Every Poster Tells A Tourism Story

It mystifies me why more is not made of an aspect of Mallorcan and Spanish history that is, for many people, more relevant and more real than much of the history that tourism bodies would prefer to shove down people’s throats. Indeed, the tourism bodies are missing a trick, because they are sitting on a vast repository of documentation and images that is a record of the very thing they are concerned with and is what intrigues any number of visitors – tourism itself and its history.

In 1985 the Institute of Touristic Studies (part of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce) was established. Its centre of documentation has well over 100,000 documents of various types. Some can be accessed via the internet or, if you happen to be in Madrid, can be seen by visiting the centre (naturally enough, only ever open in the mornings; don’t let’s get too carried away with convenience to the public).

The use of the word document suggests something rather dry. Many of the documents are just that, but not all. Nothing like all, as they include brochures, postcards, photos and posters.

Posters have a particular status in local culture. For some fiestas, they seem more important than the fiestas themselves. Their presentation are events in their own right, and sometimes – for the right and wrong reasons – they become news, as with the poster for the final bullfight in Barcelona (the right reason because it was so highly prized) and for Palma’s most recent San Sebastià fiesta (the wrong reason because the design was plagiarised).

Posters for tourism have a long history, and not just in Spain. They were once, of course, a means of promotion for British seaside resorts, produced by the old “Big Four” regional rail companies and then the nationalised British Railways.

Spanish tourism, by comparison with that to Bridlington or Brighton, is more recent, and the Institute’s astonishing collection of posters covers the second half of the last century. The golden age for the tourism poster, though, was from 1960 to 1980.

One of the first posters in the collection, dating from 1961, suggests that Spanish tourism authorities hadn’t quite got the hang of what was to make Spain a mass tourism destination. A “Castilian Landscape”, it shows a rainbow tumbling from a sky of blue clouds into the horizon of a wheat field.

A year later, however, and the penny has started to drop. Though the posters were all designed to promote Spain (in different languages), images of different parts of the country were used, and so Mallorca, and its beach tourism, features for the first time. A poster in French has a scene of the beach at Formentor. Sunshades made from reeds shield sunbathers, two boats and what looks like a water-skier are in the sea, pines (symbolic of the area) encroach on either side of the foreground. It looks remarkably contemporary; or maybe nothing has really changed.

The choice of Formentor, exclusive then and still exclusive, does perhaps hint at the type of tourism that was being mainly hoped for. In the same year, there is a poster for Torremolinos. Not of what you might expect, but of its golf course. Benidorm appears for the first time in 1966, or at least the name appears; you don’t see any of the resort, just some sail boats on a beach.

As the 1960s progress, you can trace how widely promotion was being conducted. Posters are produced for exhibitions across Europe and even in New York. Historic sites vie with the image of the bullfight and with those of resorts, and Mallorca shows off a second – Cala San Vicente with the iconic shot of the Cavall Bernat horse promontory across the Cala Molins.

The “alternative” tourism of the current day is revealed to be not quite so alternative or new. In addition to the likes of golf, gastronomy appears in 1967; a rustic bodega with an Iberian ham very much in evidence. But by now, mass tourism is being admitted to, and it is Torremolinos again, this time with a beach scene, not packed with people, but in far greater numbers than had been on Formentor beach.

I could go on, but you should see for yourselves. The collection is fascinating and it is made more fascinating because the posters represent images and resorts which mean something, which is the point of much Mallorcan and Spanish tourism history – it is history within people’s own lifetimes. And this is why more should be made of it.

To see the posters, go to http://www.iet.tourspain.es. There is an English section, and you need to click on “documentary funds”, then “catalogues search” and you will come to a list which includes “tourist posters”. Type in “España” where it says “words” in the first box, then put in the dates 1960-1980 and opt for dates ascending or descending.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Senior Service: Mallorca’s salvation?

It was the Americans, inevitably, who created new for old. The new age pensioner, as opposed to the old, became “senior”. It happened quite a number of years ago, but now, of course, we are totally familiar with seniors and with the images which accompany them.

Seniors are all Robert Kilroy-Silk or Gloria Hunniford of appropriate vintages – not a hair out of place, with their own teeth and permanently delighted by Dell having shown them the wonders of communicating via a PC, by the letter they have just received itemising their health insurance premiums or by the foreign land in which they find themselves indulging in a spot of senior tourism.

The World Tourism Organization has been holding its nineteenth assembly. It is a mark of how diverse tourism has become that the organization in its early years used to gather in Torremolinos; now it has pitched up in South Korea. Geographical diversity is matched by tourism market diversity, hence a focus on the senior market in Gyeongju (and no, I’d never heard of it either).

