Back In Time: The Jolly Roger

The history of the resorts holds an enduring fascination. It is a history that has never been written. I’m starting.

I spent an hour and a half with Jan from the Jolly Roger the other evening. I could have spent several more hours, and may yet do. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that the Jolly Roger has an iconic status in the history of Alcúdia’s tourism. It was the second British-run bar to emerge in the early 1970s, and has survived up to today under the same ownership.

The story of the Jolly Roger is astonishing. But even richer than the tales that Jan can relate are the documents and photos. Some of the latter are appearing on the bar’s Facebook page; I recommend that you take a look. The photographic history is highly evocative, as are the documents. But these documents are arguably even more revealing. For an historian by degree, as I am, they are a goldmine. Jan lent me a couple that I have photographed. She said I could keep them. I won’t. They all need to be preserved – together.

Among these documents are clippings from old newspapers, including the “Bulletin”. One of them dates from June 1975. It is a report on the problems at Bellevue, or the Bellavista Residential Complex as it was being called then. These problems surrounded financing and bankruptcies. The headline announced that the “Alcúdia complex could face 168 million pesetas auction”. (168 million pesetas would have been one million pounds; an exchange rate of 168 pesetas to the pound was established after the pound’s devaluation in 1967.)

The financial and ownership wrangles at Bellevue were to continue for years. It was not until 1983 that the complex became properly operational. 1983 was a highly significant year for the Jolly Roger – in different ways.

Another clipping comes from “The Sunday Mirror”. There is also a letter from the journalist, David Duffy, who wrote the article in the paper. Both were to do with an investigation that the paper was conducting into the sale of villas and provision of utilities to villas in the area by the Jolly Roger. These villas, close to the Lago Menor and to what was originally the Hotel Lago Menor (now the Lagomonte), had, in the main, been acquired as retirement homes by British pensioners, such as the five thousand pound “bungalow” owned by octogenarians Harry and Alice Spring who spent their days at the house but their nights at “an apartment some way from the estate”, lent to them as it had water and lighting.

What one has here is not just a historical record of one bar, not just of the early days of Alcúdia tourism but also background into the whole phenomenon of home ownership in Mallorca, of the move to the dream home in the sun. The story of the Jolly Roger is set to appear in the newspaper thing that is due to come out this month. It will deal with the bar, but the story, and I had not expected it, is far wider than just the bar alone. Fascinating.

And as if to reinforce the history of the Jolly Roger, while I was talking to Jan a lady came in with her son. The son had swum in the bar’s swimming-pool as a boy. The lady had first been a customer in … 1974.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

True And Fair? The number of all-inclusives

A restaurant owner in Playa de Muro said to me the other day that he had read that 65% of hotels in Mallorca were now all-inclusive. Give it another three years, and that number will be 100%, so he reckoned.

Always believe what you read. What can you believe? If the trend towards all-inclusives was this strong, it would already have been clear two years or so ago. This particular restaurant opened two years ago, some time into the season, following months of expensive work on converting one premises and re-modelling another. Why do it if the trend was already observable and if it was likely to be as great as it is now being claimed? Why do it, if all you do is moan about what the hotels are up to?

I am afraid you do have to wonder as to some business decisions, given the changes in market conditions. You do also have to wonder as to what people are prepared to believe and as to what they should make of the figures which get bandied around by various bodies. Take a piece from yesterday’s “Ultima Hora”. Reporting statistics from the tourism ministry, this says that the total number of hotels in Mallorca which offer all-inclusive only – the “exclusive” all-inclusive – is 48, representing a mere 3% of the total number of establishments. The figure is highly misleading, as it takes no account of size of hotel. More relevant is the total number of places in these 48 hotels – a bit under 23,000. Which sounds a lot, and may indeed be a lot, but there is no figure given as to the total number of places in all hotels.

Even allowing for this 3% to be correct, there is another confusion, and this has to do with the so-called “partial” all-inclusive, i.e. hotels which offer all-inclusive as an option in addition to other forms of accommodation. The hotel federation in Mallorca says that 165 establishments have this offer. Not that this gets us very far.

We are regularly subjected to these statistics, but never do we get a true and fair picture. You do have to wonder if “they” would rather “we” didn’t get it. Or perhaps an accurate picture is not available. Can the ministry or the federation be sure about all those “upgrades” that take place when a holidaymaker is checking in at reception?

