Son Bosc - The End?

Ever since I've been writing about Mallorca - the starting date, if you must know, was 1 November 2005 - there have been issues that have regularly surfaced. One such is the controversy over the golf course on the Son Bosc finca in Muro. This may be the last time I need to mention the golf course. The Balearic High Court has dismissed an appeal by the developers. It has ratified a previous court decision which ruled that the licence to develop the course, given by Muro town hall, was illegal.

One can never be absolutely certain with the law, certainly not here, but the environmentalists GOB seem pretty sure. The court's ruling "definitively" puts an end to the possibility of developing the course. The decision has gone against the company Golf Platja de Muro, which comprises certain hotel chains, and the environmentalists will be breathing a sigh of relief.

It was at one time unclear to me how much sense there was with building this course. It was the business angle that was my main misgiving, but as the years passed and the drive towards lengthening the tourism season and eating into the winter months became ever greater a theme, I started to see the possibilities. Playa de Muro, for all that it has now acquired late-winter tourism courtesy of cycling, is still pretty much dead in the winter. A golf course might just have brought it to life.

Business, though, was not on the minds of opponents. They weren't only the environmentalists. There were people in Muro who objected as well. This came home to me when there was a protest against what was then the plan to eventually demolish the cottages of Ses Casetes des Capellans. A banner read that Capellans was for the people, a golf course was for the rich.

The environmental argument was strong. It had the backing of the international Ramsar wetlands convention on account of the finca being, more or less, an extension of Albufera. Various species were identified which could be harmed: a rare orchid, bee-eating birds and so on. The argument had political support. This really came to the fore as a result of the upheaval in the 2007-2011 government. The Unió Mallorquina, ejected from the coalition by President Antich because of the numerous corruption cases that had engulfed it, had been in charge of the environment ministry. Clearance work at the finca had started. When the UM was removed, the PSM (Majorcan socialists), now the main component of Més, gained the ministry. Everything changed and pretty much immediately.

Reacting to the ruling, Més say that it defends one of the most sensitive and important natural environments in the Balearics. The appeal to the High Court was the last resort. So, is it all over? Quite probably it is, but if there were thoughts of further appeal, these might in any event be dashed by the government's reform of tourism legislation. The building of new golf courses is to "definitively" be prohibited. But how definitive is definitive?

Maintenance Failure: Albufera

The Supreme Court in Madrid last week ruled against the Balearic Government in a compensation claim, the origins of which go back 26 years. In 1988 the Albufera wetlands were granted protection from any further development when they were declared a nature park. The regional government is thus liable for paying 21 million euros to a developer - Playas de Mallorca S.A. - in respect of some 33 hectares of land (approximately 80 acres) on which it has not been able to build villas or hotels.

The time that it has taken for the court to reach its decision is extraordinary. Ten years ago the Balearic High Court had ruled that the government was not liable, a previous decision having said that it was. The level of compensation then was 13.5 million, so over the intervening years the amount has risen by more than 50%.

Playas de Mallorca S.A. was one of the companies responsible for the transformation of Albufera into Alcúdia's City of Lakes in the 1960s and 1970s. That transformation project originally envisaged far greater development than that which occurred, but there were pockets of further development which were placed in the pipeline. The 33 hectares would have represented development of roughly a quarter of the size of what became the City of Lakes, but with protected status came prohibition and ultimately compensation.

Protection, welcome though it most certainly was, has brought with it questionable benefits. In environmental terms, one can't question the advantage of protection, but in ongoing care, attention, maintenance, management and benign exploitation, one can.

Albufera is currently experiencing a problem of a natural variety: a lack of water. The situation this autumn is much the same as it was last year. Too little rain has meant that water levels have dropped and, as a consequence, migratory aquatic birds are seeking alternative locations. The situation will doubtless right itself, but in the meantime there are fewer birds than would normally be expected and so reduced opportunities for bird watchers. Despite this, it is said that visitor numbers are "optimal", which is a vague description but not an unsurprisingly vague one. How do they know how many visitors there are?

At present, cutbacks have meant that it is not possible to conduct satisfactory censuses of the number of birds at given times in Albufera. If they can't count the wildlife, how can they count the human life? And even if they can arrive at an "optimal" number, how many of these visitors are not residents and especially not members of the regular school parties which descend on Albufera?

Keeping tabs on the number of visitors and who they are has not been helped by the fact that the Can Bateman information centre has been closed for most of the year. It has now re-opened, but its closure is symptomatic of the malaise which affects natural spaces such as Albufera. These are granted protected status or, as was the case with Son Real near Can Picafort, acquired at vast cost and are then, thanks to unclear lines of responsibility as well as lack of funding, allowed to fall into neglect.