The growth in the senior tourism market in Europe has opened up new countries as sources of tourists. Greece, for example. One might have thought that the Greeks have the benefits that off-season Spain can boast: reasonable weather, fair dollops of history and culture and their own version of tapas. Perhaps so, but the ancient Greeks increasingly fancy getting away from it all; getting away from all the burning cars in the streets presumably.

The Greeks add to the ever-increasing numbers of seniors from the more traditional markets, such as those of Scandinavia, moving about in winter. And mostly all of these tourists are heading to Spain in the off-season under the Europe Senior Tourism (EST) programme.

According to a body called Segittur, by 2020 five million European seniors will be travelling annually in the off-season as part of EST, and three regions of the country are set to capture the overwhelming majority of them – Valencia, Andalusia and the Balearics.

Segittur is a national organization dedicated to innovation in tourism technologies, primarily the internet at present. It, therefore, has Dell and all other computer companies to thank for the delight of Roberts and Glorias from across Europe who have got themselves online and who can take advantage of the opportunities for a Spanish winter holiday.

Senior tourism is not exactly new. In Mallorca it has typically been more of a social services type tourism and is one that has left resorts underwhelmed. Scandinavian pensioners, heavily subsidised, have been going to Alcúdia for some years, but this type of tourism does little or nothing for the local economy as barely any money is spent.

What is different about this new wave of senior tourism is that EST is aimed at a market that isn’t simply being packed off to escape the worst of a north European winter by governments that hope to save on the cost of their health services. It is still described as “social tourism” but the offer is more up-market; accommodation, for instance, is usually four-star.

The holiday package is also partially subsidised – by the Spanish Government and regional governments, including the Balearics – and the subsidy varies according to country. Here, though, is a catch. Which country isn’t included in the EST scheme? Well, the UK for one. But it’s not as though this programme is just directed at new markets in the east of Europe; the likes of France, Austria and Italy hardly fall into that category.

The programme is, however, still in its early stages. A two-year pilot phase has created 100,000 visitors to Spain, so the Segittur target has quite some way to go, and to achieve it, it will need to embrace other countries, like the UK, Germany and also Russia.

So, is this all going to mean that winter tourism, courtesy of Roberts and Glorias (who do indeed feature in the EST website promotion), will be transforming Mallorca? Possibly. However, of the 100,000, two-thirds of them opted to go to Andalusia, to the Costas del Sol or Almeria. The 16,000 or so who came to the Balearics may have been higher had more hotels been part of the scheme, or perhaps one is back to the same old issue – that of the weather.

Nevertheless, it is a highly encouraging development, one that involves a market which does tend to spend money. And before you ask. No, the package is not all-inclusive; it’s half board, which is even more encouraging.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Voting Rights?: Go to New Zealand

One of the dangers with “burning issues” for the expatriate community is that we end up repeating ourselves, myself included. If not winter flights and tourism or all-inclusives, then voting rights. In addition to repetition, we might also not get a wholly accurate or complete picture.

“Brussels thinks Spain’s stance on non-Spanish voters is undemocratic.” (“The Bulletin”, 15 October.) I’m not sure Brussels does think this. Brussels, or some bureaucrats or politicians lurking within its labyrinths may think, just possibly, that a new decree should be issued regarding voting rights for expatriates in national elections, but if they do, then they would have the whole of the EU in mind. The issue is not a Spanish one but a European one.

Just to remind you. Under terms of the Single Market, provision was made for expatriates (of whatever nationality within the EU) to be able to vote in European and local elections in the country in which they are resident. No provision was made for national elections. That was the agreement, and it still is.

The agreement doesn’t prevent countries from granting a vote in general elections, if they so wish. But only two EU countries – Ireland and Portugal – have come anywhere near to doing so. In Ireland, a proposal to permit voting for the Dáil and for the President has been around for three years, but it remains only a proposal.

There are anomalies with voting rights for foreign nationals, such as Irish citizens (and Commonwealth subjects) being permitted to vote in a British general election and, in parts of the UK, a Spanish or any other EU resident being able to vote for a devolved parliament or assembly, while a Brit in Spain cannot vote in a regional election.

Anomalies aside, the undemocratic aspect of voting rights in the EU lies not with the current restrictions on foreign residents but with disenfranchisement from any national election. The UK 15-year rule is not the only such rule. If you are Danish and have permanently lived outside of Denmark for two years, you lose your right to vote.

Such disenfranchisement, unbalanced by a right to vote in the country of residence (i.e. Spain, for our purposes), is undemocratic, or appears to be, as it goes against the principle of universal suffrage. But suffrage itself is wrapped up in concepts of citizenship and national sovereignty. Limited suffrage can be granted, as with the provisions of the Single Market, but in the most important manifestation of suffrage – that of voting for national parliaments – unless you are a citizen of a country, you cannot vote.

