The Absence Of Tourism Strategy

“I think it’s better to have those drinking ghettoes, Playa de Palma and Magalluf, where people go, rather than these intellectual types of tourists who tramp over everything in their search for the untouched bit, the original Mallorcan, and the residential tourists, who buy up property, buy a car, usually two, swimming pools, and want gardens with plants and grass like at home but that need water.”

Who said this? It might surprise you to learn that it was a spokesperson for the environmentalists GOB. These are the words of Gerard Hau, quoted from an article in The Guardian in May last year. They are words which encapsulate themes of recent days and weeks and point to different extremes of Mallorca's tourism. At one end of the spectrum is the low-grade drunken tourism and its vandalistic in-resort tendencies. At the other is the high-spending luxury class and its own vandalism of the countryside. Within the context of the furore over the holiday rentals' legislation, residential tourism in the countryside has been largely ignored, and by residential tourism one means second homes that are both for rent and just for use by owners.

Among their objections to the legislation, Podemos were determined to put an end to a savaging of the countryside in the pursuit of the up-market rental. Ideologically, one would expect them to, but otherwise they are on the same page as Gerard Hau. He, however, was going at the issue from a different perspective. At the time he was quoted, Mallorca was in the grip of drought (or at least near-drought). His concern was resources: water, in this instance.

The Hau thesis, coloured by an unnecessarily all-embracing pejorative attitude towards tourists of the mass who go to the principal resorts (only some of these tourists are drunks; the vast majority are not), echoes the philosophy enshrined in the so-called Benidorm Effect. Establish areas of high-density tourism and they are very much more efficient in terms of resource use. Spread tourism with little control into low-density or virtually uninhabited areas, and the resource use is highly inefficient.

For Podemos, there is an obsession with eliminating provisions in law that the Partido Popular introduced in 2012. The Delgado Law (the 2012 tourism act) facilitated touristic development on rustic land: the territory which doesn't have a satisfactory translation in English. Rural is inadequate. But whether from a politically ideological perspective or from economic or environmental perspectives, the arguments about countryside tourism, about drunken tourism, about holiday rentals in general all arrive at the same point. What does Mallorca want from its tourism? And what overall strategy is there for this?

The simple answer to the first question is the vague notion of quality. The word is so loose and woolly as to be meaningless. And who, let's face it, ever advocates tourism without quality?

There are degrees and grades of quality. It has long been known that in Mallorca there is a type of tourism I have described in the past as social-services tourism. This isn't anything to do with the winter, sometimes subsidised tourism for senior citizens. It has to do with the tourism that is provided with a social service by the island. It commonly pitches up in an all-inclusive, extracts the social service benefits on offer, and then disappears, quite probably clutching a false claim form. The net result for Mallorca is a loss.

The evidence of this type of tourism has existed in rigorous academic research for almost thirty years. The drunken tourism of today's headlines is the inheritor of the past. All that time - thirty years at least - and it still has the capacity to shock politicians (and others) out of their complacency.

The degrees of quality are such that the principal tourism market sector - the family - can be stigmatised for being insufficiently wealthy. This is not a social-services or drunken category, it is a normal, regular segment of the market which might choose an all-inclusive on economic grounds. If the offer is there, then why on Earth shouldn't it? There may not be enormous splashing of cash, but there are none of the behavioural negatives that are dogging Gerard Hau's "drinking ghettoes".

More than ever, the current arguments reinforce the fact that there is so little coherence in terms of a strategic approach. The rentals' legislation highlights this. There should of course be some greater liberalisation. Not a free-for-all but regulation that recognises market dynamics and, yes, can generally permit a tourism of "quality".

But political flip-flopping, competing ideologies and competing favouritism (be it to hoteliers, the environment, whatever) erect constant barriers while at the same time shifting the sands of regulation without adequate regard for joined-up strategy. The arguments, one fears, will be the same thirty years from now.

What's The Environment Anyway?

Please don't shoot the statistical messenger. I'm a mere conduit of numerical glad or bad tidings, especially if there seems as though there's an angle to contemplate. Typically, one's response to the data overload delivered through tablets of percentages from government bodies and surveys or from websites and companies desperately in search of publicity ranges from a shrug of indifference to red-faced fury: how dare they take us for such fools?

While there are those who will insist that statistics exist in some number-crunching fantasy land, divorced from realities or personal perception, occasionally something comes along which makes one (well, me) pause and reflect. And so it is with a survey about attitudes towards the environment.

International "days" are frequently the excuse of a peg on which to hang a survey and its findings. Earth Day is 22 April. There has been such a day since 1970, the year in which the Earth was therefore invented. The day extends to 193 countries, according to Wikipedia, which may or may not mean that there are parts of the Earth excluded: they are not of this Earth.

Be that as it may, this year's Earth Day has inspired a website to address environmental attitudes. The site in question is Ofertia.com, which I confess to not having previously been aware of. The credentials for its survey are that it is basically a shopping website. There may well be a touch of the publicity-seeking as a consequence. We are now familiar with Ofertia, whereas before we were not, and it's all thanks to the environment.

What, you may well ask, does shopping have to do with the environment? A great deal when you begin to drill down into the detail of the retail process: land devoted to shops; the logistics demanded to supply them; the ultimate consequence of, for example, landfill; all that plastic floating around in the Med; cars and other vehicles moving hither and thither and polluting the atmosphere; ever more land needed in order to satisfy transport, i.e. roads.

Shopping, as far as the environment is concerned, does not have a great deal to commend itself. And the Balearic government has recognised this. The pro-business, pro-vast commercial centres Partido Popular once advanced (under Bauzá) a tax on commercial centres. The reason was all the pollution caused in the act of shoppers shifting themselves in order to carry away bundles of plastic packaging and domestic electrical goods to later be destined to rot away in the peculiarly monikered "green points".

When the large retailers threatened to take them to court, the PP quietly abandoned this and a couple of other "green taxes". To compensate for the lack of revenue, they instead imposed a massive charge on water use, something which, oddly enough, went below the radar. The current government, both regional and insular, has had its eyes on shopping as well. The Council of Mallorca is currently working on a land plan: the Council's main reason for existence is the drafting of land plans, or so it can seem. This one has to do with shopping; hence, there is at present a moratorium on new large retail sites.

Such concern for the environment, and here we get to the survey, does not appear to be shared by the citizens. Or rather, there is a concern but it is not as great as most of the rest of Spain. The survey suggests that the level of commitment to the environment in the Balearics is the third lowest among regions. Only Galicia and Navarre are less concerned.

Is this finding surprising? I would suggest that it most certainly is. More than statistical overload, we endure environmental overload in Mallorca. The environment can barely move because of eco groups of one sort or another, to say nothing of the eco credentials of political parties such as Més, whose tourist tax is, in case we forget, supposedly for sustainability.

But it is even more surprising if one considers what is meant by the environment. The word tends to presuppose visions of landscape and plastic washed on to virgin beaches. Yet the environment, and this is a stupidly obvious observation, is all around us. Everything is the environment, and everything influences the environment, including shopping.

We may tire of frequent reports that dissect the impact of man on fragile ecosystems in Mallorca, but the environment is greatly more than the habitats of species and coastal erosion because of the harm caused to posidonia sea grass. Perhaps the word - environment - is the issue. It conveys less than the whole, and the whole is the complete island, inclusive of the roughly 80% of land that is available for agricultural purposes. But the complete island is only small. Its environment (and its protection) is vital. Yes, I am surprised by the survey.

Pressure Under Pressure: GOB

"We don't live from tourism, we survive from tourism ... (There has to be an alternative) based on agriculture and renewable energy." The quote comes from an interview with Margalida Ramis, the spokesperson for the GOB environmental pressure group. The interview was carried in the Diario de Mallorca on Sunday.

It is never satisfactory to quote out of the context of everything else being said, but the quote nevertheless gives a flavour of the GOB stance on tourism. Environmentalism and tourism make for uneasy bedfellows. In the case of GOB, they would rather kick tourism out of bed, if only over the edge rather than onto the floor. It isn't that GOB wish that there was no tourism, just that there was rather less dependence upon it, a dependence which results in what you get - massification and saturation, to use the buzzwords of the time - as well of course as environmental damage.

The survival from tourism brings with it, in GOB terms, a lowering in family purchasing power (these families being ones in the Balearics). This is a theme of the regional government. Despite the current bonanza, the wealth from tourism does not cascade downwards throughout all the socioeconomic food chain. There is merit to the argument insofar as salaries are as they are (not always great) and jobs can so often be temporary or be subject to dubious contractual arrangements.

