Cry Wolf – Muro’s golf course

As sure as night follows day, so GOB objects to the Muro golf course. As sure as yesterday I referred to the payment of the tax being the final obstacle overcome in starting work on the course, so it could have been anticipated that the pressure group would exert some pressure to create a new obstacle. GOB is going back to an agreement in 2001 that effectively grouped the site of the course, the Son Bosc finca, with neighbouring Albufera as a protected area of environmental value, an agreement that was broken by the government of Jaume Matas in 2003. In retracing steps, yet again, GOB is levelling responsibility at President Antich (who was president in 2001) for not having “lifted a finger” to stop the work now going ahead.

Where or when does all this stop? The arguments have been going on for that long that GOB can indeed bring up something nine years old. Look back at maps for Playa de Muro of several years vintage or more, and you are likely to see “Golf” represented; it was there because it had been anticipated, years ago. It is fair enough that developments are no longer just bulldozed into being with disregard to opposing views or to environmental issues, but the bulldozers are soon going to be rumbling over Son Bosc, and there is little that GOB can do about it, short of gaining some sort of injunction. Its main political allies appear to be the Mallorcan socialists (PSM) who are trying to make things tough for the environment ministry (which has given the go-ahead) and which is headed by the Unió Mallorquina. Always the UM, seen as the devils of current scandals and the great devils of more and more golf. The PSM wants the ministry to act “urgently” in preventing the work. It won’t.

It is in the nature of pressure groups which defend nature to object to just about anything, and GOB is no different. It does much that is good, but it creates its own problems by its constant wolf-crying, as does the enviro lobby as a whole which does itself no favours by coming up with ideas that are just plain bonkers, such as giving the coast road between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa back to beach and nature. In truth, the biggest environmental battles have probably been lost, just go and look at Can Picafort’s frontline where once there were dunes and forest which served as natural safeguards against sea encroachment. GOB fights the good fight, and its fights can sometimes be justified, but, as ever with single-issue groups with loud voices, how representative is it of the democratic process? It has been said that GOB should front up and join the established political process.

The Muro golf course may be of questionable value in terms of whether it is actually needed, but the environmental issues have been addressed. GOB, and the PSM, should just get over it, and, in GOB’s case, move on to the next battle-ground. The course will be built. Long live the golf course of Muro! (I say that with some irony, as some of you may know from previous postings that I don’t believe there is a case for it – in terms of demand.)

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Chestnuts Roasting – Street cleaning and golf

A couple of old local chestnuts are being given a further roasting: one that has been long on the brazier and remains so, the other we all thought had been thoroughly cooked and eaten. They are – the street cleaning of Pollensa and the golf course in Muro. Yep, one more time for both of them. Here we go …

Pollensa’s street cleaning goes hi-tech
Pollensa town hall is to double its investment on street cleaning, bringing the annual spend up to 800,000 euros. For a cash-strapped and indebted town hall this represents a far from insignificant increase. The latest round of tendering for the cleaning gig is in progress, and so presumably there will be a contractor in place before long that does actually have a contract.

In return for this increased spend, the good people of Pollensa can now expect to be asked their opinions as to the levels of service. Dependent upon satisfaction findings, the new contractor will be subject to variable payments. Low satisfaction and they don’t get so much. Performance payments in other words. How novel. Moreover, the town hall is to introduce a system of real-time monitoring, via satellite positioning technology, of worker activity and frequency of cleaning. And there I was, mentioning the other day the apparently questionable privacy legal issues with webcams. Someone’s going to be watching you, fellas! Now, there’s an idea, add a webcam to the satellite monitoring, and everyone can watch the dog mess being swept up. They could integrate the opinion surveys and make those function in real time as well. Vote now for the chap doing the pinewalk – marks out of ten! One could then also watch the amounts being paid – or not – to the contractor, like a Comic Relief running total, but bearing in mind that investments can go down as well as up.