There are countries in which foreigners can vote in national elections. Permanent residents in New Zealand can. In Uruguay, there is a fifteen-year qualification rule. But these are very much the exception. The principle is, overwhelmingly, citizenship equals the right to vote for a national parliament; a national parliament is a supreme expression of sovereignty; and sovereignty is enshrined in national constitutions.

The limited rights to voting within the EU have required constitutional amendments. To extend rights to national elections would require further changes and thus a huge political debate. In Spain, any constitutional amendment does, strictly speaking, require a referendum. The EU might mandate voting rights for foreigners in national elections (though I would personally doubt that it would, certainly not in the current climate with the problems with the Euro), but this would still necessitate constitutional changes.

Just think about it for a moment. Would the British Government go along with such a directive from Europe? Well, would it? Apart from anything else, the right-wing press would be in uproar. The same in Spain. While British residents might press their claims to vote, has anyone asked the Spanish what they would think? Politically, it would be a step too far, and for the EU to mandate such a move would probably signal its own collapse. And were it to, then the whole burning issue of voting rights would cease to be an issue.

I have no disagreement with citizenship being paramount in determining who should be allowed to vote (and please, let’s not have any we’re all Europeans speciousness). Where a change might be made is with respect to the length of time one has been resident, as in Uruguay, but there should also be strings attached, as contemplated by the Irish, one being to pass a language test. After all, if you can’t command the language, how can you have true command of the issues, always assuming of course that you are interested? But that is a different matter entirely.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Land Of Make Believe

I’d like to take you back in time. It was a time of the three-day week, unworkable governments that changed every few months, virtual national bankruptcy and massive union unrest. It was also a time of extremely long hair and flared jeans.

It was during this time that I was at university. In common with some others, it was a self-contained community, a campus. Some miles from the city, it operated under its own rules, a mini-state not immune to the wider world, but one in which a government existed together with forces of agitation and institutions bound up in sub-governments, committees, constitutions and rigged elections.

The forces of agitation were led by the students union, generally a collective of the far and less far left. Collegiate in make-up, the university had, in addition to the main union, eight union-ettes: student bodies for each college.

The government comprised university administrative bureaucrats and academics of various political colours. The lecturers had their own set-ups: the senior common rooms attached to the colleges, the more strident among their number being those who were well-known to Moscow and others who would have considered Enoch Powell a liberal.

The government practised a system of democracy in which there were innumerable committees and a senate. To the colleges were devolved responsibilities for this and that, while the colleges’ individual unions – the junior common rooms – mirrored precisely the make-up of the main union. There was a president, a vice-president for internal affairs, one for external affairs, a treasurer, and so on.

Union meetings were interminable gatherings often devoted to the minutiae of whether ultra vires payments for supporting the Shrewsbury 3 or the Iranian 91 were constitutional or not. They always were, because the union politburo would make sure that they were. The mini-me unions, the junior common rooms, would concern themselves less with matters of national or international agitprop and more with securing the compliance of the rank and file. Bread and circuses: free beer, rubbish music acts and weekly discos.

No one ever actually questioned whether this system was right or not. It just was. It existed within a make-believe world. The campus was like Patrick McGoohan’s Prisoner island, with one major difference – dissent, if not actively encouraged, could not be repressed. The only time it was, on any scale, was at the end of a two-week occupation of the administration building. The university had the temerity to put up campus rents so that what were little more than peppercorn acquired some salt. In we all went, but after two weeks of less-than-hygienic conditions, it was a relief when plod crashed through a wall one night and carried us out. And plod were no doubt delighted at the overtime payments.

Quite what the occupation cost, heaven alone knows. But then money wasn’t really much object. The university, its students, its staff existed thanks largely to UK government and taxpayer beneficence. It was its own world, one in which politics were entirely divorced from real life. It was a land of make believe, a play thing for the mid-70s’ wizards of “Oz” magazine.

The point of all this is that Mallorcan and Spanish politics have a lot in common with those days. The make believe was that forged after Franco, a world of idealistic institutions, decentralisation, duplicated responsibilities, inhabited by all manner of political groups and parties, supported by the seemingly endless generosity of first Europe and then a Spanish state with little comprehension of control.

No one thought to really question this system. It was allowed to grow, but it has, despite some 36 years of being, not cast off the immaturities that were evident in university days. Now we have situations in which a union leader can insult a political party, as Lorenzo Bravo of the UGT has insulted the Partido Popular government, calling them pigs. Back in the day, plod were those, while anyone who wasn’t a card-carrying Trot was a fascist, and this, the fascist insult, is hurled around in all directions as well by the competing elements in the Castilian-Catalan argument.

