It's Time For GOB To Shut Up

Four years ago, in marking the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the Grup Ornitològic de Balears, I concluded that GOB had "moved a long way from its original remit but that its relevance (was) stronger than ever". This was a conclusion drawn partly from the fact that tourism and population growth had been placing ever greater strains on Mallorca. There were reasons to praise GOB, such as its historical involvement with preventing development on the island of Dragonera or the work over the decades at the La Trapa biological reserve in the Tramuntana. There is a great deal to admire about GOB; it is an organisation that represents the environmental conscience of Mallorca and has been the island's environmental soul since the 1970s. I'm not a paid-up member of GOB but I often voice my support. However ... .

Two years before that article, I had spoken about issues in which GOB had involved itself but which had little to do with its stated objectives of the "conservation, dissemination and study of nature and the environment of the Balearic Islands". One issue was having leapt to the defence of the TV Mallorca radio and television station. A further was having been part of an anti-corruption platform established in 2010. Broadcasting can be valuable in conveying messages about the environment. Corruption can lead to development that is destructive of the environment. Neither issue was totally divorced from the GOB objectives but then neither was directly associated with them.

A bus station is to be built in Puerto Pollensa. It will make use of an existing development: a small plot owned by the municipality that was tarmacked in the recent past and made into a proper car park. The bus station is necessary, and one of its purposes will be to act as the terminal for a shuttle service to Formentor. The shuttle has been deemed to be a requirement to counteract the "saturation" of vehicles that go along the promontory's twisty road to the lighthouse. It is a sort of environmental solution.

GOB disagrees with this bus station. It doesn't disagree with the principle of the bus station, just its location. It would prefer it to be sited close to what has been described as the "green heart" of Puerto Pollensa, the small park of La Gola, with a lake that is the confluence of the torrent and of the sea. GOB's proposed site wouldn't be environmentally detrimental but it would nevertheless be in an area of greater environmental sensitivity than the site where the bus station will be built.

GOB's objection has to do with the Pollensa town hall general urban plan. The site for the bus station, the organisation says, can only be used for sociocultural, sporting or health care reasons or as an open public space. A bus station is therefore contrary to this plan. The town hall, and here one encounters semantics, says that it isn't a bus station, only bus stops. However it is defined is largely immaterial; GOB has been raising an objection that has nothing whatsoever to do with its objectives. The bus station is an urban planning matter, pure and simple.

Here is an example of where the organisation stretches the limits of its remit and indeed exceeds them, as was the case with TV Mallorca. There are other entities whose roles are to challenge matters such as a bus station: political parties, for instance. But it is here where the problem with GOB lies. It acts like a political party without having any of the responsibility. Its power base has grown enormously since it started life as a bird conservation organisation. It has become inherent to the political process to the extent that its representation on the tourist tax revenue spending committee equates to that of the federation for all the town halls in the Balearics (except Palma).

When GOB fired off a statement attacking the farmers and hunters ("the defenders of the rural world") for their recent protest over government environmental policies, it was seeking to make sure that the government didn't back track; a government it would hope to be highly receptive to its wishes. It is engaged in a battle for who owns the environment, when in fact it belongs to everyone, and that includes those who adhere to a rural way of life, such as the farmers.

But more than this are the politics. There is a GOB youth wing. It has been intimately linked with the highly radical Arran and Endavant groups in attacking tourism. GOB itself was the main organiser of the "massification" demo last month. Its political nature has now become almost indistinguishable from a left-wing, Catalanist, nationalist or independence agenda.

In so doing it can alienate. The environment crosses the spectrum of political views. It is to be defended but not in such a partisan way. GOB's constant interference generates just this sort of alienation. It needs to know when to shut up.

An Environmental Rock And A Hard Place

When it comes to the environment, you just can't win. The current government in the Balearics is probably the most environmentally aware and environmentally determined (in terms of policy) that there has been. This consciousness extends beyond matters of land use. Climate change is of such importance that it has its own government department. The virtues of clean energy are being demonstrated by a conversion to the use of solar for government buildings, by testing electric buses, by subsidising town halls for the installation of electric vehicle charging-points, by investing in more rail electrification, by betting the electricity shop on a scheme for solar to power the Balearics.

The government's environmentalism can at times seem to go too far. It wasn't the government as such which ordered the demolition of the chiringuitos at Es Trenc (it was in fact the national government via the courts). But now they've gone, the local administrations have latched on to regulations like the space that sunloungers have to be from the dunes and those for utility supplies to the demountable chiringuitos (if they actually materialise). When it comes to the next election and to an evaluation of this government's legacy, the Es Trenc Nature Park will be deemed one of the triumphs. This is a government committed to the environment, but it is caught between a rock and a hard place of environmental policies. Whatever it does environmentally, there is traditionalist or environmental opposition.

If the agricultural world ever needs to protest, it typically does so by sending out the tractor boys. Palma has its farming areas but they aren't anywhere near the promenade and the Passeig Sagrera. Tractors will nevertheless appear on Saturday. The farmers are part of a countryside alliance that will be demonstrating outside government HQ.

The farmers and the government (for which read the environment and agriculture ministry) have had an uneasy relationship. The minister Vicenç Vidal has not, to be fair, had the greatest of luck. Mother Nature has done what Mother Nature does, which is to affect the land because of climate and plague. Vidal might argue in a joined-up governmental sense that policies for climate change have in mind drought and floods, but these are not policies for the immediate past. The farmers still feel they weren't compensated sufficiently. The agriculturalists are now seeking tourist tax revenue for replanting trees lost to the xylella plague.

Vidal can't control the weather, he can apply some control over xylella, and he most certainly can potentially control the worst affects of heavy rains and floods. The farmers are not alone in criticising the environment and agriculture ministry for not doing more to keep the torrents clear so that flooding (hopefully) doesn't occur. Town halls have had their say as well.

But what has got the farmers, hunters and owners of rural fincas so agitated that they are protesting is the government's expansion of zones for the special protection of birds (ZEPA). In a nutshell the rural community feels that its rights and interests are being interfered with. The association for the defence of the rural world says that it has done a pretty good job over the years when it comes to bird protection, alluding to hunting for population control purposes, but hunting is far from being the only issue. Larger protection zones could mean, for example, a broadening of restrictions on harvesting, the burning of vegetation and phytosanitary control, i.e. measures to avoid plant disease and pest.

So, there is a traditional agricultural lobby that is opposed to a particular strand of the government's overall environmental policies. While the government insists that there is compatibility, this certainly isn't always clear to those sectors affected, such as the farmers. ZEPA, meanwhile, is lauded by the environmentalist lobby - GOB in particular, as would be expected because of its origins as a bird protection group. And ZEPA features highly in the government's grand energy project for eliminating emissions - the creation of photovoltaic plants.

In Llucmajor there are three separate projects for these plants. Each one raises contentious environmental issues. One, for the finca of Sa Caseta, affects a zone that the town hall considers to be for agricultural, ecological and landscape protection. For a second - S'Águila - there is a ZEPA report pending. The third is the most emotive of all. Sa Marina, says GOB, is a magnificent agroforestry area that has escaped the changes that have occurred in other parts of Mallorca's rural world. The group wants there to be a ZEPA, and if there were to be, it could seriously inhibit any plans for a photovoltaic plant.

GOB is accusing the government of wanting to turn this whole part of Llucmajor into one giant solar farm, but the nub of the issue is that these plants have to go somewhere. And mostly any location that is identified will have some environmental consideration. The government really can't win.

