If Santa Ponsa did not exist, Ireland's holiday culture would have had to create it, the place that Bundoran or Courtown used to have in our lives, a landscape of the imagination with palm trees, cheap wine and San Miguel.
Especially Sammy Magill, as they call it. Rivers of beer that run through the veins of the city from early evening to the noisy early hours of the morning.
Ireland's most popular sun resort is home to over 3,000 of us throughout holiday high season, if they all filled out their Census forms it would be roughly equivalent to the population of Enniscorthy or Maghera.
The entertainment venues, such as the Shamrock Bar, and excursion options such as Pirates and Sona Mar are as familiar as any city venue in Ireland. People go back to the same side of town, often to the same apartments, year after year.
The accommodations are familiar names: Verdermar and Sun Beach for the young and chirpy, Bouganvilla for the family and couples.
Along the Santa Ponsa strip there is a line of 14 Irish pubs, some of them as famous as anything at home. The Shamrock Bar, where a Strabane musician whoops it up every night, The Dubliner and the original, Mrs Murphy's Irish Kitchen, which was established as the very first Irish restaurant in the resort in the early 1980s.
Back then one tour operator used to bus its Irish visitors to Magaluf once a week for an 'Irish night out'. All that has changed. Now tourists, not necessarily Irish, are bussed in from all over the island to Santa Ponsa for an Irish night out.
There is no inherent cultural reason for the hibernification of Santa Ponsa. It happened by accident when a few hotels were picked out by Irish tour operators at roughly the same time in the early 1970s and decided to put Santa Ponsa into Irish brochures.
The ugly Deila building, offered by early Joe Walsh brochures, can still be seen behind the main drag.
New hotels have to be more than 100m from the sea front, but some of the existing properties beat that ban by default. The Verdermar is right on the waterfront, and if a bit noisy for some of the clients, offers the classic Santa Ponsa 'fly and flop' holiday.
At Santa Ponsa you can do everything and you can do nothing. You can spend your week at the poolside with a good book, or you can head out for an adventure holiday or discover either the popular or the hidden Majorca.
The popular Majorca is the one you find in the excursion boards, the caves of Drach are the best known of five systems that can be visited. There are glass-bottomed boat tours, a new train tour which is proving popular, shopping excursions to Calvia and Palma, and a variety of evening entertainment and day parks at Magaluf and Palma Nova, now accessible within minutes thanks to a motorway extension opened in mid June.
Hidden Majorca requires a hired car and a 30-minute drive. Beyond Andtrax are hidden coves and small beaches which are deserted even in summer. Some beaches can only be reached by boat. Way up north the coastline turns colour, and the big mountainous interior is ideal for off-road safari.
The reasons for the success story of Irish sun tourism are many and complex. Santa Ponsa has improved beyond recognition in its 20 years of hegemony. Unlike the Canary Islands, the resort closes every November, a testimony to Majorca's reputation as a summer-only resort. It means they can refurbish, repaint and look at what is working and what is not.
At Magaluf, the English resort just beyond the headland, they even dynamited the preposterous Atlantic hotel in an effort to clean up the sea front.
Excursions which are not popular are dropped and others introduced. Mary Sullivan, who has been Budget rep on the island since 1984 says: "We don't sell other people's problems. The excursions we sell are ones we like ourselves."
The popular ones have been around a while, the fabulous Sona Mar is now ramped up to its climactic conclusion by an Elvis who must be the real thing - he comes from Drimnagh. Pirates Adventure has been a big hit with the kids for 20 years, so much so that it is planning winter tours of Florida, and has been joined by an adult version. The new Pirates Uncut features strong language and the sort of party games enjoyed on stag outings.
The Marineland waterpark is still one of the best in the business, and a seal show will be added next week to Western Water Park, a waterpark with huge waterslides and a programme of Wild West theme shows, including a stunt spectacular where a diver sets himself on fire before diving from a 15m board in a shallow pool.
Amid that flash of light and smell of burnt petrol, you realise what Majorca stands for - the little flame-flare of escape that helps us get through the rest of the year.
* Budget Travel www.budgettravel.ie has the most extensive programme to eight Santa Ponsa properties, 15 charters to Palma every week in high season.
* Falcon Holidays, Panorama and six other tour operators also run Majorca programmes featuring Santa Ponsa.
* Aer Lingus runs scheduled services to Palma in summer.