The system is akin to that of the university. Governments embroiled in issues of questionable payments, the town halls and the Council of Mallorca mirrors of government, dealing in the bread and circuses of the fiestas with their booze, rubbish music acts and discos.

The days of bread and circuses are over, however. The money’s run out. Real life for Mallorca and Spain has started. The playing and the make believe have to stop. Whether they will, though, is questionable. Here come plod.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Last Bull In Barcelona

On Sunday evening the last bull in Barcelona, the last bull in Catalonia, will meet its maker, skewered on the matador’s sword of truth. The final red cape will come down on bullfighting in Catalonia and on the bullring, the Monumental, bringing to an end almost one hundred years of the “corrida” in the arena. On 1 January next year the Catalonian ban on bullfighting comes into effect. The bull is dead; long live the bull.

The ban, a largely political manoeuvre of anti-Spanishness dressed up behind the cloak of animal rights, will be only the second such prohibition in Spain. Others may follow, and if they were to, they would genuinely be in the name of animal rights. Driven by popular petition, to which the Catalonian parliament was not obliged to accede, the ban is colossally hypocritical; the bull-runs (the “correbous”), which are a Catalan tradition, are unaffected, while the bullfight, never a particularly strong tradition in Catalonia and far more associated with “Spain”, will be no more.

Or will it be no more? The politics of the bullfight are far more complex than the process that brought about the Catalonia ban, a process that allows for possible changes to laws on the basis of petitions (the so-called popular legislative initiatives). The national elections are looming, and Catalonia could yet find itself back to square one, and the bull, who might have looked forward to a long and happy life, could yet find itself back in the circle of the arena.

The national government has more or less abrogated any responsibility for decision-making regarding the bullfight. Despite it having effected a transfer of administrative oversight from the interior ministry to the culture ministry, and having also accepted that the bullfight is of cultural importance, it is left to regional governments to arbitrate on the bullfight’s future, if they so wish.

However, the Partido Popular, set to win the elections in November and generally in favour of the bullfight (or at least not particularly against it), may choose to challenge the right of the regions to decide. Catalonian PP members, of which there are indeed some, suggest that a constitutional court could decree that the regions don’t have the competency to decide. An opposite view is that the national constitutional court could not overturn Catalonian legislation.

The PP, justified in arguing that the ban lacks coherence given the non-ban on bull-runs, could make the bullfight an electoral issue, but it would be one of even greater irrelevance than fox-hunting was when Tony Blair was brandishing his animal-rights credentials; Spain has matters of far greater importance to worry about than bullfighting and than Labour had to.

It would be a political mistake in any event. Though support for the bullfight might play well in some parts of Spain, the Spanish no longer much care for the bullfight; overwhelmingly so, to the tune of about two to one. Moreover, the economics of bullfighting, for which there are conflicting views as to how much it contributes to national or local coffers, are such that it isn’t cheap to stage. Allied to the costs of bullfighting, there is the fact that the number of events has slumped dramatically – by over a third between 2007 and 2010.

Geographical variance in terms of popular support or rejection of bullfighting tends to bolster the current situation of allowing the regions to decide as to its future. Catalonia is a special case, as it always is a special case, but the ban there does nevertheless reflect an indifference towards bullfighting.

In Mallorca, where politicians at the time of the announcement of the Catalonia ban were divided as to whether they would support or not a similar move in the Balearics, the indifference is of a different order. Protests against bullfights and indeed against the island’s only correbou (that of Fornalutx, one that is not as disturbing as those in Catalonia where flames come from the end of the bulls’ horns) are token. Indeed the Fornalutx correbou protest this year, shunted off into a sports arena and ignored by the locals at the request of the mayor, was a PR fiasco.

For many, the Catalonia ban looked as though it might spell the end of the bullfight in Spain as a whole. It was never likely to because of the peculiarities of Catalonian politics; from November it will be even less likely.

The bull is dead. Long live the bull? Maybe not, and in Catalonia maybe not. The sword of truth may stay only briefly in its sheath, to return one day to the Monumental.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Johnny Foreigners

It is fun reading what the British press has to say about expat life. Fun because it can be withering in its damnation. You need to have a thick skin if you live in Mallorca and to accept that you can be the object of satire, and at times vicious satire.

The other day, I mentioned Clarkson and his post office blag gag. There have been others, such as A. A. Gill and his character assassination of the by then ex-Keith Floyd and lampooning of Brits assembling for their all-day benders. The “Daily Mail” whipped up a storm two years ago when it addressed the shallowness of life in Mallorca’s Portals Nous, only for it to be accused, at best, of misinterpretation. But it served a purpose. And with any of this, there is some basis in truth, and the truth can hurt.