Dragonera: Forty Years Later

July 1977. It is a date when something highly significant occurred. An incipient environmental consciousness in Mallorca found both voice and direct action. It was extraordinary, an act played out against the background of equally incipient democracy. It was a time when public administrations - local authorities, police - were only starting to come to terms with what democracy entailed, a feature of which was the right to protest.

The date has in fact a far greater symmetry than mere month and year. It has entered Mallorcan folklore as 7-7-77. The day, seventh of July 1977 when fifty people occupied the island of Dragonera off the Andratx coast. It was a landmark protest, one that confirmed a movement of environmental conservation, something that had been all too conveniently ignored during the Franco era.

To understand the full background, one has to go back three years earlier. The island's owner sold Dragonera to a company called Pamesa for some one hundred million pesetas (around 600,000 euros at the rate that was used at the time when the euro was introduced). The understanding was that half of the island would remain in its natural condition; the other half would be developed and would include a marina. (The island's area is slightly under three square kilometres.) In fact, the plan was to involve the construction of four developments with capacity for some 4,000 people. Essentially, the whole of the island was to be built on. The alarm bells were set off.

It's important to appreciate that there were pockets of environmental resistance prior to the establishment of democracy. One organisation was GOB, which was founded in 1973. Although ostensibly an ornithological group, GOB's activism was to become far more broad-based. It was one of several organisations which voiced its opposition to the Dragonera plan in 1974, the year before Franco's death.

A joint statement from GOB and the other organisations was sent to the mayor of Andratx. It referred to the irreversible alteration that the project would entail and to the importance of Dragonera in the context of Mediterranean flora and fauna. It called on the town hall to defend scientific and social rights. Around the same time, the issue reached an outside audience. The Paris-Baleares magazine alerted France to the plan, while the Council of Europe was petitioned and requested to recommend that the Spanish government made Dragonera a nature park, which would mean that it couldn't be developed.

Two years later, in 1976, there were more moves to prevent development. This time, the opposition could also count on the Fomento del Turismo, the Mallorca Tourist Board. But all the petitions, the requests, the publicity were to prove to be to no avail. In what now seems one of the most astonishingly ridiculous acts of premeditated environmental vandalism (even by Mallorcan standards of the 1960s and 1970s), Andratx town hall approved the plan.

When the definitive project was published in the Official Bulletin on 5 July 1977 - it was given the green light by the provincial committee for urban development (there was at that point no Council of Mallorca or regional government) - the decision to occupy the island was taken. Two days later, with by now the whole of the Spanish media aware of what was going on, two boats with fifty people crossed the short stretch from the Andratx coast.

They were to be described as variously anarchists, leftists, artists and ecologists. They may well have been, but there were many people in Mallorca who certainly didn't fall into the first two categories, if any of them, who were outraged and supported the occupation. The occupation was to last two weeks. There were meant to have been many more occupiers, but boat owners were "persuaded" not to take them. The Guardia Civil kept watch, whereas in previous times it might have opted for its own direct action; the force's neutrality was to later be acknowledged after officers initially landed on the island to check on things. However, the occupiers were, up to a point, starved into giving up their protest.

The movement behind the occupation was known as Terra i Llibertat - land and freedom. It inspired enormous support from across Mallorca, and the occupation genuinely marked a major turning-point in conservation. The official reaction was to be uncommonly swift. The president of the Provincial Deputation, Gabriel Sampol, stamped his signature in opposing the development. The matter was to end up in the courts, and in 1984, following repeated demonstrations, the Balearic High Court dismissed an order that had permitted construction. Eventually, on 14 July 1988, the Council of Mallorca approved the purchase of Dragonera for 280 million pesetas. In 1995, it was given nature park status.

Last week, the events of 1977 were remembered. Sandra Espeja, the environment councillor at the Council of Mallorca, referred to how direct action awakened the people and transformed policies. Dragonera was a landmark.

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.

The Long March Of Miquel March

In September 1990 the Dalai Lama came to Mallorca. A principal reason for him having done so was to attend the closing of an exhibition of Tibetan art in Pollensa. He donated the Buddhist Kalachakra mandala that is now to be seen in the town's museum. When he had arrived at Palma airport, one of the dignitaries who was there to greet him was Martí March, the then mayor of Pollensa. Twenty-five years on, there is another March who is mayor of the town. He is one of Martí March's three sons: Miquel Àngel March.

There is something vaguely spiritual, other-worldly about March the son, as though he doesn't quite belong in the world of politics. But that world has been turned upside down over the past weeks. He's not a Podemos man, but he is a GOB man: for one score years he was its face. In 1988, two years before the the Dalai Lama's visit, he became the spokesperson for the environmentalists. Those who once might not have belonged in politics now do belong. Local politics - some local politics - is unrecognisable compared with what it was.

The Catalan section of "El País" ran a profile of March recently. It was like a paean, an expression or hymn of thanksgiving rooted in Greek mythology, littered with references such as to the "mythical" beach of Es Trenc (a battleground for GOB), to melancholic walks, to the playing of the flute and the drum alongside the piping xeremiers, to living in the mountains. Another world to the typical one of local politics.

GOB was once challenged - by a Partido Popular politician whose name I cannot now recall - to either put up or shut up. The allusion was to GOB's influence. If it was so determined to direct political thinking, then it should become its own party. It didn't but its former spokesperson is now a political leader. He had been approached previously but had declined offers to enter mainstream politics (insofar as there now is a mainstream). As an independent and a well-known figure in Pollensa, he was brought into the Junts Avançam fold along with PSOE, Més and the Republican Left. There was a chance to change things, he noted before the election. Change will doubtless come.

But you cannot have been GOB's leader for twenty years or have been subject to assaults from the right-wing press and not have developed a hard-nosed edge. Even the lyricism of the "El País" article recognised this. It mentioned issues that had already occurred to me: those to do with Formentor, i.e. the definition of planning, the expansion of the hotel, the Alfonso Cortina chalet. Planning - urban or rural - is a March forte. Combine this with environmentalism and plenty of attention will now be turned to the landscapes of Pollensa, to developments or not-developments. With the support of Més and that of the Alternativa (not part of the administration but a willing ally), the long march of March to the mayoral throne in Pollensa will culminate with more than just seeking, once and for all, to gain open access for the marchers to the Castell del Rei - across land owned by a different March family, the banking one. 

There will be faults to cross on the Pollensa landscapes along the way. One has already and inevitably opened up: the semi-pedestrianisation scheme for Puerto Pollensa. Tomeu Cifre's "stellar" project was not realised during his mayoral lifetime and it will now be redefined. This is not surprising. It was GOB who put one of the final spanners in the constantly delayed works by citing an urban plan of the early 1990s that the pedestrianisation had to be total, not semi. The coastal road, however (or if) it is pedestrianised, passes by the Ullal area. The project for a five-star hotel will now surely be allowed to finally drown under the negligible water content of a wetland long since mostly dried up. But here is another fault to tackle.

The Junts were handed the Pollensa administration courtesy of the Unió Mollera Pollencina, the Puerto Pollensa party. This is a party minus an ideology but defensive of business interests. There is a revealing entry on its Facebook page about luxury hotels, a link to an item in "Ultima Hora". The comment says: "Very little of this tourism is coming to our town. The lack of five-star hotels is a deficit in our hotel offer. This is a challenge for our new administration". Challenge indeed. The UMP wants new hotels. The call from business for there to be new hotels has been sounded for several years.

