Taxis for whom, one might ask. The functioning of public administration seemingly having ground to a halt because they’re all involved in the elections, no one would have been paying attention to the queues for buses and taxis. Did someone suggest that Mallorca wasn’t busy?
In Palma, the police have Operación Nube (Operation Cloud) when there is cloud around in the summer. It’s meant to try and prevent total traffic chaos. Meant to. My good friends at No Frills Excursions also have an Operación Nube. They’ve been churning out updates to the excursions’ offers because of the cloud. Visitors look for something to do, or something different to do.
The cloud isn’t essential in wanting to make holidaymakers go to the market, but it certainly provides an additional motivation. On Tuesday, there were great hordes of visitors looking forlornly for a bus to arrive (or carry on) that wasn’t already packed to the gunwales, or for taxis. At the rank at the top of the Bellevue Mile, for example, no taxis were visible. Large numbers of people were; ditto at the nearby bus stop. Free travel on buses, let’s be honest, hasn’t made public transport any easier for visitors, and the same goes for residents.
Well, the relevant authorities would have been far too busy with the elections to have to worry about all this or think that they may might just have an Operación Nube of their own for such situations. Buses may not be a matter for town halls, but taxis are. To this end, there is some good news. On Thursday, taxi and town hall representatives were due to have met in order to ratify an agreement by which taxi drivers can pick up from municipalities which aren’t their own.
Applicable to Alcudia, Muro, Pollensa and Santa Margalida, the rule will be that there can be pick-ups if there are no taxis available in a given municipality. In a way, it is a broadening of an arrangement that has existed for years on market days; Alcudia taxis have called in taxis from neighbouring municipalities to take people back from the market. Anyway, are taxis a big issue at the elections? For some, they may be. I can’t say whether any of the entities represented at the election in Alcudia have a taxis’ policy, as I haven’t received any campaign literature from any of them. So, how does anyone know what they’re going to be doing about anything? Well, there have been no shortage of events, and these have been taking place in all the local municipalities. There have been debates (assuming you can understand what they’re going on about), and there are of course the social media pages.
Personally, I feel that all parties’ manifestoes should be gathered together on town hall websites. This might not be to a ruling administration’s pleasure, but nor should it prevent it. In a sense, this is all about transparency, the lack of which in the case of Pollensa town hall has led to a very poor rating in a study of municipal websites conducted by the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
In meeting requirements of a national transparency law, Pollensa’s score is 2.3 out of ten. Criticism is reserved for, as examples, the non-publication of minutes of council meetings, lack of information about remuneration and the non-publication of budgets.
But returning to the elections, who will it be taxis for after the votes have been cast? Whichever parties end up forming new administrations, we can be assured of the continuing presence in some capacity for familiar faces - old familiar faces, such as Domingo Bonnín in Alcudia, Tomeu Cifre in Pollensa and Joan Monjo in Santa Margalida. New mayors won’t be sworn in for a while, executive councillors will briefly continue in acting capacities, but a few may wish that a taxi could whisk them away, assuming that they could find one. The forecast suggests that Operación Nube will still be active on Monday.
Having taken in record funds from the production of Snow White in February, Nomads, the North of Mallorca Amateur Dramatics Society, has given donations to various good causes that were proposed by members and agreed to at the annual general meeting in March.
Certain recipients were proposed in part because of experiences of friends or family. This was the case with Cancer Support Mallorca; the ADAA association, which helps when family members need medical treatment in other regions of Spain; and ABAIMAR, the association for children with rare diseases.
Nomads wished to contribute to Alcudia town hall’s Turkey and Syria fundraising, and other recipients were causes in Alcudia and Pollensa with which members were familiar because of their outstanding efforts - the Alcudia Food Bank, North Mallorca Lions and the Pro Animales Charity Shop. In addition, a donation has been made to the Can Torro Library in Alcudia, and specifically to its children’s section, which has been appealing for extra books and resources.
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