Moreover, personnel, when there are any, receive insufficient training in the use of the information systems at Can Bateman, while there have been previous occasions when the centre has been closed and when visitors were unable to use the so-called green card (now abandoned) to obtain discounts for bike hire or indeed obtain a bike, full stop. These all point to a failure, in marketing terms, of ensuring that the product is right. But this is a marketing and product failure mirrored elsewhere in, for example, the absence of a dedicated website for Albufera (there is good information through Balears Natura, but this isn't only for Albufera) or in other information centres being shut; the one in Puerto Pollensa's La Gola rarely seems to be open.

Pollensa's tourism development plan includes a focus on attracting bird-watching tourists and so, in addition to the La Gola centre, the town hall would like the old fish market to include another information centre for the Tramuntana and its birds, wildlife and what have you. Laudable though this might be, has any consideration been given to its ongoing maintenance and funding? And who would supply these? The town hall, the Council of Mallorca, the government?

Local authorities talk the talk about wildlife and nature tourism but then do too little to back it up. They create centres and then don't look after them. They have natural spaces but then equally fail to care for them adequately. Maybe the developer should have been allowed to build, but then, had there been more City of Lakes-style development, who would have looked after it? Alcúdia's City of Lakes suffers from seemingly being a low priority. It's a familiar tale. Create something and then don't maintain it.

A Tree For Mister Waring

Mallorca loves its anniversaries of births and deaths. The island can celebrate these anniversaries in grand or at least grandish fashion, as with Father Junipero Serra last year (there were many who reckoned that not nearly enough was actually made of the old boy's 300th birthday) and as it will doubtless do when it comes to the 700th anniversary of the death of Ramon Llull next year (albeit this anniversary will straddle two years as there is some legitimate debate as to when he did die). Most of these anniversaries commemorate, as you might expect, Mallorcans, but the island's history is also littered with prominent non-Mallorcans whose anniversaries are acknowledged or all but ignored. And one who has fallen into this latter category is Henry Robert Waring, a British engineer who can claim to have actually had his body littered on the island; he was buried in Palma.

Waring died a hundred years ago earlier this month: 5 October to be precise. A researcher from Sa Pobla, Pere Perelló Payeras, has noted that there is little which honours Waring's memory, and yet he played a significant role in Mallorcan economic life from 1863 until his death in 1914. Waring was one of the engineers who was involved in the draining of Albufera. Typically when this project is referred to, it is John Frederick Bateman who is cited as having been the most important of the British engineers, but there were others - Waring, William Hope and William Green, who is remembered in Sa Pobla because of the road and restaurant named after him - Mister Green; there is also a Bateman street and an Enginyer Waring street in the town.

Bateman and Hope founded the New Majorca Land Company in 1863, having obtained the concession for the drainage of Albufera. But though Bateman was, if you like, the chief engineer, he wasn't always around to check on the work owing to the fact that he had other projects on the go elsewhere. The project was in fact placed in the hands of Green and Waring; they were the principal engineers on the ground.

Of Waring's background it is difficult to be certain. There was a Henry Waring who was one of three brothers who formed Waring Brothers, which was to become one of the most important railway-building companies in Britain and in parts of the globe. As this company was based in York and as Bateman was originally from Halifax, it is possible that he was the same Waring. But whatever the background, it would seem that Henry became something of an honorary Mallorcan and that he chose to live permanently on the island, unlike Bateman.

In 1876 the New Majorca Land Company, having been granted permission to establish a farming colony, founded the Gatamoix settlement, which was hidden away under the Sant Martí mountain in Alcúdia, was populated primarily by poor workers from Pollensa and was to provide labour for both drainage work and cultivation of what was reclaimed land. Bateman is normally attributed with the founding of the colony, but in fact it was Waring who was in charge and who was the one who formally founded the colony on behalf of the company.

His relationship with the company clearly took a turn for the worse. Bateman had become the sole owner and he introduced his son Lee to the company. History has not been kind to Lee. He can be described as a hopeless romantic, a narcissist and as someone who went native. He changed his name to Luis and converted to Catholicism, his father and Mister Green having been the ones who had introduced Anglican Protestantism to Mallorca. Lee was also a pretty useless businessman, though to be fair the New Majorca Land Company had been experiencing financial problems for some time before he appeared on the scene. And it was this appearance that led to Waring leaving the company around 1886 and cutting all ties with it.

What he did next was to buy the "possessió" (estate if you like) of Peguera and to move to Palma from Sa Pobla, where he had owned a house. He underwent a career change and got involved with the export of capers and carobs and he was to buy further estates - Xorrigo and Moranta on the northeastern outskirts of Palma.  

So, Waring was as intimately involved with the Albufera project and with the Gatamoix colony as Bateman; more so in some respects. He was also more intimately involved with Mallorca, and it is for these reasons that Pere Perelló Payeras believes that he deserves some greater recognition than he has had, even if he has only a simple tribute in mind, the planting of a tree in Albufera in memory of a time in Mallorca's history and Waring's contribution to it.

