Soller locals are revolting

Some periods of the day are worse than others, but the situation has reached fever pitch to the extent that an emergency meeting with the mayor has been urgently sought by locals. The meeting which happens tonight (so I can’t tell you the outcome) will no doubt be a passionate and emotional affair. It was due to be held in the townhall, but word has it that hundreds of furious citizens intend to attend so it might need to be held in the town’s square.

Everyone is raging but it’s not the tourists’ fault. No, siree. We have known year on year that the traffic and parking situation has been getting steadily worse but absolutely nothing has been done. In good old ostrich style, politicians just hope it will all go away with an intangible magic wand. But it doesn’t. As they’ve now learnt the hard way, it just gets worse.

Of course, there are solutions. One would be to stop drivers entering the town unless residents, people actually staying in Soller on holiday, emergency services or those driving buses or making deliveries. The rest – day trippers - would be banished to an allocated strip of land on the fringes of the valley beyond the Soller tunnel where small courtesy buses would circle all day for pick-ups and drops offs to the town and port. A small fee might be incurred to offset the cost, but it would stop the snarl up of traffic and parking issues.

As time is short and the crisis deep, word has it that the mayor is to create two emergency carparks in the town and port to de-escalate rising tensions. I don’t see this working at all. One of the proposed sites is on a narrow lane not far from a key roundabout and I envisage even worse traffic build up there. Better would be to stop vehicles entering the valley at all.

The problem with the long-term scheme of a park and ride courtesy bus though is that funding would be needed to acquire land for parking, and for financing and servicing the courtesy vehicles. It’s not easy but grants and financial assistance could be found.

Another less popular option would be to bring back the toll at the tunnel and charge all non-residents a 20€ fee or more for entering the valley. This would definitely cut down on day trippers and many locals I’ve spoken with favour this idea.

With the volume of tourists, prices have also shot up in the town as opportunistic businesses rush to cook the golden goose. A new gelateria has opened in the square, charging just under 4€ for a small cappuccino – daylight robbery on a par with St Mark’s Square in Venice. This morning, a Mallorcan neighbour laughed and told me why. The owner is apparently paying a preposterously high rental fee for the site which made my jaw drop. Whoever it is will have to sell a colossal amount of ices and coffees to make any kind of profit.

I’ve been travelling around to different towns and hotels island wide, reviewing, and I now make a point of asking what has driven visitors to come to Mallorca or more pertinently Soller. Books? Films? TV shows? Nope. The majority told me it was the lure of Instagram and the breathtaking, irresistible teaser videos produced by polished hotels such as La Residencia in Deya.

I asked one charming American couple why if they loved La Residencia so much they’d chosen to stay this time in a luxury rural hotel in Es Pla. They both laughed and asked if I was mad. Why would they want to stay in Deya with all the traffic, pollution, noise and queues? For half the price, they could be guaranteed luxury, space, amazing facilities and peace far away from the madding crowd in a bolthole as yet unknown on the Insta map.

No Khan do

Frankly, I’m sick of Londoners moaning about the Mayor getting voted back in for another term. My chums, either left or right, seem to loathe Siddiqui Khan and yet most voted him in originally. As for the Tories, they proposed a disastrous candidate in Susan Hall and so have got nothing to complain about. Stabbings have reached a shocking level, crime in general has escalated scarily and the capital is beginning to lose its shine. Meanwhile, another supposedly unpopular candidate has just been sworn back in for his fifth term. I mean, Putin, of course. He and Khan would no doubt make a winning team.

Beauty and the beast

I’ve never attended the Met Gala in NYC and mercifully, would never be invited. It would be my idea of a literal hell. Endless vapid slebs posing in absurd frocks – or rather lack of frocks – on a red carpet with their hugely altered plastic, shiny faces pouting to camera, thanks to a bounty of fillers, Botox, tweakments and makeup. This year, the likes of singer Rita Ora, model Emma Ratajkowski who appears to prefer clothes-free option wherever possible, and someone called Doja Cat, wore barely there costumes. Most seemed to have got their inspiration from Kanye West’s girlfriend, Bianca Censori, who increasingly shuns the concept of clothes and decorum. Meanwhile, tanks are storming Rafah with Israel accusing Egypt and Qatari of moving goalposts in negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza. It’s great to see that the world currently has its priorities right.