This Wounded Land

There is an environmentalist group in Mallorca called Terraferida. The name means wounded land, and the group takes aim at what is sees as wounds inflicted on Mallorca's land. For Terraferida, human intervention is not benign. It responds to population growth, tourism, economic development and speculation. It serves itself at the expense of land, wounding it in the process.

Underpinning the beliefs of groups such as Terraferida is an unstated idyll, a hankering for a time before intervention altered the land. Yet human intervention goes to the heart of the supposedly unwounded land. It goes back to times many centuries ago, which have only recently been honoured by Unesco. The landscaping of the Tramuntana mountains was the product of ingenious intervention which created dry-stone walls, terraces and passages that survive to this day. The mountains are placed on a pedestal for tourism of an alternative variety - cultural, historical, natural - yet the mountains and this alternative tourism owe a great deal if not everything to human intervention. The motivations for intervention were quite different - they essentially boiled down to survival - but it was necessary to shape the land way back when, just as it is nowadays.

The key difference is the aggressive nature of this intervention. And interwoven with this is a connection with the land that can too easily be overlooked or not be appreciated. The connection can also be overstated, but somewhere in the middle there exists a soul in Mallorca that beats because of its land.

Contemporary political and social discourse is littered with references to land, to landscape, to scenery, to natural patrimony. This might be taken to be a consequence of the reassertion of the values of the land that were severely undermined by the process of "Balearisation" which changed coastal Mallorca irretrievably. Although Terraferida and others will point to more current-day evidence of aggressive intervention, it is the collective memory of Balearisation which informs much of this discourse. It hasn't been forgotten, and it hasn't been forgiven.

But if one goes back to times pre-Balearisation, the discourse was much the same. The early twentieth century founders of Mallorca's tourism spoke of little else than land and landscape. They were to be grateful to the publicists - the landscape artists, the writers who introduced this idyll in the Mediterranean to a gradually global audience.

It was landscape and patrimony, both natural and manmade (such as with the Cathedral), that the early movers of Mallorca's tourism promoted. And they did so, at least in part, as a response to crisis. It was one that affected the land - phylloxera.

The damage that was caused to the vineyards of Mallorca served only to reinforce the vulnerability of the island, one surviving mainly on a monoculture economy of agriculture. Tourism, predicated on land, was to provide a solution. Nowadays, the land is looked to as a means of providing a new solution to a different monoculture - that of tourism and principally a tourism of the coasts.

There has been much discussion about how tourist tax revenue is to be spent. Why, it has been asked, should revenue go to agrarian projects. One reason why is in order to recover, maintain or improve the landscape and the natural patrimony. It is too easy perhaps to consider landscape as being the Tramuntana and nothing else, purely because so much is said about the mountains. But this landscape - obviously enough - is everywhere, and it is one that provides, among other things, almond blossom at this time of the year.

The land has been wounded again. Drought and floods have created the wounds, and the land finds itself confronted by another enemy - xylella - which can deepen the wounds further. These are not self-inflicted wounds, like Balearisation was, these are natural and have an impact on the natural patrimony.

But there have been "plagues" before, such as phylloxera. The land recovers, and if human intervention can be shown to be at its most benign by hastening recovery or indeed preventing its need by stopping the destruction of almonds, olives and others, then so much the better. We wish them the very best. They are working with the soul of Mallorca - the land.

The Life And Death Of Trees

It was reported last May that almost 9,000 palm trees had been destroyed in Mallorca as a result of having been affected by the picudo rojo red beetle. The number of trees which had been affected since 2006, when the beetle was first detected in Mallorca, was put at around 11,000 from a total palm population of getting on for 275,000 trees.

Trees can be saved. I know of cases where they have been and where the trees are once more flourishing. Early detection, "shock treatment", as a gardener described it to me, constant treatment, trapping the beetle can help to revive trees and then go some way to eradicating the beetle.

It is a pest which is difficult to eradicate, especially as the beetle has no predator (birds and others shun it), but it can be eradicated. It is now over three years since the last beetle was captured in the Canary Islands (Fuerteventura to be exact). Constant monitoring led the European Commission to declare the Canaries free of the insect; the first region in the world where it has been eliminated.

It was first detected in the Canaries in 2005, a year before it was in Mallorca. From that moment on up until relatively recently, i.e. well beyond that last insect having been captured, more than 700,000 palm trees were inspected. Over 200,000 were treated. Only 659 were actually removed. In a coordinated effort which involved the general public, various administrations, strict import controls, geographic information systems and more, they managed to get rid of it. The cost of doing so was nine million euros.

By contrast with the Canaries, the response in Mallorca was uncoordinated. There was also complacency that bordered on gross incompetence. Latterly, the beetle has been treated very much more effectively and efficiently. Nevertheless, in 2015 the number of trees that were eliminated was almost 1,800.

