On The Dunes: Can Picafort and Playa de Muro

I am looking at some old photos of Can Picafort. Circa 1960. Two people are walking along what is recognisable as a road but which has no tarmac. It is made of sand. It became the Via Suiza. In the distance you can't make out the sea. Not because of buildings, because there aren't any, but because of something else that is obscuring the view. In another photo there is a boy sitting on a deckchair on the beach. You might expect to be able to see, in the background, the Via Suiza from a different angle. But you can't. Because there is something in the way. Dunes.

Can Picafort, in keeping with much of the bay of Alcúdia and with other stretches of Mallorcan coastline, is made up of dunes. Or rather, it used to be. The only dunes now are at the resort's eastern Son Bauló end, extending into what is the "rustic" coast past the Son Real finca. The dunes in Can Picafort can no longer be seen. Because they are no longer there.

The loss of the dunes along the bay is evident in Alcúdia. But here the beach is wide. Nothing sits on top of the sea. Nor does it in much of adjoining Playa de Muro. Only once past the canal that connects Albufera with the sea does the beach start to become appreciably narrower. This is what has now been lovingly signposted as "Sector 2". The resort as military installation.

Where the hotels in Playa de Muro finish there is a stretch of some two kilometres of rustic beach, backed by dunes and forest. There are no buildings. They only re-emerge as you come into Can Picafort. The dunes end abruptly. Can Picafort is built on dunes.

The creation of the resort was not so much environmental vandalism as environmental rape and pillage. The dunes were levelled and what was formed was a generally charmless front line of barn-style restaurants only a short distance from the shoreline. The restaurants, for the most part, are unremarkable. And there is probably a good reason. Being so close to the sea and being so undefended, in winter sand and water encroach. Until recently, before some new drainage, there used to be regular and damaging floods. Why create something of beauty if it's going to be ravaged by nature.

Behind the front line is a town. Shops and hotel after hotel. The dunes and what lay behind them were destroyed in constructing an urban development.

One of the points of contention surrounding the Costas demarcation plan for Playa de Muro is Can Picafort. With no small amount of justification, the murers point to what happened to what was once hardly even a village, just a bit of a fishing harbour and the old fincas of Sr. Picafort. In Playa de Muro, where the environmental destruction has been less extreme, it might just be that the destruction is reversible. In Can Picafort, it can't be reversed. But the targeting of Playa de Muro by the Costas strikes many as supremely unfair when compared with the wholesale degradation of the natural environment just a few kilometres away.

The language and the actions of the Costas in Playa de Muro have been ratcheted up since the demonstration against the demarcation took place. Celestí Alomar, the boss of the Costas in the Balearics, talks of there being "many people and organisations without any sort of consideration". He has taken particular exception to the fact that gardens have been created and that volleyball is played on the dunes. But note the words. On the dunes. They are still there. They may be subject to what Alomar calls "degradation", but they haven't all been taken away. Unlike in Can Picafort.

Meanwhile, Alomar has been suggesting that the holiday homes of Ses Casetes des Capellans could have a reprieve by their being ceded to Muro town hall and escaping any threat of demolition. Good news perhaps, and aimed at the ordinary people of Muro who own the bungalows. But it smacks of politicking, driving a wedge between the holiday-home owners and the businesses and residents of the resort.

Alomar wants an improvement to the beach in Playa de Muro, one that will create "tourism of more quality" and one that, with greater respect for nature, will offset the seasonality that local hoteliers bemoan. Who is he trying to kid? The nature is now just something to admire from a distance. The Costas has made and is making the dunes no-go areas in Playa de Muro. There may be sound environmental reasons for doing so, but what they are becoming are things to just look at. You can no longer wander in the forest and dunes areas in the way you used to be able to. Yet isn't this public land? Isn't there meant to be public access? It's contradictory, just as much as a short walk along the beach from where dunes do still exist confirms that there is a place where they no longer do.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

You Can't Push Willy Around

Vandalism directed at bars in Magaluf - mainly British-owned bars at that - comes at the same time as acts of vandalism committed against one of Alcúdia's most historic sites - the cave of Sant Marti; specifically, against the altars in the cave. If you don't know, the altars date back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the cave plays a key part in the triennial Sant Crist ceremony (the one to do with famines and blood coming from images and that sort of caper). The cave is at the foot of the Sant Marti mountain (or hill, if you prefer) that dominates the landscape at the back of Bellevue. One has to thank "The Diario" for its lack of censoriousness in showing a photo of how the vandalism has been applied. It is in the form of a horse having been gifted an erect penis. My guess is that you wouldn't get such a photo in a British newspaper. And it says something about British and Spanish cultures that the latter would and the former wouldn't show such a thing. I'm not sure what it says, other than attitudes to stiffies, but there's probably a doctoral thesis on cultures lurking in all this.