Photo: Waring's grave in the cemetery in Palma - from http://sapoblaradio.com

Neighbours At War: Sewage treatment

Lurking on the edge of the wetlands of Albufera there is something which, from an aerial view, looks like a giant painter's palette. Its colours range from grey-silvers to greens to royal and deeper blues. It is the Albufera sewage treatment plant. Most people don't know of its existence, except perhaps because of the occasional whiff. The rustic part of Playa de Muro (the so-called Sector Two), which comprises a couple of urbanisations, nine hotels and an awful lot of forest and dunes, is subject to strange smells. There is, especially in high summer, one that is like burnt sulphur. I have always assumed this to be because of a sort of marsh gas from the low-level wetlands and vegetation. I may be right. But there are other more pungent smells. An antiquated sewage pipe network is one cause. An antiquated sewage plant may well be another.

The plant is not far from Playa de Muro's border with Can Picafort. It is, therefore, within the municipality of Muro, whose neighbour, Santa Margalida, shares the facility. Or to be more specific, the coastal resorts of Playa de Muro and Can Picafort - with their combined eighty odd hotels - share it. The transient tourist populations of the two resorts massively dwarf the resident populations. These are places which exist primarily because of hotel tourism, and that hotel tourism lies at the centre of an ongoing sewage row between Muro and Santa Margalida town halls.

The Albufera plant, like the pipe network, is antiquated. A new one or an additional one has been required for years. The regional government's environment ministry has earmarked a site for a new one. It is in Son Bauló, the eastern part of Can Picafort. This proposed site has created a stink, the reason being that there are fears that its outlet - 3.7 kilometres out to sea in the bay of Alcúdia and at a depth of 25 metres - might lead to beach pollution and cause destruction of posidonia sea grass. Santa Margalida town hall, in a rare demonstration of unity between its usually antagonistic political parties, continues to flatly reject the plant's construction. The environmental concerns are one reason, but there are, as always, political and commercial ones as well.

Santa Margalida's stance is essentially one of not in our backyard, to which Muro has pointed out that for years Santa Margalida has been happy enough to make use of a sewage plant which is in Muro's backyard. Muro claims that the Albufera plant is creaking, that it could itself cause environmental contamination (to the eco-sensitive wetlands) and that it is past its sell-by date. It, therefore, maintains that the new plant is an absolute necessity. Santa Margalida says that the Albufera plant should be extended. The result? Stand-off.

Into this row has now entered a throwback political dimension. Santa Margalida maintains that the Son Bauló solution was something of a stitch-up involving the discredited former president of the Balearics, Jaume Matas. It was a political pact, the town hall claims, between Matas and the former mayor of Muro, Miguel Ramis, by which a study of the Son Bauló site was given the appearance of legality through some alleged manipulation. Miguel Ramis was the founder of Grupotel; he still is its president. Ten years ago, hoteliers in Playa de Muro, of which Grupotel is one, clubbed together and bought land in Son Bauló; the very land on which the sewage treatment plant may be sited.

That Santa Margalida is now seeking to make some political capital out of the affair adds a new twist to the story but it is a twist which seems all a bit late in the day. Furthermore, around the time that the land was being acquired, there did appear to be general consensus between the town halls as to the necessity for a new plant and for it to be established in Son Bauló. The former mayor of Santa Margalida, Antoni del Olmo, signed up to an agreement in 2005, one which Muro says that Santa Margalida should honour. It should also be noted that the acquisition of the land by the Playa de Muro hoteliers was transparent and one which most parties at the time seemed to accept as a solution in a spirit of sharing and co-operation between hoteliers in the two resorts and between the two town halls.

Since that time, though, the politics have moved on. So, what happens next? GOB, the environmental watchdogs, have added their penny's worth, saying that there should be a third option, one that is neither Albufera nor Son Bauló, but without offering an actual alternative. All the time, while the arguments fly, the Albufera plant, according to Muro, becomes more of a risk. One day, perhaps, the whiffs in Playa de Muro will be even more pungent.

Son Bosc All Over Again?

Two weeks after highlighting Muro's "model town hall", there is more evidence of good things at the council and also evidence of Muro suddenly having found itself propelled very much into the spotlight. The good housekeeping that has left the town hall with zero debt has not, as mayor Martí Fornes said a fortnight ago, meant that there is no investment, a package of just over two million euros spend having been proposed by Fornés's coalition administration, including 400,000 euros to be spent, subject to agreement from higher authority, on the first phase of the "boulevard" in Playa de Muro. This apart, an issue which has raised itself is one that had appeared to have been forgotten about. And it is one that will be destined to once more kick off all the debate and argument that surrounded it in the past. It is the building of the golf course on the Son Bosc finca next to Albufera.