The incompetence was as detectable as the evidence of the beetle was - trees slowly dying. Although it is generally thought that the beetle first took hold in Pollensa, it wasn't Pollensa where it was first detected: this was in Campos on the other side of the island. Yet Pollensa was to become the initial and most obvious part of Mallorca that was affected, so much so that it was dubbed "ground zero" for the beetle. The response was initially a state of denial. When action was finally taken, trees were cut down and the remains left in the open: a terrible decision. Eventually it was realised that the remains had to be burned or buried, preferably both. And the burning was ideally in an incinerator, not out in the open.

One can only conclude that it was a combination of incompetence and complacency that allowed the beetle to spread. One can add to this mixture a lack of resources, especially money. As the Canaries already had the problem (and were getting on with tackling it), as Valencia and Andalusia most definitely also had the problem, then why was not more done?

The complacency was perhaps because the beetle had first been found in Spain nine years before its presence was evident in Valencia. The first reported case was in a place called Almuñécar on the Costa Granadina in Andalusia. This was way back in 1994. The apparent slowness of the plague may have led some to believe that it wasn't the threat that it turned out to be.

Despite the destruction of trees and the regrettable sight of stumps that remain, in percentage terms it has been modest. But the anxieties and sadness caused should in themselves be sufficient to have administrations in a constant state of high alert in case another threat emerges. It has, and it's called olive ebola (xylella fastidiosa), a bacteria that is far less discerning than the beetle. Its appetite is for various tree species, over 300 it is reckoned, and these are not only fruit trees - oaks, sycamores, ornamental plants; they're all on its radar.

By comparison with the potential that olive ebola has for devastation, the effects of the beetle would be small beer. It is now being said that there were indications of the pest in Mallorca in 2012, so before it started to wreak havoc in Italy. If there were signs, it was only a few months ago that there were confirmed cases. But it turns out that there were more. Has the government been slow to react? Was it in denial, complacent or incompetent? Analysis was needed to be sure, it argues. It would now be easy, says the agriculture minister, to just destroy acres of countryside by cutting down thousands of trees. Instead the bacteria has to be fought. If the fight is lost, the destruction will occur anyway.

But there is hope because there is action, so one trusts that the mistakes of picudo rojo are not being repeated.

The Plagues Of Vince Vidal

Oh dear me, Vince, what have you done? Our friendly and favourite government minister, Enviro Man Vince Vidal, has been getting it in the neck big time. It was all Vince's fault that great hectares (one hectare equals 2.47105 acres) of Mallorca were under water, that entire crops were ruined, that farmers will be left destitute, that Cala Ratjada was crashing into the sea, that rocks were tumbling in abundance onto roads across the Tramuntana.

Yep, it was all Vince's fault. What had he been doing with himself for the past year and a half? Why hadn't he been out with his cement mixer to shore up a hole in the wall in Cala Ratjada? Why hadn't he been digging out environmentally unfriendly vegetation from torrents and collecting several hundred supermarket shopping trolleys, bits of old furniture, bags of building material waste and chunks of former pine and palm tree trunks which had mysteriously found their way into the same torrents?

He really hasn't had the best of luck, has he. It was also his fault that the taps had been running dry and the reservoirs had become small ponds. What can he expect next? A plague of locusts? That'll be his fault as well.

The drought and the floods were the consequence of historical inaction related to the water resource system and the maintenance of the torrents. Yes, it may well be that the likes of Muro had been demanding that Vince pitch up and clean out its torrent, but there is such a thing - strangely enough - as budgets. Why did Vince have such a barney with Cati Cladera at finance? Just because he's a Mésite and she isn't? Well, no, maybe it had something to do with needing more moolah to keep the torrents flowing properly.

The environment, we have become very aware, does need investment. If it didn't, then we wouldn't have had the former ecotax and now the new tax which pretends that it isn't an ecotax. Environmentalists GOB insist that it should be, while Palma wants to spend it all on piles of its crumbling patrimony. But call the tax what you want, there is the small matter of half of last year's revenue going on water. That's water as in seeking to ward off the worst that extended periods of dry and hot weather might throw at Mallorca. And why? Because there hadn't been investment in the past. That's why. Vince is not to blame for that.

Of course, he can't really do anything right. When the farmers were whining about insufficient aid to compensate for an absence of forage, this was all down to Vince been parsimonious. And there was he, a minister with previous eco credentials up to his beard. Shame on you, minister. Now that Noah has been forced to admit the livestock two by two, the farmers are agitating for a different reason.

At least they can be thankful that Madrid has finally remembered there is a Mallorca and will be emptying the contingency fund piggy-bank to compensate for British diners being unable to devour the earliest new potato crop. Vince, while his tears add to the inundations as he surveys the sodden spud fields of old Sa Pobla, will be thinking that he really needs to have a word with his chums at GOB. They earnestly believe that Mallorca should revive its full one-time agrarian glory (?). Are they mad?