The British press takes a certain delight in attacking the collective Aunt Sally that is the Brit expat community and giving her a periodic knocking. Fair enough. I do the same. But there is a difference. One of being here or being there. Distance, you might think, lends a greater objectivity. Perhaps. But it can also generate ignorance or prejudice. Not everyone is, for example, a Portals airhead.

On a tangential note, it was “The Sun” what did it over the fallout from the bombs two summers ago. The paper ran a most extraordinary item in which it reckoned that the bombs could spell the end of tourism in Spain and Mallorca. What was doubly extraordinary was that it was written by the paper’s travel editor. The item wasn’t so much irresponsible as complete drivel.

I treat travel pages in newspapers with great suspicion. Unless the writer is blessed with genius, like Adrian Gill, and demands to be read regardless, I wonder what the agenda is. Generally, and unlike the expat have-a-go, the travel pages are positive towards Mallorca. But there is always the punchline, as in so-and-so travelled with such-or-such a company. And if the writer is not Adrian Gill but, say, Louise Redknapp, then you do really have to wonder, especially when Louise, the boy Jamie in tow, discovered (in “The Mail”) some “authentic” Mallorca. Where? Portals Nous.

All of which brings me to Christina Patterson. She’s a good writer and penned a recent article in “The Independent” that was, notwithstanding the odd dig at some lousy tapas, highly positive. It still came with the punchline caveat, but it didn’t matter. However, Ms. Patterson has some previous.

She once wrote an article about expats, the thrust of which was the old chestnut of integration (expats not speaking the language and all that) and of the expat treating Spain (and therefore also Mallorca) and Johnny Foreigner as though empire still existed and the pith helmet was de rigueur headwear.

I despair of the integration thing, not because it isn’t an interesting topic but because it is used as a term without any attempt being made to define it. Suffice it to say, if expats couldn’t care less about learning the lingo or prefer to spend their evenings watching “Corrie”, then quite frankly who am I, or indeed is anyone, including Ms. Patterson, to say they’re wrong.

But what was particularly galling about her invective was that she implied that people who had found their lives ruined because of what had turned out to be illegal housing pretty much had themselves to blame. She then mocked those who, on discovering they were in such a parlous situation, levelled accusations of corruption without appreciating that this is how things are in Spain.

Up to a point, she was right, but she should also know that plenty of Spaniards and Mallorcans complain about corruption and that they also stand to lose, or have lost, as a consequence of both corruption and illegal housing. Furthermore, another ingredient in the strife caused by buildings near the coasts is the old 1988 law, newly interpreted by the Costas’ authority. A demand from Mallorcan landowners (not expats) means that the Costas now have to explain themselves to the European Parliament.

There are plenty of expats who do bring upon themselves the ridicule of the stereotype, and it is great fun to indulge in such ridiculing, but sometimes their lot is no laughing matter, especially when there is an issue of natural justice at stake; one that affects expats and also plenty of Spaniards and Mallorcans.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Football: A Family Game

Some football’s happening tomorrow. I had quite forgotten that the season was still with us, and had all but forgotten that Capello and England any longer existed. But they do, and they’re playing Switzerland. Has the FA’s favourite gnome of Zurich, Sepp Blatter, been invited along for the prawn sandwiches, do you suppose?

Actual games of football no longer seem to matter. It’s all the other stuff that is so entertaining, and some of it is in Spain. Take Real Mallorca. A team that can contrive to almost be relegated on the last day of the season, having spent the entire season in mid-table obscurity, takes some beating.

Dottiness is never far away from Real Mallorca, and now the club is seeking to become the Brentford of La Liga; major shareholder and vice-president Llorenç Serra Ferrer possibly taking over the coaching reins. Serra, the Ron Noades, chairman/team manager, of Spanish football. To be fair to Serra, he is actually a coach; Ron just lived his own odd dream.

Real Brentford, once described by Sid Lowe of “The Guardian” as “rubbish” and having no fans, charges which revealed that there were indeed some fans, as they leapt to the club’s defence, has, despite nearly clutching relegation defeat from the victory of staying in La Liga, been honoured in Sid’s annual Sids. Just. Two players, Nunes and De Guzmán, are on the subs bench for Lowe’s team of the season. And De Guzmán’s an interesting character. Is he Dutch, is he Jamaican, is he Canadian? What is he exactly? Owen Hargreaves with his knees still intact.

Far, far more interesting, however, are the shenanigans at the Banana Republic of FIFA, and its own Spanish connection. Blatter has proved, like Iran’s Ahmadinejad and Belarus’s Lukashenko, that a touch of pretend democracy can go a long way in keeping a dictator in power. The delegates walked up, two by two, entering the ark above the flood that never really threatened to wash Sepp away, and dropped their voting slips into the box, watched on by Sepp muttering, “there, now, you know you’re doing the right thing”.

