And They’re Messing With My Heart

Francesc Antich, leader of the Balearic Government, was yesterday asking for more dosh for the Balearics and was also railing against over-development which places at risk quality of life and which is also incompatible with quality tourism. According to a report in Diario de Mallorca, what Sr. Antich wants to see is a new model of tourism which, whilst maintaining the beach and sun aspect, will embrace also cultural and sports tourism. He then goes to say that he intends to make an agreement with developers for “thousands of dwellings” accessible to the general public.

Now, one cannot help but feel that there is perhaps a bit of a contradiction here. Admittedly, he appears to wish to see an end to development that destroys too much territory, so one has to presume that these thousands of dwellings will somehow arise from currently developed areas - a bit like the urban versus green-belt argument perhaps.

The problem with this is that, as I noted a few days ago, there has been “orgiastic construction” in centres such as Puerto Pollensa. These are not so much ripping the heart out of the town as blocking its arteries. Does the crowding of ever more apartment blocks into confined areas really add to quality of life?

Antich describes the tourism industry with his own heart metaphor; it is what pumps the social and economic body. Quite right. A question is, would the cessation of further tourist expansion and therefore developments harm the desire for quality of life which, by implication, he sees as linked to property for the public?

A while ago, the Balearic Government announced its Plan Turismo 2020 with its aim of greater added value and a stated goal of “fewer tourists and higher income”. But would this be compatible with Antich’s heart-beat motif? Cut numbers of tourists - cut jobs, cut ancillary services, cut suppliers? I don’t know, maybe it wouldn’t, but I would take some convincing. Would such a model be able to underpin quality of life in its wider economic sense as in, for example, generating sufficient employment and income to support the affordability of thousands of dwellings?

Mallorca (and the Balearics) economy is based on tourism, more than any other sector. Construction may also be vital to the economy, but it is tourism that helps to spawn it, not the other way round. Despite the talk of innovation and development, to which Antich also referred again yesterday, there is not, and is unlikely to ever be, a Silicon Valley or some such equivalent. It is tourism which drives Mallorca and which drives quality of life. This does not have to mean unchecked development, but further development is almost certainly a consequence.

But then one runs into another issue. As so often on this blog, there is a coincidence. Also in the Diario is a report about the ongoing battle as to the construction (or not) of a golf course on the Son Bosc finca that abuts the Albufera nature park on its Muro wing. The environmental lobby group, GOB, and some local politicians are against this, but is it not this sort of development that Antich is alluding to when he talks about quality and sports tourism? Only a few weeks back, the proposal for a golf course and hotel at nearby Son Real was turned down, and the chances are that Son Bosc will never be developed, or it might even if takes several years. Let it not be ignored that, on the other side of Albufera, after some fifteen years of wrangling, they have started to develop an industrial estate. Though strong environmental standards are to be imposed on the industrial estate, is it really the case that a golf course is in some way more of an environmental threat?

Mallorca is a small island with an increasing population and an increasing demand for infrastructure, be it transport, housing or other. Tourism is a rapacious beast that grabs for itself whole chunks of this infrastructure and land. But it is the beast that beats the heart of Mallorca. The challenge is to increase this heart-rate or rather perhaps to relieve it of the tourism strain, and only increased economic diversification and competitiveness can help to achieve this. Whether it can be achieved is an entirely different matter.


QUIZ
Yesterday - Robert Louis Stevenson, “Treasure Island”. Today’s title - this is a line from a frantic record by?

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