There is an additional hazard from this survival. The bonanza, as we all know, owes much to sad events suffered by others. Safety and security in the Balearics have provided homes to holidaymakers "borrowed" from elsewhere. What would happen if security became an issue here? Safety, as we also all know, cannot be guaranteed anywhere.

This said, the islands' tourism has in the past faced difficulties not of its making. An example was the oil crisis of the 1970s. It was survived, although it took around four years for numbers to really recover. There was also the Icelandic ash cloud, which created a shortlived crisis but demonstrated the extent to which the wholly unexpected can suddenly explode.

Ramis was saying nothing new. The dependence on tourism and therefore the need for diversification have been discussed over and over. They are still being discussed: at great length by the current regime. But there is diversification realism and there is lack of realism. Agriculture? Really. It counts for around one per cent of GDP. It is also subject to the caprices of Mother Nature in the same way that tourism is. I give you the drought in evidence, while I can also give you the impact of pests. As for renewable energy, it remains something of a pipedream, and while it would represent diversification, it would need productive sectors to energise, such as tourism.

Having read this interview, the general impression one was left with was that GOB believe they should be listened to more and that they should be exerting greater influence. GOB are never short of things to say or of denuncias to be lodged, but might the sheer volume of noise that emanates from them be doing them a disfavour? One can believe that with the eco-nationalists Més in charge of the tourism and environment ministries, GOB felt they had the right people to bend to their influences. But Biel Barceló is described as a "total disappointment", while there seems to be some disenchantment with Vicenç Vidal at environment and agriculture as well.

GOB have in the past been told, by the right, to either put up and become a political party or shut up. Such criticism is unfair to a pressure group with legitimate aims and concerns, but they are only a pressure group. Més have enough pressure as it is because of the constant battles with the parties of the "pact". They don't need GOB hounding them and telling them what to do. One-time natural allies can now point out to GOB that being in government requires the consideration of more than a pressure group's demands.

It isn't as if GOB aren't pandered to. Although the organisation disagrees with how the tourist tax revenue is to be spent - it wants it all to go towards the environment - it has representation on the spending committee. Two places in fact; one more than the Council of Mallorca, for example.

Then there is the question of pressure that GOB might be feeling. I have previously wondered about the relationship with Terraferida, which shot to prominence over the Cabrera beach "privatisation" and Albufera waste spillage last summer. Ramis says that Terraferida are not a threat, which is revealing in itself. Aren't they both operating from the same hymn sheet? Yes, but in different ways, explained Ramis without being wholly convincing.

Terraferida have, though, captured the "saturation" mood in a more dramatic and direct way than GOB. Is it the case that GOB have become institutionalised and now form part of the establishment? Even pressure groups, it would seem, can come under pressure.

Culture, Anger And Tourist Tax: Top Stories From 2016

Google very kindly make available statistics of the number of individual page views that each blog post receives. These are direct views in that they are to the specific URL of the post rather than having been read by regular followers of the blog. They are an indication of popularity, although I wouldn't say they were the best; my personal opinion of the diversity of subjects that appear on the blog would give a different result.

This caveat aside, the story that proved to be the most popular was that of 17 September, Promoting Culture: Where's The Strategy? This was about an agreement between the tourism and culture ministries - a "protocol", as they liked to call it - to promote cultural tourism. This required an investment of 600,000 euros to internationalise the islands' culture via a "tourism strategy". I was scathing of the whole thing, not least because an aspect of this strategy is supposedly to push filming on the islands. The relevant ministers, Biel Barceló and Ruth Mateu, admitted that there aren't the necessary tax incentives to do this, as there are in other parts of Spain. So they were going ahead with a "strategy" without having the wherewithal to implement it. Moreover, the "protocol" only lasts until the end of 2017. Could anyone make any sense of it, I asked. PR nonsense was my conclusion, and we haven't heard anything about it since September.

Number two was from 21 July - A Camel To Design A Camel: Tourist Tax. The introduction read: "How many government departments, local authorities, business associations, unions and others does it take to change the cash collected from the tourist tax into meaningful projects?" One camel was therefore the Commission for the Promotion of Sustainable Tourism, the body which decides how revenue is to be spent. The other was the tax itself with its ill-defined multi-purposes. As things were to turn out, the government used the drought as the justification (not unreasonably) to place emphasis on water projects. We are still waiting, though, to hear what these (and other) projects actually are. When there's a commission with such camel-like ingredients, should this come as any surprise?

In third place was the article about Balearic hotel interests in Cuba - Keep Taking Us To Havana, 1 December - while just behind in fourth spot was the post of 2 May, When Anger Takes Over: Mallorca And Cycling. This was prompted by the general chaos caused by the Mallorca 312 cycle event, which isn't a race as such but a trial. As I noted, it was a trial that "tested the over 4,000 cyclists and tested the patience of many people on the island". The event brought to a head the simmering (and not so simmering) conflict created by cycling. The value and benefit of cycling to Mallorca seems irreconcilable with attitudes of residents. Whether these attitudes are shared by a majority, one doesn't know. Perhaps they should undertake a survey rather than rely on social-media hysteria.

Chaos of a different sort came in at number five - More On Vueling And The Chaotic Spanish Air Industry, 16 July. At six was a subject that crept ever higher up the agenda in 2016. The Pariah Status Of Airbnb from 11 November noted that Airbnb didn't exhibit at London's World Travel Market, despite it being "arguably the most important business in the travel market right at the moment". This was the context for a discussion of the need for the regional government "to take tough and effective action against Airbnb and other such sites". Just how tough will be revealed when the holiday rentals' legislation is approved. Whether it will be effective is a totally different matter.

There was further anger on 23 April. Getting Angry In Puerto Pollensa (number seven) said that "emotions have been allowed to run high; rather too high". They were to do with the pedestrianisation fiasco and the Gelats Valls ice-cream kiosk. There was of course to be even more anger because of the separate fiasco of the sun loungers.

At eight was a tribute to a web-based business which doesn't attract the concerns surrounding Airbnb. Hotelbeds: The Best Of Mallorca from 14 July looked at this successful business, sold by Tui for a fortune, which is headquartered on Palma's Paseo Marítimo. There was a coincidence with this article. Although not the same type of business, Hotelbeds does have some similarity with Low Cost Holidays, which went belly up a few days later.

In ninth spot was The Mess Of Regulating Holiday Rentals, 21 May. "The regional government is getting itself into a right old pickle over holiday rentals' regulation" was the introduction to an article on the difficulties regarding legislation. The pickle has become increasingly pickled, what with the idea to zone Mallorca and the intention to allocate places for holiday rentals that don't coincide with areas of high residential need. The government's problems are such that it ignored the fact, as stated in the May article, that the sustainable tourism tax law mandated it to have regulation in place within six months of that law having been approved: it should have been at the end of September therefore.

And in tenth place was The Environmental Crisis Coming Our Way of 17 May. This quoted a spokesperson from the environmentalists GOB who said that this will be "a crazy year, the infrastructure will not cope". Was it all environmentalist hot air? The prognosis was for: "airport stretched beyond its limit; Palma crowded out by ships and passengers; roads chockful of hire cars; ever more thousands of apartments being rented out; the hotels full; limits needing to be placed on the numbers on unspoiled beaches; supermarket supplies questionable; water supplies threatened; outdated sewage-treatment plants incapable of taking the pressure. Too many planes, too many ships, too many cars, too many people." 2017 will be no different.

There was in fact an eleventh post. It had the second highest number of page views but it wasn't a story, just a very short and simple post. It was the one to say that, after a few days of downtime when the Blogger system changed and I couldn't post, I was back. Heartening, I guess.

The Art Of Not Explaining

It was one of those complicated little news stories. It was to do with land planning and environmental objections in Alcudia. To get to the nub of the story, the town hall wants to swap part of some land earmarked for development in one part of the municipality so that there can be development in another part. Notwithstanding the fact that an environmental commission and an environmental sub-committee object to both developments, the town hall seems determined to press ahead.

If this were all that the story entailed, it might just have been understandable. In the end, the story, as in its English version, appeared much like I've explained, but it missed out a fair-sized chunk, one that can seem almost beyond explanation or indeed comprehension, whether in English, Spanish or Catalan.

This is because it has to do with land planning and environmental regulation bureaucracy. I am personally convinced that very few people reading about this in Spanish would have the faintest idea what it was all about. Put it into English, and the comprehension would be even less.