The town hall's tourism plan, approved thanks to the coalition's majority at the council, mentions the golf course as part of potential development in 2014 to 2015. A report is to be presented in January next year, so there is nothing, as yet, which indicates the restarting of work on the finca that was stopped during the last regional government's administration.

At the heart of the argument over Son Bosc has been the environmental consequences of the course being built. All manner of flora and fauna have in the past been invoked as reasons for it not being built. They include everything from a rare orchid to the mating habits of a bee-eating bird. The construction has been referred to international bodies, such as the Ramsar wetlands secretariat, as well to national and Mallorcan governmental bodies. Experts on this and that have been consulted and have offered opinions. The views of politicians and hoteliers have been made clear, those of the former being pro and con, those of the latter being firmly pro.

The course's promoter is a company which comprises shareholders from hotel companies. The largest shareholder is Grupotel. Fornés used to work for them. But although hotelier interests are to the fore and although Son Bosc would naturally entail transformation of the land, does it automatically follow that those interests would be especially harmful to the environment and eco-system? There is now a great deal more sensitivity applied to the building of golf courses than might once have been the case. Consequently, a course can be created in such a way that it is in harmony with the immediate environment.

Son Bosc has really been a tale of political dogma and fighting as much as it has been an argument over the environment. At one point during the last administration (PSOE-led), it looked as though the course would happen, and indeed work did start. However, the moment that President Antich threw the Unió Mallorquina out of his coalition and installed Gabriel Vicens of the PSM Mallorcan socialists as environment minister, the development was likely to be halted. And so it was. The PSM and the UM hated each other's guts, and Son Bosc was one of their battlegrounds.

Fornés will know that he has a battle on his hands in having the finca's development declared as being in the island's general interest. He might hope for regional government support, but with elections moving closer, would the PP risk any more potentially negative publicity than it already has? Doubtful. The chances of the course ever actually being built must still be considered slim.


Index for May 2014

Bikinis - 15 May 2014
Can Picafort nautical sports and club - 23 May 2014
Complementary offer confederation - 7 May 2014
Eco-tax - 6 May 2014
Education conflict - 25 May 2014
Football and tourism - 14 May 2014
Giants of Mallorca - 22 May 2014
Holiday lets (private apartments) - 5 May 2014
Ironman - 9 May 2014
Jaume Sastre, hunger strike - 28 May 2014
Land law chaos - 20 May 2014
Llorenç Roses Bermejo, Palmanova - 12 May 2014
Magalluf 25 years ago - 21 May 2014
Mallorca land legislation - 13 May 2014
McDonald's Spain Brekkie Wrap ad - 26 May 2014
Microbreweries - 3 May 2014
Muro town hall - 16 May 2014
Museums - 18 May 2014
New tourism policy - 1 May 2014
P2P tourism - 8 May 2014
Partido Popular discount card - 17 May 2014
Partido Popular voting against oil prospecting - 11 May 2014
Podemos and European elections - 27 May 2014
Pollensa wine fair and wine history - 2 May 2014
Primark and Mallorca's retail history - 30 May 2014
Prostitution and violence - 4 May 2014
PSOE: the future - 29 May 2014
Son Bauló dolmen - 19 May 2014
Son Bosc golf - 31 May 2014
Stone fair - 24 May 2014
Wine Days Mallorca - 10 May 2014

The Man Who Wrote About Sa Pobla

At this time of the year, it is my lot to research and write about Sa Pobla and its Sant Antoni fiesta. The research is not obscure, unless you want it to be and unless you are deterred not just by texts in Catalan but also in Mallorquín (and the latter pose rather more problems than the former; finding assistance to help determine some Mallorquín meanings is not straightforward, the consequence of the dialect being obscure in its written form). The research is not obscure, thanks to a chronicler who, though he will be obscure for many, was one of Mallorca's more remarkable literary figures. He was remarkable for having combined an assiduous and devoted career as Sa Pobla's chronicler with having been an author and playwright.

Mallorca's towns have their historians and their chroniclers. If you were to put them together in a room, what tales and stories they could tell. Many of them have been told, but they are all too remote for the non-Catalan speaker. They tell so much, and so much that is overlooked because of linguistic obscurity. Biel Pieras, himself a leading Mallorcan historian and also Inca's chronicler, said at the end of June 2011 that Mallorca had lost its finest official chronicler. He was speaking about Alexandre Ballester.

78 years of age, Ballester was Sa Pobla through and through, despite having been born in Barcelona. He was only very young when his parents settled in Sa Pobla, and he was to become one of Mallorca's foremost literary figures. He wrote almost twenty plays, he wrote poetry, he wrote satirical essays and he wrote a novel, for which he received an award (the first of very many) in 1965. But he was far more than this, because he was also an historian; he was Sa Pobla's chronicler. When not writing for the theatre or for publication, he was writing about the place that, only a few months old, had become his home town, and included in his writings were those about the history of the Sant Antoni fiesta.

