Knocked Down, Then Get Up Again

Three decades of "demands" it may have taken, but the upgrading of the frontline walk towards Son Real from Son Bauló has finally been inaugurated - to the tune of some 500,000 euros. The minister for the environment, Miquel Grimalt, came, saw and cut the ribbon. All that remains is the rather more problematic issue of upgrading not just the walkway but the whole of the frontline in Can Picafort. Symbolic a gesture as the ribbon-cutting was, it was symbolic in another respect - that it was the environment minister who performed the act. Here was an example of something essentially tourist in its nature being enacted by the environment ministry; the two - tourism and environment (ministries, that is) rarely seem to speak from the same script let alone metaphorically join hands in holding the same scissors.

It is the environment ministry that has helped to cause the Magaluf kerfuffle in respect of an earlier bar-terrace curfew, something that does not endear the ministry to bar owners and also, one suspects, to quite a number of tourists. The environmental diktats are too often at variance with what keeps Mallorca afloat - its tourism and the majority perception of what holiday should entail, which includes sitting on terraces with music until at least midnight.

There was further symbolism in Grimalt's ceremony. The walkway lies in the general area of what is ruled by the feared "Costas". In an act of hitherto rarely witnessed common sense, the Costas, and by extension the environment ministry and therefore minister, have come to the conclusion that now is not the most opportune moment to be going around insisting on the demolition of chiringuitos (beach bars). Though the regional government's president seems to still support the enforcement of the law of the coasts (which includes the demolition of buildings apparently illegally constructed on what is deemed public beach area), the environment minister (from a different party, it should be noted) has agreed that now is not the time. Indeed, of the 107 chiringuitos that were under some sort of threat, only three now seem to have the bulldozers waiting to move in, one of them in Alcúdia. It is likely to go after the season finishes. Not all of the chiringuitos are even permanent; they get taken down at the end of the season and are put up again for the next one.

There have been some big guns coming to the defence of the chiringuitos, namely the head of the hotel federation and the president of the Fomento del Turismo (a promotional body). The hotels' boss has said that conflicts should not be created where they do not exist, and the law has tended to do just that. There is also an appreciation, now being advanced, that the chiringuitos hold an iconic place in the perception of tourists; iconic and extremely useful. But one knows what they mean by "iconic". The beach bar is as much a part of holiday as the beach itself. Far from limiting the activities of these bars, they should let them stay open into the wee smalls, put on beach barbecues, play music.

All this law is stripping out the romance of holiday. Thankfully, a bit of romance still resides in the unromantic hearts of stone at the environment ministry.


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