There will be battles aplenty. Over the Pollensa festival, for example, and the apparent lack of consultation surrounding its programme for this year and the continued appointment (by Tomeu Cifre) of Joan Valent as director. The Alternativa has kicked up a fuss over this. It will be renewed. But will there continue to be one battle for Miquel March? He is a regular Moor on behalf of the Moors versus Christians. The march has just begun.

Forty Years Of Conservation: GOB

On the first of December, a fourtieth anniversary was celebrated. It was one to mark the founding of the Grup Ornitològic de Balears, better known as GOB, an organisation which nowadays wields enormous influence in Mallorca and which has come a long way from its origins in 1973.

The organisation was founded in what was still the Franco era. The regime may have been on its last legs but it was still a time when censorship prevailed along with repression. It would have been impossible to have founded an organisation of the type that GOB has become in 1973.

Originally therefore, it was, as its name implies, a group of nature lovers and especially bird lovers who came together in order to promote knowledge of birds and other wildlife and to also promote what was a nascent sense of natural conservation in the Balearics in face of the environmental impact of tourism. In fact, the original group comprised a mere six people whose principal interest was in the island's vultures.

1973 is often referred to as the year when the first tourism boom ended. There is a good reason why. 1973 was the year of the Yom Kippur War and the year that the oil crisis arose. Tourism, for some three to four years, was affected. Numbers of tourists to Mallorca declined, and the oil crisis was to bring about a change in attitudes on the island both in terms of external relationships with tour operators and airlines and in terms of the environment. GOB's founding was coincidental, but it was extremely prescient.

With the passing of the Franco regime and the move towards democracy and regional autonomy, which was formalised thirty years ago, GOB grew and started to change its character. By the 1980s, it was organising campaigns of a much wider environmental nature. They all had the philosophy of conservation and they were directed initially at ensuring protection for natural areas, such as Albufera, and then at developments, be they roads, hotel complexes or other building and infrastructure. One of the landmark schemes in those early years was the acquisition of the La Trapa biological reserve in the Tramuntana mountain. Public support enabled the acquisition. In 1980, GOB took over La Trapa. The destruction caused by the fire this summer resulted in a new wave of public support to raise funds; La Trapa and so therefore GOB has a position in the Mallorcan consciousness which goes deep.

Though the first regional government might not have admitted it, GOB's influence on it was evident. Along with the first tourism plan came the first real legislation aimed at environmental matters. This wasn't only needed in order to balance the impact of increasing tourism numbers, it was also needed to address the effects of population growth and so therefore resources; between 1960 and 1980, the population of Mallorca had increased by almost 200,000 to over half a million in total.

A more openly political Mallorca, courtesy of regional government, began to mean a more political GOB. In a sense, it was only really taking a lead from other environmental movements, but this political edge is summed up in a dossier that was drawn up only a few years ago. The organisation listed four key objectives. Three were to do with conservation, biodiversity, education about the environment, actions against environmental destruction and in favour of sustainable development. The fourth was to do with facilitating society's participation in a better democracy.

GOB's relationship with governments has, especially in the past few years, been somewhat strained. Yet, in 1997 the national environment ministry of the government of José Maria Aznar (Partido Popular) awarded it the national prize for the environment. Less surprising in political terms perhaps was the awarding of the Balearics Gold Medal by the PSOE-led Balearics Government in 2002.

More recently though, GOB's activities have led to political opponents saying that it should put up or shut up and make itself an official political entity. It does, as an organisation, appear to be close to the Mallorcan nationalist left-wing, represented by the PSM (Mallorcan socialists) now in alliance with others, including the Greens, in the Més grouping. GOB's campaigning has moved away from the purely environmental. It has, for example, been involved with pro-Catalan initiatives and with the effort to prevent the closure of TV Mallorca. Back on firmer environmental ground, GOB staged a protest against the current government's environment policies at the Berlin Travel Fair earlier this year. One of the main issues it wanted to highlight was the planned hotel development near to Es Trenc beach.

GOB has been accused of being anti-tourism. There might be some truth to the accusation, but forty years on from its founding, the issues posed by tourism and also by population growth have changed only in terms of their scale. From tourism numbers in the five millions in the 1980s to the eight to nine millions now; from a population of 550,000 in 1980 to one that is now some 300,000 greater. It may have moved a long way from its original remit but its relevance is stronger than ever.

The Impotence Of Fire

In 1994, there was a devastating forest fire in Andratx. It was centred on a mountain finca known as La Trapa. Until the fire that broke out on Friday, it was the worst fire that had been experienced in Andratx; indeed, it was one of the worst fires on record in Mallorca.

There was a sad irony about the La Trapa fire and about the ecological damage that it caused. The finca belonged and still does to GOB, the ecology group and environmental pressure organisation. Only a part of the 1300 hectares that were destroyed in 1994 are owned by GOB (the actual La Trapa finca doesn't amount to even a tenth of the area that was affected), but the fire came to be known as La Trapa and it also marked a significant moment in recovery of mountain forest destroyed by fire and in management of this forest. The fire and the consequences of that fire are considered to have made La Trapa one of the most important symbols of the ecology movement in Mallorca.

La Trapa has been affected once again. Whether the efforts at protection that were put in place, which included farming fire breaks, the installation of the largest and most accessible water supply in this part of the Tramutana mountains and grazing donkeys to keep vegetation under control, it is not clear. What is, however, is that Andratx has suffered a worse fire than in 1994, which might yet prove to be the worst fire that Mallorca has suffered; the record is the loss of 1960 hectares above Betlem in the Artà mountains at the end of August 1992.

Fires did of course occur before those that took place in 1992 and 1994, and the means of tackling fires in an effective way - one that wasn't solely reliant on land fire crews - was created in 1979, when the first firefighting planes (Canadairs) were introduced to Mallorca. They were based initially at Son Sant Joan, i.e. Palma airport, and then, from 1982, at the base in Puerto Pollensa. Coming nearer to the present (2005), a national initiative, the formation of a unit called Unidad Militar de Emergencias under the national Ministry of Defence, established an elite and highly professional fire-control service. UME personnel have been heavily involved in the latest Andratx fire and they have their own aircraft.

These firefighting capabilities are reassuring, but fires do, most unfortunately, break out. Many on Mallorca last year were deliberate; a pyromaniac who had lost his job with the forestry service was the main culprit. There can be all the capabilities going, but if a determined firestarter wants to torch a forest then he will. Or, as would appear to be the case in Andratx, if someone is stupid enough to be burning stubble at a time when the island is bone dry, is experiencing high temperatures and is also being blown by hot winds from the Sahara, then these capabilities are very welcome, but they can't of course prevent a fire.

The Balearics president, José Ramón Bauzá, surveying the scene in Andratx, spoke of a feeling of "impotence". What he was getting at, one supposes, was impotence that stems from forces of nature and from difficulties with access in order to fight a fire that, also in his words, has caused the loss of centuries of natural heritage. But he was surveying an area not that far from La Trapa, supposedly this symbol of ecological importance. It is important, but how important is it and how important are other forests to the politicians?

Two years ago, the president was in Ibiza. He was doing different surveying, that of efforts to recover the area of Benirràs that had suffered a serious fire in 2010. He spoke of the government approving in 2012 the fourth plan for defence against fires in the Balearics. By July last year, when Mallorca was burning, Friends of the Earth were asking whatever happened to the plan.

At the same time as the president was speaking about this plan for fire defence, he observed that the Balearics didn't have a forestry plan full stop. Moreover, the Balearics were the only autonomous community in Spain without such a plan. And yet, almost 45% of land in the Balearics is forest or in some way wooded.