There are things which do need explaining and there are others which are probably best left unexplained. They are too confusing and too technical by half, but such is how administrative procedures are in Mallorca. They almost defy explanation on account of their sheer complexity and in the way that a rule for one thing conflicts with a rule for another, largely dependent on how many administrations are involved, of which there is an abundance.

Just to give an idea, there is PGOU, there is POOT, there is PORN, there is PTM, there is ART, there is ZEC, there is ZEPA. To say nothing (and oh how one would prefer not to have to) of the likes of ZGAT and PIAT. What does any of this stuff mean? Some is, on the face of it, comparatively straightforward. A PGOU in essence is a municipal urban plan, but straightforward it rarely or indeed ever is. Not when there is a POOT (tourist accommodation quotas), a PIAT (vaguely similar), a PTM (the overall land plan for Mallorca) or, God forbid, a PORN (natural resources plan) to take into account. Which is before one even starts on the possible implication of, for example, ZEPA (bird protection zones). And how can one overlook PHIB, the Balearic Islands hydrology plan? That's water to you and me. There may be a simple explanation as to why there is a lack of water at present, but things are not simple when one delves into the hydrology plan and its far-reaching tentacles that cover every single drop of water on the island, thus rendering aspects of a PGOU, for instance, unworkable.

If all this is difficult enough to explain in layman's terms, don't think that those to which it all applies find it any easier. One often hears of the need for "legal certainty", so that town halls, businesses, whoever can proceed with whatever project they have in mind without ending up in court. Which is what normally happens anyway. It's not surprising if no one can tell his POOT from his PORN.

Mallorca has long since disappeared up a posterior crammed with acronyms. Constipation has thus ensued because there are that many plans for this, that or the other thing that everything grinds to a halt. And once it all does, no one is much the wiser because explaining any of it would take so long that anyone attempting to read an explanation would very early on lose the will to live.

Not everything is mercifully as complex and confusing as land regulations. Take politics, for example. Hang on, what am I saying? Not confusing. Well, some of it probably gets over-confused and over-explained. Is it really necessary, for instance, to have to refer to PSOE as the socialist party? It's not as if PSOE is a recent phenomenon; it's been going since the middle of the nineteenth century.

But it's when one gets down to all the various parties, groupings and combinations that some explanation is perhaps necessary. Can one, for example, just refer to Més and say no more? Perhaps so, and in some ways it's best not to say anything more because the explanation involves trying to get across what it means by nationalism. And this creates its own issue. Més is a nationalist party, which sounds right-wing but isn't where Més is concerned; it's the opposite.

If it were the case that every plan, political party or whatever required explanation, you would never get to the story which is being reported. But perhaps this is how they like it - the various administrations and parties. Transparency is supposedly a mantra these days, but opacity rules. Anyone want to know what a PORN actually entails? You'll be sorry you ever asked.

Podemos And The Battle Of Tourism

Terraferida is an association that only now is starting to make its name known. It was Terraferida who first drew attention to the spill of faecal water in Albufera a couple of weeks ago. Its name has been attached to images on social media of the "invasion" of Cabrera beach by superyacht users. Its blog would appear to have started in April last year. Since then it has posted almost sixty items - articles about land, roads, biodiversity, tourism and - the largest category - "denuncia". As part of this latter category, in June it complained about the "occupation" of Es Caló in Betlem and the activities of a tourist boat taking visitors to the coves of the Llevant Nature Park.

It's all worthy stuff. All well-informed and researched. As is its publication for Mallorca, Summer 2016. Entitled "Tot Inclòs", the strap line reads "damage and consequences of tourism in our islands". There are features about land, about "political protection" for "grand capitalists" in the Balearics, about holiday rentals, about resources, about impacts ("climate suicide", for instance). You can probably get an idea, therefore, where it is coming from. If you still need more explanation, then you can find, inter alia, a graphic with election posters. Under "vota" are the faces of Gabriel Escarrer senior (Meliá), Carmen Riu (Riu Hotels & Resorts), Miquel Fluxa (Iberostar) together with the amounts they are said to be worth - each a dollar billionaire.

In a broad sense, therefore, Terraferida is an environmentalist group. For an island considered to be "saturated" by tourists, there seems an equivalent risk of Mallorca being overwhelmed by the number of groups and associations lining up to confront tourism and the consequences of tourism. There are familiar targets for Terraferida in "Tot Inclòs" - all that occupancy of beaches of whatever sort, roads jammed with cars, land colonised for polo fields. On and on it goes.

Terraferida has had another boost to its growing reputation. "Tot Inclòs" formed the basis of an assault by Podemos on the regional government's tourism policies earlier this week. Laura Camargo and Carlos Saura, respectively the parliamentary spokesperson for Podemos and a parliamentary deputy, railed against tourism minister Biel Barceló and others. "The government is on a party boat looking at a wonderful reality that doesn't correspond with the truth." Tourism success, Saura remarked, only generates more social poverty from the majority and greater wealth for a few - the grand hoteliers - at a cost to the environment and to land.

Podemos, one feels, are working themselves up for the mother of all confrontations with their so-called partners in the "government for change" following the summer break. One battleground will be the legislation for holiday rentals, an issue that greatly confuses the left. It is a democratic right for someone, for a family to earn extra income from a property. Thus spake Toni Reus of Més some time ago. The implication of his words was that there should be a sort of free-for-all. His domain - Santa Margalida so therefore Can Picafort - would indeed be saturated.

Since he said this, his party has moved into government. The realities are rather different. Podemos are correct in this regard. Camargo, however, somewhat echoes what Reus had to say. There is a difference between renting out to make ends meet and a form of property speculation with the sole aim of making vast profits from rentals. Camargo wants a review of the tourist tax, arguing that the "objective estimation" for self-assessment of what is to be paid means that hotels do not reveal exact numbers of places. And these places - tourist places of all kinds - need to be subject to limits.

The Podemos rhetoric, not confined to tourism matters, marks the opening exchanges in the confrontation to come, one being heightened by the struggles that each of the three partners in the pact have politically.  Podemos see themselves, with some justification, as the main power in the pact, and there is a great deal of mileage to be had from the tourism debate. They accuse Barceló and the government of improvisation and complacency when faced by the "gravity" that is tourist saturation. They take issue with President Armengol, Pilar Costa and Cosme Bonet (all PSOE) for seeking to downplay the "saturation" argument and the call for limits. PSOE are fearful of such talk and rhetoric, yet Podemos are cranking it up, fearful of nothing it would seem.

But what do they want from tourism? It wouldn't be surprising to learn that Terraferida and Podemos are more or less one and the same. The Terraferida agenda finds absolutely nothing good about tourism - this, at any rate, is the impression given - and it is an impression which Podemos convey. Their tourism "guru" once spoke about sun-and-beach tourism being obsolete. What do they want from tourism? What do they actually know about tourism?

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.

The Environmental Crisis Coming Our Way

"The Guardian" joined the Mallorca overcrowding bandwagon at the weekend. Apart from a factual error - the date of the introduction of the tourist tax - and certain points that needed qualifying, such as all those cruise ship passengers supposedly inundating Palma on one day, it was reasonable enough. Being "The Guardian", an environmentalist was sounded out. A GOB spokesperson, Gerard Hau, said that this will be a "crisis" year, "a crazy year, the infrastructure will not cope".

You would expect GOB to say this, but are forecasts of some touristic Armageddon just environmentalist hot air? We will only know once high summer arrives, but the current prognosis goes something like this: airport stretched beyond its limit; Palma crowded out by ships and passengers; roads chockful of hire cars; ever more thousands of apartments being rented out; the hotels full; limits needing to be placed on the numbers on unspoiled beaches; supermarket supplies questionable; water supplies threatened; outdated sewage-treatment plants incapable of taking the pressure. Too many planes, too many ships, too many cars, too many people.

It should be a bonanza, but the anxieties and fears seem to outweigh the joy and the benefits. Mallorca, safe haven destination, reaping the rewards of others' hardships: all systems go, until the dam bursts and the haven is flooded by a tsunami of human pressure.  

To take a specific. Water. The geographer Dr. Ivan Murray from the University of the Balearic Islands, one of Mallorca's most often quoted experts on the impact of tourism, said the other day that while a resident might consume 125 litres per day, a tourist will get through 440. One might query how he gets to these figures, but he is not the first one to point to the vast difference in terms of water usage. With Mallorca having endured a dry autumn and winter, we all know that water supplies are not as they should be. Thank Heaven that there was the foresight to build the Andratx and Alcudia desalination plants, barely used until now.

