Mallorca's person of the week: Emmanuel Macron

was the president of France, Emmanuel Macron. Language unbecoming of a president and all that, M. Macron thus found himself in good (?) company, a year after Trump and the Shaman. And there were no doubt many who agreed with him. “As for the non-vaccinated, I really want to piss them off.” It was as well that it was the Australian Open which was coming up therefore, and not the French Open. Meanwhile, and in not dissimilar vein, the boss of Iceland, Richard Walker, was calling for policies that don’t allow the unvaccinated tail to wag the triple-jabbed dog.

Three cheers...

For all the town halls in Mallorca which didn’t do a Calvia. Which appeared to mean all of them. Covid rules and recommendations, ok; Omicron spreading like wildfire, yes; difficulties with maintaining controls, fair enough. But it was the evening of the Kings and all the joy and colour that this means. Plenty of town halls not blessed with Calvia’s resources went to the trouble of making alterations so as to try and prevent crowds of people. Calvia, though, said no. Second largest municipality in population terms maybe, but of the larger municipalities the likes of Manacor carried it all off. As did Palma.

A big boo....

For confirmation, if we still needed it, of how far tourism fell off the cliff in 2020. The National Statistics Institute published figures on Tuesday which showed that tourism accounted for 5.5% of Spain’s GDP in 2020. This was a fall of 6.9% from 12.4% in 2019. In a respect, the fall didn’t seem as great as it might have been, considering that foreign tourist numbers for 2020 were around 21% of what they were in 2019. The tourism GDP account for 2021 will prove to be better, but for what will still only be around 36% of 2019’s foreign tourism. There is an awful lot of catching-up to be made.