But it is only when and if a complete list of hotels and the precise number of all-inclusive places is published, and by resort, that we will ever really understand the extent of all-inclusive. And it is this which is lacking. The 3% figure, for example, is irrelevant as it takes no account of local conditions – by resort. As I have mentioned before, Puerto Pollensa cannot compare with Puerto Alcúdia, Can Picafort and Playa de Muro when it comes to all-inclusive offers, as they barely exist in Puerto Pollensa.

Until such information is made available and is truly transparent, which it is not at present, restaurant owners (and others) will continue to believe what they read, even if it is not accurate. And they will continue to bemoan their luck. But they should also take a look at themselves and at their decisions. In Playa de Muro, which does have a number of all-inclusive places, the bad-luck stories all centre on these places, except in the case of some businesses, such as Boulevard and its Dakotas. They have opened a second Dakota in the resort, and the boss has told me that all-inclusives have not affected them. And if this is true, then you do have to further wonder as to factors like marketing and trying that little bit harder, especially at a time of changed market conditions. Whither, therefore, one might ask, the traditional restaurant?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Open All Hours

A familiar – very familiar – gripe about Palma is that it is normally shut. Great hordes of tourists would otherwise descend on the Mallorcan capital, handing over large amounts of folding notes in a binge of around-the-clock eating, drinking and shopping. Well, that’s the rather hopeful theory. The practice is quite different. Especially at weekends.

Whether a less rigid application of opening hours, or more aptly closing hours, would make much difference to tourism is something of a moot point. Nevertheless, the intrusion of siesta shutting and non-opening after Saturday lunchtime do both seem somewhat anachronistic to visitors, in particular those now conditioned to liberal opening hours, e.g. the British.

One thing that the tourism minister mentioned in the interview I referred to yesterday was that there needs to be a change in terms of attitudes towards working hours and practices. There does, she argues, need to be greater flexibility, and she is absolutely right. And Palma needs such a change more than anywhere, but one could also lump in the major resorts as well.

With this in mind, there was a not uninteresting piece in “The Diario” yesterday which looked at the development of 24-hour Palma. It may have gone unnoticed by many, but the capital is shifting towards the type of model familiar to those who visit or live in capitals and major cities elsewhere. Over the past ten years, so the article explains, there has been a growth in the number of establishments which are open all hours or nearly all hours (closing only for a couple of hours to clean up). These include restaurants, pharmacies and bakeries. They may not include shops, but something has been stirring, and it might also be illuminating to note that one of the more popular places is one serving burgers and tex-mex (they’d love that news in certain parts of the island, e.g. Puerto Pollensa – or possibly not).

The obstacles to more liberal hours of working and opening are obvious enough, and they come from the unions, church, some political parties as well as from entrenched attitudes that place service fairly well down the list of reasons to actually be in business. It is curious that when fiesta comes to town, along with the hordes, some places will choose to close. But more than this, is the attitude towards time. If a shop or bar announces that it will open at a certain time, then that is precisely what it should do. If an appointment is made, it should be for a particular time and not some vague “mediodía” or whenever, which often means that it is not met. The minister also referred to productivity. I’m not sure this word was being used correctly, but it was still appropriate to mention it; the loss of productivity because of the time malaise is incalculable.

An argument that has been trotted out over the past couple of years of “crisis” is that businesses should be prepared to be open much longer. It is an argument that I have sympathy with. The counter-view is that it costs too much, in terms of staff and energy, to do so, expenses that businesses can ill afford. It is also an argument one can sympathise with. But fundamentally, it boils down to attitude and to a greater focus on the customer and on service. It may be taking time for the message to get across, but in parts of Palma at least, it is.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Are You Being Served? – Two restaurants in Alcúdia

Old town Alcúdia. Friday evening in February, not exactly buzzing with huge numbers of diners, albeit that it is only twenty past seven. Half five, the Germans had originally suggested. “Half five!?” We settled on seven. Nothing’s likely to open before seven. Even this is early – for the Spanish. For Germans it’s closer to midnight.

There’s a restaurant we’re going to. We think. No naming and shaming. Not a big place. Old town. Quiet. Intimate, the publicity would probably say. There is a menu on a stand in the street. Lights on. No-one in. We wait a moment. A “chico” comes in. For four, we’re about to say. But the words never come out. The kitchen is not ready, he says. 7.30, he says. It’s 7.20. Am I hearing this correctly? Are we all hearing this correctly? Do we hear, would you like to have a drink? Do we hear, sorry we need just a few minutes, but please take a table, and I’ll be with you? We hear nothing of the sort. Nor do we offer a suggestion that we could have a drink and wait a little while. The chico would evidently rather not hear such a suggestion.