In late 2003, Sa Pobla town hall produced a history of the town. Its title is "Sa Pobla: The People, The Environment, The History". It was the work of four teachers from the town. Ballester wrote the foreword and wasn't being unkind when he referred to the history as "basic". It was a "basic book, indispensable for everyone who lives in, works in and loves our town". Ballester was cited extensively in the book, and one begins to get a flavour of just how diverse his own coverage was. From eleven bibliographic references, there are those to the archaeology of Talapi, a finca in the town, to the land at the turn of the twentieth century, to Albufera's "yesterdays" and to the third centenary of the Sant Antoni parish church in 1997 (the 300th anniversary of the church which replaced the original that was built in 1357).

There could have been many more references. Ballester, like any good historian, dealt with the broad picture and the specific, and included among his investigations in the latter category were those into the glosadors, themselves chroniclers of times past when communications and the perpetuation of Catalan (Mallorquín) were largely achieved by these monologuist-chanters, and into arròs brut, that most traditional of Mallorcan dishes but in truth a tradition that was bound up in the development of Albufera at the end of the nineteenth century and the cultivation of rice in the wetlands.

There is far more to Sa Pobla's history than two themes, but they are two themes which dominate its past and also its present. Albufera is one and especially the period of the English engineers - Hope, Waring, the preacher man Mister Green, Bateman and his son Lee, who adopted the Catalan Lluís name and called the Gatamoix colony after himself. The other is Sant Antoni, the tradition of the fiesta and the parish churches built in his honour. 

There is a third theme, which is agriculture and specifically the growing of potatoes. Put these three themes together, and you get what you have - a town wedded to the land and the wetland and to centuries-old tradition that was imported by the kings of Mallorca and which was invested in Sa Pobla; Sant Antoni became and remains the centre of this tradition. It is not for nothing that Sa Pobla is referred to as the capital of rural Mallorcan life, a mix of cultivation, the working of the land and superstitions and fiesta. Sa Pobla, perhaps in a self-appointed way, has assumed a role as capital also of a specifically Catalan rural life, and in its simple denomination, it asserts a position in Mallorcan history as a sort of favoured town. Sa Pobla, "the populace". Not a populace but the populace. And Ballester was the man who truly asserted this position. He was the man who wrote about Sa Pobla and, in many respects, was the man who made Sa Pobla.

* Photo from www.escriptors.cat

MALLORCA TODAY - Madrid seeks explanations concerning Albufera

The national environment ministry, prompted by the Balearics environmental group GOB, has sought explanations from the regional government concerning the management of the Albufera nature park in Muro and acting on recommendations for this management given by the Ramsar international secretariat for wetlands. Some specifics of this request include wanting to know if the building of the golf course on the Son Bosc finca has been definitively rejected.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - Albufera park closing early because of lack of staff

The Albufera nature park, the reception to which is in Playa de Muro, has been closing earlier than it should do. The park, management for which has now transferred to the Balearics Institute for Nature (a governmental body), should stay open until 6pm but has been shutting up to two hours before. Visitors can still get into the park, despite this, but without any control, a situation criticised by environmental watchdog GOB.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

The Colony That Died: Gatamoix

In the mid-nineteenth century, two laws were passed by the national government which paved the way for the creation of agricultural colonies in Mallorca. These laws of 1855 and 1868 were what brought about Colonia Saint Pere, Colonia Sant Jordi and Colonia de Nostra (aka Porto Cristo). The colonies came into existence as a response to demands of a growing population to feed itself and to have somewhere to live. Much coastal land had until then been looked upon as being worthless, owing to problems of cultivation caused by natural obstacles: forest, dunes, salt marshes. And there was no marsh that represented a greater challenge for development than the wetland of Albufera.

Though Alcúdia (and later Sa Pobla) didn't acquire a settlement with "colonia" in the name, one was created. Gatamoix. It was later to get a "colonia" in its title when, in 1892, its name was changed to Colonia de Sant Lluís. Gatamoix was, by population, one of the largest of the colonies, but it, as with others, such as Els Fusterers, the smaller, later colony in Sa Pobla, died out, whereas those right by the coast, like Colonia Sant Pere, were to eventually become tourist centres.

Gatamoix has perhaps the most poignant tale to tell of these colonies. At one time, there were more than a hundred people living there. Over 40 families in more than 20 houses. By the time of the outbreak of the First World War, there were a mere seven people left. Within ten years, there was not a soul left. Gatamoix's decline was not as sudden as its creation had been, but the lingering death that it experienced was attributable in part to the death of the projects that the British civil engineer, John Frederick Bateman, had initiated.

