Summer ends on the Island, perhaps not just for 2008.

It's early November here in Mallorca, the relentless summer has given way to autumn. The pungent smoke from almond wood fires curls into the still skies and residents reach into the back of their wardrobes for the socks and long trousers packed away nearly six months earlier. The last of the late season holidaymakers catch the dying rays of the Indian summer, and the Mediterranean, as blue as ever is too cold for all but toddlers and the more hardy of Northern European tourists.


All over the island businesses are closing for the winter, the bars and restaurants in the resorts are cleaning and packing, and poring over the summer takings. Make hay while the sun shines, squirrel away as much of the summer profits as possible, and spread them as thinly as you dare through the long winter months is the strategy, but for many doing the seasonal sums, the reality is dawning that they may not reopen again come next spring.


Meanwhile the real estate agents rearrange their paperclips in empty offices for the third time today, their cheery smiles soon drop as they realise you won´t be buying into the dreams that mock them from the gaudy window displays promising permanent blue skies and seas. The Porches and Mercedes parked out front are looking like expensive liabilities now, rather than the executive treats bought to celebrate another bumber year twelve months ago. 'The Germans are still buying', 'The top end of the market is fine, the rich will always have money', 'Mallorca is different'. The thin veneer of optemism vital in a market based on confidence is beginning to show the cracks. Catch them off guard and they'll tell you that the gravy train has left the station. Unfinished constructions of over priced apartments stand like monolith reminders that prices do not always go up. The banks have called in the loans, while the botomless pit of new buyers arriving by the plane load have all but gone, at least for this year. It will be a while before they arrive back with pockets as deep as they used to have.

It´s been a lean year here on the Island, no fat to trim, no winter stores to eek out until spring welcomes in the new harvest. We must all learn to forage wherever and whatever, to line the pantry shelves this winter, and hope for better next year.

There isn´t a corner of the world that the credit cruch hasn´t touched, but it´s bitten off a little more here than in many places. Life´s little treats, foreign holidays, meals out, second homes, boats or a round of golf are always going to be the first to go when pocket books and purses begin to lighten. What to do when your economy is based on those treats?, that, is the million, or maybe even billion Euro question to which Mallorca is desparately trying to find an answer.