One menu per week in Pollença

For once, this will not be a restaurant review. Rather, a small update on our aid project in Pollença. You remember? More than a year ago, in the depths of the Covid period, we started serving a menu for needy families in Pollença together with the restaurant R3spira.

Every week. Together with the town hall and the social affairs department, we pushed the campaign forward in summer 2021. The sticking point at the beginning was that long lines formed and, unfortunately, people who were clearly not in need tried to grab a free meal at the expense of those who really needed it.

Back then, we spoke to the social affairs department, shocked. And we developed the idea of creating vouchers that are issued by the town hall to the needy families. Since then, that has been working perfectly every Tuesday.

Nicola Celentano, owner of what is, according to Tripadvisor, the best Italian restaurant in Pollença, conjures up a new menu every week. On his day off, he does the shopping and cooks the meals. And his charming wife Lorena hands out the meals.

Together, we had assumed that, thanks to the excellent booking situation, the number of needy families would drop significantly again. In fact, however, that has not been the case so far.

Clearly, the truly poor families are not able to share in the potential record revenue that tourism will probably experience this year. That was a shock for us; we had expected something completely different.

My attempt at an explanation is that the luxury segment in particular—as desired by the island government—is driving growth in tourism. Mass tourism is basically being economically ruined by more and more rules and decrees. Which presumably hits the most socially disadvantaged especially hard, because more jobs in the low-skilled environment are being eliminated.

In general, I believe that we, especially on this island of the beautiful and the rich, must pay close attention to ensuring that the less privileged are not left behind. And that the solidarity which, in Spain from my personal point of view, is still somewhat more pronounced than in Germany, can at least be maintained at a high level.

In December 2021, we, Respira and Predator, jointly informed the Mayor of Pollença that we can run the aid campaign over the longer term. We don’t want to put out flash-in-the-pan fires; we want to help in the long term.

That is why our foundation, the Fundació Predator, also has the motto: “Expand help”. We want to help organisations or individuals who are already providing help. Mostly on a voluntary basis. And who have often already achieved an enormous amount. We can then use our financial and organisational resources to expand this help. So that even more good can be done. Without the money flowing into bureaucracy, but rather to where it makes sense.

Our foundation has been established since December 2021. Unfortunately—hard as it is to believe—there are still bureaucratic obstacles to this day that make it difficult for us to operate. Therefore, as things stand, we are also unable to accept donations. However, if you should feel like getting involved in our aid projects, we will be happy to pass that on directly to the organisations we work with.

And the other way around too: If you know of projects that need help, please feel free to put us in touch!