Within two years, there would be such a plan, the president said. While he was surveying the destruction in Andratx, he may have been reflecting on both the fire-defence plan and the forestry plan. Impotence perhaps, but only if nothing is done before the feeling of impotence takes over and strikes not just a president but also people in Andratx who were given the fright of their lives and anyone who fears for the future of Mallorca's forest and woodland ecology.  


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Alcúdia asphalt beach path denounced

The environmental group GOB has denounced the blue asphalt beach path in Puerto Alcúdia to the Costas Authority, arguing that it is inappropriate and questioning whether the town hall had permission from this governmental department to create it. GOB has received support from the Més per Mallorca (socialists) group.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

Ich Bin Ein Berliner Protester

The Berlin travel fair is over for another year. It is an event which attracts much media attention in Mallorca because of the importance of the German tourism market. This year's event has attracted the attention of the German media; Mallorca's presence at the fair has been news.

Of Mallorca's big-two tourism markets, the German relationship with the island is different to that of the British. It is a deeper relationship to that of the British, for whom the island is primarily and only a holiday destination. The Germans are more students of Mallorca than the British. The association is so strong, it is as though there were an imaginary land connection between Mallorca and Germany. Weather forecasts specifically feature Mallorca and German newspapers from Mallorca are widely available in Germany.

It was once said by a Mallorcan politician that the British have Mallorca "in their genes". If they do, then these genes are partly German. Mallorca is a holiday birthright for the Germans as much as the Chiemsee, South Tyrol and the islands of Sylt and Rügen are.

The participation of Mallorca and the Balearics at the Berlin travel fair has been news in Germany in a way that would be unimaginable in the UK; unimaginable, because events at the Berlin travel fair wouldn't have occurred at London's travel fair. And they wouldn't have occurred because of the different nature of the relationship.

The environmental pressure group GOB chose the Berlin fair to draw attention to concerns it has with policies of the regional government. It was chosen because, more than any other audience, GOB wanted to hammer home its message to the Germans. GOB will know that German environmental consciousness has traditionally been stronger than in other European countries. When TUI, a German company of course, makes the big deal that it does about ecologically sound hotels being an important sales point, it is referring mainly to the German market. Green matters were matters in Germany well before they were in the UK.

What happened in Berlin last week has not, however, put Mallorca in a terribly good light. Neither GOB nor the Balearics government (for which, read the Partido Popular) covered itself in glory in Berlin in what was a follow-on from a video that GOB had launched just prior to the fair. This video, which features the Mallorcan artist Miguel Barceló, is one in which GOB denounces the import of waste and developments such as Es Trenc. It denounces the government and so the PP.

The tourism minister Carlos Delgado had already criticised GOB for releasing the video and for presenting it at the travel fair. He said that it was irresponsible and could cause harm to the islands. But it was what then happened at the fair that caught the attention of the German media, and it did so because both GOB and the government grossly exaggerated what happened. GOB's representatives planned to raise questions at a press conference which President Bauzá was to attend. It was thought that GOB might also stage a protest. As a consequence, the organisers were told of the possibility and they in turn informed the police who did what police normally do, which is to attend the scene and to ensure control and to keep the peace.

The exaggerations then started to fly. GOB claimed the government had called the police in, when it hadn't. GOB also claimed that there were police "cordons" created at the request of the government and implied that there was some aggression by the German police. There were no cordons and there was no aggression. Had the government then kept quiet and let the matter rest, it might have come out of Berlin with its public relations intact, but it didn't. It insisted that GOB had planned "violent" protests; all three of its representatives. The accusation was exaggerated, hysterical and downright wrong.

GOB may believe that it has succeeded in publicising its gripes with the PP, but, and regardless of what one thinks about waste imports and Es Trenc, Delgado was not wrong in suggesting that its stunts could be harmful. In fact, it probably won't make any difference to German tourism, despite the coverage in the German media, but it might make Germans look askance at politics of the environment in the Balearics. Germans like consensus, it is the cornerstone of their political philosophy. In the Balearics there is no consensus. There never is. And the environment is a subject about which the polemic has no end and which has become as tedious as it is divided. Perhaps it would be better if mouths were just kept shut for a change.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Political Nature: GOB

In a recent article, I identified influential Mallorcans who were unlikely to be well-known to foreign residents. One of them was Margalida Ramis, spokesperson of GOB, the Balearics environmental pressure group. It was good, therefore, to read an interview with her in "The Bulletin" on Sunday.

The interview boiled down to four themes, two of them, the Sa Rapita development by Es Trenc beach and the import of waste for incineration at Son Reus, having been well-covered previously. The other two, the political environment (sic) and the nature of tourism, have also been well-covered but there were specific issues that cropped up with regard to these themes, and it is these I wish to address.

Sra. Ramis had a go at both the Partido Popular and the opposition. "Both sides of the house (the Balearic parliament) are totally inept." "The Balearics is not being governed and there is no proper opposition to hold the government to account." Neither of these statements brooks much argument, though when Sra. Ramis refers to the "opposition", does she mean all opposition parties or just PSOE? I wouldn't argue with her that PSOE is useless, but what of the PSM (the Mallorcan socialists) who form a pact with the Greens? Maybe she means them as well.

The point is worth raising because GOB, ostensibly a charitable organisation that devotes itself to a one-issue cause, has become a quasi-political organisation. The environment is a political issue, this much is undeniable, but GOB has gone well beyond this single issue.

A year or so ago, I suggested that the strongest voices of political opposition in the Balearics were, following PSOE's kicking at the polls, those of non-political parties, such as GOB. At the time, it had become involved in the campaign to keep TV Mallorca on air, a matter that wasn't its to become involved in. Prior to this, in March 2010, it had joined an anti-corruption "platform" alongside the OCB (Obra Cultural Balear). It does have an association, if not a formal one, with the Catalan language and culture promoters, the OCB.

This association was such that the two organisations were "overlooked" when invitations were being handed out for President Bauzà's inauguration last year. They were not overlooked by the UGT union in the Balearics when it was handing out its annual May Day "mentions" this year; they both received awards.

The two are not joined at the hip, but together they represent a loose union of similar interests. GOB is the environmental division of a broad, left-wing Catalanist movement. As such, it is an organisation that is poles apart from the Partido Popular. While GOB has strong arguments on environmental matters (and I don't necessarily disagree with GOB on either Es Trenc or Son Reus), one cannot lose sight of the political dimension or of its opposition to the PP. "Ultima Hora" once suggested that GOB had been "silent" when the Unió Mallorquina, Mallorcan nationalist if not left-wing, and PSOE had initially put forward the "decreto Nadal" which, among other things, was intended to allow hotels to build on their land. The paper implied that there would not have been the same "silence" had the decreto emanated from the PP. Yet, there are some similarities between this and the PP's new tourism law, to which Sra. Ramis voiced her opposition in the interview.

There has to be a trade-off between the economy and the environment. Ideally, there wouldn't be, but one will always tend to prevail, and it is usually the economy, which in Mallorca means tourism. And on tourism, Sra. Ramis came out with an extraordinary statement. I quote: "Eco and activity tourism has become big business", implying that eco tourism is a way forward for Mallorca. But what does this mean? Indeed, how can eco tourism be big business? Only if there are great numbers of tourists. And eco tourism ceases to be "eco" if there is human pressure. Moreover, eco tourism is more applicable to underdeveloped tourism economies, and Mallorca most certainly isn't one of these.

