Days Of Renting And Sewage

So then, just so everyone is clear ... Alcudia town, Pollensa town, El Vilà, La Font and Ullaró are saturated. Everywhere else isn't: Puerto Alcudia, Alcanada, Playa de Muro, Can Picafort, Son Serra, Muro, Santa Margalida, Sa Pobla, Búger, Campanet, Crestatx, Bonaire, Barcares, Puerto Pollensa, Formentor, Cala San Vicente.

How on earth do they arrive at such conclusions? No one really knows. They just do. And having arrived at these conclusions, the saturated areas can be eligible to no more than sixty days of holiday rental per annum, licences renewable every five years at the mere cost of 5,000 euros per accommodation place, assuming any licences are eventually forthcoming.

Licences being forthcoming is as much of the issue as all this daft zoning business. It isn't clear how they will be divvied out. I have seen a list per municipality of rental places, but as this list comes to over 100,000 places I have to assume that it is one that takes account of what is already legal (there are only some 30,000 new places on offer). If I'm reading this list correctly, in the case of Pollensa, as an example, there would be some 3,000 going spare. How many of these might end up being apartment places would be anyone's guess. There are hurdles to be overcome, such as communities' rights of veto.

Pollensa's mayor, Miquel Àngel March, has said that he's satisfied with the conclusions. Pollensa is saturated, thus there is the sixty-day restriction. But what was it that March said almost two years ago about problems of accommodation in Puerto Pollensa? I don't know that he is entirely satisfied. Alcudia's Toni Mir isn't satisfied, because the town is deemed to be saturated. The town hall will be letting the Council of Mallorca know what it thinks of this saturation. It won't get very far.

Elsewhere, Sa Pobla's Biel Ferragut is doubtless happy. The town hall has been betting on a favourable rentals outcome in order to boost the Sa Pobla tourism economy. Muro's Marti Fornés hasn't said anything; he's probably keeping his head down, given his historical links to the local hotel industry. Joan Monjo in Santa Margalida, an El Pi man like Mir, has no saturation concerns.

For now, though, it is all a bit of a waiting game. The Council of Mallorca still has its plan to tidy up, and the government has its moratorium to finish. Nothing, it seems to me, is likely to alter this summer. There are too many factors to take account of in facilitating licences, and they will take time to deal with.

While Santa Margalida town, Can Picafort and Son Serra have been given the blue or orange colour-coded all-clear for 365 days a year rental, the town hall is in the process of reclassifying land in Can Picafort in order that some new hotels can pop up. The timing of this, what with all the discussion of saturation (or not), might be considered a little unfortunate. And just as unfortunate is the ongoing row over the Son Baulo sewage and water treatment plant.

A reason why a new plant is needed is that the one in Albufera can't cope with all the additional demand placed on it by tourism. Increased numbers of tourists have meant increased strain on a plant that is considered to be obsolete. Adding more hotels in Can Picafort would simply create even greater problems. Yet Santa Margalida town hall continues to defy everyone and anyone when it comes to the Son Baulo plant.

Muro town hall is now taking the matter to court. Specifically, it wants a legal review of the Santa Margalida decision to unilaterally break an agreement for the Son Baulo plant that was signed in 2005. In a statement, Muro makes clear that at the turn of the century it was already understood that capacity at the Albufera plant was being exceeded. That was eighteen years ago, and nothing has happened.

Adding greater weight to the Muro court case is the decision of the government's Abaqua water agency (the successor to Ibasan, which was the agency that signed the 2005 agreement) to instruct the regional attorney to challenge the Santa Margalida decision. The agency points out that the Son Baulo plant was declared to be in the general interest in 2010, meaning that there isn't a legal obstacle blocking its construction. That's the theory anyway. In practice, eight more years have passed, and the courts are now involved.

Neighbours At War: Sewage treatment

Lurking on the edge of the wetlands of Albufera there is something which, from an aerial view, looks like a giant painter's palette. Its colours range from grey-silvers to greens to royal and deeper blues. It is the Albufera sewage treatment plant. Most people don't know of its existence, except perhaps because of the occasional whiff. The rustic part of Playa de Muro (the so-called Sector Two), which comprises a couple of urbanisations, nine hotels and an awful lot of forest and dunes, is subject to strange smells. There is, especially in high summer, one that is like burnt sulphur. I have always assumed this to be because of a sort of marsh gas from the low-level wetlands and vegetation. I may be right. But there are other more pungent smells. An antiquated sewage pipe network is one cause. An antiquated sewage plant may well be another.

The plant is not far from Playa de Muro's border with Can Picafort. It is, therefore, within the municipality of Muro, whose neighbour, Santa Margalida, shares the facility. Or to be more specific, the coastal resorts of Playa de Muro and Can Picafort - with their combined eighty odd hotels - share it. The transient tourist populations of the two resorts massively dwarf the resident populations. These are places which exist primarily because of hotel tourism, and that hotel tourism lies at the centre of an ongoing sewage row between Muro and Santa Margalida town halls.

The Albufera plant, like the pipe network, is antiquated. A new one or an additional one has been required for years. The regional government's environment ministry has earmarked a site for a new one. It is in Son Bauló, the eastern part of Can Picafort. This proposed site has created a stink, the reason being that there are fears that its outlet - 3.7 kilometres out to sea in the bay of Alcúdia and at a depth of 25 metres - might lead to beach pollution and cause destruction of posidonia sea grass. Santa Margalida town hall, in a rare demonstration of unity between its usually antagonistic political parties, continues to flatly reject the plant's construction. The environmental concerns are one reason, but there are, as always, political and commercial ones as well.

Santa Margalida's stance is essentially one of not in our backyard, to which Muro has pointed out that for years Santa Margalida has been happy enough to make use of a sewage plant which is in Muro's backyard. Muro claims that the Albufera plant is creaking, that it could itself cause environmental contamination (to the eco-sensitive wetlands) and that it is past its sell-by date. It, therefore, maintains that the new plant is an absolute necessity. Santa Margalida says that the Albufera plant should be extended. The result? Stand-off.

Into this row has now entered a throwback political dimension. Santa Margalida maintains that the Son Bauló solution was something of a stitch-up involving the discredited former president of the Balearics, Jaume Matas. It was a political pact, the town hall claims, between Matas and the former mayor of Muro, Miguel Ramis, by which a study of the Son Bauló site was given the appearance of legality through some alleged manipulation. Miguel Ramis was the founder of Grupotel; he still is its president. Ten years ago, hoteliers in Playa de Muro, of which Grupotel is one, clubbed together and bought land in Son Bauló; the very land on which the sewage treatment plant may be sited.

That Santa Margalida is now seeking to make some political capital out of the affair adds a new twist to the story but it is a twist which seems all a bit late in the day. Furthermore, around the time that the land was being acquired, there did appear to be general consensus between the town halls as to the necessity for a new plant and for it to be established in Son Bauló. The former mayor of Santa Margalida, Antoni del Olmo, signed up to an agreement in 2005, one which Muro says that Santa Margalida should honour. It should also be noted that the acquisition of the land by the Playa de Muro hoteliers was transparent and one which most parties at the time seemed to accept as a solution in a spirit of sharing and co-operation between hoteliers in the two resorts and between the two town halls.

Since that time, though, the politics have moved on. So, what happens next? GOB, the environmental watchdogs, have added their penny's worth, saying that there should be a third option, one that is neither Albufera nor Son Bauló, but without offering an actual alternative. All the time, while the arguments fly, the Albufera plant, according to Muro, becomes more of a risk. One day, perhaps, the whiffs in Playa de Muro will be even more pungent.