The German language has some cracking words. “Wahnsinn” is one such. It means madness, insanity. It is pronounced with a maniacal, elongated first-syallable emphasis, and so has an onomatopeic, nonsensical quality. Did we hear this correctly? He basically asked us to leave. For the sake of ten minutes, he asked us to leave. On a Friday in February in the old town of Alcúdia. Not exactly buzzing, albeit that it is early. But he has declined custom. He wouldn’t know for sure how much. And now he’s not going to find out. “Wahnsinn.”

In the square, the Constitution Square, it is quiet. No, make that dead. The café Llabres, the pizzeria and … and Satyricon. This seems ok, it’s said. I gulp, but then I’m not paying. I’m also wary of “concept” restaurants. I prefer unpretentious. But I’m always game. At least it’s warm. The space heaters are roaring, filling the interior air with butaned heat. I’ve never quite got it with the name. Satyricon. Orgies, cannabalism, the everyday lives of everyday Roman folk. There again, some of the novel concerns a meal, an extravagant occasion with several courses. Oh, and a touch of everyday debauchery. I suppose we skip the latter and just go for the food.

It’s an impressive place of galleries. Costs more if you go upstairs, I suggest. Ho, ho. Better down in the one-and-nines. Appropriate. It used to be a cinema. And the space heaters seem confined to the stalls. Heat rises though. It would need to. The ceiling seems miles away. You could imagine a Michelangelo with a pot of Dulux. Or maybe not. Oh, and no-one says we’re not open. No, no.

Water comes in a jug and is poured into metal goblets. I feel a Michael Winner moment coming on. Tastes metallic – unsurprisingly. Tap, I’ll be bound. Not historic. The maîtresse d’ is too hard-faced. She should lighten up, like the charming waitress who is receptive to requests for taking photos. Nevertheless, the service is prompt, pleasant, helpful, not overbearing. The “menu” is opted for. 42 euros a head. Gulp. But then I’m not paying. Why not go for the Can Vidalet Sauvignon, I venture. A Pollensa bodega. Ah, ja, very Mallorcan, very near to Alcúdia. Good, I think. I must tell them at the bodega next time I’m there. The menu novella includes a photo of the head chef. Chefs come close-cropped or shaven-headed nowadays. Very Heston. Very Blumenthal. I fear we might all be attached to oxygen cylinders and be force-fed bacon and egg ice-cream via a catheter. I know the dishes are going to be poncey. I don’t mind poncey, so long as it doesn’t mean stopping off for fish ‘n’ chips on the way home. When nouvelle first took London, we did poncey in Chiswick and left starving. The Indian chippy take-away on Acton High Street did roaring business back then.

The Vidalet is most acceptable and highly fruity; light for a Cabernet and not over-powering. The four courses are preceded by a couple of small tasters. What’s this? Looks like a small toffee-apple upside down. A type of ricotta painted red. Superb. Give me more. Not so. Everyone else has eaten theirs. And then on, and on. There’s sufficient time between courses for digestion purposes. It’s all timed to perfection. Not too quick, not too slow. Spot on. The two “girls” remain pleasant, smiling (the waitress anyway), helpful. The dishes are brought and their silver lids are lifted in synchronisation. It is all absolutely magnificent. The turbot, the solomillo – outstanding, mega-historic – the needlework twines of paprika, the purées, the sweet with a cream of some ambrosia. More, more, more; please, more. An almond liqueur. I’ll take the bottle. And what do you know? I’m full. No KFC for you on the way back, young fellow m’lad. Full. Not belt-undoing full. But sated, satisfied, and served well.

This is a fine restaurant. Ostentatious, yes; tries a bit too hard, yes; but the kitchen is supreme, the service just about delicate, courtesy of the the waitress, rather too matronly where the maìtresse d’ is concerned. Not economy class. But for treat purposes… . Go on, do it. On the stroll back we pass the other restaurant, the one that had been intended. Don’t know if there’s anyone in there. Lights on. No-one in. I do know they lost out on something like 200 euros. On a Friday in Alcúdia. Not exactly buzzing. For the sake of ten minutes and a touch of service. Satyricon got the gig and did service; did it well. The other place? The unnamed place? Hmm. Or rather, “Wahnsinn”.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Push Me Pull You – Mobiles in marketing

The use of mobile phones to convey advertising messages from Spanish companies tripled in 2009. The greatest increase in this form of marketing has occurred in the restaurant sector. The growth of text messaging, with discount offers, information about different dishes and the like, is just one indication of the advance of mobile technology. It is here to stay and here to ultimately dominate. The refinement of the technology, the move towards smart phones, the presence of web browsers, the lowering of charges all point in one direction – that mobile dominance. On a worldwide scale, there are four times more mobile phones than there are personal computers. Four billion mobile users compared with a billion users of a PC. The scope for marketers is immense, far more so than the internet via the PC.