Bateman, as you may know, was responsible for the project to drain Albufera. This project had been first mooted at the end of the eighteenth century. It was finally given the green light through a royal order of 1851. Bateman, through his New Majorca Land Company, won the tender to undertake the drying-out, a scheme that was felt to be essential primarily on public health grounds. Albufera was a breeding-ground for disease, including malaria.

Bateman was also instrumental in the founding of the Gatamoix colony. The people who came to live there - and they were primarily from Pollensa - formed part of the drainage workforce and were those who set about commercial cultivation on Albufera.

Gatamoix was (is) behind the Puig Sant Martí, the brooding presence that looms over the current-day Bellevue Mile and main Alcúdia tourist centre. It was some distance from work that was being done on Albufera; even if work had to be performed under less than totally healthy conditions, the hope was that the colony wouldn't be as affected by mosquitoes or by the diseases that Albufera bred.

The drainage project and Gatamoix were both relatively successful, but only relatively. Bateman is recognised as having achieved much, one of his achievements having been the creation of the original bridge (the bridge of the English - Pont dels Anglesos) over another creation, the Grand Canal, which offered a means of movement between Alcúdia and communities further east along the coast. But despite Bateman being remembered with a degree of reverence, the project was far from wholly successful. Albufera was still liable to being inundated and to having salt water come into it. The land for cultivation was, as a consequence, not as extensive as had been hoped.

Nevertheless, Gatamoix thrived for a while, new crops being introduced to Mallorca for the first time - peanuts and sweet potatoes - to supplement the farming of wheat and maize. And Bateman's son, Lee, to whom ownership of Gatamoix was passed three years before his father died in 1889, set about further development. A school was built, as was a church. It was Lee who had the name of the colony changed by royal decree - Lluís for Lee. Unfortunately for Lee, he had enormous debts, mainly because the returns from the cultivation had not lived up to expectations. Gatamoix, by now popularly referred to as Poble Nou rather than Colonia de Sant Lluís, was sold in 1896 to a Palma nobleman, Joaquim Gual de Torrella, who chose to close the colony.

The buildings were systematically demolished over several years. The material was used, among other things, for developing the road between Sa Pobla and Alcúdia. As the buildings were demolished, so the people left, and ninety years ago, Gatamoix became totally de-colonised. All that remained was what is now the refuge of Poble Nou, the new town that died. 


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Albufera fire forces evacuation

Occupants of a house off the Cami Polls between Muro and Sa Pobla had to be evacuated earlier today when a fire broke out in Albufera and affected some 40 hectares of reed land. The smoke was very thick for several hours, and the fire appeared to be in an identical spot to one last year.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - Albufera receives more visitors than other Spanish wetlands

The number of visitors to the Albufera nature park in Muro has been rising steadily. In 2011, it rose by nearly 10% and was 20% higher than in 2009, making it the wetlands with the highest number of visitors in Spain.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

MALLORCA TODAY - Greater study of small birds in Albufera

The study of small birds in the Albufera nature park, about which little is known, is to be extended. Some 30 species are included in this study, the birds being difficult to observe on account of their size and colour.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - Sa Pobla wants cycle lane by Albufera

The mayor of Sa Pobla Biel Serra has asked the Council of Mallorca to look at the possibility of creating a cycle lane that would run by the side of the Albufera nature park along the main road that connects Sa Pobla with Playa de Muro.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

MALLORCA TODAY - Fire in Albufera

Well, you would have to say that it hasn't been the best of starts to the summer where fires are concerned, and summer is still months off and the summer season still six weeks or so away. Following the fire in the Tramuntana mountains last week, there has been one today in Sa Pobla by Albufera, 1.5 hectares of reed land being affected.

The Best Laid Plans: Water and tourism

Plans for everything. Central government has plans, they are passed onto the regions which approve them or alter them, then central government changes and changes its mind, these changes are passed onto the regions which approve or alter the original alterations, but only after months of public consultation, at the end of which they probably don't do anything.

Among all the various plans for this or that, there is one for water resources. It is grandly known as the "Plan Hidrológico". In Mallorca and the Balearics, as with other regions, the plan refers not just to the provision of water but also to areas of water, i.e. the wetlands. As opposed, for instance, to wells and other underground water sources as well as overground reservoirs, it is when the visible wetland environment comes to the fore that plans become that much more complicated, because one plan is likely to conflict with another.

The water plan is out for revised public consultation, the new regional government having got central government to agree to a further consultation that is due to finish at the end of this month. But only recently has the plan been taken much notice of. And this is because the government is minded to change provisions of the plan that were approved almost a year ago and because only now have the impacts of these provisions come to be understood.

