The Forgotten Museum Of Water

Who among you remembers the museum of water? None of you? Then let me remind you. The museum, also provisionally and variously known as the touristic-environmental or environmental and education interpretation centre, was a project hatched by the last PSOE-led administration in the Balearics. The director of the then office of analysis and forecasting of the cabinet of the president was forced to announce in December 2010 that the project to create the museum was to be "parked", meaning on hold, also meaning there wasn't the slightest intention of going ahead with it.

Not that this was how it was put. It would be a project for the following legislature, the one due to begin in June of 2011. It never of course had the remotest chance of being a project for that legislature. For starters, PSOE and what remained of its coalition (the anonymously monikered Bloc, i.e. Biel Barceló and chums) were removed from office. In came the PP, and José Ramón Bauzá set about his austerity measures. It's unlikely he ever gave the museum a moment's thought. Unlikely that anyone else did either, including PSOE.

Museums of water do exist. There's one in Rotterdam, one in Saint Petersburg. There's a museum of water and steam in Brentford, which is sort of West London. But those other museums were not the ones that had attracted the attention of the then government. They had their eyes on what had been put in Zaragoza in 2008: The Expo for Water and Sustainable Development.

The expo had cost a great deal of money. Earlier this year, an in-depth report considered the consequences of that expo. All 266 million of them. That's the debt that is outstanding. It will take the city of Zaragoza decades to ever repay it.

At the back end of 2010, the true financial disaster of the expo was only starting to become apparent. Those were times of crisis and of increasing scrutiny of grand projects that had been dreamt up by Spanish municipalities, provinces and regions when the money had never looked likely to dry up and few questions had ever been asked as to suitability or wisdom.

The Balearic government had the idea to reuse the pavilion it had at the expo. Basically, all the material from the pavilion, or most of it, was to have been used in recreating the pavilion or some other structure. Where? Well, they never really got as far as truly identifying a suitable location, though three sites in Palma were mentioned in dispatches: the Intermodal Station; the desalination plant; and the Son Pacs water distribution centre. Another place was the Parc de la Mar, which in fact had been the original intention.

The project, though, was "parked". To the best of my knowledge, it has never been raised again as a potential project. There are, however, some questions, such as what ever became of all the stuff that had gone into the making of the Balearic pavilion. Some was reused, and this was explained when the parking of the project occurred. But what of the rest, for this had been something with a total value of around two million euros which had consisted of, among other things, various audiovisual projections in what were essentially tanks. They showed, for instance, the ways in which various cultures had managed water in the Balearics - from prehistoric times to the current day.

Perhaps all the kit and various fixtures and fittings were put to good use. But as there hasn't been a peep about this project for nigh on six years, who can really say. Like the project itself, the bits and pieces for the pavilion were forgotten about.

The overall value of the pavilion plus all other costs that would have been incurred for staffing at the expo and other reasons were only a small fraction of what the expo cost Zaragoza. But in the same way as the expo had been a grandiose scheme, so participation was also grandiose. What did it achieve? Anything?

It is perhaps ironic that an expo which proclaimed sustainable development should have ended up lumbering Zaragoza with an unsustainable debt. But it, as also with what went into the expo, such as the Balearic pavilion, were from an era when accountability was all but non-existent. Now, we hope, there is accountability, and oddly enough now might be the time to reconsider the museum of water.

There is a great need to raise awareness of water use and of water as a sustainable resource. Information campaigns can do so much, but what if there were a museum, suitably all singing and dancing but with a fundamental mission to stress the importance of water to resident and tourist alike? Might the awareness be that much greater? And how would it be funded? How do you think? The tourist tax, now being spent on water.

Into The Biosphere: Menorca

Mallorca has its areas which are protected in different ways. Wetlands such as Albufera are protected and so are parts of old towns. Menorca, on other hand, does not have specific parts which are protected; the whole island is. In 1993 it was declared a "biosphere reserve" by UNESCO. It is one of over 400 such "reserves" across the planet, all of them working within a framework of sustainable development. In accordance with its status, anything which gets done on Menorca has to be done in such a way as to preserve the quality of life and the environment. There are various initiatives which pursue these goals, such as Agenda Local 21, which is a plan for environmental activity drawn up by municipalities, of which there are eight in Menorca.

The UNESCO declaration was made on 8 October 1993, so the island is now celebrating twenty years of having become a biosphere. It is something which the Council of Menorca is shouting about, and there is any amount of self-congratulation going around, stating how well things have all gone.

But not everyone agrees that the biosphere has been the great success the Council would like everyone to believe. Indeed the Council has been identified as having always lacked both the skills and the money to make anything of Menorca's biosphere status in terms of attracting more tourism.

Esther Mascaró, writing in "Hosteltur", has laid into the Council and the Balearic Government. It is she who says that the Council has been found wanting. She adds that there is mistrust in the Council and in its ability to make anything worthwhile come of the biosphere status and that the government has never had the will to create a viable tourism product that exploits the island's natural attributes.

One of the reasons for apparent inaction lies with the fact that businesspeople, who might wish to establish businesses which are in line with the status and which would also help to attract more visitors to Menorca, especially out of the summer season, are hamstrung by the levels of bureaucracy and government. It is a familiar tale of woe that sees applications pass through municipality to provincial administration (the Council) to regional government and possibly also on to Madrid and Brussels and which means that it can take anything up to three years for decisions to be made, approvals to be given and permissions issued.

There was a recent forum on tourism and nature in Menorca. The tourism minister, Carlos Delgado, was there. But not for very long. Many were the complaints that he appeared less than interested or committed enough to have devoted more time to hear from local businesspeople and others. 

The forum highlighted examples in Spain where biospheres have been made very much more valuable in tourism terms than Menorca's has. A case in point is La Palma in the Canaries where, despite a similarly heavy reliance on tourism, there is a limit placed on tourist accommodation and a greater emphasis placed on maintaining the island's traditional agriculture and products. La Palma, similar in many ways to Menorca, sounds idyllic insofar as its biosphere status has been applied effectively, but it does benefit from being in the Canaries. Menorca is the wettest of the Balearic Islands and, as with the others, doesn't have the same winter sun and so therefore the same potential for winter-sun tourists.

But Menorca has suffered in other ways. Though a biosphere, it is not part of Turespaña's "ecotourism" product. Which begs a pretty big question why not. Again, the Council and regional government are accused of allowing this to be so. But while the Council of Menorca is criticised, there does seem, and this is not an isolated example, to have been a neglect of Menorca by the government in Palma. The experience with the biosphere does raise a question about how much the islands other than Mallorca are paid a proper amount of attention to. And it raises a further question, that to do with the Tramuntana mountains. These were awarded a different UNESCO status two years ago. What has happened since? Where is the plan for tourism, especially winter tourism, that its heritage status is meant to produce? Are the mountains, like Menorca, being either neglected or exposed to that much bureaucracy and to so many layers of administration that nothing is being done? 


* Esther Mascaró's article: http://www.hosteltur.com/114490_menorca-20-anos-reserva-biosfera-producto.html