But desalinated water costs more than the water supplied from aquifers and reservoirs, and this water - from whatever source - goes for example, as Gerard Hau observed, towards the swimming pools and gardens of residential tourists. These aren't only foreigners. There are plenty of Mallorcan-owned second holiday homes.

Hau, it might seem strange, suggested that it is better to have "drinking ghettoes" such as Magalluf rather than have "intellectual types who tramp over everything in their search for the untouched bit, the original Mallorcan". Strange but not wholly wrong. There is a name for it. The Benidorm Effect. Pack tourism densely into specific areas, introduce sound environmental efficiency controls, and the overall cost and damage to the environment and resources are reduced.

Inefficiency is increased by having high dispersal of tourism, and there is ever greater dispersal in Mallorca, partly aided by legislation. The last government made easier the creation of rural tourism accommodation, one needing water and other services and so adding to inefficiency. It seemed minded to also permit developments such as polo fields. These might seem benign, but not when the supplies of water have to be factored in. Likewise with golf courses. Murray reckons that the 440 litres per day doubles if a tourist plays golf. His calculation is obviously not solely on direct personal consumption but the volume of water required to permit this type of tourism activity.

There again, if tourism is a vital industry, which it is, is this water usage any more detrimental than the vast amounts needed for agriculture? Tourism's contribution to island GDP is massively greater than that of agriculture, but then agriculture, with its huge appetite for land (and so therefore water), is equally vital. Citing GDP figures gets one only so far when produce, livestock, landscape, rural communities and employment need to be taken into account.

Water is just one example but it is a fundamental one. The lack of rainfall has sharpened minds, as have all the forecasts regarding numbers, be they for people or means of transport. But what, other than drafting drought plans, has the government been doing to prevent this being a "crisis" year? What actually can it do? Biel Barceló, the tourism minister, talks on the one hand of it being impractical to put a cap on numbers - preferring instead that the load is spread and therefore assists with tackling seasonality - but he also implies a cap. If there are finite numbers for hotels, so there should be for other accommodation.

Yet for all this, can anyone say what the cut-off point should be? Does anyone know for certain what this might be? Is talk of "crisis" correct or is it just environmentalist propaganda? We may be about to find out. But if systems start collapsing, don't blame the tourists. Forward planning had required more than a couple of desalination plants.

* http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/14/gridlock-tourists-terrorism-spain-balearics

By Committee: Eco-tax by the back door?

If the process by which the tourist tax was finally approved involved delivery after a "labour with some pain" (to quote PSOE's Andreu Alcover), might this newborn have arrived into a world in which relatives will be kicking and screaming over its upbringing? Antenatal experience suggests that this will be so. The omens are not good for this Damien of a tax.

The approval process, as we know, required meetings late into nights in order to resolve matters such as how the revenue would be spent. Agreement of sorts was arrived at. Més had to back down on residences for the elderly. Podemos didn't get its preference for the revenue to be devoted solely to environmental ends (or did it?).

An aspect of the tax's legislation - a fairly key one at that - has not received a great deal of attention. Yet. Now that the legislation has been passed, this aspect will assume far greater significance. It is the committee that is to be formed which will decide how the revenue is to be distributed.

Podemos also didn't get all its own way on revenue distribution. It had wanted it all to be allocated according to a proportional system it had drummed up across the four islands. In the end, it was agreed that 60% of the revenue will be dealt with in this way. Podemos did get its way by persuading the government that there should be our old friend "citizen participation" in deciding projects for the revenue to be spent on. A figure of 30% of the total has been mentioned.

Already, as you can possibly detect, the playing of percentage games is going to make the work of the committee more complicated than it was destined to be because of the numerous purposes on which the revenue can be spent. Didn't someone call this a hodge-podge of a tax? Just wait until the committee gets underway, its calculators at the ready, determining percentages for this or that while participating citizens peer over its collective shoulder. Then we'll really find out about the hodge and the podge.

But before the committee ever first meets, there is the not inconsequential matter of who will be on it. And then a further one: who will be its president or chairman or whatever? The potential for a right old ding-dong arguing over these matters is high.

Included on the committee, we know, will be what, in direct translation, are "social agents". These are organisations, associations and what have you that are not governmental. And Mallorca (and the Balearics) have thousands, possibly millions of them: associations for this or that; platforms for and against whatever; groupings, federations, confederations. There are that many that anything they might wish to decide on together will resemble more than just a camel.

But which ones, do you suppose? Do I hear the hoteliers federation? I might, but others will probably be struck deaf. Good odds, very good odds, should be laid on environmental watchdogs-in-chief, GOB, being on the committee. And it is the likelihood that it will be which begins to make one smell something of a rat scurrying around in verdant undergrowth which requires the attention of conservationists.

Firstly, anything which comes with the "sustainable" adjective, which the tourist tax does (law on the sustainable tourism tax), can easily be interpreted in the environmental sense in which the word is often used. Though the tax is not an eco-tax - as we have been told - the chances that it will end up being exactly that are great. Originally, we were led to believe that environmental purposes were not priorities for the tax revenue. The message has altered significantly. Biel Barceló says that the environment will be a priority, which is reassuring, coming as the message does from the tourism minister.

So, will the committee end up ensuring that the tax is an eco-tax after all? It is its make-up that leads me to wonder if the Podemos desire for 100% environmental purpose has really been consigned to legislative long grass. Podemos kicks up a hell of a fuss about committees, their members and their senior officials. The sustainable tourism tax committee will be no different.

I'm not averse to revenue being spent for environmental purposes, but this isn't the point. We are told, and the legislation states this, that there are the various purposes, such as resort infrastructures and tourism promotion. How much of the revenue will find its way to these other purposes?

Clashes will occur. Firstly over the committee's membership and then over how the revenue is to be spent. Too many fingers want their bits of the pie, and so the scope for argument will be enormous. And ultimately, if the revenue is not spent in line with the various purposes because of how this committee operates, who is there to ensure that it is?

The Shambles Of The Tourist Tax

If there was any question over the tourist tax being a political tax and only a political, as I suggested the other day, it has now been removed. The politics of the tax do not solely reside with the motives for its introduction, they are also firmly at the centre of the mess that is passing for government in the Balearics, one created by the unworkable nature of a government held hostage by a party that is not even part of it. This is the government and model of government that Francina Armengol insists is working so well that the national government should be based on it as well. She's either having a laugh or she really is in cloud cuckoo land.

Much as it might pain me to side with the Partido Popular, when its general secretary in the Balearics, Andreu Ferrer, says that it is "worrying" that Armengol should suggest this model to Pedro Sánchez, I cannot disagree. I had, after all, said much the same thing, just as I had suggested, before Jaume Font of El Pi did, that the tax would end up being this government's TIL: its own omnishambles.

It was all so predictable. Another of Armengol's crutches is her regular reference to the accords for change that underpin (supposedly) the way this government works. These accords, for which there is the ominous-sounding monitoring committee to ensure their compliance, were cobbled together in the days of desperation following the May regional election in order to form a government with Armengol theoretically at its head. They are accords subject to, as the president parrots, dialogue and consensus, when all along they have been a means by which the government could be collapsed and have been the principles through which Podemos controls Armengol, controls PSOE and controls Biel Barceló.

The arguments over the tax are no longer confined to the rights and wrongs of its introduction. They have moved on to who it is that defines it and controls it, and the past few days have revealed who this is: not the government, not Armengol, not Barceló, but Podemos. The tax is a defining piece of legislation, as it was always destined to be. Podemos wants it all its way and no one else's. If it fails to get its way, then the unworkable working-well government of Francina Armengol's fantasy may well collapse in the great heap that had been predicted.

Laura Camargo of Podemos, expressing her surprise at disagreements over the tax, its purpose, its potential discounts and more, was voicing surprise at the temerity of the government to be contemplating uses that differ to those that Podemos demands. This is not government through consensus, this is government through command and strong-arm tactics, and it was all so very predictable.

Camargo said earlier this week that were there to be a vote on the tax legislation right now, this would not be a vote in favour of an eco-tax. The semantics are important, as the government has gone on record as having said that it will not be an eco-tax, i.e. not one in the image of Eco-Tax Mark I of 2002-2003. Catalina Cladera, the PSOE finance minister, has been one of those to have insisted that it will not be an eco-tax: one to be used solely for environmental purposes.

