Anna Nicholas

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Winter Wonderland in Mallorca!

Well what do you know? For the first in 25 years Mallorca has experienced ground snow and the locals just can’t get enough of it. Today we awoke to piles of soft fluffy white snow covering the enture garden, cats, donkeys, henhouse, car…just about everything. The Tramuntanas looked absolutely spectacular in their new pristine winter coat and there wasn’t a...

Bull on the Beach is on the way!

Dear Readers and Visitors, I’m happy to report that “A Bull on the Beach” is now finished and will be published this summer. Aside from yet again cataloguing our own chaotic and happy antics living in rural Mallorca, I take a look at the wonderful farms that despite massive obstacles and EU interference, still exist here.

Many young Mallorcans are...

Are cruises all they’re cracked up to be?

Watching images of a listing, drunken Costa Concordia lolling like a beached whale in shallow waters off the coast of Isola del Giglio, made me consider once again, whether cruises are really all they’re cracked up to be.

Grim passenger accounts of the panic and mayhem that ensued shortly after the unwieldy wedding cake of a cruise ship hit a rock...

Sensational book links Princess Diana with King of Spain

It appears that poor King Juan Carlos of Spain is entering what might later be known as his Annus Horribilis. As his son-in-law, Inaki Urdangarin, faces allegations of corruption, a potential scandal acutely embarrassing to the Spanish Royal household, along comes another spanner in the works, in the form of Catalan journalist, Pilar Eyre.

Miss Eyre has just unveiled La Soledad...

How a Majorcan nun changed a doctor’s life

After the working day many of us might contemplate, with some relief, a few hours free time in the evening but for one Spanish doctor in Majorca, that’s when his other working life begins.

Back in 2010, Dr Jorge Muños, head paediatrician at Palmaplanas USP hospital in Palma, was visited by Sister Magdalena Ribas, a Majorcan nun and nurse, who...

In tough times community matters most

Early yesterday morning as I puffed up the winding, country road to Fornalutx, a nearby mountain village, I heard a toot toot from a battered old car coming down the hill. ‘Get a move on, lazy bones!’ a man grinned from the window. I shot a glance, long enough to clock it was Llorenç, a local tradesman. Running past the...

Thank you!

A big thank you to all of you who have left cheery messages on the site after receiving my latest newsletter. I am ashamed that it has taken me so long to send it but I always seem to have something more pressing to do…er hem, do you ever use a similar excuse? Today I whizzed off to see Dr...

Mayor Bloomberg should be applauded for his Spanglish bloomers

Some people are natural linguists. Others, sadly, are not. When Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York, addressed his citizens via a television broadcast on the eve of hurricane Irene, he also attempted to reassure the city’s large Hispanic community with some choice Spanish phrases.

With an endearingly deadpan delivery worthy of Mr Bean, the mayor unleashed what can only be described...

It must be love?

When the Duchess of Alba, one of Spain’s wealthiest women, announced last month that she would be marrying her civil servant boyfriend of three years, Alfonso Diez, a snort of cynical laughter erupted from many quarters.

Let’s face it, why would a 61 year-old presentable male be interested in an 85 year-old pensioner with a rictus smile and taut facial skin...

Hollywood takes Mallorca by storm

Oh the excitement. As I walked into my local café, the owner grabbed my arm and thrust a Mallorcan newspaper into my hands. He pointed urgently at one of the headlines. Actors Tom Hanks, Halle -or “Hayay” according to my Mallorcan chums –Berry, Jim Broadbent and Susan Sarandon, would all soon be jetting off to the island for the making...

Holidaymakers to be fined for flaunting the flab

It’s been a long time coming but after years of patiently enduring the sight of tourists strolling through its streets in a state of undress, Barcelona’s city council has issued a ban on exposing the flesh.

Residents and local businesses in the historic Catalan Capital have grown increasingly irate with holidaymakers who stray from the beaches in wholly inappropriate clothing and...

