Twin Obsessions: Playa de Palma and Magalluf

Playa de Palma in its entirety has getting on for 40,000 hotel places. Palmanova-Magalluf has slightly fewer than 30,000 places. These two resort conurbations account therefore for roughly a quarter of Mallorca's hotel places. In the past few years we have bombarded with news of the redevelopment of Playa de Palma. Over recent weeks, the bombardment has been renewed; new hotels of a luxury variety, so we are told. In Palmanova-Magalluf, or more accurately Magalluf, we have been bombarded endlessly with news. There may have been a time when there was no news bombardment, but when that was is lost in the mists of touristic time.

This coming winter, we are informed, will witness hotel investments and projects the like of which have not been seen for many a long year. They are aimed at increasing hotel prices, increasing profitability and increasing employment. All positive stuff perhaps, but the focus of attention is on projects in these two conurbations. Playa de Palma, Meliá, Viva, BH; the island's tourism news agenda is driven by two resorts. Nowhere else matters.

Both Playa de Palma and Magalluf are news for the wrong reasons, and we all know what these reasons are. The reporting of these wrong reasons is entirely understandable - it is not reporting with which I take issue - but it is separate to the other reporting, that to do with the investments in the resorts. Again, this reporting is perfectly reasonable. When there are developments, they should be discussed. But it is these developments which, because the media reflects the objectives of others, have created an obsessiveness. Playa de Palma and Magalluf are twin obsessions. Not because the media has made them so, but because political and commercial interests have, and they are twin obsessions which are a disguise and a diversion and which are potentially deleterious and prejudicial to the 75% of coastal hotel tourism land which isn't either of them.

Around the coast of Mallorca there are four principal concentrations of tourism: Calvia, Playa de Palma, the bay of Alcúdia and the bay of Cala Millor, to which can be added lesser concentrations such as Capdepera, Pollensa and Santanyí. Not all of these centres are ancient in Mallorcan tourism terms; much of Playa de Muro, for instance, is of more recent vintage. Not all are centres of high-rise, massive hotel construction; Puerto Pollensa, for example. But most of it is ancient and massive.

In Calvia as a whole there are almost 60,000 hotel places. 50% of them are, therefore, neither Palmanova nor Magalluf, but Palmanova, for the purposes of the obsession, is unimportant; just as Peguera and Santa Ponsa seem to be unimportant. The Alcúdia bay conurbation of Alcúdia itself, Playa de Muro and Can Picafort has over 50,000 places; the bay of Cala Millor, over 35,000.

Between 2012 and this year, we are told, 260 million euros have been spent on hotel redevelopments of some form another. They have been spread around: Alcúdia 33, Cala Millor 26 and even Colonia Sant Jordi with 23. It's not as if there isn't and hasn't been investment, but this is not the issue. The type of project is the issue, and it is this which gives rise to the twin obsessions.

Playa de Palma's redevelopment, for so long in the planning and the debating, has essentially been a political investment. Both national and regional governments have bet a great deal on its transformation. Magalluf's is more purely commercial than political. The white knight of Meliá has ridden into town brandishing the standard of saviour and has attracted the fellow-travellers which now also seek the accolade of transformer.

The twin obsessions of transformation are the consequence of political expediency (Playa de Palma) and of proximity (Magalluf). Meliá can attract investors to itself to embark on the beautification of Magalluf because of its man-made physical advantage; that many Meliá hotels in close proximity. Political and commercial sugar daddies are, though, short in supply. Other resorts have neither. It is not as if there isn't a political appreciation of the need for resort modernisation - both the 1999 and 2012 tourism laws spoke of it - but where is it going to come from?

Playa de Palma and Magalluf create disguises of and diversions away from the realities of other resorts - realities such as those of Calas de Mallorca, where Manacor town hall does at least seem to have been shamed into doing something after the criticisms of neglect which were highlighted last week. The self-congratulation that flows like champagne with every new announcement regarding the twin obsessions obscures the falling self-esteem created by the flat beer of under-investment elsewhere. The corks pop and champion the new-age Mallorca. But behind the mask of this shiny future, there is all the other old age, for which obsession does not exist.