Walking, Talking

They came, they took a butcher's and they used ladders to climb over the barrier. On Monday, 500 or so people took part in the so-called "re-claim walk" along the camino de Ternelles in Pollensa and to the Castell del Rei. This is the camino, across the Ternelles finca, owned by the March family, which has been closed to ramblers and which has been the subject of much huffing and puffing, and not all of it by less-than-fit walkers.

Pollensa town hall, which ostensibly is on the side of those who want to see unfettered access, had stipulated that only twenty people would be allowed to make the symbolic re-claim walk. As this was a local decree (backed by the regional government), the local plod were duly on hand to enforce it. They didn't. And so it was that the march of the great 500 did come to pass across the land of the March.

The walk (not the re-claim one but the actual one) is in fact promoted among the rambles of the local area, but for years it has been off-limits. The mayor has talked a good walk and has taken notice of the will of the 500 (or more) to open it up, but still it remains a case of "walk, don't walk". The action on Monday was all the more notable for the fact that, amongst the ranks of the 500, were the regional government's transport minister, the parliamentary spokesperson for the Mallorcan socialists, a nationalist deputy and the director for heritage at the Mallorca Council. Swelling the numbers were various ecologists, representatives of the two main trades unions, doubtless a few agitpropists and even some genuine ramblers. All that was missing was the gangling sight of Janet Street-Porter whom I once saw arm-in-arm (just about) with a short bloke walking along London's Tottenham Court Road. A world away from the rambling hinterland of England's fair dales - and indeed Mallorca's finca-land - but I know how much you like these celebrity stories. And if you don't get the Street-Porter connection, then you'll have to google her together with rambling; up to you.

But where was I? I was rambling. Oh yes, take a look at that list above. What exactly has all this got to do with the transport minister? Was he sizing it up as a potential site for a new motorway? Or maybe he's a mad keen hiker. Of course, there is the probably not insignificant matter that he is also a member of the Mallorcan socialists. As so often, these things seem to come down to a touch of political handbagging, or backpacking in this instance; the mayor of Pollensa is Unió Mallorquina. And the mayor is, as you might expect, outraged and is due to be writing to the regional government's president, Antich, to protest at the breaking of an order from the government itself (one covering the camino) by at least one member of his government, albeit that the transport minister is from a different party to both Antich and Mayor Cerdà. The environment ministry, whose agents had been positioned to prevent a previous re-claim walk, had in fact sanctioned this latest one, but with the limit of twenty hardy souls out for a hearty yomp on what was a public holiday.

Anyway, one could nuance the dispute over the camino as an important battle for the heart of countryside Mallorca and for the right to walk. And one would be correct, up to a point, perhaps about as far as the barrier that was erected. There are, though, plenty of people who do enjoy a stroll off the beaten Pollensa track, and some of them are tourists. But the problem would then be, were the camino to be totally opened up, that the same ecologists would turn round and say that this was harmful to the environment, to which the environment ministry would add its centimo's worth. So you would end up with a different argument. Despite the claims for the right to walk, this has descended into politicking. As such, it seems as nuts as the football trophies of yesterday.

Still, the walk re-claimers have made their point and have created a spot of media frenzy (erm, slight exaggeration). Be grateful that there weren't 600 of them, as you would then had to have put up with me doing a line about into the valley of Ternelles walked the 600. Come to think of it, you just have.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Carly Simon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO8FZJ_UIn4. Today's title - what?

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