sa Pobla and Santa Margalida probably had similar thoughts. They have ended up, respectively, being lambasted for hiring private detectives to spy on personnel and having their face superimposed onto a mock 500 euro note. Cerdà has ended up – ended up yesterday – holed up inside the municipal building in Puerto Pollensa while a thousand or so demonstrators gathered outside to demand some action by him and by his town hall administration. Even the thickest-skinned mayor must feel some hurt by such intense a protest. I felt sorry for him yesterday. Just as he was instructing the press to leave the office in which he was going to talk to the organisers of the demonstration, I took a photograph of him. He looked straight at the camera. It was a mixture of boiling-point and breaking-point. Who would be mayor of a local town hall?

On the march yesterday, and speaking to some leading lights, there was confirmation of what I have said about the demonstration: that its origins can be traced back to the successful opposition to the pedestrianisation scheme; that tourism economic hard times had been instrumental in provoking it; that there is a real issue in terms of the separation between the town and the resort. In an ideal world, the last of these might be overcome through the creation of – in effect – a separate mayor or at least a port delegate with some real teeth and some real money. Even more than the mayor perhaps, the current delegate – Francisca Ramon – is held in general contempt, and she was treated with huge amounts of it when she tried to address the masses. But she has no real power; it’s not totally her fault, even if she may be considered to be little more than a town hall lackey.

The tourism hard times are the fault of neither the mayor nor the delegate, but Cerdà is somehow now being blamed – by implication (that of the deficiencies in the port) – for the tourism downturn. It’s unfair, but he has done little to prevent such an impression. “First-class tax but third-class service,” was a chant yesterday. The town hall takes – massively – but doesn’t give back, and lets the local tourism industry suffer. That, at least, is what the protesters believe.

And the town hall have fanned more flames. Among the protesters were The Hustlers. I had suggested that the apparent music ban might be tagged onto the protest, and so it was. The band, and other musicians, are proposing their own showdown with the mayor. The timing of pursuing the ban was crass, to say the least. The mayor is also facing more pressure – to come today at the plenary session – regarding the Pollensa music festival finances and possible links to the Operación Voltor corruption case. He really couldn’t will himself any more grief. But he’s got it. Stacks of it. Who would be mayor of a local town hall?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Puerto Pollensa Protest – Manifestación – 2 June (2)

More photos from the protest. Includes various restaurant owners/managers, Garry Bonsall getting the petition signed and the mayor getting shirty.

Puerto Pollensa Protest – Manifestación – 2 June

Here are some photos from today’s protest. Delegate Francisca Ramon and Mayor Joan Cerdà under pressure. Protesters outside the town hall building. Banners laid out in front of the building.

The Manifesto Of The Puerto Pollensa Party

More on the protest thing – the Puerto Pollensa one. There is a “manifesto” for this “manifestación” (which is Spanish for demonstration): a four-page document, outlining the gripes and fingering the town hall. The demo will coincide with market day on Wednesday next week. Don’t try getting any petrol in Puerto Pollensa on Wednesday, as the petrol station’s likely to be log-jammed with protesters.

The manifesto deals with the items listed on 26 May (Fix You?), to which has been added a further item regarding the state of the waste of space and money that is La Gola. “The state” pretty much sums the whole thing up. The state of Puerto Pollensa in different respects.

The second main point in this manifesto is telling. It refers to the fact that tourism is the “motor” of the local economy. Yes, we do know this, as the manifesto says. But let’s just imagine, shall we, that Puerto Pollensa was currently flush with great hordes of tourists, flush with cash. Would this protest be going ahead? No, it wouldn’t. Macroeconomic difficulties have created the micro-ist economic problems of Puerto Pollensa’s tourism, not dog mess, rubbish collection or a lack of parking.