Let me say that I have much sympathy for what GOB stands for and for what it campaigns on. It is a vital voice in Mallorca, its conscience if you like. This is why Sra. Ramis is influential. But GOB has to decide what it really is. It was once challenged to put up or shut up by coming out as an explicitly political entity, which was harsh, as pressure groups can and should stand aside from the everyday political process. However, its political nature cannot be denied. There are other questions Sra. Ramis needs to be asked.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - GOB adds its voice to La Gola criticism

Following yesterday's news of the criticisms by the Alternativa Party as to the apparent closure of the visitors' centre in the La Gola park in Puerto Pollensa, the environmental pressure group GOB has voiced its concern as well, attacking the regional government for seemingly having reneged on a promise that the centre would open at the start of April and for having little interest in the promotion of birdwatching tourism.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

Going To Waste

Between the two town halls of Alcúdia and Sa Pobla, the company Tirme, which provides rubbish-treatment services on Mallorca, is owed in the region of 4.6 million euros. The amount is divided roughly evenly between the two administrations, a difference lying with how much interest they both owe (Alcúdia more than Sa Pobla).

This is not the first time that Tirme has gone in pursuit of outstanding debts from town halls. At the end of May, Inca got a demand for not far off two million. Just one strange aspect of the non-payments is that they relate to the period from 2008, in the case of Alcúdia, and from 2009 where Sa Pobla is concerned. How many other town halls are similarly in debt to Tirme? And if there are others, but even if not, how does a company operate when it is not being paid such vast sums?

Alcúdia and Sa Pobla are both negotiating payment terms, and the respective administrations are of course blaming the previous administrations. Which seems fair enough, but, just as one wonders how Tirme copes with not being paid, one wonders how it is that town halls can apparently just not bother paying. Sa Pobla is also in for about 1.35 million to three other service providers, including the rubbish collectors.

One gets the impression that the whole business world in Mallorca - that which has anything to do with the town halls or other public bodies - is surviving on the promise that they might one day actually get paid. But promises don't amount to a great deal and they certainly don't amount to cash flow or reassurances to lenders, if they are applicable.

Tirme, though, isn't quite like other businesses. Most would find 4.6 million plus the couple of million from Inca and whatever else might be outstanding rather too much debt to bear. Tirme doesn't. Or doesn't appear to. This may be because of who owns it - Endesa, Iberdrola, Urbaser and FCC. Tirme is also a monopoly, and its concession for waste treatment lasts until 2041.

Tirme's monopoly position is understandable in that its operations do demand heavy investment, so it has every right to be able to expect to have a period in which it can make a return on its investment. But not everyone is happy with this monopoly nor with how Tirme prioritises its investment and its operations.

A key part of Tirme's remit is recycling. Mention the R word and you can be sure that one organisation will prick its ears up: GOB, the environmental pressure group. In August, GOB issued a statement attacking Tirme for what it claimed was the company's concentration on incineration as opposed to recycling. GOB maintained that recycling plants were operating well below capacity, while the ovens were going full pelt in optimising as swiftly as possible the investment on incinerators at the Son Reus plant in Palma. Moreover, reckoned GOB, the incineration was allowing for the generation of electricity that was being commercialised.

GOB has accused Tirme of engaging in misleading marketing where its operations are concerned and has accused the Council of Mallorca, which, and truly bizarrely, has managed to extract a reduction in the cost of waste treatment for 2012 of slightly less than two centimos, of complicity.

But then, the story of waste management and treatment is far from straightforward; you wouldn't expect it to be, because nothing ever is in Mallorca.

In January this year, the anti-corruption prosecutors embarked upon the so-called "Operación Cloaca". This had to with allegations of false accounting centred on waste management operations sanctioned by the Council of Mallorca. Of those detained at the time, and I would make it perfectly clear that Tirme was not implicated in the Cloaca investigation, was an executive with FCC-Lumsa, one of the companies with a concession for recycling collection; FCC, which is a shareholder in Tirme.

Cloaca highlighted the dual system of waste collection (door to door as well as from green points) which had resulted in effect in payment for recycling doubling. Cloaca also revealed that town halls had been pressurised by an individual at the Council of Mallorca into adopting this dual system.

What Cloaca also highlighted was the sheer complexity of arrangements for waste management on Mallorca. Perhaps town halls simply don't understand what it is they are meant to be paying for. Now, though, Alcúdia and Sa Pobla accept that they have to pay Tirme. But you wonder how many other town halls owe the company and whether the reason for non-payment has been more than just an inability to pay.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Rotarvator: Theme park scepticism

The first rule of any plan for a new development, be it major or minor, be it housing or commercial, or be it theme park, is that the environmentalist group GOB will find some reason to get it strangled before it's even born.

The theme park between Llucmajor and Campos would be illegal. Well, what a surprise. You wouldn't need to be intimately acquainted with the arcane nature of Mallorcan land law to yourselves be able to announce that the plan was illegal. You wouldn't, because somewhere along the legal line it's almost bound to be illegal. Everything is in Mallorca, if you look hard enough.

What might come as a shock to GOB, however, is that legal objections may no longer hold much sway. Illegal? Fair enough, we'll make it un-illegal, we being the regional government. GOB is in danger of waging wars it has not the slightest possibility of winning. Has it not noticed who's running the island now?

The environment bit is not what really interests about the theme park plans. The first rule of any plan for a new development involving foreign investors, who may not be immediately well-known, is to assign to them the possibility of their "doing a Davidson" and to look hard enough to find some reason, however tenuous, to support the Davidson theory.

In case you need reminding, Davidson was Paul Davidson, he who made fools out of Real Mallorca football club (not, admittedly, that difficult to do) with his wild ambitions to buy the club. The few fools who weren't taken in hook, line, sinker and plunger by the otherwise-known-as "Plumber" were the Spanish press. They were hostile to him from the outset. Rightly as it turned out. But now, the chance to find a further example of "doing a Davidson" is leading the press to express scepticism and to dig for support to justify it.

What we are getting, therefore, are questions as to business credentials (not unreasonable) and to hints of some sort of Rotarian carve-up (almost certainly utterly unreasonable).

Setting aside any proclivity for xenophobia (and many a Mallorcan is guilty of it), the Rotarian ruse is extraordinary. Or, on the face of it, it is. To explain: The main man behind the Theme Park Group (TPG) is one Per Michael Pedersen. It just so happens that he is a Rotarian. So also is the president of the Balearics, José Bauzá. QED, some sort of accommodation of a Rotarian nature.

To understand the Rotary angle, over and above any hugely dubious suggestions of influence being wielded, one needs to appreciate a spot of Rotarian history, especially where the Spanish are concerned, because they have form. It was Spanish bishops in 1928 who, convinced that the Rotarians were "satanist" and "execrable", got the then Pope on-message enough to go along with the idea and thus bracket them with the masons.

The Catholic Church has since softened its stance, but there remains a tendency to equate Rotarians to the masons. Some might be both, but few would be their numbers. In the Balearics, there are said to be around only 400 masons. Rotary International, on the other hand, has any number of members locally. As its regional co-ordinator said in a recent interview, they have "nothing to do" with masons.

But in the scramble to find some means of supporting scepticism, poor old Pedersen's Rotary membership makes him a target for the seekers after a new "Davidson Effect". I can accuse Bauzá of many things, and do accuse and will continue to do so, but to suggest that there is anything more to the coincidence that he and Pedersen are both members of Rotary International is absurd.

Where there is more reason for scepticism relates to the business credentials. Pedersen has been involved with grand plans for a commercial centre in the Danish town of Greve. They have ground to a halt because of local town hall objections. But to use this as a rod with which to beat him is also pretty absurd. How many developments in Mallorca grind to a halt because of objections, be they from GOB or whoever?

