Did You Know They’d Pulled The Town Hall Down

Who would be a local councillor or mayor, charged with balancing the local-authority’s financial books. This is hardly a problem unique to Mallorca’s town halls, but the ongoing parlous state of Pollensa’s finances shows little sign of being reversed. On 30 September last year I noted that the town hall was in the red to the tune of some 800,000 euros. Perhaps it is a device of public-sector accounting, but that loss merely seems to have been shifted a year, with unpaid bills and service deficits for 2006 dragging the town hall ever more into debt. And the solution? As you would expect - rises in taxes, for instance a whacking increase in the local business tax. But Pollensa is not alone in exacting ever more from the local taxpayer. Around the island, taxes for rubbish collection are increasing steeply, not least in Muro.

Some owners of coastal properties may not be faced with such a tax demand. Rather, some owners of coastal properties may be faced with nowhere to live. From “The Times” today one learns of the Spanish Government’s intention to pull down dwellings and hotels along the Spanish coastline, including the Balearics, where the building of these is deemed to have been illegal. Alarming though this may sound, it is unlikely to involve mass demolitions.

Under Spanish law, construction within 100 metres of the coastline is outlawed. That’s the theory, and has been for 20 years. But the law has been flouted - massively. This new drive by the Zapatero administration is being seen by some as a sop to the environmental lobby as a means of securing re-election next year. Perhaps. The obverse of this would be that, were there to be mass demolitions the repercussions would be extremely harmful to the Government. The negative publicity in respect of homeowners would be one thing; the opposition from the powerful hotel sector would be quite another.


The season is as good as over, save for some diehards faced with what is distinctly wintry weather (by Mallorca’s standards that is). A fierce wind blew up last night and, while it has abated, it has brought a blast of chill from the north. The comparison with this time last year is profound. The heat then took the edge off the depressing nature of the season’s end, and served as a means of showing how unpredictable the weather can be at this time. Three years ago I was in Barcelona towards the end of the month. It was wet and cold, and there was snow on the tops of the mainland mountains; Mallorca was not much warmer.


QUIZ
Yesterday - Primal Scream, “Star”. Today’s title - a line from? (The group has featured here before, not that long ago - no apologies, they are one of the all-time great pop acts.)

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