A taste of Spain, but what about Britain?

Many moons ago I was idly chatting with Ignacio Vasallo, director of the Spanish tourist office, about the possibility of holding a massive Spanish street event in London. A year later, he made it a reality and created A Taste of Spain in Regent Street, a huge annual event which incorporates Spanish culture, food and entertainment. He’s even replicated the...

Why a small village in Spain is feeling blue

Out of the blue, the tiny, traditional village of Juzcar, a pueblo blanco in the Genel Valley in Andalucía has found sudden fame as Sony’s chosen venue for hosting the world premiere of The Smurfs 3D. But becoming the blue-eyed boy of the valley has come at a price. To satisfy the forthcoming invasion of tiny smurfs, known as pitufos...

Euo-commuting isn't for the faint-hearted

Having braved the hordes at Gatwick passport control and security -during which my hand luggage was searched to within an inch of its over-packed life-I hopped onto a bar stool in the departures lounge and reached for a glass of cool Chablis. It was then that a piercing alarm reverberated through the terminal, followed by an announcement that we should...

White Knight Protestors Save Homes from Repossession

The other day a local Majorcan bank manager told me that the town’s notary had been twiddling his thumbs of late. With few buying property despite the drop in house prices his role as marriage broker between vendor and purchaser with all the Spanish officialdom that that entails had been severely diminished. Instead he had found himself having to witness...

Nudists bare all at Spanish gym

In Spain it always seems to be the Catalonians in the north east of the country who court controversy and raise eyebrows. After all it was the socialists in the region who devised an election campaign with a risqué television advert whose protagonist had an orgasm while casting her ballot. It was in Catalonia that the first “queer kissing flashmob”...

Are we mollycoddling our unemployed youth?

It’s laughable to imagine a son suing his parents for unpaid pocket money and even more ludicrous when the man in question happens to be 25 years old. And yet in Andalusia in Southern Spain a judge has just ruled against such a petition, ordering an unemployed young man to leave his parents house within 30 days and to find...

Superstitious Spaniards fret about Waity Katie's ring

The Majorcan women in my local town are very concerned that Prince William chose to give his future bride the 18-carat sapphire engagement ring that belonged to his mother, the late Diana Princess of Wales.

They all loved Princess Diana but they worry about her ring. Their view is that it will bring “Waity Katie”-a moniker that has stuck fast over...

Majorcan Tourist Board Shoots itself in the Foot

According to Pedro Iriondo, president of the Majorcan Tourist Board, the millions of Britons who travel annually to Majorca on budget airlines such as easyJet and Ryan Air are not quality tourists. Perhaps he’d like to share his views with David Cameron who recently celebrated his wife’s birthday with a Ryan Air trip from Stanstead to Granada?

Today when I popped...

Giant extinct bunny discovered on Menorca

The discovery of the fossilised remains of an enormous extinct rabbit on the island of Menorca, has proven of great excitement to old fossils like me living in the Baleares.

The creature named Menorcan King of Rabbits (Nuralagus rex) by local palaeontologists weighed at least 12 kilos and was ten times the size of its extinct mainland cousin and six times...

Majorcans, Parisians and Mr Zarkozy's ostrich

Did I have something to declare? An odd question. Standing in the customs zone of the Eurostar terminal in Paris Gare du Nord, I pondered what in my holdall of crumpled clothes, books and toiletries, could possibly have raised suspicion. Then it dawned on me. The ostrich.

In faltering French, more rusty than the corroded iron lid on my ancient well,...

Planes, trains and Spanish politicians

Si, si, señor. It’s that time of the year again when politicians are on their best behaviour, kissing babies in the street, cracking jokes with the elderly, cutting ribbons and generally acting as ingratiatingly as possible with all and sundry in the run up to the big event: regional and municipal elections.

In Spain there’s a cut off point for unctuous...

