Troubled Waters In Alcudia: Port developments - part one

You wait years for controversies to arise in Alcudia's port, and then two of them come along together. They involve the marina, Alcudiamar, and the area between the fishermen's pier and the commercial port's terminal: much, therefore, of the port zone.

Both of them have the involvement of the Balearic Ports Authority. While it doesn't operate Alcudiamar - it has always been private - it does have a say: it is the authority which grants the concession. Alcudiamar has negotiated an extension of the concession until 2030, an aspect of this being an investment project for a further 12,000 square metres of dock. No one, apart from Alcudiamar, seems to actually want this, a local movement - Salvem el Moll (save the port) - has been formed to stop it, while the town hall is against it as well.

A first independent report into the project has established that it would not make any difference to the movement of sediments. A further one is needed to assess what might happen to water quality, and we are talking here the potential impact on the sea water where the beach starts and where the sea is exceptionally shallow. The town hall, in the form of the two main parties - El Pi and PSOE - has declared itself in favour of a project for marina improvement but not the one being planned. It is worried about water quality and Alcudia's array of certification for standards plus the Blue Flag.

Gent per Alcudia provides the other councillor to the ruling administration. This combination of Més, the Republican Left and independents wants the immediate cessation of any work at the marina. So, the town hall is, to an extent, divided. The environmentalists, GOB, have added their views: they want an immediate halt to any expansion.

El Pi and PSOE can overrule any opposition from Gent, as they have enough councillors to do so, but the Gent councillor, Tòmas Adrover, was brought into the administration with specific responsibility for the environment. It would now seem odd if, when a major environmental issue arises, his views were to be overlooked. These coincide with GOB and with the regional government's environment directorate: there has to be an environmental impact assessment report by Alcudiamar, something that would be subject to subsequent all manner of scrutiny and probably challenges.

At the back of all this is the inevitable collision of private interests and those of the public (some of them anyway). And in Alcudiamar one has the greatest of these interests in the port. Those involved with it basically run the port: that part of it which isn't run by the state in the form of the ports authority. The clash has echoes of other port developments in Mallorca, such as El Molinar in Palma and Porto Colom, both of them with "salvem" groups: Porto Colom's is the more vociferous, suggesting that the wishes of residents (and tourists) are being trampled over by the private interests of the yacht club.

The amounts that Alcudiamar will be handing over because of the concession extension may also have something to do with murmurings regarding rents. One understands that a well-known restaurant is considering packing up and going.

A further background element is the rude health of the nautical industry and indeed the regional government's support for it. The administration considers the industry to be a "strategic" one for generating employment, enhancing Mallorca's general image and tackling tourism seasonality, but the industry needs to therefore grow in different ways, and one of them is via the space it occupies. As ever, the environmental dimension is coming up against the needs of tourism. Reconciling the two is never easy; it is often impossible.

The other development, one led by the ports authority, is not one which, on the face of it, involves private interests. As a division of national government it shouldn't be. Yet there do appear to be such interests. It's a story for tomorrow.

Photo: A view taken from Alcudiamar.

Liberalising Wetlands: The Balearics new water plan

The Balearics Water Council (Consejo Balear de Agua) is a body within the regional government and is one that oversees the planning of water resources in the Balearics. This council consists of the environment minister and various others, such as representatives of agriculture, health, the ports and users of water in coastal and urban areas. It also includes a representative of ecology groups and defenders of the environment. One representative among 42 in total.

Not all of these 42 were at a meeting of the council the other day. 34 were, and of these 34, one of them voted against the ratification of the new regulations under what is known as the Plan Hidrológico de las Islas, which basically means the plan for water resources. I wonder who the one who voted against was.

This water resources plan, on the face of it, is pretty dry and dull stuff, but when you go behind it, it becomes anything other than dry and dull. Primarily, the plan has to do with ensuring water supplies and their quality, but water resources in Mallorca are not confined to what is swimming around off its coastline, to what lurks underneath the earth or to obviously protected areas of wetlands, such as Albufera. There are other areas of the island, the classification of which makes the water resources plan less than dry and dull.

The environmental GOB has attacked the ratification of the new plan. It has done so on various grounds. It disagrees with what will be authorisation for new wells in coastal areas where there is an issue with salinization, with access to water "without limits and controls", and with the modification of limits in areas of partly urban wetland.

The revised plan is, therefore, destined to be more permissive. As such therefore, it is in line with other policy moves adopted by the Partido Popular regional government which have favoured a more market approach than previous illiberal restriction. There is good and bad that can come from this greater freedom, and there will be those who believe that modifications to what can be done on partly urban wetland will only be bad. I am not one of them.

A major argument can be expected to return to Puerto Pollensa as a result of the new plan. It will be about the Ullal area of the resort. The modifications under the plan open the way for the development that has been envisaged for Ullal for some while, this development being a five-star hotel complex.

Puerto Pollensa badly needs more hotel stock. The relatively low amount of hotel places in the resort has been recognised as a potential weakness for years. It has also been a strength in that a tourist accommodation base which favours non-hotel stock has helped to maintain the traditional, less-developed feel of the resort.