None of this can come soon enough where I am concerned, if only because it might, once and for all, put paid to the inefficient economies of publishing, those inherent to print. In Mallorca, this inefficiency is compounded. Print costs on the island are absurd. Offshore printing is an option, but that brings with it complications of distance and immediacy, to say nothing of shipping costs. Print? Get thee behind me.

For advertisers, a shift away from established media makes sense in different ways, and improved measurability and targeting are the two greatest advantages of internet and mobile. They are the Holy Grails of advertising, and neither of them have been satisfactorily discovered via print, TV or radio. That internet advertising, in the UK, now outstrips television does perhaps prove the point. It isn’t necessarily a cost issue if one takes account of the vast sums paid by companies with the budgets to do so on the know-how that goes into adwords and response, but investment in this area can be offset against lower spend elsewhere.

Fundamentally though, the advance of mobile as the delivery mechanism of choice is a personal one on behalf of the user. It is the same psychology that stops someone using a mobile for anything other than basic purposes as stops an advertiser from adopting the technology or believing in it: personal use, choice and values. What the Spanish findings show, however, is a move away from this psychological resistance, and in a market sector that is littered – in Mallorca, at any rate – with many from the old school. If restaurant owners, and others, are being persuaded of the value of what one might call push marketing through texting, so they will be far more accepting of pull marketing, the use of the mobile for searching for example.

It is the new generation of mobiles that has opened this up. The coming together of browsers, graphics and video, through the mobile, allied to search engines (as with Nokia and Apple), transforms the possibilities afforded by mobile technology. For some of you grandmothers, this may sound like egg-sucking, but for some it may not be. Portability, convenience, these are just two advantages of the magic in the small mobile box. The box won’t mean the end of print, of course not, but for many applications print has become anachronistic and unsustainable in terms of cost and lack of flexibility. Welcome to the new age.

Bleach
Yes, that’s right. Bleach. Not beach. Why? Well, go into a supermarket and you are likely to see prominent displays of bleach, great numbers of bottles awaiting the buyer. And why is there such prominence and such abundance? I’m guessing, but it is probably because of walls, as in walls and dampness, and other surfaces that can be affected by the damp. If someone knows otherwise, maybe they can let me know.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Nothing Lasts Forever

So, that article did not appear in “The Bulletin” – Michael Jackson got in the way it would seem – but it left some sufficiently hacked off because there was another piece about the Calvia bar association. Always Calvia, never Alcúdia – not my view, but what I hear. It is now meant to appear today. Ho hum.

This Calvia association. The desire is to get bar owners to become members and then act in some form of pressure capacity. I get a sinking feeling about it. The mover behind it is one of those who was involved in the ill-fated (Calvia-originated) British and Irish Business and Residents Association. It collapsed through lack of funding that was not forthcoming from the Mallorca Council; at least that’s my understanding. There was probably also an element of here’s an association, here’s some publicity and here is then massive indifference. Which is not to say that these things spring up without good intentions; but it is to say that people, for a variety of reasons, do not wish to get involved. Those reasons include the fact that they do not wish to be identified, that they don’t have the time and that they are just not interested. The only association that has ever truly established itself is ESRA (English Speaking Residents’ Association). It exists primarily for one reason – English speaking. There is no real agenda, which probably explains why it’s successful. People feel comfortable with an essentially benign group of fellow expats which courts neither controversy nor publicity. Plenty others feel uncomfortable if they are not straw-hatters, prefer not to wear black ties and attend dinner and dance functions or prefer not to play bowls; hence they do not join. ESRA goes about its admirable charity efforts and good works, its committees and gardening contests with all the gentility of an English shire country fête. Why, when I think of ESRA, can I never get out of my head the image of Matt Lucas and David Walliams as Judy and Maggie judging the marmalade?