Looking a gift suitcase in the mouth

Now, I know I’m going to sound ungrateful and thoroughly undeserving but the truth is that there are times when a gift placed in my hands holds as much pleasure as receiving a grenade or possibly a starved piranha. Let me qualify that.

When, as an expat, I trundle back and forth from Majorca to the UK for work or to...

Nick Clegg's a crying shame

There’s been much guffawing and rubbing of hands in the media at Nick Clegg’s recent girly outpourings during an interview for the New Statesman magazine. The revelation that he is hurt by the public’s apparent loathing for him and how he is reduced to tears listening to music describes a man possibly al borde de un ataque de nervios-on the...

Bingo! Gambling Pensioners busted by police

A group of Majorcan pensioners were enjoying a regular weekly bingo game in the company of their local parish priest when all hell broke lose. Heavily armed police officers stormed the Son Cotoner club for senior citizens in Palma and ordered the players not to move as they sealed off all exits and inspected documentation.

In some bewilderment the elderly priest,...

Queer Kissing Flashmob fails to offend Pope

A campaign orchestrated by gay activists on Facebook to embarrass Pope Benedict XVI on his 32-hour visit to Spain was regarded as a bit of a damp squib on Sunday night when it failed to live up to media hype and pre publicity.

Gay protestors failed to catch the Pope’s eye
Bizarrely and some might say offensively entitled “Queer Kissing...

Size matters to Spain’s most obese man

Spare a thought for Gustavo Moreno who has become a reluctant star of the Spanish media this week. He is, dare I say it, being feted as Spain’s most obese individual who at only 31 years of age, weighs 260 kilos.

The good news is that in recent months Colombian born Mr Moreno managed to shed 20 kilos but according to...

Spain's errant knight to become YouTube hit?

Some years ago I foolishly attempted to read both volumes of Don Quixote, the 17th century masterpiece by Spanish author, Miguel de Cervantes. It didn’t help that I had bought them in the Spanish language. Reading all 1000 pages of the epic tale in English would have proved challenging enough.

It’s fair to say that I persevered and managed to read...

Zapatero praying for time in Washington

Sorry to be a bit of a killjoy but why exactly was the socialist prime minister of Spain, José Luis Zapatero, giving an address at the ultra conservative, national prayer breakfast in Washington this week?

At a very big pinch his socialist party might purport to have agnostic leanings but in the main it has introduced sweeping reforms to clip...

Another one bites the dust in Mallorcan corruption scandal

As if the corruption scandals engulfing Majorca just couldn’t get any worse, a series of fresh allegations and arrests have been made. Rather like a Brian Rix farce it’s becoming hard to remember who’s who in the regional government as new characters embrace the spotlight only to be booed and booted off stage, more often than not in handcuffs.

In the...

Should Spain be digging up its past?

It is almost inconceivable to imagine the terror felt by poet and playwright, Federico Garcia Lorca, as he was led stumbling to his death at the hands of a right wing Nationalist death squad during the Spanish Civil War. The date was August 1936, shortly after the hostilities began, and it is believed that he was shot and dumped...

It's never just been about Maddie

When I popped into the local newsagent for my papers, the woman behind the counter began clucking when she saw a front cover image of little Madeleine McCann accompanied by a report on the latest episode in the whole sorry affair.
‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ I muttered in Spanish, fumbling for my euros. She nodded. ‘Absolutely. How could...

Is Spain right to cut off health care scroungers?

Think about it. You need a hip replacement but the NHS is overloaded, advising that it could be many months before you can ever hope of admission. Then you learn about healthcare in sunny Spain with its sumptuous public hospitals that offer excellent patient care and treatments virtually on the spot. What do you do, wait in the

A Stamp of Approval

Waiting in the queue at our local post office, the correos, I was approached by Miguel, one of the staff, who asked in confidential tones about the British postal strike. When I told him it was being called off, he touched his heart as if I’d just delivered life saving news and joyously announced the decision to the other counter...

Red Rag to a Bull? Bullfighting: it's just not cricket.

