There's A Battle Ahead

I referred yesterday to local businesses not being influenced by the media into suspending investments and employment because of the allegedly poor predictions for 2009. As hinted, I come to a more positive aspect, and that has to do with hotels and their investments and the promises of near-to or at-zero levels of interest finance and an unloosening of restrictions to enable hotels to effect modernisations. These have been welcomed, as you might expect, by the hotels. They are positive moves, albeit that, as I said on a previous occasion, hoteliers are admitting that the measures come too late for any meaningful activity this winter. However, the winter of next year should be a period of significant investment and employment as the hotels swing into action, always assuming the local town halls don't place obstacles in front of them. And the town halls, their bureaucracies and potentially also their politicking form just one possible set of blocks; there is also, as always, the pressure of the environment defenders, most obviously GOB. Unsurprisingly, GOB objects to the fact that procedures put in place to restrict developments - which have cost time and money - are to be modified or largely removed. It goes on to say that the "economic crisis" is being used as an excuse to eliminate these procedures.

GOB is not wrong. Of course the crisis has led to the changes in these procedures. One might say that it is the economy, stupid. The problem, as ever, is finding a happy compromise in the economic and environmental tug-of-war, and the economy - from a position of weakness - is nevertheless pulling that much harder, given a helping hand by the government. In all this, both camps refer to "sustainability". They use it as it is meant in the environmental lexicon, as it has been borrowed from the panacea of "sustainable development", the environment ministry stating that the hotels will put in place efficient energy and waste-management measures. Both sides argue that this "sustainablity" of the environment, in its widest sense, is required by clients and is something that attracts those clients, or tourists to you and me. They are both spinning. Most tourists are indifferent. Many like their "environment" packaged in neat excursions to the mountains or to somewhere quaint in the interior. So long as the beach and streets are clean, they give the matter little attention, and just how many base a hotel decision on whether or not it uses low-energy bulbs? There is another, more pertinent meaning for "sustainability", and that is the purely mercenary one of sustaining the current level of tourism, if not increasing it.

GOB's objections seem largely petty. For the most part, the changes to procedures are for alterations to existing hotel stock. There is also the possibility, as GOB alludes to, of increasing that stock. Here it is perhaps on firmer ground. Gone, or so it would seem, is some of that defence of the coastline talk. But be it more development or mere refurbs, one suspects that battle lines are being drawn, and they will be those at a local level, with GOB and its political supporters (mainly the minority parties) hounding the town halls to prevent work happening. And as some town halls are dominated by the Unió Mallorquina (UM), the battles could be vicious. The UM is seen as the devil in all this by GOB, which also accuses the party of wanting to cover the island with golf courses. The UM may be a nationalist party, but it is also centre-right: classically conservative, if you like, in conserving Mallorcan interests while at the same time adhering to principles of free enterprise.

Does GOB have Mallorca's interests at heart? It sounds like a ridiculous question, as the answer has to be yes. It wishes to preserve the natural state of the island as much as possible. It is a not unworthy objective. But its predictable contrariness, whenever development raises itself as a possibility, blinds it to wider interests. It is the Luddite voice set against the industrialist. Yet despite its ability to cry wolf and to constantly poke its nose into seemingly every conceivable area of economic life on the island, it does have an important role to play. The crisis has led to the changes in procedures and to the financing available to the hotels. To deny this would be absurd. But this emphasises the most crucial debate about Mallorca and its future. As was the case with the Campos golf development, the short-term economic priorities place that debate into sharp relief, namely the degree and type of further development and its environmental effect. And then there is the backdrop to all this, and that is the as-yet unknown but apocalyptically forecast impact of climate change. The government is freeing the hotels to undertake developments to sustain tourism, but longer-term just how sustainable will that tourism be? When it comes to cutting dole queues and to boosting economic growth, the environment takes a back seat, however the government may wish to spin it. The far bigger question is being ignored, and that is the future, be it four or five years from now when any major developments, were there to be any, might come on-stream and also 30 to 40 years down the line when the seas (and the temperatures) may start to make some of the current developments appear redundant.


CHRISTMAS COMES TO ALCUDIA
Well, not yet, but the town hall is taking the Christmas wrappings off of two programmes to enliven the local scene up to and past Christmas. On the three remaining weekends of the month, there are to be markets (ever more markets), workshops, theatre and music on each Saturday, and there is also "Alcúdia tapa a tapa", a sort of bar/restaurant crawl of 16 establishments which will occur from the Friday till the Sunday. Tapas and wines will be on offer at the likes of Genestar, Cas Capella and Sa Plaça.


AND IN PUERTO POLLENSA ...
"The Diario" reports that a "platform", whatever this might mean, has been created by various citizen and business groups, the purpose of it being to act together in improvements to the town. Not sure what this is, but it sounds like the "über-association" that Garry Bonsall alluded to a couple of weeks ago. I shall doubtless find out and let you know. Sure you can't wait.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Temptations. A further clue could have been the name of a one-time bar/restaurant in Puerto Alcúdia: "Cloud Nine" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBxFTzxc0Bo). Today's title - a line from an Antipodean crowd. Brilliant song.

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