The Train That Ran Away

"The runaway train went over the hill and she blew." Fat chance. The train won't be going near the hills of Artà any time soon. It has run away and hidden. Wagons for the Manacor-Artà line had already been bought. They are in storage, and they are likely to stay there.

Why, in the name of financial common sense, were wagons purchased before the line was anything like completed? Sure, it had been anticipated that the line might be ready this year (this was initially the plan), but the development, ever since it was embarked upon, has been only a sudden halt from ramming into the buffers.

Crisis has well and truly done for former President Antich's "age of the train", one that he announced on becoming president in 2007. First, the Alcúdia extension was scrapped, and now the Artà line, which had been intended to eventually go on to Cala Rajada, is paralysed. Whether it will ever be reactivated, who can tell.

The regional and central governments are bust. We know this. President Bauzá, desperate to reduce the Balearics massive debt, has ordered the freezing of projects. Central government has been only too happy to support him, by stating that it will not forward any more funds for the Artà line.

Something had to give. Clearly it had to. Boracic, the Balearics Government can't afford to indulge in major projects. However, at the same time as the announcement was being made as to the halting of the Artà line, Vice-President Aguiló (and overseer of finance and business) was saying that the Palacio de Congresos in Palma was "fundamental in order to reactivate the Balearic economy". It will continue to receive funding.

How is it fundamental? The palacio is essentially a conference centre, one designed in the hope of a strand of tourism - the business conference tourism market - becoming a significant part of Mallorca's tourism mix. But on what evidence?

Plenty of other cities in Spain have similar palacios. Perhaps this was the impulse to create Palma's. If others have got them, then so should we. It could indeed prove to be important in economic reactivation, but the suspicion is that it is a vanity project. It will be heralded, as such developments tend to be, as "iconic". A railway line, on the other hand, wouldn't merit such hyperbole. It is functional and presumably is not considered fundamental to anything.

Furthermore, the palacio couldn't just be abandoned. Its structure exists. For it to not be finished would make for an appalling eyesore, which is what it might turn out to be anyway, uncomplementary as it will be to other Palma seaside architecture, the Cathedral for instance. It's an easier option to crack on with the centre than it is with a railway line for which vast tracts of land - out of sight of Palma - have already been churned over, dug up and levelled.

The total cost of the Artà line is said to be 150 million euros. But there is a mystery about its funding. In 2009, 92 million euros were supposed to have been diverted from the abandoned Alcúdia project. What happened to them? In June, it was reported that 112 million euros for the Artà line were lacking.

Is the government so wrong, though, to have put a halt to the line? The mayors of towns which would have been connected, Sant Llorenç and Son Servera, believe so. One who doesn't is Antoni Pastor, mayor of Manacor (Partido Popular). There again, Manacor already has the crucial connection - that to Palma. Moreover, Manacor's resorts would not potentially have benefited. The line would have run close to Cala Millor, a resort that falls under two administrations - Sant Llorenç and Son Servera.

The Chamber of Commerce in Mallorca has come up with a telling finding. According to its own report, the volume of traffic that the line would have generated would have been roughly a third of that considered by the government to make it viable. This governmental figure appears to be one that the previous administration came up with. If the discrepancy is accurate, then why was the line ever contemplated?

However, the Artà line would have brought benefits other than those directly from passenger sales. The eastern part of the island needs development. Improved connections with Palma would have brought secondary benefits, hard though these might be to quantify.

Similarly though, there is a conference centre being built in Palma, the benefits of which have not been quantified. It goes ahead because of what it is and because of where it is. The train to Artà is in another world.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.