These days I’m a bit of a bulldog when it comes to bullfights.

Spanish friends have tried valiantly, over the years, to convince me that the corrida, the bullfight, is an event of historic, aesthetic, religious and cultural significance but for me it is nothing more than an outmoded and voyeuristic blood sport.

I’ve read Lorca’s Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Medíjas with...

Everyone Loves an Old Bag

Savvy Majorcans like nothing better than the odd freebie and what could be more tempting than the offer of an old bag, or to be more exact, a traditional wicker basket?

As the leading producer, and third largest consumer of plastic bags in Europe, Spain isn’t known for its commitment to recycling. But recently it seems to have had an epiphany...

House Today, Gone Tomorrow

Having a bad hair day? Try being Florentina Mora, a Majorcan chef from my local town of Sóller, who has inadvertently fallen foul of Ley de Costas, the Coastal Laws of Spain, and on November 5 will see her family’s beachside home demolished.

Florentina’s in-laws purchased this romantic old landmark on Cala Tuent beach back in the 1920s with all the...

Stephen Gately: A Tragic End to a Holiday

There I was pottering down one of Palma’s long, leafy avenues today en route to a meeting when I came across a complete scrum of media with zoom lenses poised and cameras ready to roll. Too curious to walk on by I approached them and asked in Spanish whether someone famous was about to arrive. ‘Do you speak English?’ a...

You Say Majorca, I say Mallorca...

Oh here we go again. When I first came to live on the island of Mallorca, I couldn’t get that oafish rhyme out of my head of, the water in Majorca don’t taste like it oughta, and it started me questioning how the word really oughta be pronounced. The local British newspaper, inaugurated in 1962, is called the Majorca Daily...

Growing Up Is a Risky Business

My twelve year old son, Ollie, came home from his Spanish school, talking about a great trip he’d just had, visiting a newspaper printing works and a radio station in Palma. Did I have a problem with that? Absolutely not, but I found it odd that once again, I knew nothing about it beforehand. In his previous English school we...

Is It Cool to Kiss Babies?

It never ceases to amaze me how here in Mallorca it is customary to see men of all ages making complete fools of themselves in the presence of babies and children. Yesterday for example, I was on my way home from the local market when I noticed a young, bronzed Adonis bobbing up and down by a parked car while...

Whatever Happened To Mr Mayor?

There’s been much in the media about the lack of civic involvement in sorting out local street crime in the UK and I think it’s a fair point. Where is the mayor when you need him? In truth, I’ve lost track of exactly what a mayor in the UK is supposed to do, aside from rattle his chains and glide...

Have Overpriced Restaurants Had their Chips?

I’ve just received a surprising invitation to sample free canapés every Friday night at the Palma based restaurant, Fosh Foods. Why am I surprised? Simply because Marc Fosh, the only British chef in Spain to have received a Michelin Star, has thrown off his mink mantle and opted for chic and cheap. So sure is he that times are changing...

Hidden Treasures

This may be the season of mist and mellow fruitfulness back in Blighty but in Majorca it’s the beginning of the seta season, or to be truly Majorcan, the month for bolets, mushrooms. With Maria, the mushroom queen of our valley, leading me astray early one morning in the Tramuntana mountains, I discovered why fungi gathering has become an...

All About a Goat

There’s a frisson of excitement in Soller, my local rural town, and it’s all thanks to a dead goat. One hundred years ago, an eccentric Edwardian scientist named Dorothea Bate from the Natural History Museum in London, came to rugged and tourist-free Majorca and found, in the deep recesses of a sea cave, the oddly shaped cranium and jaw bone...

Goodbye to All That

Now that I live in Majorca I often guiltily recall, how despite living in central London with museums and art galleries practically tripping me up on the doorstep, I rarely got round to visiting many. Of course I blamed the stress of London life and work but I really should have made more effort. Yesterday, in glorious sunshine, I found...

