Fighting Them On The Beaches

Some years ago, I was given an insight into how the tendering process for awarding beach-management contracts went. It is probably best that I don't go into any detail or to identify the beach in question, but suffice it to say that it was an eye-opener, though one which only really served to confirm what one knows - that there is far more to such contracts than meets the eye.

Since gaining that insight, I have been something of a keen student of beach-management affairs, though there would be little to actually study if it weren't for the fact that three of the four main resorts in the north of the island are constantly subject to some form of shenanigans. Of the four - Can Picafort, Playa de Muro, Puerto Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa - only Alcúdia operates without any odd carryings-on. The other three do, and they are sometimes related.

Which brings me to the quite extraordinary state of affairs surrounding Playa de Muro's beach and, by incrimination, Puerto Pollensa's. A concessionaire on Muro's beach, Gabriel Moranta, has set out "denuncias" with the Guardia Civil with regard to vandalism of sunbeds during the summer and expressed his suspicion that the vandalism, which has cost him, he says, 50,000 euros, has to do with the neighbourhood association (AAVV) that manages Puerto Pollensa's beach.  

To be so public in expressing this suspicion is astonishing, but the vandalism had aroused police suspicions that it was the work of a competitor and not just some act of random destruction. The grounds for the suspicion are tied up with the awarding of the Puerto Pollensa contract in 2011 to Moranta's company, F&A Beach. The AAVV had traditionally always managed the beach - for some 30 years at any rate. F&A then lost the contract for this year, and the AAVV regained it. The ill-feeling between these two concerns gave rise to and continues to cause a real old slanging match, F&A implicating Pollensa town hall by suggesting that it colluded with the AAVV in renewing its concession to manage the beach.

F&A is not the only party to express concern. Political groups in Pollensa have also done so. The award to the AAVV this year was met with questions regarding money that it previously owed the town hall and its ability to meet conditions of the renewed contract. This concern has been such that there has been a call for the public prosecutor to investigate what has been happening with the beach-management contracts in Puerto Pollensa.

These contracts are pretty lucrative. If they weren't, then there wouldn't be all the shenanigans. It probably is time for the prosecutor to take a good look, and not only in Puerto Pollensa.

Returning to the vandalism though, F&A is exploring the possibility of security cameras being mounted on lifeguard towers on Playa de Muro's beach. Muro town hall is said to be considering the request. While I can understand a desire for such cameras, they would have to be used under very strict conditions. Specifically, they would surely have to be switched on only at night-time. But their very presence, as they presumably would be visible and as there would have to be notices stating that there are cameras, would not be welcome.

Permissions for surveillance cameras that are trained on the "public way" (and beaches are the public way) have to be sought, owing to the strictness of privacy laws, and there is a precedent for Muro to consider. This concerned the installation of webcams at hotel sites that were trained onto beaches in response to the ETA threat in 2009. One of these cameras was at the Sunwing Resort in Alcúdia, and their presence really only came to light as part of investigations into the former tourism minister, Miguel Nadal. Among issues that were raised were who actually controlled the cameras, who was looking at their images and what happened with any images that were stored.

Much as I sympathise with F&A, I, as a user of Playa de Muro beach, would be dead against cameras, strict conditions or not. They send out entirely the wrong message.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.