Wacky Races: The Alcúdia-Puerto Pollensa coast road

The Wacky Department's at it again. It seems to be the only department in the Spanish Government that's expanding during the "cree-sis". What it has now dragged out, courtesy of the dreaded Costas and their "demarcation", is a revival of an old tune - the elimination of the coast road between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa. This was something that had gone ominously quiet since being given plenty of airplay a couple of years ago (for example, 9 May 2008, Road To Nowhere). But it's back on the playlist - and racing up the charts.

The idea that the coast road should be removed and nature allowed to reclaim the coastal area is one that goes back some years, but it has never really attracted serious attention. This is about to change. The Costas, as reported in "The Diario" yesterday, are embarking on two studies - one into the socioeconomic implications of getting rid of the road, the other a technical proposal for doing so.

The environmental context for the road's elimination is clear: the road runs right by a line of coast that is "rustic", i.e. not made up, and by the Albufereta wetlands and finca of Can Cullerassa, itself recently cleaned up after years of neglect following the abandonment of a building project that dated back to the seventies. The non-environmental ramifications of eliminating the road are also obvious - Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa would in effect, unless there were an alternative road, be cut off from each other. And quite what the owners of the Club Pollentia Resort, the Club Sol Apartments, the Can Cuarassa restaurant and various fincas make of the idea, God alone knows.

Pollensa's mayor Joan Cerdà, for his part, has expressed his scepticism regarding the plan and is also concerned as to what an alternative road might mean for finca owners and for the virgin land that exists beyond the Albufereta. Any new road, and there would surely have to be one, would have to cut across this land while probably also having to have feeder roads. Solving one environmental problem would merely create a different one, to which would be added the costs of expropriation and the inevitable legal challenges.

What needs to be established, above all else, is whether the continued existence of the current road represents genuine potential for long-term environmental harm. If not, then one would have to conclude, and not for the first time with the Costas' diktats on demarcation, that the road's elimination would be an example of over-zealous application of that demarcation. The project demands an independent enquiry, not one under the auspices of the Costas.

There are other issues to be taken into account. The current road can be dangerous and also a nightmare when the weather is bad and stones are being hurled onto it. It might be no bad thing if there were an alternative road, but the existing road is also important for tourism, a point that Mayor Cerdà has made.

The logic of the Costas' position would, one might think, place the continued existence of the hotels and the restaurant in peril. Leave them, but without the coast road and with a new one to their rear, and that logic would be undermined; they are as much a part of the environmental issue along the coast road as the road itself.

But there may also be another factor, one lurking in the background, and that is the European Union. The recuperation of Can Cullerassa was part of what the EU had determined to be a priority in terms of environmental regeneration.

While common sense would suggest that Cerdà is right to be sceptical as to whether the project will happen, there are sufficient forces potentially lining up that might just make it happen.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Into The Gap

Following up on yesterday's reference to the mad plan to close the coast road between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa, there are some other factors to be taken into account. While Pollensa town hall might have got it into their collective heads that this is more than just some whim, there is the not insignificant matter of what Alcúdia thinks about it all. I drove along the road yesterday, and checked the boundary signs. That for Puerto Pollensa, the you-have-now-left Puerto Pollensa one, that is, is just past the new roundabout for the new bypass road. The welcome-to-Alcúdia one is right next to the old road to Pollensa, quite some way further along the coast road. Maybe the gap in between is Pollensa's (as opposed to just Puerto Pollensa's); whatever, the road itself "belongs" as much to Alcúdia as it does to Pollensa.

I cannot imagine that such a scheme - to close the main link road connecting Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa - can be within the gift of a local town hall; it is too strategically important in terms of transport infrastructure. I had always assumed that decisions regarding the "carreteras" were at least rubber-stamped centrally, if not made. There is then the issue of necessity. The closure would require another road. If not, the detour would be so inconvenient that Puerto Pollensa would be partially cut off. Besides, there is simply no need for another road; the one we have at present, i.e. the coast road, is perfectly adequate, if sometimes dangerous. That the beach may be expanded, as a consequence of getting rid of the road, and that the beach that is currently there might be "beautified" with imported sand, may be the desire of some environmental fanaticism, but who would actually use that beach? If there were no road, then how would beach users get there?

Finally, there is another strategic transport matter. It concerns the idea that there might be a tram that goes to Puerto Pollensa if there can ever be any agreement on the siting of the train terminal in Alcúdia. One hears less of this part of the mooted tramline than of the one that might go to Can Picafort, but it remains a possibility. And if so, well where would that go?

I don't believe this scheme will ever see the light of day. It's unnecessary, it's impractical, it serves an ill-defined environmental fancy, it would be hugely expensive (and the tab would be picked up centrally, not by the town halls), it would be unpopular ... Erm, is there any reason for it?

It was against this background that I had a conversation with someone in Puerto Pollensa yesterday. This chat also touched on Garry Bonsall's complaint which I also mentioned in yesterday's piece. The nub of the conversation was that Pollensa town hall, unlike Alcúdia's, seems to make secondary the needs of its port area. In other words, the town of Pollensa takes preference. I'm not sure this is right (Pollensa's roads, for example, are just as appalling as those in the port), but it is right in that this is a perception, and perceptions matter just as much as realities. Pollensa town hall has an image and a PR problem, if you like. It's not the only one. People in Playa de Muro and Can Picafort make the same sorts of complaints about their town halls, those of Muro and Santa Margalida. The great difference between Alcúdia and the other three is that the town and the port (or resort) is geographically linked. Pollensa, Muro and Santa Margalida are all several kilometres away from their resorts; Alcúdia is right on top of its. One does not hear the same level of complaint. Ok, Alcúdia town hall does its share of daft things, too, but there is not the same perceptual gap; one that distance only helps to accentuate. It is as if there is an elitism in the towns that affords the resorts secondary status. And people get upset, especially upset, as it is they in the resorts who generate such a high proportion of the town halls' revenues. There is something of the town halls acting as kingdoms of mediaeval England, dispatching their reeves or sheriffs to extract taxes from the thanes and peasantry, whilst lording it (as it were) in their castles of antiquity - which is about right in terms of the ages of the towns. And now I think of it, history says that Spain retained an essentially feudal system well into the last century, one that the Second Republic (which Franco crushed) sought to dismantle. That wasn't so long ago, and some seem to have good memories of feudalism.

Local democracy is a fine idea. I have no problem with it. It should be far more widespread in the UK. But if it results in perceptual faultlines and accusations that great parts of the municipalities are not listened to, then it is democracy by sham and autocracy by fiefdom. There again, isn't that the nature of democracy?


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - she's an old favourite of the blog, and thanks to a first-time quiz respondent Terence who got Dusty Springfield and Dionne Warwick (who did it first) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxl7YbVi4Cs. Today's title - big-selling album from one of the most intriguing British "pop" bands of the '80s. Think Hergé's Adventures of Tintin.

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