And finally … finally they’re building the golf course in Muro
Work on the golf course in Muro is due to now start in the next couple of weeks. You might be forgiven for having thought that it had already started and that all the final impediments to the course’s creation had been overcome. Indeed it had been reported, as long ago as 3 September last year, that work was set to begin during September. The delay seems to have had nothing to do with the endless debates about rare orchids and other environmental matters that had so taxed many, mainly the enviro pressure group GOB, but with the payment of a tax, some 170 grand to the town hall. This money, to be coughed up by the developers, was, we were led to believe, meant to have found its way into the emptying coffers of Muro town hall all those months ago, but has only now been handed over. Which does make one ask why there has been such a delay. There again, the debate regarding the building of the course has gone on for that long that a few months more won’t make much of a difference. And no-one will actually be teeing-off in Muro for some time yet. At least two years, possibly longer. Doubtless we can now anticipate beardies prostrating themselves in front of bulldozers in order to protect the orchids. Not that they need to, as the protection of rare flora on the Son Bosc finca is a condition of the development, and the developers have – for the duration of the work – engaged a firm of environmental consultants who will presumably ensure that the environmental conditions are indeed adhered to.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

No More

Does the regional government have a policy on golf courses? As far as the opposition is concerned, it does not, and it is not difficult to understand why it might think this. On the one hand, there is the tourism minister giving more or less carte blanche for the building of more courses and on the other there is the transport minister saying that no more will be built. He also reckons that the 23 in existence on Mallorca are sufficient and that many of these are under-utilised, a view that it is difficult to disagree with.

This contrariness is, though, hard to fathom. The tourism ministry’s stance would see, for example, the building of the course in Campos, along, in all likelihood, with a hotel complex. This course might actually make sense, given that Campos has so little by way of tourism. But in the wider scheme of things, i.e. taking the island as a whole, whether any more courses are needed must be open to question, something which, more than the environmental issue, has always dogged the credibility of the building of the Muro course.

Over the past eighteen months or so, there have been different reports, one saying that the island is “golfed-out” and agreeing that no more are warranted, another reckoning that no-one should be more than 50 minutes from a golf course, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. More courses probably. There has also been the association of golf tour operators saying that the numbers coming to play golf could rise by 15%. And when its president met the tourism minister, the latter forecast a situation in which the Balearics would become the leading golf destination in Europe.

None of this quite adds up, unless, that is, one accepts that a 15% rise in golfing tourists could be accommodated by current courses, which probably is the case. But as golf is presented as being such an important facet of the so-called “alternative” tourism, the fact that the government seems to be unclear as to its actual policy does seem rather curious.

If not golf, then how about half-marathons to swell the tourism masses? Or how about a film festival to do likewise? From next year there will be a half-marathon in Pollensa – in April in fact. And in 2011, also in April, there will be the first Mallorca International Film Festival, which presumably will become an annual event. Both of them are worthy enough, but neither has much to do with improving the winter tourism scene, given that they will both be staged just prior to the start of the main season and that neither will necessarily generate much by way of “new” tourism.

And still on a sporting theme … Real Mallorca. Thrice woe, or maybe several times more woe. The latest farce, the selling to the Martí family that has proved not to be a sale as the previous interim owner has not been paid, now sees the club back in the hands of that interim owner, Mateu Alemany. This lawyer is something of a club hero as he regularly pops up to try and dig it out of its latest hole. One might ask if he was perhaps less than diligent in gaining assurances as to the financial capabilities of the Martí family. He accepts that he made a mistake but that the information he had led him to believe that they would prove acceptable. Alemany is right when he says that no-one, least of all in the press, raised any great questions about the family’s ability to finance the club. One thing’s for sure, he will make damn sure that any new owner does have the financial wherewithal, though the questions remain as to what state the club might be in come May when the next sale is projected and as to who might even want the club.

Grantchester Meadows

In Cambridgeshire there is a golf course which is completely organic. You’ll have to forgive me, I missed the name of the course, but there was a report about it on Five Live the other day. I emailed the station to ask if they could send me the name, but … . Anyway, the point about this is that it demonstrates the extent to which golf developments are being planned in a way that they have strong environmental elements. The course itself has separate meadows for flowers and birds, while a river attracts numerous types of wild fowl. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has been involved in the planning of the course, and the representative from the RSPB said that, though golf courses can be harmful to the environment, managed correctly there is no reason why courses cannot co-exist happily with nature.

Instinctively, I’m inclined to believe this. A development that just ploughs up habitats unthinkingly is no good, and this may well have been the case in the past: one thinks of all the conversion of unproductive agricultural land in Britain that was turned over to golfers. Yet, why shouldn’t the two make for environmental bedfellows? In the Cambridgeshire case, the golfers themselves are said to be all in favour because of the ambience created, while apparently the Royal and Ancient now have firm environmental management policies.

One says all this in connection with courses in Mallorca, especially those in the planning or to be developed, such as the one in Muro about which there has been such a protracted environmental hoo-hah. Things have gone pretty quiet on the Son Bosc development front, but the Gobby lobby have had its latest objection rejected, one that centred on a less-than-favourable report by its own people being ignored by the environment ministry.

