Sanity In Pollensa: The auditorium

Finally, some sanity prevails at Pollensa town hall. The previous madness had not been claimed by myself alone; far from it. The Alternativa per Pollença party has been one that has made constant reference to the lunacy. At least now it cannot be said that the lunatics have taken over the auditorium.

Several years down the line - the project has been on the drawing-board for eight years - Pollensa town hall has decided to withdraw from an agreement with the regional government for the building of an auditorium in the town. By doing so, it hopes to recover funds from the government to the tune of just over 200,000 euros a year that it has not been receiving since 2007. The reason why it has not been getting these funds is that they were waived in return for 4.5 million euros from the department of the presidency to go towards the auditorium's building.

Whether the town hall will get its money back, we will have to wait and see. As the government hasn't got any money and has, in any event, been playing hardball with the divvying up of cash through the so-called co-operation fund, Pollensa may have to wait. At least, or so one presumes, it will receive the money over the next five years of what was meant to have been a ten-year period.

Apart from the loss of annual funding, the madness of the auditorium project has been evident in different ways. Firstly, why was it ever deemed necessary at all? Its necessity lay with the vanity of a town hall that wanted a me-too auditorium because other towns (e.g. Alcúdia) have one and with the grandiose schemes for public works dreamt up under the regional presidency of Jaume Matas.

Secondly, where was the control of the project? It was not officially put out to tender. Its design and budget (ten million euros in total) were those of one architect.

Thirdly, of this budget, why was the tourism ministry involved? It was due to have contributed five million euros to its building, a contribution that was withdrawn a few days before the regional elections in May by the ministry of the former administration. But what did the auditorium have to do with tourism? In Alcúdia, where its auditorium has never operated at anything like capacity, the building contributes precisely nothing to tourism.

The tourism ministry was the wrong ministry, just as it has been the wrong ministry for giving out grants to events such as Pollensa's music festival (or not giving them out, as it has turned out). The music festival, like the auditorium, is something for the culture ministry; the festival's contribution to tourism is minimal.

Each ministry has its own budget, and the tourism ministry, in effect bust, had little alternative but to withdraw its funding. But it should never have been saddled with the responsibility in the first place. If you wonder how it is that the ministry can be so ineffective when it comes to tourism promotion, here is part of the reason; it has been lumbered with things that shouldn't be on its manor.

The Alternativa has been laying into the previous mayor, Joan Cerdá, for his "obsession" with the auditorium project and the current mayor, Tomeu Cifre, who, in previous administrations, did not speak out against the project. And now Pollensa will have neither an over-ambitious auditorium nor a far less ambitious multi-purpose hall, which is what the Alternativa believes the town does need.

It may well be right, but the experience of Alcúdia, with the over-budget and under-utilised fiasco that is its Can Ramis building, suggests that Pollensa might be better off forgetting about some other scheme as well.

The one saving grace of the "crisis" is that hare-brained projects, cobbled together with nary a thought as to what their use or return might be (did anyone calculate a reasoned return on the auditorium investment?), have to be put on ice or killed off. One day though, a new project for an auditorium will probably return; if it does, it still wouldn't mean it was necessary.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.