What matters, or should do, are the financing of the theme park, the partners involved (and they have ample and relevant experience) and the plans themselves. It is these which raise my own doubts, such as the notion of the park being open most of the year, but they are practical ones, nothing more.

The worry that another Davidson might be done is understandable, but Davidson was some sort of fantasist. The theme park may have its fantasy world section, but, it is a very different beast. As for the Rotary stuff. Just forget it.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Brussels to be alerted over Muro golf course

Environmental watchdog GOB says that it intends to bring to the attention of the European Commission what it believes is the plan of the Balearic Government to unblock protection orders relating to the Son Bosc finca in Muro and so permit the development of the long-talked-about golf course.

Mouthing Off

Certain acronyms for organisations don't do these organisations any favours. The FA, for instance, can all too easily represent what critics claim it does, or rather doesn't do. And it's sweet.

Acronyms come in different forms. Some, like the FA, are spoken as individual letters; others are spoken as words. One of these is GOB. Its full name is a mouthful - Grup Balear d'Ornitolgia i Defensa de la Naturalesa. The D and the N have been discarded in allowing for a simpler pronunciation and in also allowing for an Anglicisation and for jokes at its expense. Got a hell of a gob on it. It's got a gob on. A gobby bunch of environmentalists.

Whenever an environmental issue emerges from some threatened undergrowth, and sometimes when it doesn't, GOB has a lot to say for itself. It is in the nature of the work of nature's defenders that it should feel compelled to make utterances against the designs of government, constructors, hotels, tourists, buses, road builders, drivers, and whoever else happens to loom onto the potentially harmful environmental horizon. It is work that is never done.

Mallorca For Sale is GOB's latest campaign. Not that it wants to sell Mallorca of course; it is fearful that Jolly Joe Bauzá and his Partido Popular chums will. GOB is outraged that Bauzá is contemplating creating some dynamism for the moribund Mallorcan economy by easing laws to enable the building of theme parks, more commercial centres and even a Formula 1 circuit. Consequently, it has started an online petition against the forces of development.

Some of this is dreadfully old hat. In the case of Muro's golf course, the hat dates back to the nineties and we're still no nearer knowing who might actually get to wear it. So old are some of the projected developments that GOB complains about, and so tedious are the endless arguments, that most people gave up long ago taking any interest in them.

It's not to say that GOB doesn't engage in good works. It does. But its constant carping has a touch of the cry-wolf; the public might believe in what GOB says but it withdraws its sympathy because there is so much carping and precious little by way of alternative solutions, save for the we should all go back to the land and live off wind and solar energy variety.

Nevertheless, it is an indication of the degree to which the environment plays a key role in decision-making in Mallorca, that of both business and government, that GOB's voice is given such prominence. Because the environment is such an important issue to the island, it is only right and proper that a strong environmental lobby exists to try and prevent excesses. GOB serves this purpose, and it does its job well in looking to meet its objectives of the "conservation, dissemination and study of nature and the environment of the Balearic Islands".

However, the centrality of the environment to the decision-making process has pushed GOB ever further towards politicisation. It is a charity, but its independence and indeed its objectives have become potentially compromised.

The Muro golf course was a case in point. When the PSM (Mallorcan socialists) assumed control of the environment department in the last regional government, the immediate decision to put a halt to the course's development came as absolutely no surprise; the closeness between the PSM and GOB and the similar statements the two were coming out with made it appear as though GOB was like the PSM's provisional wing.

The left having been pretty much eclipsed at the last election, the strongest voices of opposition are emanating from groups which are, in theory at any rate, not political, e.g. GOB. And when the established political left has managed to raise its weary voice, there too is GOB to add its support. But to issues that have nothing to do with GOB. Go back and look at its objectives. Where in any of these is there anything about the TV Mallorca radio and television station? Yet, there was GOB leaping to the station's defence. When an anti-corruption platform emerged last year, which was one of the groups? Yep, GOB. Again, there is nothing in its objectives about corruption.

In the past, GOB has been challenged to basically put up or shut up by coming out and making itself a political entity. It won't do, and nor should it, because it does perform an important function. But as it allows itself to be so constantly involved in the political process and to be involved in matters which are not within its remit, then its function does become open to question.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

When In Rome: Climate change

Two euros per night per guest in one to three-star accommodation. Three euros a night for four and five-star hotels. Sounds familiar? It is. But this is not Mallorca, this is Rome. The Italian capital's council introduced its own version of the unlamented eco-tax on 1 January. Rome's tax is earmarked for keeping the city clean and for urban improvements; it should raise 82 million euros per year. It hasn't exactly met with universal approval. Just as Mallorca's eco-tax was met with a level of hostility that saw it booted far out to sea a year after its introduction.

The eco-tax was flawed for different reasons. One was that the revenue that it might have generated, while not insignificant (60 million euros a year in the Balearics as a whole), was not that significant. Think of it this way. Had it been distributed to each town hall in Mallorca and the Balearics in a proportionate manner, it would have failed to bridge town halls' funding gaps. A second reason was that it was discriminatory and based on the principle of "polluter pays". It was also potentially pernicious in that, applied unilaterally, it would have placed Mallorca at a disadvantage.

The eco-tax was an example of attempting to apply fiscal measures to tackle environmental problems. Legislatures and executives reach out for more law and more tax in the hope that they can turn back the rising tides of environmental damage and climate change. The eco-warriors of Mallorca, GOB and its fellow campaigners, are now calling on the regional government to introduce a climate change law, one akin perhaps to that now operating in the UK.

There isn't a specific climate change law either in the Balearics or nationally. What there is, in addition to a whole raft of previous laws and policy documents, are measures designed to promote energy efficiency and the use of renewables; these form part of the new law on sustainable economy. GOB and its enviro-fighting allies want the Balearics to go a stage further in bringing in what Friends of the Earth were calling for last year for the whole of Spain.

GOB has specifically fingered the power station of Es Murterar in Alcúdia as the greatest offender when it comes to emissions. Notwithstanding the possibility of the power station converting away from coal, GOB is right to identify it as a major contributor to environmental damage in Mallorca.

However, the resort to legislation and taxation is an essentially mechanistic response to the problem of climate change. The debate is impoverished, partly because of the primacy of the legislature as arbiter of policy and partly because of the nature of the debate itself - you are either a climate change believer or atheist. In the latter camp, for instance, is the leader of the Partido Popular nationally, Mariano Rajoy.

The mechanisms of tax and legislation, combined with political confusion and the inconclusiveness as to whether climate change exists or the degree to which it presents a threat, prevent a far more challenging discussion and far more searching policy decisions.

What if the predictions for climate change are right? It is the inability to answer this question that leads to the impoverishment of the debate where Mallorca's future is concerned. The most dire predictions of rising sea levels and temperatures would create, by the middle of the century, a very different Mallorca. Introducing laws and taxes now might go some way to stalling the inevitable, but if the inevitable is indeed inevitable, then what on earth is going to happen?

It takes little imagination to consider the impact on coastal resorts and on tourism. The impact would affect thousands of homes and businesses. It takes little imagination, but for Mallorca's policymakers it seems to remain unimaginable. They don't have to imagine though. The centre for scientific investigation at Palma university set it out in pretty simple terms last summer. A 20 centimetre rise in sea levels, a 20 metre loss of beach and coast, extended periods of drought, a greater propensity for hurricanes and tsunamis. All by 2050.

