When you're about to spend the best part of two and a half million euros on a construction project, you might hope that someone had first checked that the whole thing wouldn't collapse or be inundated with water. What am I saying? The recent history of great Mallorcan civil engineering success stories is awash with water. The Palma Metro for example.
Along now comes another rail fiasco which we can all rail against. "The tram now standing at platform ..." Sorry, there is no platform. As also there are no proper foundations, other than sand, or adequate drainage. As for the tram, well you can forget that anyway, as they've forgotten about the supports for the power cables. Oh, and that bike lane, the one that would have been vital because the tramline had been knackered ... .? Nope, they haven't remembered that either.
Work on the re-development of the paseo marítimo in Port de Sóller, tram and all, is due to start in October. Somewhat belatedly, the technical chaps have had a peek at the plans. What plans, you might ask. There are "deficiencies", they say. Just ever so slightly there are. One of the companies contracted to undertake the work states on its website: "development is a reality". As far as Sóller is concerned, that should read, "will be" - with any luck. When though is another matter.
The Sóller promenade development can be viewed in a wider context than just the apparent deficiencies with the project. Bar and restaurant owners in the resort are none too impressed with the scheme. Ditto the on-off and now maybe on again re-development of Puerto Pollensa's frontline. Pedestrianisation may seem like a way of beautifying Mallorca's resorts, but strange to report there are plenty of people who would disagree.
An editorial in "The Bulletin" referred to a loss of charm, the consequence of resort developments. One aspect of this charm is that some tourists quite enjoy the bustle that having a road right next to a bar or restaurant can create. So too the owners. It may seem odd to wish to breathe in the fumes of a bus that has mysteriously passed its MOT, but who am I to question what anyone finds charming?
Some years ago Puerto Alcúdia's prom was pedestrianised. What was created was a spacious strolling boulevard, wide enough to house the capricious folly of a bridge that goes nowhere, an Escher-like impossible reality. The development wasn't a reality in Alcúdia, it was surrealistic, while the spaciousness is not to everyone's liking; visitors still talk of that "bustle" and charm which existed previously. There will probably be those who reject the Playa de Palma re-development on the same grounds, though how somewhere lacking charm can lose it is a moot point.
Playa de Palma, though, is a specific case, one in which there is now a collision between civil engineers, town planners and architects like no other resort. This was where the architectural vandals once scaled the ramparts and sacked the place before anyone was any the wiser. What comes now is important. The New Turkey perhaps? A resort for today's competitive age? One of dome and semi-circular five-star opulence would be in keeping with a Moorish inheritance, and would be an appropriate artifice for an artificial resort, which is exactly what it is. Everything in its place.
But this is the problem. Not everything is in its place, especially building design. It's not just the resorts. The Can Ramis monstrosity in Alcúdia town is an example of how bad unsympathetic architecture can be. It was the misfortune of the little Ramis houses that they were situated only metres from the sanctuary of the town's walls, behind which is a heritage law that would have stopped their functionalist conversion in its tracks.
The argument goes, of course, that Mallorca has to upgrade to compete. It's a fair argument, but only up to a point. The pedestrianisation dogma is not the same as creating new four- or five-star hotels. In Puerto Alcúdia's case, has the paseo made any difference to tourism competitiveness? Doubtful. But over and above a prom in this or that resort is an orthodoxy of today's school of architecture which has, for example, succeeded in undermining the ramshackle appeal of Cala San Vicente.
Sóller, Pollensa, Andratx, you can name others. They have thrived on their individual, idiosyncratic charms. But they face the offence of the "new" charm. In Sóller, maybe a botched project wouldn't be such a bad thing.
QUIZ -
Yesterday: Fleetwood Mac, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE4HGlmtOcg
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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