The Pointlessness Of Voting For Beaches

Beaches naturally arouse a great deal of interest. There are, it is obvious to say, a great number of them in Mallorca. Where would the island be without them? So, when it comes to working out which is the best beach, there is also naturally a fair degree of rivalry and attention. Or is there?

Niumba is TripAdvisor's holiday rentals arm. Some 20% of all properties it offers (the total worldwide is more than 300,000) are in Spain. Niumba, in keeping with one of TripAdvisor's apparent missions to be "the word" when it comes to determining bests-of, has set up a poll to decide the best beach in Spain. However, unlike the free-for-all that one normally gets, there has been a pre-selection process. There are only 25 beaches to vote for, two of which are in Mallorca. These two are, in a sense, the same beach - Puerto Alcudia and Playa de Muro. The beach on the bay stretches for kilometres and is only interrupted in a minor way by the canal from the Lago Esperanza and in a more major way by the canal from Albufera.

So, Niumba blog users are being asked to distinguish between the two. For what it's worth (and frankly it isn't worth very much), the Puerto Alcudia stretch is not the proud possessor of a Blue Flag, whereas Playa de Muro is. People have until 25 June to cast their votes. As of yesterday morning, there were only two beaches in it. Guess which ones. Playa de Muro had suddenly leapt ahead of Puerto Alcudia with a 41% share against 38%; Puerto Alcudia had, the day before, been well ahead.

There were, up to half seven on Friday morning, 573 votes. Fifteen of the 25 beaches had polled not a single vote. It seems that no one is paying this a great deal of attention, apart from the town halls in Alcudia and Muro plus some of the local media. Facebook has been used to generate votes, which is fair enough, but if nowhere else is particularly bothered, then one is bound to get a distorted view. Which isn't to say that the two beaches don't deserve to be vying for the number one spot. They are both excellent. But the poll, because of its pre-selection, clearly eliminates other beaches on the island and, in truth, is all a bit silly. Still, publicity, one supposes, for Niumba, though even that is questionable. 573 votes?

A Tale Of Two Tourist Information Offices

Once upon a time the tourist information office in Puerto Pollensa was in a side street. I can't quite remember which one (Monges? Elcano?). It doesn't matter which one. The point was that it wasn't the greatest location. Recognising this less than optimal site, the solution was to be a new office by the yacht club roundabout. An interim measure had to be adopted while the old office was vacated and the new one was created. So off to the old municipal offices went tourist information. Finally the new one became available.

The thing was that it was small. Always has been small. Location-wise, though, it was excellent, and right by the bus stop as well. Perfect. Then of course the bus stop had to be moved because of the pedestrianisation. The location was still good, though. However, it has now been accepted that the office is too small, which everyone knew was the case.

The movable tourist office is to therefore get a new location - in a shop along Juan XXIII: number nineteen to be precise. It's not a bad location either, but it isn't optimal.

Pollensa has had an issue with its tourist information offices; they have regularly been on the move. As with the port, so it has been with Cala San Vicente and the town. In the case of the latter, it may well be that the office will get a prime location in the restored old fish market on the Plaça Major. This will be a great improvement on being either in or next to Sant Domingo: there has been some chopping and changing.

Plaça Major will ensure a healthy level of traffic, which is what a tourist office demands and which is why it needs to be in as good a location as possible. Contrast the movements in Pollensa, therefore, with Alcudia and Can Picafort. Alcudia town has its office where the market is and right by the bus stops. The port's office is slap bang on the Paseo Marítimo. The one in Ciudad Blanca has a new home. By the beach. It has been moved from a pokey office which, although only a few yards off Pedro Mas y Reus, meant that it didn't receive anything like the traffic it should have done. Hundreds, thousands of people will pass the new office on a daily basis.

In Can Picafort, the old tourist office was in the municipal offices next to the Guardia Civil and local police. It was basically in the middle of nowhere. No one went there because no one could be bothered or could find it. So a new one emerged on the prom, close to the marina. If there is such a thing as an ideal site in Can Picafort, given its great sprawl, then this was it. Moreover, its movability is such that a crane can lift to a slightly different spot, which a crane once did.

A new facility has been required in Puerto Pollensa; this much is clear. But at the same time as it is being moved away from a more optimal site to a shop on Juan XXIII, the office in Ciudad Blanca, a brand spanking new one and of good size, has been created in an ideal spot. The photo shows it in its white and grey lack of splendour (everything has to be white and grey nowadays; architects have decreed thus). Good location, even better if it were actually open.

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.

MALLORCA TODAY - Bellevue new lease terms

A company formed by ex-directors of Hotetur has put forward a proposal to lease Alcúdia's Bellevue complex for a period of seven years at an annual cost of 5.5 million euros. The company, called Blue Sea, has to wait for the offer to be cleared by the administrators, but if it is accepted it would replace Al Andalus, the company which has been renting the hotel complex from the owners Posibilitum.