Among the members of the FIFA “family” who turned on the bleating black sheep Bernstein of the English FA was another interesting character. Spain’s very own Sepp: Ángel María Villar Llona, the president of the Spanish football federation. Villar Llona’s been in power even longer than Blatter has. He’s carved out his own fiefdom. And like Blatter, a certain amount of mud has attached itself to his hands and knees.

Back in November, a judge formally archived charges that had been open against Villar Llona for several years. Despite, I quote, “abominable management in accounting for trips, expenses and purchase of foreign currency” as well as various other criticisms, the judge found that the president and other directors of the federation should be absolved of charges of impropriety.

On being re-elected, yet again, as president in 2008, the head of La Liga said of Villar Llona’s re-election that this would mean “the union between all the families of football”. Football certainly is a family game, and “allegations”, that “beautiful English word”, as Villar Llona taunted the FA with, should not be made about families.

In the 2008 election, when he was unopposed, Villar Llona polled 87% of the votes, a bit short of the 92% Blatter secured in Zurich, but pretty good going after 20 years. There was clearly no problem for him in that, two years before, he had managed to stun delegates at a UEFA conference by arguing that too much attention was being paid to racism in football.

It should have come as no great surprise that Villar Llona joined the queue to give the FA a good kick in the shins in Zurich. During the gathering to divvy up the spoils of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, Villar Llona, rounding on those accusing FIFA of corruption (i.e. the British media), said: “FIFA is clean and does things with honesty. All of you (members of FIFA) are honest and hard-working and are concerned only for football”.

Ah, the beautiful game, the beautiful family game, adorned by Messi, Xavi, Iniesta and Guardiola’s wonderful Barcelona. But even Barça can’t avoid being dragged in. Villar Llona has spawned a word. “Villaroto”. José Mourinho has used it, the Madrid football papers have used it. It refers to the alleged bias of the Barça-supporting president against Real Madrid.

Barça, more than a club. Football, more than a game. I nearly forgot, there’s one on tomorrow.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Cucumbergate

It is the lot of certain fruit and veg that they imply innuendo. Melons, for example, are something other than melons, while any old two veg, accompanied by meat, take on an entirely different meaning to that of simply being placed on a plate.

Which brings us of course to the cucumber. Its capacity for the comedically prurient was highlighted in the scene in “Benidorm” when Martin, thinking he was coming to Kate’s aid, burst into a bedroom only to discover Mateo, gagged and strapped to the bed, and Donald and Jacqueline preparing the salad.

The swingers would have been handling a Spanish cucumber. Was Mateo’s fate to be to succumb to the E.coli bug? Well no, but had it been, it would have been far worse than what the couple had in mind for him.

There was just a possibility that it wasn’t a Spanish cucumber, but a foreign import. This would, though, have been a remote possibility, because, as we know from the tourism-sustainably correct TUI and others, produce in Benidorm and elsewhere is sourced locally, thus establishing the great benefit of the all-inclusive.

The fuss about the Spanish cucumber, wrongly blamed for Germans dropping like flies, has had its repercussions on this local sourcing. Cucumber’s off in many a hotel, and there has been an 80% fall in sales. The locals, as well as the hotels, are eschewing any chewing on a pepino. Despite Spanish indignation as to German allegations of contaminated veg, one German supermarket proudly announcing that it is stocking no Spanish produce at present, the Spanish themselves have taken the scare to heart as well.

The Germans, and the German media in particular, have form when it comes to making the blame fall mainly on Spain for health scares. Outbreaks of swine flu in Germany a couple of years ago were attributed, with barely any evidence, to a pocket of the virus in Playa de Palma. And so, as with swine flu, Cucumbergate threatens the German tourism market.

Joan Mesquida, the national secretary-general for tourism, has admitted that damage has been done. TUI, however, reckons that German tourism has been unaffected, but you can probably imagine that it will have been firing off emails to all its hotels in Mallorca and Spain telling them not to let a cucumber within a hundred kilometres.

With health scares come the photo-opp ministerial attempts to convince that all is well. The Andalucia minister for agriculture, suitably but perhaps unfortunately trussed up in plastic anti-contaminant attire, has tucked into a pepino for press photographers and cameras. “Mmm, lecker,” she should have been instructed to say, with the footage then supplied to German television. It was her John Selwyn Gummer moment. “Mad cow disease? What mad cow disease?”

Not everyone is convinced though. In an act of solidarity with the Fatherland, Lidl has temporarily stopped stocking cucumbers, including those grown in Mallorca. This, despite the fact that all locally grown pepinos, which mainly come from around Manacor and Porreres, comply with all known sanitary measures.

