You’ve Done Too Much

Café society. You will never go short of a café or bar here. Despite the claims that nothing is open in Alcúdia or Pollensa over winter, the fact is that there is – and quite a lot. For the British tourist, such as he or she might be in winter, there may not be a surfeit of “British” bars, but there are certainly Spanish (Mallorcan) bars.

A writer to “The Bulletin” raised this recently. He was spot-on in his analysis. It comes back to the issue of over-supply. There may be naïve Brits who come and take on bars, but there are also an awful lot of Spaniards who do the same – naïve or not.

The writer was referring specifically to the “locales” that often come with new residential developments. Build some flats and devote the ground floor to “locales” (units if you like), often of a charmless and purely functional appearance. And amongst these units will be a bar or café. The populations of the local towns may be increasing, but not to the degree that they demand ever more bars.

Take one such development. It is by the now closed Hospital d’Alcúdia. Flats and a café. I can’t remember its name, but I have used it occasionally. It is pleasant enough. It is also enormous by comparison to some bars. I wish them well, but was it really needed? Across the road there is a bar of many years standing. Walk up the road a bit to the Charles Square and how many bars are there within short staggering distance? Four, five? Walk a bit further, and there are four or five more. Most of them are always open.

That they may get used is not really the issue. People do go to cafés, they are very much a part of life here. But they go and have a coffee. They go and often spend an inordinately long time – having a coffee. The more cafés there are, the more the numbers – having a coffee – are spread more thinly. This is the point the writer was getting at. So much supply serving questionable demand. The result, the bar is put up for sale or rent.

Too great a supply is an economic killer. The same problem exists with restaurants. A new one opens and one immediately asks why. Does Puerto Alcúdia, for example, need the number of clothes shops it has? It is one thing to serve the local towns, but it shouldn’t be overlooked that Palma is readily accessible and has its own abundance of supply. The estate agent market is another with too much supply; indeed Mallorca gives the impression of drowning under an excess supply of all sorts.

One can extend the discussion to the summer. Clearly, there are far more people around. Greater demand in terms of bodies, but the supply also increases – all those places that do not open through winter. The all-inclusive and the lower spend may have curbed actual demand, but the supply side has kept on growing. It makes no sense. The changes to the summer economic model seem to have been, and are, ignored by many. The all-inclusive may take the brunt of the blame, but when the suppliers complain, they might also take a look at themselves. They are as much, by their very number, a part of the problem.


QUIZ
Yesterday – Joe South. Today’s title – first line from? Some of Coventry’s finest.

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