Then there is something even more telling. The manifesto refers to an abundance of domestic properties at the expense of hotels or residential areas of high social status. While the latter sounds – and is – appallingly elitist, it is the former that seems to give the game away. Separate to this latest protest (or is it part of the same thing?), the local hotels recently themselves complained about an abandonment and neglect. The manifesto appears to be supporting the hoteliers in calling for not just an appreciation of the apparent disregard of the Moll but also for more hotels. It, the manifesto, goes on to say that plots exist on which such hotels (or elitist residences) could be located. Maybe so. But the very presence of this “demand” confirms the impetus behind this manifesto: the parlous state of current tourism. It also flies in the face of that “guru” piece of the other day; that resources are stretched and that alternatives to tourism (and thus hotels) have to be sought. While the current town hall can be criticised, rightly, for all manner of things, it is not their fault that there are not more hotels; their lack is an historical fact of local planning.

This protest is a manifestation of the pain caused by recession. Let’s not be fooled into thinking that it is anything else, except …

There is justification for the protest. The lack of hotel stock has, arguably, held Puerto Pollensa back, even if the wisdom of building hotels now would be open to question; and such building would be most unlikely to occur. There is justification in there being a protest, period. In its organisation and publicity, it is an example to those elsewhere who voice discontent and then do precisely nothing, as in, most notably, the Bellevue area of Puerto Alcúdia. There is justification, though God knows where the money might come from to right the wrongs. There is justification, but of a different order to that which is being stated.

Mayor Cerdà is said to be “concerned”. About what exactly? The fact that there are elections next year? One thing he should be concerned about is the structure of how the town, as a whole, is run. Let’s just compare the situation in Puerto Pollensa with that in Puerto Alcúdia. There, the embellishments to the beach (costing some 700k) were recently officially “opened”. Alcúdia has neither the psychological nor the physical distance problems I referred to the other day.

The justification, and if this protest is to achieve anything, and it probably won’t, will be to highlight the deficiencies of the local political structure not the deficiencies with street lighting and all the rest. The perception of injustice towards the port has existed for years. It has come to a head. It needs sorting out.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Fix You? Puerto Pollensa and protest

The protest season goes from strength to strength. A general strike, some time or other; Puerto Alcúdia, a petition against all-inclusives, possibly; now Puerto Pollensa. On 2 June, setting off from the petrol station, i.e. the one opposite the fire-fighter-roundabout Eroski, a thousand people, so it is hoped, will take to the streets. Why?

I am grateful to Zelda at http://www.puertopollensa.com for sending me the bits and pieces which come from Annika at Sail & Surf who seems to be the main organiser of this demo. I like Annika. Who wouldn’t? I wish her success. But the question remains – why?

The litany of problems that the small businesses of the Moll want addressing are as follows: the lack of good parking; access ways from the by-pass to the front line of Puerto Pollensa by car and on foot; a lack of clear signing of the entrance to the port from the by-pass; lack of street lighting; rubbish and lack of cleanliness; a need for improved pavements and green area maintenance; the speed of traffic along the coast road into the port; the need for greater night-time security; the need for a general “beautifying” of the port and for public lavs.

Fine. Anything else anyone wants to add? Why not toss in the need to pedestrianise the whole of the front line? Oh, sorry, forgot. They did away with that because the small businesses didn’t want it. You’d crack some of the above at a stroke if there were no traffic along the coast road into the port.

Look, there is nothing wrong with any of what is the target of this protest. Much of it is familiar in terms of gripes regarding Puerto Pollensa. But is this, will this protest be indicative of casting around for something, anything, to put into the gun sight as a way of voicing anxiety regarding the currently lousy state of tourism? I have a horrible feeling that it might be. In which case, it is irrelevant. There is also a worry that, as I have said elsewhere in respect of protest in Puerto Alcúdia, that some sort of demo is counterproductive. Don’t, whatever you do, fool yourselves into thinking that the majority of tourists either know or care about what ever the problems in Puerto Pollensa might be. Go demo-ing and bring attention to the problems, and they soon will know. Thanks very much. Best go to Croatia next year.