I have never understood why there has been such a fuss, other than the fact that the course might turn out to be a white elephant. From an environmental point of view, it surely can be made to work. Perhaps the Muro developers should be talking to those in Cambridgeshire who are making it work.

Continuing Columbus

And ever more on the Columbus story, and once again thanks to Dom for his feedback on this. There is a blog site – http://www.medievalnews.blogspot.com – which would be good for any of you who might have a general interest in history, but specifically it ran a thing on 26 October entitled “Scholar casts doubt on claims that Columbus was a Catalan”. This reports views of a Dr. Diana Gilliland Wright who questions the significance of a particular form of punctuation used by Columbus and said to be indicative of Catalan of the time. She says that this was used elsewhere, for instance by the Venetians who were of course Italian, even if Venice is some distance from Genoa. Moreover, she says that spelling at that time was “fluid”, which does to a degree support my own view that Columbus could very easily have acquired a “polyglot tongue” especially if his written works were grafted onto what was effectively a blank canvas as native Genoese did not have a written language as such.

Light Up The Sky

‘Tis that time of the year. There is even a Bonfire Night tomorrow night at the Mallorca Cricket Club (“the island’s premier ex-pat community family event , it says: why do they spell expat with a hyphen; it’s one word). But note that it is Bonfire Night, not Guy Fawkes. We’ve stopped having guys. We don’t burn effigies. Or do we? Somewhere in Surrey, they put Jordan to the flame yesterday. What a splendid idea, all that silicone exploding, while a touch of satire, rather like the giant heads in Mallorca at fiesta time, are often satirical representations of local politicians and others. Makes me think. Who would I burn? A couple of clients I can think of could do with a good dousing. Who would you burn? Step forward – probably – Gordon and any number of MPs, but otherwise … ?

You Don’t Have To Wear That Dress Tonight

How many golfing tourists come to Mallorca do you reckon? The tourism ministry has kindly presented the answer. 112,752 – in 2008. No round figures here. Quite how they arrive at the figure who can say, but as it is so exact one has to suppose it’s right. The 2008 number was up by just under two per cent on 2007. The ministry also reveals that the golfer stays on average for just under ten days and spends per day 211 euros. Given that the average spend per person per stay is 993 euros (the figure for June this year anyway), that 211 per day is quite a lot of spend, though what it entails is not clear – perhaps it includes green fees and so on. Nevertheless, it is a tourism market that is worth cultivating, and so the ministry has come to an agreement with the association of golf courses to spend 180,000 euros promoting golf tourism in the Balearics, presumably in addition to that which is currently spent in attempting to attract this sector of “alternative” tourism.

I was told something quite startling yesterday. Had it come from bloke in bar as opposed to a hotel director (which was the source), I would have been inclined to have dismissed it. It was in the context of pickpockets, but it could apply in other situations. If the pickpocket pockets less than four hundred euros, there is nothing the police can or maybe will do. You get your wallet liberated with a mere 399 euros in it, and go and make a “denuncia”, and it won’t get you very far. It’s as though there is a sort of threshold, like with insurance policies: you accept liability for the first 400 in this instance. If you are, therefore, the unlucky victim, might be as well you make it a round 500, just to be on the safe side.

Kroxan – you don’t have to wear that dress tonight. Sorry, I’ve never been able to hear the name of this café without thinking of … (as you see, it’s today’s title). The only thing is that it has a name change, a slight name change – to Croasan. Why? Asked I of Pedro. A new company. Kroxan is a franchise, but the café is no longer a franchise. Pedro is now the proud owner in his own right. Hence the slight name change. For those who don’t know, Kroxan or Croasan is by the Magic roundabout on the Tucan road going towards Hidropark in Puerto Alcúdia. It’s one of those fine meeting-places, patronised by Mallorcans and expats alike, whatever the name.

Bulletin Watch – one of my correspondents sends me this observation: “The Bulletin’s beach of the day today is Cala Mitjana which is a rather remote cala I know from my Cala d’Or days. Very interesting except that the accompanying map locates it on the bay of Palma even though the text describes it as just 2km from Cala d’Or. Even better … on closer inspection the map shows Artà just south east of Palma airport on the way to Llucmajor.” Oh dear. At least one trusts that the text and the photos are correct. Not having checked this particular one, I can’t be sure but put it this way, when these beaches of the day first started appearing I thought there was something a bit odd about them. They come from the illesbalears tourism website.