Gran Scala: Lessons ignored?

I was lying on the beach and my thoughts turned, as no doubt yours turn as well, to the issue of major theme park projects. These thoughts centred on one project in particular; well, two actually, but the first thought was with desert near Zaragoza on the mainland and with Gran Scala.

I first became aware of Gran Scala almost five years ago and did so not because of any coverage in the media in Mallorca but because of the occasional article in "The Times". While this was a project for the mainland, it was nevertheless curious that it was totally ignored locally, except by myself. The scale of Gran Scala (and the name speaks for itself) was so grand, the proximity was that close that it had to pose some sort of threat to Mallorca. Moreover, it was just the sort of project, with its capacity for all-year tourism, that could only ever exist in the dreams of the Mallorcan tourism industry.

If you don't know about Gran Scala, let me tell you what had been envisaged: over 200 restaurants, 70 hotels, 32 themed casinos, six large theme parks and 12 smaller ones, golf courses, a racecourse, pyramids and sphinxes plus 25 million visitors by 2020, two and a half times the total number of visitors that Mallorca receives in a year. Its first phase was due to have opened this year. Things dragged on, arguments raged, and the option for the developers to acquire the land expired earlier this year.

The developers are International Leisure Development, registered as a PLC in London and a consortium comprising numerous companies from several countries. The authenticity of ILD and of the Gran Scala project were never really in doubt, though some would argue otherwise, but the project ran up against all manner of problems, not least of which has been financing in the economic climate of the past few years.

Gran Scala isn't totally dead in the water, though its future must be highly questionable. There is still talk of ILD finding new investment, but since Gran Scala was first presented (and the presentation was hugely impressive) another casino-based project has emerged, one that is as if not more controversial - Eurovegas in the Barcelona area. Just one of its controversies relates to an investigation for corruption.

As far as opponents of Gran Scala are concerned, the project is dead. Dead and good riddance to it. One has to accept that views of environmentalists, unionists, the Catholic charity Caritas would probably automatically be negative, but these views were gathered by one of the many blogs that has covered the whole Gran Scala story since it was first announced. And it is some of these views that demand being paid attention to in connection with projects in Mallorca, those that are far less grand or are of a different nature, and projects that might yet emerge.

Apart from the obvious resistance on environmental and ethical grounds to the development and to gambling, the analysis of the Gran Scala affair is striking for the way in which it condemns the whole project from the point of view of public policy (what the politicians do or don't do, in other words). "Gran Scala is a good example of what can happen when there is an absence of a coherent project for land and when support is for any proposal that generates (real or not) employment." This comes from the Granscaladebate blog, and it continues by observing that "much of the current (economic) pain is about the madness of walking in the wrong direction: the economics of real estate speculation".

Basically, what this is saying is that Gran Scala would have been a further, massive example of the type of project, with regional government political blessing (this one from Aragon), that has got Spain into the mess that it is. Lessons would have been completely overlooked therefore. More than this, the argument against Gran Scala was that the real estate speculation was one of speculation without genuine feasibility to support the numbers of visitors and the number of jobs and so the whole economic viability of the project.

It is when you consider projects in Mallorca, those both ongoing or planned, and when you consider the greater permissiveness to be allowed by the current regional government, that the arguments above do resonate. One ongoing project (now it's going, now it's stopped) is the Palacio de Congresos, a project about which I have asked numerous times where the business plan is. It is a purely speculative project. One that isn't ongoing is the plan for the theme park (that may or may not be located between Campos and Llucmajor). What has happened to it? Tourism minister Delgado was ambiguous when asked recently. But has it ever been more than speculative?

Gran Scala was a hugely ambitious project, but its sheer scale do not prevent it offering lessons and cautionary notes regarding other much smaller projects, be they hotel complexes, be they theme parks, be they convention centres, be they velodromes or sports centres. The real lesson of Gran Scala is that politicians need to demand that such projects are given a thorough, rigorous and independent analysis, because politicians in Mallorca and Spain are the last people who should be making the final decisions.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.