By John Ross, Mar 18 2004
"Mediterranean" only has one real meaning, but a lot of connotations. Hearing the word, a botanist will automatically think of the Mediterranean climate, found in other parts of the world like California. A historian will think of ancient cultures like the Phoenician, Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, Carthaginian or Roman civilizations. An architect will imagine Spanish-tiled roofs or villas with arches, or Italian fishing villages. And so on.

So what does it mean to Mediterranean Blue?

Two things. First, the Mediterranean is the most important holiday destination in the world, a playground for rich and poor alike, or at least rich and poor Europeans. In the north-west corner of the Mediterranean alone, France and Spain between them attract over 120 million visitors a year. But travellers to the Mediterranean are not homogeneous, nor do they all seek the same. Millions come in search of sun, sea and sand, it is undeniable, but Italy's art treasures, Greece's ancient monuments, Turkey's bazaars, Lebanon's casinos, Jordan's lost cities, Egypt's pyramids, the Tunisian desert and the colours of Morocco are all major attractions to travellers and tourists. Other countries are less popular with westerners, but draw their own kind of visitor: tourism in the Balkans never ceased altogether, even at the height of the recent Yugoslavian wars; Syria is popular with Arabs; Libya fascinates the adventurous; even conflict-torn Algeria is famous for its oases and exotic desert-dwellers. So Mediterranean Blue has a vocation as a travel guide, a source of information for tourists and visitors.

To this website, the other important connotation of the word "Mediterranean" is the one in "Mediterranean region." At first sight, this is a slightly artificial concept, even including places like Portugal which do not actually have a Mediterranean coast. Think again. Crossing the border from Spain into Portugal, who could doubt that the latter is a Mediterranean country? The voluble people, the food and drink, the architecture, all tell you you are in the Mediterranean, even if technically it is a moot point. And more importantly, Portuguese interests, concerns and problems are those of the Mediterranean: culture, ecology, immigration, economic prosperity, trade... (almost all the Mediterranean's great civilizations have been equally great traders).

If you add up the population figures for all the countries in the Mediterranean region, you will find it is home to no fewer than 462,735,595 people. That's a lot. The population of the United States of America is a mere 290 million. The whole European Union contains only 368 million people, nearly 100 million fewer than the Mediterranean. And for all their squabbles, wars, conflicts and strifes (and though they may not know it themselves), those four hundred and sixty-something million people have more in common than differences. If you have ever visited Andalusia, you have probably thought how Arabian-looking the people are; if you have ever remarked on how talkative Italians are, you may well have said the same about Moroccans; if you have ever noticed how olive oil is used in Spanish cooking, you could well have made the same observations about Arab or Maltese cuisine (and what really differentiates Serbians, Croatians and Bosnians, except religion?). Much of this is due to common history. Not just Israel, the whole Middle East is soaked in biblical history, including that of the New Testament. If you go to Turkey, you will probably discover how important its Greek heritage is. Or read about Egypt's later pharoahs (Greek again). And, of course, wherever you go in the region, however inaccessible, you will almost certainly find the Romans were there before you.

But this does not mean the differences can or should be ignored, because the Mediterranean, the middle of the Earth, is also where Africa meets Asia, Asia meets Europe, and Europe meets Africa. And all too often, instead of being a great meeting place, it is where the East-West and North-South divides coincide, with all the resentments, hostility and, though I do not want to be overdramatic, threat to the future that implies. There are notable and praiseworthy intiatives in progress, of which the Barcelona process is the most important, to counter these divisions, and Mediterranean Blue's second stated purpose is to inform about and support them to the best of its (and my) ability. And by dealing with matters that unite rather than divide, perhaps even to help just a little.

These two vocations, travel information and what we could call pan-Mediterraneanism, are not contradictory. Indeed, it is arguable that the activity which gives people most insight into other cultures is travel (there is a case for saying the same about trade, but what is tourism but a specific form of trade?). At the risk of seeming pompous, I think it fair to say that tourism is the Mediterranean's main point of contact, not only with the rest of the world, but also with itself.