It’s all a bit last days of the Raj, and to hear some of what is currently being said one might well form the impression that ESRA – and every other association as well as agency of government – is bearing witness to the last rites of things as they are known in Mallorca. I was given a right old ear-bashing by a (Mallorcan) restaurant owner in Playa de Muro the other day. “What do I do?” he kept asking. “What’s the solution?” he demanded of me. As if I know. Why not get all the owners together and put on some sort of protest, suggested I. It won’t happen. But there is some sense in associations, that do represent interests, coming together to voice their legitimate concerns as to the direction in which the tourism economy (the summer one) is heading – or more accurately, has gone. Recession is temporary, but the underlying decline has been there for some years, a combination of competition, reduced spend, over-supply and all-inclusives. The depressing fact is that complacency has prevented more or less everyone – government, local authorities and yes bar and restaurant owners – from recognising or at least admitting the trend. It has taken the “crisis” to finally wake everyone up. But having had some choice words for Muro town hall, this particular owner said, “so we protest and then the tourists all end up going to Turkey”. It’s an exaggeration, but it contains some truth in that there is a general impotence in the face of tour operator power and tourist choice.

Though there can be sympathy for bar and restaurant owners, it is also in limited supply for some, especially, I’m sorry to have to say, the Mallorcan families who have enjoyed the benefits of and reaped the rewards from tourism. The hardships tend more to be confined to newcomers, often foreign. Many of these families, some of them doing the moaning now, are sitting on significant wealth, or at least the potential to release wealth. Mallorca grew fat and made many Mallorcans wealthy thanks to various factors that dropped into the laps of these Mallorcans: first, perhaps the only sensible policy that the Franco regime had (to develop mass tourism); second, the tourist benevolence of tour operators, airlines and the tourists themselves; third, the benevolence of Europe in creating a modern economy for Spain and the island. Nothing lasts. That is the real point and the real problem. The tourist is spread far more thinly, he has more options. He, the tourist, and the tour operator can give and have given; they can also take away.

Sympathy there is, but there needs to also be a serious dose of realism. One detects a sense by which some of these owners believe that tourists continue to owe them; that they most certainly do not.

Pennyroyal Tea

One of those holiday survey things. What the Brit holidaymaker takes with him or her on holiday. Apparently, 43% of tourists take their own teabags with them. Do you?

At least teabags don’t take up much room in a suitcase or indeed weigh very much, so squeezing a load of bagged-up Tetleys inside a shoe isn’t too much of a problem, unlike, for example, cans of Heinz baked beans or some sliced loaves. But the British enduring imbibing love affair with tea demands that the right tea is on the table wherever the Brit may wander, Mallorca or further afield. Some while ago I spoke about tea (4 November: Storm In A Teacup), remarking that “whatever that sachet with a piece of string contains, you can be confident that it isn’t actually tea”. And that was because local tea bears only a passing resemblance, and usually not even that, to the brackish stuff that floods out of a PG Tip. For Mallorca and Spain, read also many other countries. That 43% are probably right.

Still, if you need to go out and buy some tea, you might try one of the local so-called discount supermarkets. Since when was a discount “hard” do you suppose? But hard it is if, that is, you go to the Royal Cheapest at the top of The Mile or, allegedly, Aldi in Playa de Muro. Now I may be wrong, but I have a funny feeling that this isn’t Aldi as we know it, Jim, or should that be not as “wir wissen” it, Hans.

One of the great truisms of local business is that bars come and bars do go, that restaurants come and restaurants do go. Puerto Alcúdia has lost, finally, one of its less attractive but damned good eateries. Cap Roig. What a fine place this was. The stuffed peppers and the battered cod were excellent. Toni may have occasionally sported rather eccentric head furniture in the form of his haircut, but haircuts have never been a crucial factor when it comes to culinary skills. The restaurant had been for sale for at least three years and it has now passed into other hands, or indeed haircuts. It will still be a restaurant, but a different style. It will be … an Indian. And, your starter and main course for ten euros or so, who is behind this new Indian? Think Puerto Pollensa. All will be revealed … . But you probably already know.

And … some of you may have noticed that today sees the United of Manchester playing the Barcelona of Barcelona. Watch your hats around the bars tonight as the locals demonstrate their sound Catalonian credentials. But in celebration of this, and my thanks to Danny Baker, here is one of Mallorca’s Z-list celebs performing a peerlessly awful thing called “Soccer Superstar”. Enjoy, or more likely, don’t. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Jess Conrad, and to be honest you can have him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_urjNkxaLz0.