So, what Camargo was getting at was that Podemos will not accept anything which isn't an eco-tax. The deadlock that has been caused through the stand-off on the purpose of the tax (but not only this) can be resolved, suggests Camargo, through the forming of another monitoring committee, one expressly for the tax and which would presumably be separate to the planned committee for supervising the distribution of tax revenue. This would be a political committee to make damn sure that the tax becomes an eco-tax. Not that it would comprise only politicians. Oh no, Camargo wants experts and environmental activists. Now, who might she have in mind? GOB perhaps? Gurus from the university's geography department?

Biel Barceló, who himself has said in the past that environmental purposes would be only one of a range of uses of the tax revenue, now says that the environment is a priority. But Barceló is hostage to not only Podemos but also to his own eco-influenced party. He keeps changing his mind because he is forced into doing so. A member of his party, David Abril, finds it curious that Podemos should be siding with the enemy, the Partido Popular, in some aspects of the tax legislation. It isn't curious, because the PP is well aware that it can make mischief to the point of ensuring that the tax is at least held over until next year.

Meanwhile, the arguments over the tax create the metaphor for this government. Shambles.

Environment vs. Ambience: Beach chiringuitos

Legend informs us that the first beach-bar or chiringuito in Mallorca appeared on the beach at S'Illot in 1951. It was in the days when beach and non-beach were indistinguishable and when the means of running it would have been primitive to say the least. Despite it having been on the east coast and well off what was mostly beaten track in any event in those days, it proved to be popular and wasn't apparently just solely a place for cooling refreshment. For all that it would have been rudimentary, it was a beach-bar to which people would travel and where they would meet. It had ambience, the product of what seems like a natural collision - bar and beach.

The chiringuito, as in the traditional sort with thatch and a shape vaguely reminiscent of a boat, can be distinguished from other beach-bars, such as the wooden-roofed balneario, which is a misleading term in that the word means spa but which has acquired official status for its beach locations. Resorts are mapped according to balnearios: Playa de Palma, for instance. These balnearios have become part of the beach urban environment. A chiringuito implies a construction of a more rustic beach nature, to which can be assigned certain characteristics: laid-back, relaxed, cool.   

This is the implication, though it isn't always the reality, while the word chiringuito may or may not mean that traditional image. And into this realm of uncertainty has ridden the controversy of Son Serra de Marina, where the town hall (Santa Margalida) has been thinking about plonking a chiringuito and other beach paraphernalia, such as sunbeds. It is not known what the chiringuito structure might be (or might have been), while its positioning would not necessarily have been rustic in that its location was in front of or very close to the final urban development in this resort.

One can talk about this plan in the past tense, as the regional government would appear to have scuppered it. The protesters, several thousand of them, who formed a human chain against the plan can breathe a sigh of relief. The rustic nature of Son Serra is to be conserved.

The cause célèbre that has been the Son Serra plan might seem to have been what has provoked the environment ministry into tightening up on chiringuitos and what have you on rustic beaches. In fact, the ministry's natural spaces and biodiversity department have been on the case in any event. Son Serra is a clear case in point, but it isn't the only one.

The objection that the ministry has to the project is that one hundred sunbeds plus bar and other facilities would "appreciably affect" an area of "community interest". The objection isn't so much that there would be the risk of environmental harm through pollution (though there might be some small risk), it is more the damage to the visual environment: unspoiled should mean and remain unspoiled.

Santa Margalida have given out different justifications for the plan. One was (bizarrely enough) to obtain a Blue Flag. Another was that the revenue from the concessions would pay for the maintenance of the beach. These may well have been reasonable grounds, but the chiringuito was surely unnecessary. Indeed, it would have represented a kick in the teeth to the one or two bars (not on the beach of course) which have, over several years, contributed to a laid-back atmosphere which so many thousands were prepared to defend.

But while this particular bar was questionable, can the same be said for chiringuitos on other beaches of a rustic style? A full invasion of beaches by sunbeds and other facilities is one thing, but a chiringuito on its own? Yes, there are many tourists (and residents) who crave unspoiled beaches. Likewise, there are those who quite enjoy there being a bar. It can be positive in that it adds to the ambience rather than subtracts. It can also be positive in preventing a need to haul any amount of containers and plastic which might end up being discarded and so pose more of an environmental risk than a chiringuito, so long as the latter is subject to strict control.

What will now happen is that the ministry is going to say yea or nay to new applications and existing ones. Son Serra, representative of the former, is almost certainly out of the question. But what of, just as an example, Es Trenc's famed S'Embat?

My guess would be that a great majority of tourists and residents will approve of the government's aims (and I would be included in that majority), but being too dogmatic and too universal in treating each beach as the same would mean missing a point about how many have enjoyed beach life for so long. Chiringuitos have their role and it is one of ambience created decades ago.

Yet More On Tourist Taxes

The regional government has asked the citizens how they would prefer the sustainable tourism tax to be spent. An online poll revealed an 80% preference for environmental protection and conservation, a result which comes as no surprise. Depending on which options the citizens are presented with, then the citizens - more often than not - will reply with an answer that might have been hoped for: among certain elements of the government at any rate.

Were the government to follow this preference, then the tax would become an eco-tax, but as we have been informed, by the finance minister, it is not an eco-tax: that was something they did thirteen years ago. This tax is different. And the government still isn't clear as to how it intends spending it.

One person who has made his views clear is the prime minister. Mariano Rajoy is not in favour of eco-taxes or other taxes directed at tourists. As pointed out previously, such a view avoids the fact that he and his government increased taxes - indirect ones - aimed at tourists: the tourist rate of IVA (VAT). This was, in a sense, a national tourist tax, but of course no one ever referred to it as such.

It isn't totally beyond the bounds of possibility that a new national government might pursue a national tax, though this would almost certainly require Podemos being at the centre of the next government's policy-making, which it may not be. Such a move would be interesting in that it could well end up being challenged in law because of regions' statutory rights over tourism policy. Hypothetical though this might be, tourist taxes are being talked up (or down) in different parts of the country. The Canaries had dismissed a tax, but the idea still keeps cropping up. The city of Seville is said to be looking at one. The Valencia region may yet introduce one.

In other tax developments, the Més lead candidate for Congress, Antoni Verger, has been speaking again about his party's wishes for air travel, a component of which would be local management of airports through which, he believes, it would be possible to reduce the airports' taxes on airlines, i.e. the charges for landing rights and handling. Rather more significant, though, is the powerful lobby of Europe's five largest airline concerns. Air France-KLM, IAG, the Lufthansa Group, Ryanair and easyJet are calling on the European Commission to act "immediately" in taking concrete measures to reduce airport taxes. They argue that, while these charges have increased by an average of two-thirds in the past ten years, the supply side (i.e. the airlines) has been lowering its charges, in other words its ticket prices.

The airlines' lobby complains about "airport monopolies on a grand scale", which is something that can be applied to Aena, and these leading airlines believe that a mandated lowering of taxes would create employment and contribute to general economic growth. One hesitates to suggest that the lobby's intervention will lead to significant cuts, as there is the Spanish example to bear in mind: the National Competition Commission has forced a reduction in taxes for next year, but it is certainly not great. But the fact that the matter has been placed on the Brussels agenda might result in something more substantial, which could only be of benefit locally in Mallorca, where Palma has the third highest (all year) charges in the country.

Plastic Politics: Mallorca's environment

Last Saturday, hundreds of people took to the streets of Palma to march in favour of the future of the planet and renewable energies and to alert everyone (those who must have been living on a different planet for the past couple of decades) to the threats posed by climate.

The global climate change march, or at least the march in the small part of the globe that is Mallorca, demonstrated that there are hundreds more inclined to concern themselves with the environment than they are with Mallorcan independence. That protest march was on the same day. Barely tens of people were sufficiently moved.

Nonetheless, there was a degree of crossover, even if certain groups concerned with marching on behalf of the climate didn't actually put their names to the independence stroll. The usual suspects displayed their green credentials - GOB, Més, Friends of the Earth, Podemos - and some even wore the green t-shirt of trilingual teaching defiance (hasn't that become somewhat passé?). Still, if you're on a demo for a green issue, then what other colour should you wear?

Climate change attracts its lunatic wings at the polarities of the argument - the Flat Earth deniers and the Armageddonists - but they aside, why is it that this is an issue, in Mallorca at any rate, which appears to interest only the left? There is political mileage, as with Més, in being "eco-nationalists", but the "eco" part is inclined to get lost for the vast majority who are probably generally sympathetic to the cause but who grow fatigued by the constant and largely meaningless narrative of sustainability. Such is the political centrality of this concept that Més have even managed to honour it by introducing a tax in its name. Sustainability is the new political hectoring.