Cap Rocat
Anyway, moving onto a different subject. The Cap Rocat hotel in Cala Blava, a converted fortress, has been named by the BBC website as one of its five best new hotels of 2011. The accolade for this Mallorcan hotel is welcome, as it is a remarkable hotel which presumably has some remarkable prices as well.

But quite how you arrive at the five best of anything when you have the whole world to choose from is a bit of a mystery. If the BBC’s travel chaps have been jetting off across the globe in search of the best five new hotels, this would be licence-fee-payers’ money well spent, I’m sure you would agree.

Cap Rocat, and its website is as near to it as I will ever get, other than standing outside its gated entrance, is not untypical, in its publicity, of the way in which the simple use of the definite article can create exclusivity. Thus, the website lists “THE water” (not that which you drink, but the “fantastic” and “crystal clear” Med; oh dear, someone’s been at the brochure talk), “THE experiences” (sport), “THE special moments” (private meetings, it would seem). The only part of its offer which isn’t “the” is an article-less gastronomy. No mention of THE cucumber being on the menu though, which is probably just as well.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Persecution Of Baltasar Garzón

It takes something for a judge to be the subject of a film or a TV show. Baltasar Garzón is neither an eccentric figure of the Wild West (Judge Roy Bean) nor a fictitious and unrealistic character such as Judge John Deed. He is grounded and real. He is grounded in more than just one sense. Level-headed, he has also been suspended since last May, while awaiting trial on an allegation of “prevaricación”, which is a Spanish legal concept which isn’t really as it sounds; it can be taken to mean misconduct in office or possibly perverting the course of justice.

The documentary film, “Listening to Judge Garzón”, is more than simply a look at his life and times and his fears arising out of his suspension. It is also representative of the support Garzón has from the liberal arts. A week ago, in Madrid, there was a demonstration, one by artists, unionists and politicians, calling for an end to the “persecution” of Garzón. Under the banner “truth, justice and reparation”, the demonstration rejected the attempted criminalisation of Garzón and criticised the inaction of the government and tribunals.

Garzón, who, by appearance, has something of a chubby Sven-Goran Eriksson about him but who has not been guilty of Sven’s peccadilloes or indeed those of Judge John Deed, is far from uncontroversial. To call him a judge is misleading, in English terms. He is an investigator, more than he is an arbiter. It is through the nature of his investigations that he has aroused controversy and the attentions of opponents as diverse as the Spanish right wing and the US Government.

The Spanish legal system allows for investigations that go beyond national jurisdiction. Consequently, Garzón has brushed up against the American authorities for seeking to pursue torture allegations and Henry Kissinger. But it was one investigation in particular, one in Spain, that brought about his suspension. It was that of calling for exhumation of graves and for charges of crimes against humanity related to incidents during and after the Civil War.

Garzón, so goes the allegation, exceeded his authority in ordering this investigation. It was said to go against the amnesty that was granted after Franco’s death, one that, until relatively recently and the introduction of the law of historic memory which was designed to strip Spain of vestiges of the Franco era, had caused a kind of collusive, national amnesia.

The argument that the investigation contravened the amnesty is dubious. Its drafting was intended to clear those who had been imprisoned by the Franco regime; not the Francoists and Francoist judges who had put them into prison. Amnesia and selective memory have surrounded its actual terms ever since. The selectivity has been one of interpreting the amnesty to suit purposes.

The investigation was itself suspended. But this didn’t stop Garzón being indicted. And the impulse for his being so has widely and correctly been seen as one that has come from the right. The Partido Popular has been accused of willing his neutering, while the ones to actually file a lawsuit were from a right-wing trade union called Manos Limpias (“clean hands”). Other hands involved with bringing Garzón to trial were those of the Falange.

It is the dark forces of the extreme right that hang over the Garzón affair. Though Garzón could well be accused of courting his own publicity and seeking self-aggrandisement, the case reveals much of what lurks beneath the surface in Spanish society and of the dichotomy between liberalism and the pursuit of justice and a reactionary neo-Francoism.

It also reveals much about the politicisation and partiality of the legal system. Garzón is not completely immune to charges of political bias; he is a member of the PSOE socialist party. But one of the judges selected to investigate the charge against Garzón contributes to a magazine with pro-Franco sympathies. Last year, more than 1500 judges issued a declaration condemning the influence of political parties in the legal process.

It is against this background that you have the current situation in Mallorca in which two parties, the now former Unió Mallorquina and the Partido Popular (neither to the left of the political spectrum), have been levelling allegations of political interference and judge and prosecutor bias in cases of corruption. The PP’s Balearics leader, José Bauzá, has come out and said that “cases of supposed corruption” directed at the party have been pursued with the “clear agreement and rigour” of the judiciary.