If you own a property by the sea, you might be well advised to try and get shot pretty sharpish and hope no one asks any awkward questions. While the Costas authority yomps across the coastal regions in its bovver boots, threatening demolition here and there, it may as well not bother. Something else will do its work for it. The worthless properties caught under the Costas' thirty-year law will be worthless anyway. As will any other that might find its owner sharing its terrace with some jellyfish.

The problem is that you, and others, may well prefer to play at ostriches on the beach. It won't happen. But can you be so sure? Your head in the sand and an almighty great tidal wave suddenly washes up and fills your lungs. Because it seems unimaginable, it won't happen. Maybe it won't. Or maybe it will. Rather than taxes and pieces of law, the government should have a plan. The worst-case scenario. Does such a plan exist? No, it doesn't. Has it even been considered? Not as far as I am aware. Instead, rather like Nero, it fiddles with legislation or is told to do so by GOB while its own Rome drowns and is set ablaze by rising mercury.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Crazy Golf: Too many courses in the Balearics?

Where do you go in Spain to have a quiet round of golf? The Balearics. Whole courses uninhabited by the one thing they should be inhabited with - golfers. Golfers of a local variety that is. Ignoring overseas players, a survey by the information company 11811, reveals that there are fewer registered golfers on the islands, relative to the number of courses, than any other region of Spain. The finding is slightly misleading as a further discovery of the survey is that the number of registered players per head of population is the sixth highest in the country. But what really gives the game away regarding how unused courses are in the Balearics is the fact that there are more courses for each and every resident of the islands than anywhere else in Spain.

The revelation as to the low numbers of golfers is nothing new. In April 2008 a different survey came to the same conclusion. Golf, far from booming, seems to be standing still. Is the relative unpopularity of the sport among residents, however, important in the wider debate surrounding golf courses? Local golfers are really only a sub-plot to the main story of golf tourism, but the fact that they are spread so thinly across the islands' courses - 387 registered players per course - represents a weakness in the "home" market and raises the question as to whether Mallorca and the islands need more courses.

A year on from that previous survey, the Balearics business confederation (CAEB) issued its own report which stated that as many as five more courses were needed in Mallorca alone. These were courses, it said, that were necessary for the development of golf tourism, and it received support from the then tourism minister Miguel Nadal. The support was not unexpected; Nadal's party, the Unió Mallorquina, has been cast, alongside the Partido Popular, as the devil of golf expansion by both the left and environmentalists.

The arguments advanced by CAEB for the islands as a whole are those echoed in the endless row regarding the development of the Muro golf course. These are well-rehearsed arguments: higher-value tourists; diversification of the tourism offer; a means of countering tourism seasonality.

The problem with these arguments is that they are just that - arguments. What invariably seems to be lacking is evidence as to what more courses would actually mean in terms of increased tourism. One would hope that a business confederation could be capable of presenting a sound business case in favour of more courses, just as one would hope that the Muro course developers could do the same. If so, then where is it?

Beyond the claims and the prospects of some employment being created, the pro-golf lobby has failed to win hearts and minds by pointing to serious numbers. Were it to, then it might do better in the propaganda war with the anti-golf lobby, bolstered recently by a report from an international organisation (the Ramsar Convention on wetlands) which recommends that Muro should definitely be scrapped because of the environmental impact. Furthermore, it is the no-to-golf side which attempts to come up with figures that dispute the yes-to-golf's arguments.

In September the environmental watchdog GOB produced what it reckoned was proof that golf does nothing to increase low-season tourism. Based on hotel occupancy figures, it argued that were there golf tourism demand in the likes of Alcúdia or Pollensa then hotels would be open, which with some exceptions they are not. It wasn't proof because GOB had overlooked non-hotel accommodation and figures from November to March, but it did nevertheless suggest that the quieter months of April and October did not show any real benefit from golf tourism.

Though tenuous, GOB's findings do deserve some attention, while more rigorous research for the off season would not go amiss. And to these findings, we have to take into account what appears to be the lack of a bedrock of support for golf in the local market. One wonders to what degree, if at all, the apparent unpopularity of golf is a reflection of the environmental case. It would also be interesting to know how many of the registered golfers in the Balearics are foreign residents.

What do local people think about the development of new courses? Are they ever asked? In Muro a flavour of opinion was evident in October last year when townspeople demonstrated against the possible demolition of the bungalows in Ses Casetes des Capellans. One prominent banner read: "A golf course is for the rich. Capellans is worth much more".

Local demand for golf is only part of the equation, but it cannot be overlooked. If one takes Muro's course, what might this demand be? Excluding the population of neighbouring Alcúdia, where a course exists, the combined population of Muro and its other neighbours - Santa Margalida, Sa Pobla, Búger and Llubi (where there are no courses) - is around 35,000. Extrapolating from the figures in the latest survey, this would mean a course that might attract 260 registered players. 260 across five towns. It doesn't sound like much of an argument for building a golf course. You would need an awful lot of golfing tourists to make it work. An awful lot of golfers that no one seems able to put a figure to. Crazy.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Hand Of GOB: Coals to Alcúdia

Old king coal is not a merry old soul for the residents of Alcúdia. They would rather the old boy's pipe of transportation through the town were fiddled with and made less noxious, be it in the middle of the night or at any time of the day.

The old king coal of Alcúdia has long been making its way from the port to the Es Murterar power station - 30 years or so. In a shuttle of trucks it chugs along the three kilometres of road, sometimes straining, as with the incline leaving the port itself, and letting bits of itself go and skip onto the road and into the verges. Once upon a time, before they built the by-pass next to the Puig Sant Martí, the trucks used to take a different route, right through the resort. Things are better nowadays, but only in that the trucks are less intrusive.

Given how long coal has been transported to the power station, it seems a bit odd that it is only now that Alcúdia residents have decided to denounce its movement. In fairness it has long been a matter of discontent, but the current complaint against the dirt, an alleged absence of control, and the deposits may be a case of maintaining a momentum that started in the summer.

In August, there were protests against the emissions from the power station and against the transportation of coal. There was also a level of support from business for the proposal that Es Murterar should be gradually closed and its coal and oil-fired electricity generation be replaced by that from renewables. The proposal and the protests were the work of the environmental pressure group GOB. Has the hand of GOB touched the denouncing residents of Alcúdia? If so, then rightly so.

The trucks are mobile monstrosities, while Es Murterar itself is a panoramic affront, a blight on the landscape. Wander in the tranquility of the Albufera nature park and it is hard to ignore, rising from the park's west side, the chimney of the power station. Albufera and Es Murterar are in surrealistic juxtaposition; it seems inconceivable that the power station would be built today. Not where it is, at any rate.

For all the visual unpleasantness of the lorries and the power station, the actual level of harm to the environment is open to debate. The regional government's environment ministry maintains that particles of coal dust from the transportation are within limits that might be prejudicial to health. The power station has cut significantly its carbon emissions. Albufera is thriving. It wouldn't be were it being polluted.

As you might expect, however, not everyone is of such forgiving opinion: GOB for one. It believes that Es Murterar is responsible for some 60% of local greenhouse gases. The power station is also responsible for generating a half of the electricity consumed in the whole of the Balearics. But GOB also believes that local production of energy can be scaled right back so that renewables are the only source of electricity. It is the prospect of the majority of energy requirements being met by supply from the mainland via electricity cabling and natural gas that leads it to conclude that supplementary energy creation in Mallorca could avoid the use of coal.

The regional government doesn't dispute the possibilities of GOB's argument, but it has said that there needs to be some realism. Nevertheless, the day does seem to be coming closer when the level of electricity production at Es Murterar is reduced if not eliminated completely. Were it to stop though, a question would be what would be done with the site. The old power station in Alcúdia seems no nearer to being converted into the science and technology centre it is meant to become, and it has been abandoned for years.

