Reviving Alcanada's Power Station

Oh, here we go again. Remember the abandoned plans for the abandoned old power station in Alcanada? The abandonment of both may soon be over. One says soon, but how soon is soon? Ever?

Let's go back in time to days of plenty and projects for which money grew on relics of Mallorca's glorious industrial heritage. Over twenty million had been earmarked for "a clearing in the wood", the name given to the plan for the power station by the winning architects. It was to be a museum of arts and sciences, opened up to the shore and sea and incorporating the very much older defence tower (eighteenth century). It was, furthermore, to have become a reference point both for tourism and for culture in the north of Mallorca. No one ever actually explained how.

The idea wasn't that bad. It still wouldn't be that bad. This is because something, anything needs to be done with the old power station. It's looked after up to a point, but has of course long ago ceased to be used. When they built Es Murterar, some kilometres away by Albufera, there wasn't a plan for the old power station. It was simply left to rot, while the workers who had rented the cottages of the Poblat Gesa found that the urbanisation was allowed to rot as well.

Poblat Gesa will at some point become a shining beacon of residential redevelopment, Endesa cashing in on real estate inherited from the purchase of Gesa over thirty years ago. Gone will be an element of industrial heritage: an urbanisation which served the power station and which had officially been opened with due ceremony by the Generalissimo. The last thing that residents of the revived Poblat will want as a blocked sea view will be a rotting old power station. Time to rethink.

They were there last Tuesday. The Council of Mallorca's councillors for culture and infrastructure. They were examining this ruin. It is recognised as having industrial architectural value under a special plan, which is under a further plan - the land plan of Mallorca - which has spawned another plan, that for areas of landscape intervention. So many plans, so little product.

Under the architect plan, much of the power station would have remained. There's no point in valuing industrial architecture, if you then proceed to knock it down. Hence, and for example, the chimneys would continue to rise, ominous dual erections on the Alcudia coastline, prominent landmarks to be admired by those arriving on luxury small cruise ships docking at Alcudia's "boutique" port. Like the sometime-in-the-future residents of the Poblat, the high-purchase-power passengers demand an agreeable vista. Something, anything has to be done.

The "clearing in the wood" was greeted with some fanfare. Here was the future for the Alcanada power station. The future was very soon on hold. Then there was no future. It wasn't actually economic crisis that scuppered it. Even before crisis truly took a grip, there was an issue with the funding. The then mayor of Alcudia, Miquel Ferrer, said so: money didn't grow on old relics after all. That was in early 2008. Crisis did of course arrive. The power station was not deemed worthy of the millions, billions that the Zapatero government was tossing around under its "E" plans to environmentally buy Spain out of crisis (what crisis, as Zapatero didn't actually say but intimated). There was to be no governmental largesse for the power station.

Maria Salom, the president of the Council of Mallorca during the previous administration (2011-2015), once definitively said that nothing would be done with the power station. But these are different times. These are cultural heritage times of an alternative regime. In fact, the councillor for culture at the Council, Francesc Miralles, seems a decent chap, one who does have a genuine interest in combining culture with tourism. He hasn't, however, said what might happen with the power station. Museum possibly, but there is no clear statement about the future of the clearing in the wood.

One can but hope. The power station cannot simply be allowed to continue in its now decades-long limbo. Might it be a beneficiary of tourist tax revenue? Over twenty million would be a lot: roughly a quarter of annual collection. The regional government says that the tax won't be used for major projects; rather, a series of mini projects. But some revenue could go the power station's way. Don't rule it out.

However the funding might be for whatever the new plan might be, one hopes that this plan is more clearly explained than the last one. More clearly thought through in terms of what a museum (were it to be so) might entail, in terms of who actually might want to visit it and in terms of the return on investment.

* Photo from the abandoned Poblat of the power station taken a few years ago.