Whatever the truth or not of bias and interference, from either left or right of the political spectrum, there is undeniably an underlying politicisation, and it is one that threatens an undermining of what should be an independent institution – the judiciary. More than this, however, and as the Garzón affair exposes, influences on the legal system go to the centre of Spain’s democratic institutions and to a battle for the country’s heart and soul. If Garzón is indeed being persecuted – and he is to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights – then it is worrying. And not just for Garzón.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Earthmovers: Quakes in Mallorca

In the early morning of the 26th of July last year, at seven minutes before two, there was an earthquake in Alcúdia. Its epicentre was the Alcanada district. The tremor lasted no longer than a couple of seconds. It registered 2.5 on the Richter scale, but it was enough to cause alarm in Pollensa, Sa Pobla and Can Picafort.

This was a minor, insignificant event, but the earthquake in Japan, coming on the back of those in New Zealand and previously in Chile and Haiti, ones that created significant charitable efforts in Mallorca and Spain, have all raised awareness of potential threats to the island and to the mainland.

Earthquakes have tremendous power, not just through their unleashing of natural forces but also through their ability to scare the living daylights out of you. As a young child, I started to appreciate, in 1963, that the world was not always a very nice place. Makarios gave me nightmares, I thought Kennedy’s assassination meant a world war and Russians exploding giant mushrooms over our heads, and I began to fear being swallowed by the earth suddenly breaking up. Skopje was that significant for me that my father, an engineer with an earthmoving-machinery manufacturer, was engaged in organising aid for the devastated, then Yugoslavian city. Coincidentally, the Skopje earthquake occurred in the early morning of the 26th of July.

The concern in Spain, arising from events in Japan, has been more sophisticated than my eight-year-old fears. Partly, it has to do with any threats to Spain’s nuclear power stations. If tsunami is the main reason for concern, then the plants most vulnerable are those of Vandellòs near to Tarragona, along the Catalonian coast. In an act of reassurance, the Spanish Government has released a map which shows the degree and number of seismic observation facilities across Spain, there being one in Mallorca. Observation isn’t, necessarily though, of much use when it comes to the unstoppable.

The map shows a concentration of observation units in the south of Spain and in Catalonia up towards the Pyrenees (as well as in the Canaries). With good reason. These are the parts of Spain most at risk from earthquakes. The most significant of recent earthquake activity has been in Barcelona (September 2004, a measure of 4.1) and Ciudad Real in Castille-La Mancha (August 2007, 5.1). The most devastating of earthquakes in modern times occurred in Granada in 1884. With an estimated magnitude of up to 7, it left 800 people dead. Modelling of potential earthquake risk places a similar level of magnitude affecting the likes of Santa Fe.

Spain, by comparison with countries further to the east in the Mediterranean, is at relatively low risk of suffering serious earthquakes, but the risk is still there. In Mallorca, there are specific fault lines, one between the Balearics and Alicante and another on the island itself, the Sencelles fault. The worst earthquake to affect Mallorca was one recorded in Palma in 1851. This registered VIII on the MSK scale, a different seismic system to the Richter scale; VIII representing “damaging”. The earthquake was centred on Santa Eugenia and was attributed to the Sencelles fault.

Scientists from the University of Salamanca and the national museum of natural sciences published a paper in 2001 that traced earthquake activity in Mallorca**. They reported that the level of seismic activity was indeed low on the island; a mere 21 “events” between 1654 and 1996. But they pointed out that, despite the irregular and low occurrence, there had been some large earthquakes, such as the one in Palma in 1851. And the most serious ones (VII on the MSK scale) pre-dated the 1851 event; one also in Palma in 1660 and another centred on Selva but with impact on Alcúdia in 1721.

The fact that these more damaging earthquakes happened so long ago is no reason for being relieved. Quite the opposite. The scientists believe that “given the time elapsed … it is reasonable to assume that the Sencelles fault has accumulated sufficient elastic energy to generate a new VIII MSK seismic event”. And the most likely impact would be on Palma and its surroundings. A “damaging” event is characterised by, inter alia, large cracks and fissures, partial collapse or considerable damage to buildings.

Precise predictions of earthquakes are nigh on impossible. What can be predicted is that they will happen, some time. They are inevitable. But the inevitable can be delayed. In the eastern Med, in Israel, a major earthquake is almost 600 years overdue. It will happen, though. You just don’t know when. This said, take a look at the dates above. There are no data relating to earthquakes before 1654, so no one can say with any certainty what the pattern was before then, but the gap between the two big Palma earthquakes was 191 years. We are now 160 years on from the last one. And nature, despite the coincidence of the 26th of July, doesn’t deal in exactness. It deals in variance.

Don’t go having nightmares.

** “Paleo and historical seismicity in Mallorca”, Silva, González Hernández, Goy, Zazo, Carrasco, “Acta Geologica Hispanica”, 2001.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.