There is, though, more to all of this. It isn’t simply a case of protest for protest’s sake. There are legitimate points being raised, but it is the ones who should be listening who are the problem. Those at the town hall.

Pollensa town hall is hugely in debt, and that debt is likely to rise. It sought credit this year, only a part of which was forthcoming. There is most unlikely to be any more in the short term, given that the Spanish Government has frozen town halls’ credit. Want better street lighting therefore? Go wave a lighter, then. A thousand arms waving in a Coldplay “Fix You” style. But the town hall can’t fix it. No money, chums.

Even more than all this is the fact that the protest would be a manifestation of the massive distance between Moll and town. Town and down – down there by the sea. Pollensa is not unique in this regard. Think Santa Margalida and Muro as well. Only Alcúdia escapes the problems of physical and psychological distance between town and down. Ask yourselves this question? Why is there a town hall “delegate” for the Moll? One who is widely held in contempt? What do you need a delegate for? It’s the same town, for crying out loud. The very existence of such a delegate tells you all you need to know. The Moll, the port is the town’s second-class citizen, down there, down by the sea. Not here. Up in the town.

Protest? Go ahead. Better still, declare UDI.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Grim Up North: The problems of the season

It’s grim up north. It’s grim down south. No point beating about the bush, and there’s little point in going over the reasons. We all know them. Only too well.

In this week’s “Talk Of The North” will be a piece I have written. “Protest Is Futile.” Protest is never futile, even if it merely satisfies a psychological need to let off steam and to appear to be doing something. Anything. However, it was written because there is a drive in Alcúdia towards organising a petition. Its target would be all-inclusives. I know who the protagonists are. I wish them well. I hope it does more than I will be suggesting in that piece. Moreover, all-inclusives are the punch-bag for other travails. They aren’t the whole story. Of course they’re not.

Expressions by bars and restaurants as to the problems of early season are being echoed by the hotels. Ironic perhaps that the devils of the piece seem to be on the same side of those being cast into the hell of a fiery death by all-inclusive. But the hotels’ problems speak volumes for the wider issues, those we know all about.

To protest, by means of a petition, seems like kissing in the wind. Who do you petition in the first place? And what effect would it have? The sad fact is that bars, restaurants, hotels even, oh and myself are all controlled by factors that we cannot control. Petition is the attempt to gain some control.

But if matters are as critical as are being said in some quarters, then protest of a more significant nature is called for – maybe. Closing all establishments as a symbol of how things might be is one. Not that you would ever get a collective agreement to do so. Short-term self-interest will always rise to the top. Forget it.

Why not march? A great demo along the main streets of the resorts? Would tourists thank you? Would they thank you for closing for a day? Would they approve of outraged bar owners standing atop hotel blocks with banners? Some might. Some tourists are only too aware of what is going on. Some, plenty, aren’t. Some, plenty, have no wish to be informed. They are on holiday. They are not on holiday to bear witness to the apparent collapse of local tourist industries. Would it be fair on them? Maybe it would be. Tourists, we are told by some, should be more ethical. What are ethics when it comes to a fortnight in the sun? As that old managing director of mine once wrote, it’s a county in eastern England, a county that’s roughly the same size as Mallorca.

It is, we do have to remember, only the middle of May. A middle of May that has been preceded by factors (well, one) no one could have foreseen. Come July and if matters are bad, then this would be the time to protest. But there is some justification for the anger at present. And that is that the season is being compressed into ever shorter a period. This has nothing to do with all-inclusives. It has everything to do with what the regional government would consider to not be the principal problem with the island’s tourism – the summer season.

Protest. No, it’s not always futile. But protest against the right targets. The idiots in government should be the first. Not really that they can do much either. However, it is they who have been and are kissing in the wind and fiddling Nero-like while they faff around, endlessly pronouncing on less important tourism issues. And kissing? Well, you know, like you know the issues, what word I really mean.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.