Taking to the streets to warn of the possible end of the world is a noble enough thing to do. If the message gets across, then fine, but it's not as if those who matter aren't aware. They invented sustainability, as an example, around thirty years ago and then made it globally popular at the Rio Summit. Waving banners and wishing to overcome can seem somewhat futile in the face of colossal smokestacks - the whole of China one has the impression - and the avarice of Big Business. It's much the same with paying for a supermarket plastic bag. Why not just ban them? Another futile gesture though because of all the other plastic packaging to be carried home.

In Mallorca, many spent last summer getting into a flap - rightly - about the tons of plastic drifting up from north Africa, where the Algerians have managed to create landfills (not particularly efficient ones at that) right by the coasts. The clean-up efforts were admirable, but they were a shining light of eco-action as opposed to eco-conscience-assuaging and eco-indifference. Mallorca loves a good recycle. Or would do if the populace was inclined to follow instructions. 

At fiesta time, the chances are that you will stumble across recycling workshops. Everywhere has one (or several). Mainly aimed at children, if they fulfil a worthy educational function, then so much the better. But the island's eco-values aren't, despite all the huffing of Més and others, that strong. Yes, everyone bangs on about the environment, but there isn't, as an example, the strict enforcement of recycling as there has been in Germany for a good twenty odd years. Woe betide anyone who falls foul of the Green Gestapo ready at any moment to leap out from behind a container if a householder errs in dropping a miniscule piece of plastic into the paper bin. In Germany, the very name of the recycling enforcement agency was met with a look of dread and fear.

Then there are the renewables. Or should one ask - what renewables? A target of 20% renewable energy by 2020, supposedly a regional pledge made several years ago, will not be met. It will be missed by many percentage points, one fancies. At present, the islands manage to generate roughly a measly 2% from renewables, while a region in the middle of the Spanish land mass - La Rioja - has over 80% renewable energy source. Why is the figure so low in the Balearics? There are many reasons why, but try starting with Endesa and Red Electrica.

Environmental issues demand fully joined-up policy thinking and making. Currently, this has the look of being piecemeal. It's one thing to direct the sustainability dogma at the tourism industry and invent a tax in the process, but it cannot be piece by piece, it has to be whole, if sustainability is actually to mean anything. 

Més (and Podemos) will doubtless steer a course towards such unity of policy, only to find it undone when they lose the next regional election. Environment - right versus left. Why not stick it in the centre, where it belongs.

Tourist Satisfaction Not Guaranteed

We are told, repeatedly, that things have never been better for peak-summer tourism. In they come, the holidaymakers, great droves of them, boosting occupancy levels in some resorts to 100% (a figure which may be given but which is only truly attained in specific instances and never resort-wide). More passengers than ever before have passed through Son Sant Joan. The "irregular" offer of holiday accommodation is booming in much the same way as the legitimate offer is. But this joyous news is, as always, tempered by realities created by all-inclusives and of genuine spend. It may well be up, but the spread is not uniform.

It is also tempered by concerns that there are simply too many people. The strains on services, on infrastructure, on the environment are such that the regional government appears willing to consider what has not previously been unthinkable but which has not been acted upon or at least seen through: a deliberate and concerted strategy aimed at reduction, offset, the government would hope, by a smoothing of tourist numbers to create a longer season.

While the politicians agonise over this human and environmental pressure, dabble with financial engineering (tourist tax, off-season social security discounts) and constantly utter the mantra of a tourist base of greater quality, the hoteliers have been hard at it, raising their game along with their star classifications and so prices. Profit is up, turnover is up. Tour operators are gladdened by the upward trend in the quality of hotel stock. Mallorca may be more expensive - hotel-wise - than most of the Mediterranean, but to the advantages of reliability, safety and durability can be added this recent qualitative leap.

But if this is all the case, why are the people who really matter - the holidaymakers - not more satisfied? Are the strains causing them to be less satisfied? Are they more discerning, more demanding than ever before? Is dissatisfaction simply the result of their not having been asked before?

Gadeso, the Mallorcan research organisation, does ask tourists. It has been asking for a few years now. It isn't alone. Cala Millor is an example of a resort having finally cottoned on to the need to conduct surveys with the objective - it might be hoped - of the opinion-asking being more than just PR. But the surveying is limited; Gadeso's sample base is small - only 400 interviews.

Given the size of the sample, should the latest tourist satisfaction survey be considered credible? Can it ever be truly representative of what is, after all, a highly diverse market? Tourists form anything but a homogeneous market. It is one that differs in every way imaginable: demographics, attitudes, country of origin, expectations, to cite just a few.

The findings, therefore, come with this caveat. Nevertheless, there are worrying trends. Take the upping of the quality ante and of prices. The price-quality ratio for accommodation is deemed "adequate" (six out of ten), but it is slipping by a point year upon year. It's impossible to know if this is as a consequence of higher prices or of, for example, a more demanding attitude, one that may be influenced by experiences in other destinations. Whatever the cause, despite the efforts to raise quality, the satisfaction level stubbornly continues to drop.

It is when one leaves the hotel, however, that things go decidedly pear-shaped. The price-quality ratio satisfaction for the "specialised" offer - restaurants, beach services, shops, sports facilities, leisure activities - has gone from "deficient" to "very deficient" (2.9 out of ten). Gadeso supports this finding by referring to excessively high prices for food and shopping that are "repetitive and outmoded". It is an embarrassing finding, given that gastronomy is supposedly one of the great saviours of Mallorca's tourism.

Then there is what may be evidence of those strains of human pressure. Down have gone assessments for water quality (the sea's), for air pollution, for the general environment. Down also are opinions on what previous surveys had already identified as the two most deficient factors - cleanliness and noise (acoustic contamination).

Palma's new mayor, José Hila, has identified filth as a major problem for the city, and his administration is making efforts in rectifying this. But is Palma unique? Cast an eye around and observe, for example, plastics recycling containers that are overflowing and so not emptied often enough. Has it not occurred to anyone that there is high plastics waste on account of all those bottles of water and drinks being purchased? This is only one example, and standards of waste collection will doubtless vary from resort to resort, as will complaints about noise.

Gadeso cannot be taken as being definitive, but it is an indication. As such, therefore, it should serve not as the definitive word but as the starting-point. There should be far greater systematic surveying of visitors: resort by resort.

You Are Not Mallorcan

I am making an assumption that you are not Mallorcan. You may live in Mallorca, you may visit Mallorca, but no, you are not Mallorcan. But not being Mallorcan does not prevent you from having opinions about Mallorca. These are opinions which, predominantly though not necessarily exclusively, will be formed from your own perceptions, from your own backgrounds. Are they Mallorcan?

There is a Facebook social network site called "Mallorquins en perill d'extinció". Translation is not needed. Even a non-Mallorcan can figure out what it means. Its title is exaggerated. Mallorcans are not about to go the way of the dodo. But does peril exist? And if so, when did the threat of extinction start and why?

Twentieth-century history offers some evidence. Francoism contained a threat but it was principally one to undermine Catalanism rather than island cultures. Even in the early years after the Civil War, local languages were receiving official permission. For example, the glosador verse-makers were performing in theatres of the first half of the 1940s. Later, and as a further example, the fiesta of Sant Antoni in Sa Pobla was declared to be in the national touristic interest in 1966. The cult of Sant Antoni was one that had been imported by the Catalan forces of the thirteenth century.

The greater threat was that of tourism. Its social impact was enormous, and non-Mallorcans arrived in droves, not just tourists but workers and also purchasers of property. You are the descendants of the 1960s. Indigenous culture was banished from the resorts and replaced with a Spanish standard, but even then there was acceptance of this culture, as with the Sant Antoni declaration.

The threat was, therefore, never total, and in the 1970s the combination of the oil crisis, Franco's death and the emergence of democracy brought about a revision and a revival. Local cultural associations such as Sarau Alcudienc in Alcúdia, the environmentalist group GOB, the activists Terra i Llibertat and the 1977 occupation of the island of Dragonera; these were all products of this revival, as was local politics.

The renaissance was facilitated by the politicians, not hindered. Differences there were, but from both right and left there was an appreciation of local culture and heritage and a strengthening determination to protect it and the environment. Old towns were given heritage orders; natural parks, such as Albufera, were established. But all the while there was the never-ceasing expansion of tourism, the constant construction of more tourism infrastructure and housing, the immigration of workers and residents and its greater enablement thanks to the Maastricht Treaty.