Top 5 Must Read Books for July!

Well, having suffered a week or gastroenteritis, an experience my 12 year son Ollie was also lucky enough to share with me (ho ho) I at least had a little cheer-me-up moment this morning with the following review from St Christopher’s Inns publication and website:

‘‘Goats From A Small Island by Anna Nicholas’‘
‘No one is more of an authority...

Unleashed from the crypt!

Ok, that’s a tad dramatic. My little cellar isn’t so very crypt-like although the white walls, unpadded as yet, and the general silence would without doubt appeal to a trapist monk. Well, dear readers, I have finally put my next little tome to bed and to say I am maaaaaa’d out would be an understatement. For some months now I...

Goats from a small island-Grabbing Mallorcan Life by the Horns

The time has come to announce the forthcoming tome. Sorry dear readers but there WILL be another and this time I am taking Myotragus as my theme. My, er, WHAT???? You might well be forgiven for not knowing about this little creature, which translated from the Greek means, ‘mouse goat’. Until about five thousand years ago this dwarfed...

Shopping Frenzy

It’s a funny old thing, but whenever I enthuse about my regular shopping forays to our local town of Sóller, London friends view me with some skepticism. How, they ask, can I find the weekly grind of grocery shopping so enthralling? Well, I say, shopping in our town is not a perfunctory affair but more of a social event, an...

Miguel the Toro

Something I haven’t been aware of in the UK before but which is alive and well in Mallorca, is the parking pitch phenomenon. Driving into Palma on a busy day when parking is near impossible in any of the underground car parks or on the street, we head for the small plaça by Es Baluard museum in the hope that...

Bored Stiff

So a clever professor at Michigan University has discovered that when we are bored our brains simply disconnect. In a simple experiment, placing volunteers under an MRI scanner and showing them streams of numbers, he was able to ascertain that our self control, vision and language become greatly affected by boredom. Now this is very opportune research as far...

Thin Londoners

A record is soon to be announced by the government. Apparently Britain will shortly be able to hold its head up high and proclaim itself the world’s fattest nation. America is currently the reining king but we are fast catching up as the nation of fat. Isn’t that something to be proud of? Well when back in London recently, I...

Christmas Elf & Safety lollipop Ban

Santa’s happy elves are working 24/7 to get those presents wrapped up in time for the big day but in one part of Hampshire, a breakaway group of killjoy elves are hell bent on making Christmas a misery for locals. In festive mode, school crossing patrol officer, Kevin Simpson, decided to attach glittery tinsel to the top of his lollipop...

Dreaming of a White Christmas

A vicar in Dorset has announced that he is banning the hymn, O Little Town of Bethlehem, from his church this Christmas because it is outmoded and doesn’t reflect the conflict happening on the West Bank. Shocked by a recent visit there, Mr Coulter cannot now tolerate this festive ditty because he maintains that Bethlehem isn’t a nice little town...

CHILD’S PLAY

During the summer a Mallorcan friend begged me to teach English to her daughter. I hesitated. After all I’m not a qualified teacher and lessons with a Mallorcan speaking seven year old sounded like a bit of a challenge. Finally I agreed. After all it would only be for the holiday period. ‘That’s great’, she enthused, ‘because I now have...

Wrapping up Christmas

All being well, in a couple of days time my husband, son and I will be in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to share some Christmas spirit with 70 orphaned girls from 3 to 17 years old in a small orphanage on the perimeter of the city. What’s that got to do with sunny Spain you may ask? Nothing at all. Well,...

The Wild Woman of Borneo

Well, appallingly, I see that I have failed to submit a piece to my own website for some months. Tsk Tsk. What kind of writer am I? Still, I hope I might fall on your mercy, dear reader, given that I have just arrived back, jet lagged and grimy (40 hours in transit-4 flights and 13 hours on bumpy tracks)...