One impact would be on parts of Puerto Alcúdia. For those of you not familiar with Puerto Alcúdia's geography, much of the resort is built on reclaimed wetlands, i.e. Albufera. It is the remaining wetlands and the restoration of wetlands which fall under the plan's provisions. The restoration would affect the public swimming-pool and sports centre, the Club Mac hotel complex and the Lidl supermarket; to the extent that some demolition would need to occur.

This is most unlikely to happen. And nor indeed should it, as it would be complete and utter folly. It is unlikely to happen because the new government is less minded to be as environmentally zealous as the former environment minister Gabriel Vicens was. Vicens, in approving the plan last February, spoke of investments running to nearly three thousand million euros up to 2027 that would have turned Mallorca into one vast lake. I exaggerate of course, but the plan's provisions placed conservation over and above other considerations.

This is not to play down the importance of the water plan. It is hugely important, but where the visible water environment and therefore the island's ecology are concerned, it runs up against plans regarding land classification and usage, such as something known as POOT. This is the plan which classifies land that can be used for tourism purposes. And it is in Pollensa where the conflict between the water plan and POOT is being highlighted.

As a further geography lesson for those who don't know, the wetlands of Albufera, i.e. along the bay of Alcúdia, used to once upon a time connect with those along the bay of Pollensa, which are now Albufereta and La Gola and also the area of Ullal in Puerto Pollensa.

This area was earmarked by the previous town hall administration in Pollensa for development. Until, that is, the idea came up against how it was classified. The current town hall wants it to be de-classified under the water plan and then re-classified as POOT land. (I do hope you're following all this.) The government, it would seem, is likely to agree with the town hall, and this has provoked all manner of opposition.

Yet the opposition does not come from the resort's businesses. In the summer of 2010, when businesses led a protest against Pollensa town hall's management of Puerto Pollensa, one of the demands was for more tourism accommodation, and Ullal would be the most likely place for such accommodation to be built.

Opposition comes, not unexpectedly, from opposition parties. In addition to wishing Ullal to remain as a wetland, they claim that the town hall's architect doesn't know what he's talking about in presenting reasons for Ullal's wetland status to be removed and shouldn't even be having his say anyway, as it should be down to an environmental expert.

One can sympathise with both sides in Pollensa, as one can sympathise with the environmental and ecological arguments that would require wetland restoration in Alcúdia, but the proliferation of plans with differing aims, to say nothing of the proliferation of agencies of government and the changes to plans when these agencies themselves change, means that nothing ends up happening. Or if it does, it takes years for any decision to be agreed. The best laid plans ...


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Small fire in Albufera

Proving that it does not have to be hot for fires to start, there was a fire that affected 0.2 hectares of reed and grass land in the Albufera park yesterday afternoon, helped on its way by the winds.

MALLORCA TODAY - Rain helps to douse Albufera fire

A fire that broke out in a reed bed in the area of Son Sant Martí at the edge of the Albufera wetlands and off the road between Can Picafort and Muro was brought under control after some four hours, thanks in part to rain that had been anticipated all day. The fire started at around 19:45 yesterday evening.

Some 100 hectares of mainly reed and grass land are said to have been affected by the fire.

Unfinished Symphony: Albufera

Two in the morning. Save for the Saturday-into-Sunday night birds that swoop along the main road to and from the clubs and bars of the north and who create their sampling of engine rush and techno from the in-car system, the nights are quiet. With the arrival of May, the music of the machines will start to become unrelenting. But for now, there is motor silence. Not that there is silence.

During the day, it is hard to tell what noises come from Albufera. Those which there are, are usually drowned out by the incessant traffic. At night, it is a different matter. Amidst the quietness of the road, there is only one man-made sound that comes intermittently; the throb and sometimes roar of the Es Murterar power station, a rumbling synthesizer that conveys a mood music of mystery, an industrial electronica that is aurally surreal when set against the other sounds - those of the nature park. In April, in springtime, the sounds of Albufera build up, they are constant, always changing; they are their own unfinished symphonies.

In the mix of sound and limited vision, to the fore there is the sight of the puff monsters of pines silhouetted against moonlight or the distant lights of Muro and Sa Pobla. They are the maestros, the mute conductors of the orchestras that they hide. Unseen, in the pit of Albufera, whole string, horn and percussion sections stay up all night and play for a sleeping audience. They are the phantoms of an opera that the puff monsters mask.

It is too early for the crickets. In summer, they come to dominate, with their drum-box rhythms. For now, it is the marsh frogs that are the main percussion. It is subdued, understated at present. As the weeks pass, the frogs' chorus reaches a crescendo before being supplanted by the crickets in this unending and cyclical opus.

The music of the wetlands is variously symphonic, jazz orchestra or an ambient soundscape dreamt from the imagination of Brian Eno or Philip Glass. The syncopation of the frogs is a rapid chatter of scat drumming over which wails an improvised, viola screech of a startled barn owl or over which is the high-pitched piping blast of a scops owl. This jam session with its shifting members can bring the single, irregular hoot of a different owl, a sonic bleep that rises and falls as though it were being spun around on a radar screen.

