Live from Ciutadella, Menorca, Spain (Uno)

Well, not so live now since if you´re reading this I´ve already left the internet cafe, but you get my drift! Menorca is gettin a little more relaxing, although I can´t believe how fucking sore I am right now. I mean, seriously in pain with my back. It was giving me trouble before I got here but a lot of sitting-like-there´s-a-pole-up-my-arse at work got rid of that. But even that was only a nerve thing, like this one tiny spot that annoyed me. But this is like muscle pain. It´s really really sore and I thought I´d have a good whinge at the start like the last entry.

So what´s the shtory? Last night I barely slept, thinking there was someone wandering around the apartment. There was a breeze (shock! – wind in the Balearics!) blowing the curtains up around the door to the balcony and once any potential thief had gotten over the obvious reaching-the-third-floor problem, they could just sneak in. And I was certain I was hearing creeping or the slap of a foot on the tiles. I dunno. And then there were these three little English kids, around 16, who´ve been generally a pack of shits since we got here. One of them couldn´t understand why he could buy cigarettes at the age of 16 in In-ger-land and yet couldn´t buy them here because the minimum age here is 18. He looked at disbelief at the shopkeeper, slowly realising, as the English so rarely do, that he´s in a country that isn´t England. And that as well as their funny coins and driving up the wrong side of the road habits, they also have their own laws. Then he looked to me for reassurance. I told him that´s the age here and it´s the same in Ireland. I wanted to add that maybe if his mother hadn´t smoked while she was pregnant, he wouldn´t have the body of a ten year old…….but then that would have gone too far.

I´m in Ciutadella again, the only place around here with anything more than bars y restaurantes. Ciutadella is really too nice to be left to tourists, but all the same it´s got along. It´s the kind of city that hasn´t conceded too much to tourism. Torremolinos in southern Spain is a by-word for tourism gone crazy. The main thoroughfare, Calle San Miguel, is wall-to-wall souvenirs, pubs and perfumeries. There´s too much effort made to make it familiar to tourists, when what many tourists want is something altogether different to their experience. And Ciutadella is definitely the least “touristy” tourist urban area I´ve been to in Spain.

Old men sit outside bars. Everything is in Catalan first, if nothing else. There´s plenty local businesses that tourists would have no interest in, like banks and building societies. Some even have a few branches, impressive for a city no bigger than Kilkenny. That doesn´t sound much, but I´ve never felt a place with less to lose from a lack of tourists. It´s not that they don´t appreciate us, only that I really feel walking around here that you´re watching what would go on anyway.

I walked into the city today. It´s not pretty on the outskirts, but then what city is? Roundabouts, bins, abandoned cars and that ever-present Spanish institution, The Unfinished Building Site For Something Completely Unidentifiable At This Stage. Our rep told us that the local government has decreed that no new building work may start here for the next ten years, to aid Menorca´s goal to become a “biospheric” island. I´m a little unclear on all of this, but it seems to have something to do with balancing Menorca´s commercial and environmental needs. The “Enough Of The Fucking Tourists Already” act, if you will.

Anyway, what it means is that anyone travelling to the Balearic Islands (the three little ones off the east coast of Spain, Menorca being the third) since May this year have had to pay this Biospheric tax which is something like €1 a day. And it can´t be included in the price of the holiday, it has to be paid for separately once you´re here and you must have your paid receipt ready for inspection on your departure from Mahon airport or they´ll shoot you or something.

Incidentally, not as much sign of the police here as anywhere else I´ve been to. Spain has this set-up where you have the Policia Local who trapse around in sober little Renaults or Nissans and wear blue whirts and the kind of chequered caps you might see on a British policeman. They have guns too, which is weird considering they´re supposed to be the Diet Police.

The Full-Fat, Maximum Strength Spanish police are the Guardia Civil, who´s aim seems to be to scare folk. They´re the civil guard, a kind of federal police like the FBI in America except they mount patrols and don´t seem to have to dealings with the local police. They´re also armed, except given the way they´re presented (hardened soldiers in green shirts) you wouldn´t be surprised if they walked the streets with an Uzi in each hand. I think they take care of policing traffic, speeding tickets and that. But still. You notice their guns more. I get a little fixated with the guns, so forgive me if I sound a little naive. In Ireland, possession of anything more powerful than a shotgun is illegal. Of course, in Northern Ireland there´s more legally-held firearms than people. But in the Republic, handguns are simply illegal, the only people allowed to have them being detectives and….well….the army. I never saw a gun in real life until I was 11 and even then it was an unloaded shotgun fixed to a wall. The idea of guns just…..out there in public is very strange. I suppose it´s all part of experiencing another country, but it´s still a bit unsettling.