As the paper points out, the cave is one of the sites in Alcúdia of which much is made when it comes to cultural visits to the town. Yet, in addition to the newly added visual element, there is also rubbish at the grotto which has an air of being neglected. It is, I guess, a place that is out of sight and out of mind. Were it in the middle of the town, rather than down a track off the bypass that goes behind Bellevue, then it would probably be looked after rather better. One thing one can assume, though, is that when they next do the Sant Crist gig (in 2010), they'll have got round to scrubbing the willy off.


Accidental or perhaps incidental vandalism is that caused to the local dunes. Overt vandalism, in the form of getting rid of the dunes completely, has of course occurred, and no more so than in Can Picafort, but they are trying to make up for it with the wooden walkways that have been installed for a year or so now (and in parts of Playa de Muro, too). The hope is that if people use the walkways rather than trample all over the dunes then there will be less erosion and greater preservation of the flora. Yet, a few weeks ago, there were these whacking great sacks on Playa de Muro beach that were full of ... flora, especially that rubbery crawling type thing that you get. (Sorry, I'm not very good when it comes to botany; I need Klaus and his daily photo blog to help out.) Anyway, I grabbed a bit of it and put it in a plant pot to see if it would grow. It has been singularly unsuccessful, and I suspect it is an ex-piece of dunes flora by now. But if the preservation is so important, what were they doing getting rid of whole plantations of it?


I forgot yesterday to follow up the tweeting thing about football debt. I'm sure you were disappointed, so apologies. All the clubs in La Liga seem to be in debt to some extent, Valencia being the most indebted at some 550 million euros; a mere bagatelle. There is, of course, debt and debt. If it's serviceable, it isn't necessarily an evil. Real Mallorca, for all the club's problems, only ranks at number nine, though it, with its debt, was described as being "unviable" by Freddy Shepherd. Since then, the former chairman, Mateu Alemany, has returned like a knight in shining armour to rescue the poor damsel that it is Real Mallorca weeping from the top of the wicked king's tower and letting her hair down for him to clamber aboard, sorry up. He says the club is no longer for sale. Probably as well. Would anyone really want to buy it, though two recent victories could yet help the team stay in La Liga and would make it more attractive were there indeed to be a potential purchaser.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - John Lee Hooker (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOyj4ciJk34). Today's title - well obviously you can in that you can draw one: not you personally, but you in general. Beg your pardon, it's a bit juvenile I know. Who was this though?

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

Oh Superman Where Are You Now?

I don’t know, I get pretty confused. All this statistical stuff. We’re back to the subject of how well, or not, restaurants have been doing this season. On 16 August (“Bad”), I referred to a survey by the small and medium-sized business organisation which suggested that restaurants, notably in Alcúdia and Can Picafort, were doing less well than last year and that the apparent late start of the high season was one of the factors (together with all-inclusives). So, what are we supposed to make of another survey emanating from the same organisation which suggests, in the case of Puerto Alcúdia, the opposite?

Restaurants in Puerto Pollensa and Puerto Alcúdia have had increases in numbers of up to 15% and up to 10% in spend. This contradicts the earlier report. Moreover, the latest survey says that June and July were better than August. Fair enough, I said this on 16 August, but this does also contradict the earlier report’s finding that the allegedly late start to the season was a reason for poor performance.

As I say, I don’t know, albeit that poor old Can Picafort is consistent - down by as much as 10% of spend.


And so to a follow-up to the issue I raised on 15 July (“200 Motels”). This concerned the over-availability of sun loungers and umbrellas on the beach at Playa de Muro. Now it seems that Muro council could be fined because there are too many, which would be passed to the concessionaires, already liable to fines from the council itself. Confused? Well, check back to 15 July for a bit more of an explanation.

Muro council is very much in the naughty chair at the moment because of the presence of dogs and horses on the beach and harm to the dunes. Well, well, here’s something else I had previously brought up (24 May: A Horse, Of Course). Something odd happened a couple of months back. I went to check the information board on my bit of beach in Playa de Muro, and it had gone. Disappeared. Now, that board for sure had a no-dogs sign, so why was it removed? Very odd.

As to the dunes, I’m also a bit confused. As far as I am aware, the dunes form part of the nature park and are therefore the responsibility of the relevant ministry. Indeed the sign that was put up when part of the dunes were roped off made this clear; there was the Government’s motif and that of S’Albufera. The criticism of the council specfically refers to the “elimination” of the dunes. I suspect that this does not envisage the head of the council standing at the water’s edge Cnut-like trying to ward off the waves. All I can think is that this suggests that the dunes have been built on or are being used for some reason or another. There is no doubt that this is the case, in the sense that hotels (and houses) have been built on what were dunes, but that is historical. What are they going to do? Plough the bulldozers into a few Iberostars? I don’t think so. Otherwise, the dunes aren’t, from what I can see, used for anything except for the Balnearios, which have also been there for years.

Confused? I am.


QUIZ
Yesterday - Will Smith “Men in Black”. Today’s title: it is a line from a song that echoes the theme of this piece.

PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)