Just a Minute

For fans of the long-running Radio 4 show, Just a Minute, I hear from my friend, Nicholas Parsons, the show’s chairman, that the new series is currently being recorded and taken out on the road around the UK. Interestingly Just a Minute, which you can tune into via the BBC website began in 1967 and is now in its...

Chippies shaking with despair

Chippies across the north of England and Scotland are digging a hole for themselves-quite literally. It transpires that new regulations at Gateshead Council have put an end to salt shakers with seventeen holes being used in local fish and chip shops to cut down on salt consumption. The chippies dilemma is that the largest supplier of salt shakers in the...

A Sporting Chance

It came as no surprise that a school in the UK has banned sports day for fear of one of the children stumbling on loose mud or twisting an ankle on a random mole hill. It is indeed laughable but England has become such a nanny state that this sort of utter tosh is now the norm. Long gone are...

I'm Alright Says Tom!

Why is it that politicians never learn when to keep their traps shut? If things weren’t bad enough for our Gordie, he now has his rubber-band mouth Transport Minister, Tom Harris, lecturing the nation on how lucky they are. With food bills up, house prices sliding into oblivion, pay rises below inflation and petrol costs going through the roof, this...

A Non-Human War

Some months ago I contacted a raft of global animal charities about a story of a mistreated street dog in Brazil which countless friends had asked me to investigate. Most organisations were hugely helpful and one in particular sent me regular news and then began sending me updates on animal cruelty worldwide. It’s an outfit based in the States and...

Lonely Freedom Fighter

All hail David Davis! The man is a veritable God. For once a politician has had the guts and garters to stand up for what he believes in. I have always thought Mr Davis rather grey and mousy but no, he is a true lion in rodent clothing. May Gordon and his ghastly nannying team quake in their boots as...

Getting Crabby

Much as I rarely agree with our nannying government poking its nose in our daily affairs, I do have a little sympathy with Norfolk Coast Partnership for its concern about the plight of crabs caught by children on beaches. My sister and I used to go crabbing in Wales and we rarely caught more than a few and always returned...

Heart of Stone

There are few things worse than a fool sounding off on a subject he knows nothing about except perhaps when it comes to a Hollywood icon spouting on world affairs. Gabbling breathlessly at the Cannes film festival, actress Sharon Stone surmised that the devastating earthquake in China which has claimed countless lives, was probably due to China’s Karma. In a...

Don't Cry for Me London!

If anyone thought Ken Livingstone would be weeping with his newts having lost the mayoral race, they can think again. Within a few weeks of defeat, our Ken is happy again having managed to secure hugely lucrative after dinner speaking contracts with a top London firm. He is rumoured to have secured more than £100,000 in speaking fees already. Unlike...

Willie Won't He?

So, thumbs up to Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways for snubbing a ten percent bonus of £700,000, to indicate his remorse for the extraordinary fiasco that unrolled at the opening of Terminal 5. It would be foolish to imagine Willie didn’t want the dosh. His canny reasoning for not taking the money was that he’d have been eaten...

Ramsey the food tsar

It always seems incredibly bad taste for one super chef to sound off about another, and none more so than in the case of bruiser Gordon Ramsey, who as self appointed food Tsar of Britain, has lambasted Delia Smith for giving the thumbs up to tinned food, and other chefs for using vegetables and fruit out of season. Ramsey believes...

Jacqui Jobsworth

One of Gordon Brown’s biggest mistakes was awarding the post of Home Secretary to the ineffectual and dreary Jacqui Smith whose robotic voice could challenge that of a Dalek in any voiceover competition. Time and time again she has made embarrassing gaffes and naïve, contradictory statements which show just how out of touch the government really is about the state...

Boris on a Roll

It’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement of what is happening in London with bouncy Boris Johnson at the helm. Much as it’s the glorious honeymoon period for the new Mayor of London, one has to admire his shrewd early moves which are impressing Londoners across the Capital. He has already appointed a tier of bright, no-nonsense,...

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© Anna Nicholas