Electric Light Orchestra: Mallorca's electricity

Endesa's recent announcement that cold weather had brought about record gas consumption levels in Mallorca was hardly a great surprise. Not because of the cold weather as such, but because natural gas has been supplied to the island for only two and a half years.

Infrastructure can take an awfully long time to be developed. The introduction of natural gas does give rise to the promise that the days of hernias and back problems, thanks to humping butane bottles around, might soon be something of the past. Natural gas is on its way north and west from its Palma base - to Inca and then onwards to Alcúdia and also to Andratx.

The piecemeal approach to the development of a gas infrastructure has echoes of that which brought electricity to Mallorca. There was little danger of there ever having been any light pollution in Mallorca before the turn of the last century, and for some time afterwards the danger only slowly became a possibility.

Electricity arrived on the island, not as you might have expected in Palma, but, of all places, in Alaró. 1901 was the year that the first electricity network was established, thanks to the vision of one Gaspar Perelló, native of Alaró, who had been to Barcelona and realised what vision could really be, thanks to the city's electricity system.

From the first bulbs being lit at the town's Mare de Déu d'Agost fiesta in 1901, it was still several years before other towns started to catch on to the idea. In 1912 Sa Pobla got its first real spark of electrification. The hundredth anniversary of lighting up La Puebla will be on 24 July, coinciding with the Sant Jaume fiesta, and doubtless there will be a display of lighting that befits the occasion and probably results in an overload of the system and power cuts for everyone else.

We can expect a 1912 overture with full orchestral accompaniment in a Sa Pobla piper and whistler style, and there will be further ones over the next years until 2026, the one-hundredth anniversary of the lights truly going on all over Mallorca. But all that sound and light in Sa Pobla will probably be as nothing compared with another electrifying one-hundredth birthday, as the grand switch-on in Sa Pobla was overshadowed, three months earlier, by a fanfare for the common man not on the Clapham omnibus but on the Sóller train. 6 April 1912 was when it was inaugurated, though to be electrically correct, it was to be another 17 years before an electric train ran.

A mere one hundred years later, the electrification of the Palma to Inca railway has now been celebrated, but how long it might be before the extension to Sa Pobla gets its juices flowing, who can tell? He who holds the keys to the 45 million or so that will be required to do so, along with the extension to Manacor; that's who.

With all these electric jubilees knocking around, it is unfortunate that a hundred years of electricity have to coincide with grand switchings-off rather than switchings-on. And in an effort to help with household energy bills, the regional government has hit upon the idea of having meters show consumption directly as euros, instead of kilowatts per hour, something that no one understands, rather like an Endesa bill therefore.

The story of Mallorca's electricity and indeed its trains at the start of the last century was one of lack of interest by government and a reluctance to invest in mostly any form of infrastructure. The story has changed in Spain as a whole, but in Mallorca the story is different to that of the mainland. Álvaro Middelmann, the director of Air Berlin in Spain and Portugal, has said that Mallorca and the Balearics should be compensated because of the islands' transport systems. The citizens of the islands pay the same taxes but they don't get the same benefits of motorway systems or high-speed trains.

Cost of energy is another disadvantage that the islands have. Investment there may have been in natural gas and also in electricity cabling from the mainland, but infrastructure is still lacking by comparison with the mainland. Part of the rail network has been electrified but it is inadequate and subject to political squabbles and funding cuts, as have affected extensions to Alcúdia and Artà.

Still, at least there is some public money. This didn't used to be the case. Alaró's electricity, Sa Pobla's electricity, the Sóller railway; they were all private initiatives. And in the case of the Sóller railway, it still is.


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MALLORCA TODAY - Gas up, electricity stays the same

Central government has approved its quarterly revisions of prices for energy. Electricity, with some changes to the actual formula for arriving at its price to consumers, will stay the same, but gas is to go up by 4.1% for natural gas and 6.1% for butane.

It's A Gas, Gas, Gas

Two coincidental but quite illuminating pieces from "The Bulletin" point to the part played by transport in polluting Mallorca. Much of it is self-evident, but it does highlight how dependent the island is on motorised transport. The head of the natural gas foundation points out that people here are "unused to using public transport" and that this public transport is "underdeveloped". He also says that the fleet of rental cars has risen by 40,000 in the past four years (from 20,000 to 60,000), though it is a bit unclear to where he is referring. In the other piece, it is said that this fleet increased from 20,000 to 65,000 between 1992 and 2007. As always, a bit of editorial inconsistency, but the point is still clear - there has been a substantial rise. Moreover, the number of taxi licences (in Palma) has not increased since the early '80s and the number of school buses has decreased.

Mallorca is an island built on the motor car. It has the highest ownership of cars per head of population in the whole of Europe. It is largely understandable though. Outside Palma, even were the metro actually operating (which it is still is not), the public transport network is not good. Trains are largely useless, though the proposed extension from Sa Pobla to Alcúdia would be welcome. Buses can be ok, but when they press the reserve buses into service during the summer, you want to try driving behind some of the exhausts that belch out filth.

As a result, the idea of converting buses to natural gas, in Palma at any rate, is also welcome. Natural gas is on its way to the island, which should be an advantage not just for some transport but also for household consumption which still relies on the vapour-full butane gas, though God knows what this might mean in terms of pipeline laying and therefore ever more roads and streets being ripped up in order to create the infrastructure.

However much the authorities may wish to see a move towards public transport, they will have a heck of a job. This is four or five vehicle per household land, not just two. And where, one might well ask, would any further public transport be built? At the same time as concern is being expressed regarding the growth in the island's population (demanding more housing etc), the pressure on land use comes from all manner of needs - and don't forget the strength of the eco-lobby that would put obstacles in front of most land development. Natural gas may be useful, but only up to a point.


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