From Naviform To Nadal: Manacor

Manacor, Mallorca's third largest town, the commercial centre for the eastern Llevant region of the island, birthplace of the most famous Mallorcan ever, Rafael Nadal, but a town known less, by tourists at any rate, than its coastal resorts - Porto Cristo, S'Illot, Calas de Mallorca - and its caves, those of Drach and of Hams. It is a town, rather like Inca, which can tend to be overlooked and dismissed on account of its industrial/commercial nature. Yet there is, as with any town in Mallorca, a great deal to commend it and a great deal that is of interest to be discovered and learned.

One of the first times that Manacor loomed onto my radar was when I found the story of the ghost of the neighbourhood of Fartàritx. It turned out, or so it would seem, that this ghost was a simpleton by the name of Pere-Joan. When he died in 1820, the appearances of the ghost stopped. The ghost story is one of the more unusual ones that goes into the making of the history of Manacor, a history which is on display at the town's museum.

There have been other famous people from Manacor. Two of them also brought the town firmly into my consciousness. One of them was Antoni Maria Alcover, one of the most important literary figures that Mallorca has ever produced. Linguist, folklorist, story-teller, Alcover is something of a current-day hero for the Catalanist tradition. In terms of literature and linguistics he is on the same sort of cultural pedestal as that old mystic Ramon Llull, but he did something which Llull didn't; he co-compiled the "Diccionari català-valencià-balear". He has become known as the "apostle of the language": the Catalan language.

A very different historical figure was Simón Ballester (aka Simó Tort). In the middle of the fifteenth century, Ballester led an uprising against the governor of Mallorca. He and his men made at least three attempts to attack Palma and to get rid of the governor. The revolt failed, he fled to Menorca, was captured, returned to Mallorca and executed.

The point about Ballester, Alcover, Pere-Joan and even Rafa Nadal is that they all contribute in their very different ways to the story of Manacor and they are all representative of the richness of the past (and the present) that resides in the town and in other Mallorcan towns. Manacor may be known more for what exists on the coast but there is a great deal away from the coast that is also worth knowing and some of it is to be found in its museum.

This building is in itself part of the town's story. It is located in a manor house, Torre dels Enagistes, which dates back to the thirteenth century. The museum has exhibitions which relate to different eras, starting with prehistory and so with the Talayotic period and what indeed came before it: the Naviform era, so-called because of the way that dwellings were built in the shape of upside-down ships. The museum is remarkably good in identifying time frames. The Naviform people, who provided the first evidence of proper settlement in Manacor, were around from 1700BC. The Talayotic period came some six hundred years later, and there is plenty of evidence of Talayotic settlements dotted around Manacor, and the Talayotic people were later, from the seventh century BC, engaged in trade with the Ebusitano, merchants from Ebussus, aka Ibiza.

But moving much nearer to the present day and to Manacor's reputation as an industrial and commercial centre, the museum is staging a special exhibition dedicated to trades and crafts which have, for the most part, disappeared. The point is made that, though these were trades that were to be found in Manacor, they were ones that would have existed across Mallorca. They were trades which were commonplace, going back centuries, such as to the dairy which was certainly established in the mid-eighteenth century, and which numbered roughly forty in total - anything from healers and water diviners to makers of noodles and to those engaged in trades which survive; bookbinders, for instance.

These traditional trades and crafts didn't necessarily fall by the wayside on account of the industrial revolution of tourism. Though it is said that Mallorca was industrially underdeveloped before the arrival of tourism, this is accurate only up to a point. Manacor is an example of a town which disputes this argument. It transformed itself from the start of the last century thanks to artificial pearls and furniture.

The traditional trades serve as a reminder of times that will not return and of Manacor as it once was, but remembering their passing serves to emphasise the fact that Manacor grew to be the town it now is not because of traditional trades but because of the pre-modern ones that arrived before tourism.

* Photo of Manacor Museum from: http://www.balearsculturaltour.net

MALLORCA TODAY - Can Llobera could become a museum

Pollensa town hall is in talks with the Council of Mallorca to convert Can Llobera, the old family home of the poet Miquel Costa i Llobera, into a house museum. The Council was responsible for two-thirds of the funding of the house when it was bought in 2005, but the house has been closed ever since and its condition had deteriorated badly before recent restoration work was undertaken.

See more: Ultima Hora