The counterpoint to the melodies of nightingales and even robins are the crow-like bursts of a night heron on its discordant Ornette Coleman sax or the comedic intermezzo of a duck disturbed into a deranged trumpeting. The party animals that fly-dance to the tunes of the Albufera night club are the bats, darting and diving and ignoring the admonitory stares of the puff monster conductors.

You can sit and listen to all this. You can have a front-row seat for an astonishing concert that costs nothing. But you can't sit too long. Not before there is a different sound, one of a sawing buzz by the ear. The mosquitoes are alive again and they are giants in spring. The bats are hungry, thankfully. They do their best, but there are only so many mosquitoes they can eat as though they were chomping on their equivalent of popcorn taken into the auditorium for the Albufera concert.

As the night orchestra quietens around dawn, so a different shift takes over. There are over hundred different types of bird in Albufera at present, some that are there all the time, like the hoopoe which joins with the bats in being a natural destroyer of the nasty. For the hoopoe, it is the moth of the processionary caterpillar. Other birds are passing through, one or two are there by accident, such as the golden eagle. And most announce themselves as dawn comes, when they can be heard because the road is nearly always silent. Just at the moment.

The sights of Albufera, during the daytime when it can be seen, are what attracts, but there is a different attraction. What can't be seen but can only be heard. At night. The unfinished symphony of Albufera.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Fire in Albufera

There was a huge great plume of smoke coming from the Albufera nature park earlier this afternoon. Fire broke out and there was concern that winds might pick up again and spread it, but helicopters and fire crews seem to have dealt with it.

A Gentle Touch Of Colic: Senses working overtime

"All I could hear was the strange hum that hovered behind every other sound throughout that summer."
Tim Pears, "In The Place Of Fallen Leaves".


What are the sounds of summer? The bass from a system pulsating across vast acres of Mallorcan land as the local fiesta turns its back on tradition and admits DJ Headcase and a legion of party-goers, tanked up from the botellón. The Canadair growling low as it transports its Mediterranean payload towards smoking finca land that some fire-starter has thoughtfully taken a cigarette end to. Joni Mitchell's hissing of summer lawns, gyrating tops and spikes of water thrown around erratically and splattering the persianas. The enthusiastic keep-fitter on morning reveille duty, bellowing across a hotel pool and coaxing lard buckets with hangovers into movements more suited to the Rocky Horror Show.

But there, in the background, is the hum. In summer you can only detect it when the general silence briefly descends, usually at eight minutes past five in the morning. Earlier or later, and you'll miss it, thanks to the almost constant whoosh and splutter of coaches, motos or autos on what is the most densely populated part of Europe when it comes to car ownership. The power station hum. It's always there, as ominous as the chimney that rises above the nature park of Albufera.

The sounds of Mallorca are part of the sensory overload that the island lovingly bestows. What are the smells of summer? A grill wafting succulently and charcoaled as evening evaporates into night, the unexpected fragrance like vanilla from an unidentified plant, the sulphuric combustion of marsh gas and the insidious stench of sewage. The latter is at its most extreme when Colis comes a-calling: the drain-unblocking people who can inspire a stomach-churning or cramping retch.

But strangely you become inured to malodorousness. You don't exactly crave it but you are reassured by its mysterious presence, the unseen force of a primeval chemical reaction, albeit one sometimes influenced artificially or orificially. The bad smells form a nasal entertainment; they are their own tribute acts to an ecological and semi-ecological world that created the island in the first place and its second, industrialised and urbanised life.

A bit of a pong is not to be sniffed at. It's a reminder that not everything is or should be sanitised. Mallorca doesn't deserve to be sterilised, scrubbed and sealed hermetically. Its very imperfections are what give rise to its perfections or near-perfections, those revealed through the other senses - the sight through the transparent light of Pollensa that inspired the local post-impressionists; the radiance of white, rose or russet-bracted bougainvillaea but with its duplicitous enticement to touch the shock of its thorns; the ambrosial taste of a fig during its all too brief harvesting period.

The sights, sounds and other senses of Mallorca are too easily defined in terms of the superficiality of brochure-style beautifulness, but they ignore what can be a natural or part-natural, maleficent intoxication - that of the Mallorca that isn't quite right, an environmental quirkiness that should be bottled, if only anyone could stomach the Colical, great smell of sewage. And then there's that hum. The power station's isn't actually the only one. From Albufera, if you listen carefully when the traffic abates, you can hear a regular murmur in the darkness beyond the puff monsters of pines silhouetted against the distant lights of Muro and Sa Pobla. It's always there, just as the smells are always there.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.