But there is one very major way in which the regional government, and its PP masters in national government, is not liberal, and that is in its attitude towards and treatment of private accommodation for tourist rental. What has been a strength in the resort could very quickly become a weakness, and a crippling weakness at that, if the regional government was stupid enough to really get tough on private accommodation.

The government, which hasn't been doing Puerto Pollensa any favours in one way, is doing so in another; the development of Ullal should be welcomed. Doubtless there will be arguments, and one wouldn't rule out legal challenges, but if the plan now does clarify the status of Ullal, then perhaps the questionable notion that Ullal is wetland can be dispensed with. It is said that it is an historical, ancient wetland, which it may well, but in its present-day incarnation, it is very un-wet.

While the revised plan will raise hackles in Puerto Pollensa, it is unlikely to in Puerto Alcúdia. It is striking just how different attitudes are between the two resorts in respect of partly urban wetland. Political parties at Alcúdia town hall have pretty much been unanimous in rejecting the idea that developments in the resort between the horse and Magic roundabouts and along the Avenida Tucan contravene the plan as it was before the latest revision. They are also unlikely to disagree vehemently with any further developments which may arise because of the new plan, and one of these may be the revival of what has long been talked about, which is a further hotel complex, one that would now, like Puerto Pollensa, be of a five-star category. 

Of course, none of this development might happen, but the new plan makes it possible. It may not be a plan that meets with universal support, there may indeed be rightful concerns about over-exploitation of water resources, but in one respect, it is a step in the right direction.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Pollensa approves Formentor development

Pollensa town hall has approved the removal of planning restrictions in force for several years that have limited developments in Formentor. This will allow for the licensing of work to expand the Hotel Formentor but does not envisage development on land outside of existing limits in Formentor.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - Ullal owners seek compensation from government

A different and ongoing dispute in Puerto Pollensa, that of the development of the Ullal wetland area. This complicated issue is bound up in provisions for land development that would have swapped development in Cala Carbó for development in Ullal. This led to land in Cala Carbó being bought by owners in the Ullal area in order that they could then develop in Ullal, this now having been blocked. As a result, owners are seeking compensation from the regional government.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - Formentor development gets the go-ahead

A decision by the Balearics consultative council has given the green light to development in Formentor that includes green areas in this part of Pollensa and which embraces a plan to extend the Hotel Formentor. The decision now awaits ratification by the Council of Mallorca.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - Ullal proposals withdrawn by town hall

Pollensa town hall has backtracked on suggestions that the Ullal area of Puerto Pollensa could be opened up to wholesale development as a consequence of a revision of the "plan hidrólogico". However, this change in attitude is provisional and there appears to be a lack of unanimity among different political parties which would allow the establishment of a new ordinance which would guarantee that future changes to the wetland area of Ullal were in the common interest and not in the interests of just a few.

Memories Light The Corners Of My Mind

I went for a trip down memory lane earlier today. It was a journey to Can Picafort and Playa de Muro that started over 40 years ago. The memory lane was mainly made of sand. The starting point was a house in Can Picafort opposite an open space on which now stands the Clumba Mar hotel. The lane from the house to the sea was uninterrupted by other buildings; there was a clear view and a clear walk to the beach; the lane was of sand. There was open space then; open space and forest and dunes. Can Picafort comprised but a handful of houses, shops and bars, but one hotel that was genuinely a hotel (what is now the Miramar). One of the bars was on the beach which extended back further than is now the case before the dunes were flattened. That bar was demolished and they built the Hotel Sol. The marina was a harbour with the occasional rowing-boat and fishing-boats.

Then there was a second house in a clearing in the forest in Playa de Muro, the forest that used to extend all along the coastline and which is now but a fraction of what it once was. This second house, dating from 1968, was the first in the urbanisation. There was a street of sorts, made of sand; it ceased to be of sand only a few years ago around the same time that the telephone cables were installed. Permissions for this second house were applied for in Palma as there were no local town halls then. This second house was a kind of pilot house for subsequent development; the building materials came from a hotel, a hotel on land owned by the family who had claim to the terrain from Playa de Muro up to Alcúdia. The hotel was the Esperanza, named after a girl from that extended family. This second house has now been finally finished; at one point it eventually had proper foundations laid as originally it had been built on sand.

The two houses tell a story of different generations of one family, a story getting on for half-a-century old that began in one of Can Picafort’s few houses before the roads were criss-crossed, before the frontline wrecked the dune zone, before the nearly half-a-century of hotels were constructed; a story also of the cutting-down of the forest in Playa de Muro and the building that now leaves but about half-a-dozen plots without a house, an apartment block or hotel, a story of the eventual completion of infrastructure to enable basic communication which only a few short years later has been superseded by broadband.

The two houses tell a story not so much of the changing face of Can Picafort and Playa de Muro but of their total development. And now the politicians talk about the recuperation of the coastlines.  


QUIZ
Yesterday - The Cure, “Friday, I’m In Love”. Today’s title? Fabulous song from a film.

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