For now though, the coal will continue to be transported and Es Murterar will continue to hum. Old king coal's pipe will remain lit, and the residents of Alcúdia will be less than merry.

But there's one other thing. Behind every good nursery rhyme there is another story. It is one that just about surfaced a few years ago but was then given greater prominence at the start of this year. You know those trucks. Who owns the company which transports the coal to the power station? Coincidental to the Alcúdia residents' denunciation is the start of the court case involving the former president of the Council of Mallorca, Maria Antònia Munar. The company belongs to her husband, 15% of which is hers.

Timing is everything.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Adopting Positions: Chopin should have played golf

Chopin is to be made an adoptive son of Mallorca. No doubt he'll be rubato-ing with contentment in his Parisian grave, well away from where his interred non-missus, Amandine Dupin (aka George Sand), will be cursing the fact of his joining her in adoption but rejoicing in her having secured the gig before him; she was made an adoptive daughter of Mallorca some years ago. Beat yer to it, Freddie, you sexual inadequate.

Chopin and Sand were simultaneously enchanted and appalled by Mallorca, and specifically Valldemossa. It's the enchantment that gets hyper-brochured, alongside mentions of Chopin's output while in his mountain retreat and of Sand's legacy to the island, commemorated in the annual Winter in Mallorca cultural programme, named after her book. The selective writing of the history of the Chopin-Sand stay in Mallorca disguises the brevity of that stay and the deterioration in Chopin's health during it, a consequence of a miserable and cold winter. How he actually managed to play the piano, rubato or otherwise, is a mystery. Or perhaps he was blessed with warm extremities. Well, a couple if not one other, if George is to be taken at her word.

Chopin was from Poland. It's a happy coincidence. Name some of the "new" markets from which Mallorca hopes to attract more tourists, and Poland will appear high on the list. Having an adoptive son to boast about doesn't presumably harm that objective: the tourism juan-ies should be frantically casting around for a few Russians or Chinese who might have some adoption credentials, other than members of the Russki Mafia or owners of shops in a Mallorcan McDonald's style - the Chinese bazar; one on every street.

While Chopin and the not-missus Chopin are invoked as part of the island's cultural and winter tourism, they might have greater contemporary impact had they played golf. Perhaps someone could conveniently unearth a 170-year-old pitch 'n' putt in Valldemossa; it would do wonders for the golf tourism project. Possibly. Golf, though, holds the key to greater off-season riches than piano playing. Or that's what they would have you believe.

It's doubtful that Chopin ever made it as far as Muro or the north of the island. But it is here that the battle for golf tourism is being waged - as if you weren't aware of this already. Muro's golf course development is going through yet another eighteen holes of it's on, then it's off; the promoters threatening to sue is the latest. Not, I imagine, that you care. No one much does any longer, except the main protagonists, one of which is the enviro doom merchants GOB.

The pressure group has been playing its own statistics game. What it has found, it reckons, are figures which "prove" that golf doesn't do anything to bolster tourism off-seasonality. I had hoped that the figures would be proof, as at least it would have been evidence of someone making a hard case one way or the other as to whether the Muro course, or indeed others, are of any significant tourism value.

The statistics show that in the lower months of the "summer" season, i.e. April and October, occupation in hotels in Muro and Santa Margalida (for which, read Playa de Muro and Can Picafort) is higher than those in Alcúdia and Pollensa. From this, GOB argues that golf does not benefit either of the latter two resorts, ones where there are golf courses extant, while it also argues that Muro and Can Picafort are already doing nicely thank you by comparison, and therefore, by dubious extrapolation, don't need a golf course (or courses). It then goes on to extol what are the highly limited business virtues of small niche tourism in the resorts, e.g. bird-watching.

What this argument overlooks is the fact that the early-season occupancy of hotels in Playa de Muro and Can Picafort can be explained by these resorts being centres of cycling tourism, more so than the other two resorts. By concentrating on hotel occupancy figures, it also neglects the fact that Pollensa has a far lower number of hotel places by comparison with the other resorts. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the fact that golfers might stay in other types of accommodation (and GOB doesn't take this into account), the findings do underline a point that I have made in the past, which is precisely the one that GOB is implying. Were there real tourist demand for golf in Alcúdia and Pollensa, then more hotels would open. Wouldn't they?

GOB's argument is persuasive up to a point, but there is one big hole in it - there are no figures for the months of November to March. The seasonality issue is a twelve-month affair. Winter tourism, or the lack of it, cannot be defined in terms of April and October. Which brings us back to Chopin and Sand. Has anyone ever attempted to prove a link between Winter in Mallorca and winter tourism? Maybe they have, and they're keeping schtum. GOB's claims are based on some science, but they seem post-hoc. However, they are not without a dash of merit. There ought to be more science, but one suspects that certain vested interests would rather there weren't.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Old King Coal: Alcúdia's power station

In passing yesterday I mentioned that GOB is wishing to have the power station (Es Murterar) in Alcúdia closed. It isn't so much the closure of the station as putting an end to carbon emissions. The power station runs on a mixture of coal and oil.

GOB has a strong case. By any environmental standards, including those of plain, layman common sense, the power station is something of a nonsense. While the environmental arguments have raged for ages regarding the building of a golf course on one side of Albufera, they are as nothing compared with what goes on on another side, i.e. at the power station.

If you drive along the road to Sa Pobla, past Murterar, you will see the grass verges stained with coal dust. To the back of the station are whole "fields" of ash which is used, decreasingly, in the making of cement. Lorries that move the ash and the coal from the port are in regular motion. There is something that is particularly absurd in having these filth-generators shuttling along the roads of Alcúdia every three minutes.

GOB is calling for, and is apparently getting some support from industry, the elimination of the coal and oil firing and for its replacement by renewables, wind farms most notably. It is not the only ecological power that has been attacking the power station and the use of coal. Greenpeace have, in the past, tried to disrupt the shipping of coal to the port.

Whether the wind alternative makes economic sense will doubtless be open to scrutiny as will the feasibility of changing the generating source. What it might all cost and who might pay for it are other questions. But, for once, GOB are likely to be able to call on widespread support, politically, from business and from anyone who believes that the emissions can make little sense, especially given the location of Murterar.


More on ducks
Well, pity a poor old duck in Albufera which finds itself covered in coal dust. It needs to go and have a swim in the clean waters of Can Picafort. The fallout from Sunday's shenanigans continues, "The Bulletin" drawing attention to the fact that Can Picafort council is not taking the actions of the illegal duck tossers lightly. Unfortunately, there is no Can Picafort council. Ho hum. But what of Santa Margalida council?

While it is obliged to set plod off in pursuit of the miscreants, it is open to question quite how determined Santa Margalida town hall is. "The Bulletin" would have it that its actions are "another example of how the local authorities are cracking down on local custom involving animals". Of course they are. The same actions that inspired the sympathetic Power Rangers poster for the 2008 fiestas, that prompted the head of fiestas to declare, after this year's tossing, that "there always have been ducks and always will be" (and he wasn't referring to rubber ducks) and that suggested to the town hall's delegate in Can Picafort that he should be photographed with duck supporters.

The town hall opted for rubber ducks only reluctantly and only after it had been fined for allowing the live ducks to continue to be used. Its attitude now is equivocal. "The Bulletin" devotes little attention to matters Can Picafort or northern, and it's a shame that when it does it can manage to get things wrong and to fail to understand what the situation really is. Poor.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.