His cabinet colleagues, alarmed that the government as a whole is being lined up and shot at for having caused the floods, have told Vince that he needs to become Enviro Action Man. And this is what he is doing. Appearing here, there and everywhere. But if Vince and the cabinet thought they only had the floods and the missing part of a harbour wall to worry about, they had to think again. A plague is either on its way or is already here. Not locusts but the "xylella fastidiosa", the bacteria also known as olive ebola.

Here's something else to suggest that GOB are a couple of trees short of the full orchard, because olive ebola can be devastating. Vince knows it can be. But he hadn't let on that there were more cases of affected trees than the ministry was saying there were. More than the vagaries of weather, it is the handling of olive ebola that is raising questions about management at the environment and agriculture ministry. Almonds, olives, cherries, vines; they're all susceptible. Vince must be wishing that all he had to worry about was the drought.

The Threat Of Olive Ebola

On Thursday, the co-operative Camp Mallorquí will be holding a conference in Palma. It will address issues such as technological innovation in agriculture, commercial opportunities and the future of farming co-operatives. But these will not be agricultural issues in general. There is one theme to the conference: almonds.

A further issue that will be discussed will be diseases and pests, and it is this issue which is by far the most pressing on the agenda. Almond trees are under renewed danger. So are olive trees. The danger comes in the form of a bacterium called "xylella fastidiosa".

Of American origin, this has already started to have a devastating effect on olive and almond trees in Italy and has now spread to France. Some 100,000 hectares of tree crops in Italy have been affected. There is no remedy other than to cut trees down and burn them in the hope of stopping the bacterium spreading. Which is a big hope. The bacterium is transmitted by leafhopping insects, which are extremely common.

So damaging has the bacterium been that it has acquired a deadly name - "olive ebola". It has not been detected in Mallorca, but farmers are naturally fearful that it might be. The consequences of it arriving on the island and taking hold could be enormous in terms of the island's economy and landscape. Its potential harm would greatly exceed that of the attacks on pines by processionary caterpillars or on palm trees by the "picudo rojo", the red beetle.

It poses a threat that is reminiscent of the phylloxera "plague" of the late nineteenth century. Mallorca had benefited greatly from the devastation of French vines by phylloxera earlier in that century. But when it arrived on Mallorca in the 1890s, the consequences for some rural areas of the island were catastrophic. Though it has since been argued that phylloxera was not as damaging as had been thought, there is no arguing the fact that it contributed to emigration and to a major shift in agricultural production. The vines were to return, but it is fair to say that the Mallorcan wine economy, a staple for so many centuries, didn't truly start its recovery until the 1970s, though the Franco regime had to take some of the blame for this delay because of its one-time insistence on an equally catastrophic self-sufficiency economic policy which placed an emphasis on subsistence crops.

There is a certain similarity between phylloxera and xylella fastidiosa. The grape phylloxera insect sucks sap from and feeds off leaves and roots. The result can be a fungal infection. Xylella fastidiosa insects also suck sap and transmit the bacterium in the process. There is still no actual remedy for phylloxera, though it has been combated by introducing resistant rootstock which creates a type of sap that repels the insect. As yet, a similar means of combating xylella fastidiosa appears not to exist.

At present, there is no formalised system of control against xylella fastidiosa, but the farming community wants controls of imported trees and of nurseries to be stepped up. A positive bit of news is that olive trees are typically imported from Andalusia where there is no evidence of the bacterium but also where the alert was first raised: the government in Andalusia, which has tightened its controls, was the one to let the rest of Spain know about the potential harm.

So, the threat, for the moment, is a hypothetical one, but as was seen with the palm beetle, it was public administration inertia that helped its diffusion. Before it truly took hold in Pollensa (where it is commonly said to have first been detected), attention was being drawn to an infection of palm trees. If local authorities had acted more swiftly, the loss of the island's palms would not now be as great as it is. At least, though, the threat is known about this time and it is one that would have greater economic consequence than the beetle. There are almost 25,000 hectares dedicated to almond production and a further 8,000 or so to olives, approximately a quarter of these for oil that has a protected designation of origin - the highly prized Mallorcan olive oil.

But there would be another consequence. Though the volume of farming land devoted to almonds has decreased significantly from what it once was, it has now stabilised, and it is almond production which gives Mallorca one of its most characteristic landscape features - the blossom of late winter. If this were to be threatened, if this were to disappear, there would be a loss very much greater than a mere economic one. And, unfortunately, there is more. It isn't just olive and almond trees that can be affected. So too can oleander and citrus trees, meaning lemon and orange groves. Just hope to God the bacterium stays away.