These competing forces didn't, however, bring about noticeable tensions; there were benefits to be accrued from the developments of the 1990s that followed the recession of the early part of that decade and which continued for a time into the new millennium. Concomitant with this was an inevitable consequence of a further explosion in tourism accommodation and indeed tourism itself. The hoteliers, always powerful, acquired ever more power. Even so, an unwritten accord between the competing forces remained. But then something happened, and it wasn't just economic crisis.

Arguably, you can pinpoint the time as that moment in 2008 when the last regional government pushed the cultural pendulum so far towards Catalanism that it was the competing force of Spanishness (and Castellano) that was threatened with extinction. Cultural tension, up till then mostly contained, surfaced. In seeking a correction, the current government has swung the pendulum back in the opposite direction. Latent division within society was no more. Division is no longer hidden or below the surface. Its fight is with extinction.

This cultural dimension is not the only justification for a poster produced by "Mallorquins en perill d'extinció" which is entitled, ironically, "you are Mallorcan if". It is there, nonetheless. You are Mallorcan if you want "our language" eliminated, a reference, one has to presume, to Catalan. Continuing in this ironic vein, you are Mallorcan if you accept the slavery of the hoteliers, the lack of protection of green areas, Europe's waste on the island, the Palacio de Congresos, the cost of water, the cost of travel from the island.

It is clearly a political statement, but not all of it can be disputed. You are Mallorcan if you pay for the most expensive petrol in Spain. This is a fact. You are Mallorcan if you pay more than anyone to the state without something in return. This is also a fact, one to do with the nature of state financing. It is a statement aimed squarely at the Partido Popular nationally and regionally (though not totally, as PSOE is not let off the hook), but in combination it is a declaration of discontent that would have been hard to have imagined even some ten years ago.

You are not Mallorcan, but maybe you are. Only you can decide this.

The Propaganda Of Sustainable Tourism

In June 1992 world leaders and representatives of non-governmental organisations gathered in Rio de Janeiro for what was officially called the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development but which unofficially became known as the Earth Summit. There had never been a gathering like it, there had never been an agenda like it. The results of the deliberations were summed up in the Rio Declaration. Its 27 principles ranged from "the role of man" through environmental legislation and impact assessments, the roles of women and youth to co-operation between the state and its people.

At that time, my interest in the Earth Summit was that of business and management applications. Together with two leading business journalists, I tried to make sense of the volume of papers and documents that the summit produced and to publish in a cogent and greatly summarised form what they meant or might mean for business. And from all the thousands upon thousands of words that Rio spawned, two words came out. The world had truly discovered the notion of "sustainable development".

With this term firmly embedded into the business lexicon, industries within industries were formed. The genuine and the charlatan leapt aboard the sustainable bandwagon. Consultants, advisors, Harvard scholars were offering business solutions to save the planet and local communities. Some meant it; others didn't. This post-Rio feverishness found no greater expression in and no better business activity than tourism. The Rio principles could have been written with tourism in mind.

Thus, sustainable development - simplified to sustainability - became specific. The leitmotif of sustainable tourism emerged, championed by those with environmental and social-consciousness integrity but also bastardised as platitudinous propaganda by elements of the tourism industry forever on the lookout for a marketing and competitive edge.

Sustainable tourism morphed into responsible tourism, the latter a more comprehensible term; comprehensible, that is, to a consumer base for whom "sustainable" was too abstract a word. The two terms are interchangeable, but whichever is used they mean the same thing or they can mean very little or nothing. It all depends on how genuine those who promote them are. A consequence is that today's tourism industry - not all of it certainly - is characterised not by sustainable development but by what I would call sustainable dissonance: an inconsistency between what is claimed and what is practised. Dissonance demands that individuals find a way of reconciling competing notions or beliefs. Thus, the tourism industry is inhabited by sustainability propagandists who, were they to be truthful, know that it is little more than propaganda.

Two years after the Rio summit, a Swedish hotel chain, Scandic, embraced sustainability in a way that no other chain had done. This commitment has been carried on, and every aspect of its business is guided by environmental and social consciousness. I was reminded of Scandic by an article for the "Hosteltur" magazine community in which the author, Arturo Cuenllas Soler, questioned how well rooted this responsibility is in the Spanish tourism industry and how committed the industry actually is to it. He recognised, as do I, that there are hotel chains and tour operators that have done a great deal in terms of environmental programmes and energy management, but the point he makes is my own: sustainability, responsibility go way beyond environmental factors and they embrace all sorts of stakeholders - employees, local people, local governments, customers, suppliers. Everyone.

If you go back to 1992, this was a time of economic recession. For the tourism industry, recession gave rise to what in the Mediterranean was then a rarely offered tourism package - the all-inclusive. Subsequent downturns have reinforced this offer, but coincidental with the rise of AI (and now also a quasi-AI) was that of sustainability. Here was something which, in public relations terms, could be used to offset the negativity of AI. Hotels and tour operators have pinned their colours to an environmental agenda mast but not to the full sustainability package. They might claim to - sourcing local produce, generating employment etc. - but all types of hotel can do this. For local communities, such as Mallorca's resorts, this has been specious propaganda, but it is propaganda that has been developed because the tourism industry and government know only too well that AI does not adhere to principles of sustainability. Sustainable dissonance, therefore.

The point about AIs and sustainability is that once upon a time in Mallorca, although the environment was treated with disrespect, certain sustainability conditions did exist. Local resort economies could flourish because of a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship. Now, however, there is tourism - and a great deal of it - which is parasitic. It leeches off resources such as sun and water and gives too little back in return. How, therefore, does this square with messages from hotels and tour operators regarding responsible or sustainable tourism?

Whether you call it sustainable or responsible, if this brand of tourism is to be genuinely meaningful it has to be far more open to the needs not just of the environment but also to those of local people and local communities. But it has to go further still. As Arturo Cuenllas notes, there are the customers as well. The tourists. Their attitudes have to change, as do those of tour operators. Corralling people into AI or quasi-AI is the antithesis of sustainability, and they know it.

Will such a change come about? It is highly unlikely, and so while it remains improbable, claims made for sustainability and responsibility are empty ones.

The Saviours Of Mallorca

Mallorca needs saving, not from a collective fall from grace but by conservers and preservers of nature and of the manmade, fighting the good fight against claimers and defilers of the environment and of heritage. "Salvem" is the new rallying cry. Save this, save that. If we don't save whatever it is, then Mallorca is lost. Saving is all around us; calls for the conservation and preservation of both the great and the small are as never before.

There are "salvem" campaigns, groups, platforms, blogs, social media sites in abundance. So great is the saving that it might prove counterproductive; the island could sink under its sheer weight. To all the previous savings, two more have just recently sprung up from a land which, while not all of it is fertile, manages to organically grow new sources of saviour sustenance. "Salvem Sa Canova", "Salvem Portocolom" have allied themselves with, inter alia, "Salvem Es Molinar", "Salvem Sant Kanut", "Salvem Ses Fontanelles", "Salvem Andratx", "Salvem Es Trenc", "Salvem els Paisatges de les Illes Balears".

The two most recent campaigns conveniently distinguish between conservation (the environment) and preservation (buildings and traditions). Sa Canova is the former; Portocolom the latter. But there is common ground between both: symbolism, iconic status, heritage. Sa Canova beach is symbolic of unspoiled coast and iconic as a consequence, while the lighthouse in Portocolom is symbolic of a history that stretches back to the middle of the nineteenth century and is iconic because, well, lighthouses are deemed to be iconic.

The descriptions are a touch overworked. So much is symbolic or iconic that the words lose their power through their constant reiteration. But let us not quibble with the sentiments that inspire saving campaigns to invoke them; these campaigns generally have right and sincerity on their side as well as a moral rectitude of conservation and preservation to support them.

Sa Canova beach lies between Son Serra de Marina and Colonia Sant Pere and falls within the municipality of Artà. It is rustic beach, backed by dunes with one-time submarine-target towers that are familiar to the bay of Alcúdia coastline. Part of it is well known for being a nudist beach, but this is not its only attraction. It represents beach life that was once how it was. Son Serra de Marina, from where most of its visitors come, is Mallorca beach of a past time; laidback and undisturbed with a veneer of contemporary coolness and surf.

Somewhere along its length, the town hall in Artà is considering the installation of a chiringuito beach bar. It would, in all likelihood, be in the more popular nudist section, a walk of perhaps five minutes or so from the couple of bars which mark where Son Serra ends. "Salvem Sa Canova" doesn't want this chiringuito. Rustic beach should be rustic beach and that means the exclusion of a building, even if it would only be temporary and would be dismantled at the end of the season.

Justification for the beach bar is slim. It might be argued that it would be advantageous in terms of providing an additional attraction to tourists, but the argument lacks weight. Tourists go there precisely because the beach is unspoiled, while it is not as if there aren't places for refreshment close by or as if it is too far to walk with cool boxes. Artà town hall might eye up some revenue from granting a concession, though even this might have to be shared with the Costas Authority (which appears to have given its blessing). Why bother? It seems unnecessary.

The lighthouse in Portocolom is one of six lighthouses that the Balearics Ports Authority wishes to privatise. It would still operate as a lighthouse but would be converted into a hotel, a form of privatisation which, while not uncommon in other countries, had not been pursued in Spain until the national development ministry gave the go ahead for regional ports authorities to permit it a couple of years ago.

"Salvem Portocolom" is planning a protest against the privatisation plan later this month, arguing that conversion would conflict with the lighthouse's heritage value, history and status within the public domain. However, though the lighthouse is, given its coastal location, within the (state's) public domain, it isn't for public use. At present, it is well maintained but perhaps the fear is that, sometime in the future, it might not be, while clearly the state has a source of revenue to interest it. But if its appearance were not altered, would privatisation and conversion be so harmful? Maybe not, but for the saviours of the lighthouse, what matters are the symbolism and the heritage. The opposition is essentially, therefore, an emotional one, just as it is in Sa Canova, but what's wrong with this? Some things are worth conserving and preserving for their emotional value, and the number of "salvem" campaigns across Mallorca prove the point.

The Environment Ministry Is Not Interested In The Environment

In 2009 I invented a term. It was a "lagola". It was an expression for a considerable sum of money, 750,000 euros to be precise, the amount that had been ploughed into making the La Gola wet zone in Puerto Pollensa presentable. The "lagola" (and there was to be a further half-lagola as well) went on cleaning up the water, putting in some nice pathways, some lights, the odd sign and a visitor's centre. It was all part of a scheme to create what was referred to at the time by the regional government environment ministry (under the Unió Mallorquina) and the town hall (under Joan Cerdà of the UM) as a "green heart" in the resort.

Periodically, I have cause to go to the La Gola area. I was there a week or so ago. I had a look. It was in a bit of a state. Grass hadn't been cut, there was rubbish in the water, the visitor's centre was shut, as it has so often been shut. Pollensa town hall, now under the PP of Tomeu Cifre, has also been at La Gola to take a look. What has been observed has led it to declare that the wet zone is a disaster area in the making.

What the town hall is specifically concerned about is the water and the need to keep it from silting up. Some of you may recall the incident a few years back when a whole load of fish died. They had suffocated. Mayor Cifre says that, if needs be, he will order dredging to be undertaken. It is not meant to be the town hall's responsibility. It is the responsibility of the environment ministry. Cifre has accused the ministry of not being interested in maintaining La Gola adequately.

The story of La Gola is far from an isolated one. The money spent on it was not as great as had been the case with other areas of environmental importance in the north, but the "lagola" is, in a way, not what matters. It is what has happened since the initial amounts were spent. Or rather, not happened. La Gola is small compared with these other areas - Albufera, Albufereta, Son Real. Its size is such, one would think, that it should be easier to maintain than the vast acres elsewhere on the bays of Pollensa and Alcúdia, but it has rarely been maintained adequately. The agreement between the coalition of environment ministry and town hall back in 2009 was supposedly clear enough. The ministry would run the visitor's centre and keep the water clean. The town hall would tend to the small parkland. This was a simple division of duties which, almost straightaway, did not work as it should have done. Two months after the new, improved La Gola was opened in the summer of 2009, there was an outcry about the mess and the graffiti.

The town hall has to take some criticism itself, but it is nonetheless right in pointing the finger at the environment ministry. It has failed in other areas as well. In Albufera, the visitor's centre there is also shut. Son Real has been a scandal of neglect by government for years, and a very expensive one too. Santa Margalida town hall has, in the past, had to take it upon itself to undertake maintenance which it is not meant to. A similar situation to La Gola, therefore. And then there is Albufereta, where such is the lack of initiative that guests at the Club Pollentia Resort are invited to make donations. I am all in favour of tourists contributing to the environment, but for goodness sake.

La Gola is, unfortunately, a metaphor not just for three-quarters of a million euros, it is also a metaphor for the various grand environmental projects that have been embarked upon without adequate provision for their subsequent maintenance. It seems too easy to simply blame economic crisis and austerity for this inadequacy. Cifre's probably right. The environment ministry isn't interested.

* Photo of La Gola from 2009.

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

Oil Politics: Balearics and Canaries

"It's all about the price of oil," lamented Billy Bragg. The oil men in the White House didn't give a damn, but one in particular gave enough of a damn to give the appearance of a justified, non-oil-driven adventure by bringing along whichever ally, irrelevant or not, he could. José María Aznar was such an ally. If he was then mocked for being "Tony's little friend", he must have been Bush's very tiny friend. All about the price of oil.

In 2002, a royal decree of the government of José María Aznar was finally approved and published in the Official Bulletin. It paved the way for oil prospecting off the coasts of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. It was a decree with the backing of Aznar, the then vice-premier, Mariano Rajoy, and the environment minister at the time, the now disgraced ex-president of the Balearics, Jaume Matas. 

For various reasons, this prospecting didn't happen. One was that the Spanish Supreme Court blocked Repsol's attempts to start exploration in 2004. This was after the government had changed and Aznar was no longer prime minister. But while the arguments over the exploration centred on the environmental impact, in the background were international political issues.

Following 9/11, the American Government moved to strengthen its relations with Morocco, and a free trade treaty was signed between the two countries. Morocco became the first African country to have such a treaty. This, however, was problematic for Spain. And the reason why was oil. Or the possibility of oil and to which country it might actually belong.

If you look at a map you will see that the Canaries lie off the coast of Morocco. Only a comparatively short distance to the south is the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Morocco claims sovereignty over Western Sahara, a territory which, under US-led pressure at the United Nations, Spain was forced to give up in 1975; the UN doesn't recognise Morocco's sovereignty claims. Exploration for oil off Western Sahara started, at the behest of the Moroccan Government, in 2002. It has since come to a halt, partly because of the lack of clarity over legal status. But the point is that oil fields which may or not exist off the Canaries could extend into territorial waters that are not Spanish and are either Moroccan or Western Saharan.

The trade agreement and cosier relationship between the US and Morocco were problematic for Spain because it needed (or would need) US support in any dispute over rights to oil. Was it all about the price of oil? Well, there are those who would argue that the only reason Aznar and Spain sided so strongly with Bush against Saddam wasn't so much to do with oil in Iraq but to do with oil in the Atlantic.

The international politics may have shifted since then, but the arguments are still the same, and they have been boiling up in the Canaries. An oil platform belonging to Cairn Energy sits in readiness for drilling work on behalf of Repsol to start this year. Aznar is no longer prime minister, but his one-time second-in-command is, and the Partido Popular administration has given the go-ahead to prospect for what could amount to 38 million barrels of oil a year.

Opposition in the Canaries has come from hoteliers and others in the tourism industry, from environmentalists and from local politicians in the regional government and at island councils. It is only really the Canaries business confederation that supports the national government in undertaking a venture which, for some in the Canaries, amounts to the islands being treated "like a colony" and being exploited against their wishes.

There is a much more tangled web surrounding the exploration off the Canaries than that to do with a subterranean sea mountain which runs from a location some 70 kilometres from the mainland at Cabo de la Nao to 45 kilometres off Ibiza. It is this mountain that has been designated for oil exploration. At one end is rare seaweed; at the other, in the waters near Ibiza, is posidonia sea grass, which is not unique to the Balearics but is otherwise also rare. The opposition to the exploration is as unified in the Balearics as it is in the Canaries, but it has a notable difference; the political leadership in the Canaries is not Partido Popular.

So, one has a situation in which the regional PP in the Balearics opposes the national PP. President Bauzá is against the exploration because of the potential harm that could be caused to tourism. Whether the opposition, in more general economic terms, is right is another matter. At least in the Balearics, though, there are no international politics to be concerned with other than those of a European Commission nature. And the EC, for one, needs convincing as to environmental safeguards.