Intensive Uncared-for Units

“Look at all these places that are closed.” I had bumped into a mate in Puerto Alcúdia. There were a number of “locales” that were empty. The tell-tale signs of abandonment were clear – whitewashed glass, mail piling up on the floors inside, fraying posters for this and that fly-billed onto the exteriors. “Yea, but they’re units under the apartments. It’s no wonder. They stick these places up, and on the ground floor they always have ‘locales’. There’s just too much of this stuff.”

Too much. Too many bars or cafés, too many shops. There is too much of everything. Too little of what matters. Demand.

The economic crisis has served to highlight what should have been obvious – the over supply of bars and shops. Perversely, the crisis has not reduced the supply, it has seen it increase, thanks primarily to the units that sit, mainly empty, under residential buildings.

The reason for these units is the consequence of a land law in the Balearics, one that has not been adopted elsewhere in Spain. The law goes as follows. There has to be a limit to the number of apartments per building. Were the ground floor to also be used for residential purposes, the average size of all apartments would have to increase. A solution, that of making buildings lower, isn’t a solution when it comes to the owners of land who want to maximise their returns. Another would be to scrap the law on the maximum number of apartments, so long as their sizes do not go below a minimum.

One view in favour of ground floors being reserved for commercial use is that people simply don’t want to live on the ground floor. It’s an understandable view, but only up to a point. Not wishing to be on the ground floor may have more to do with where the buildings are constructed rather than with a reluctance per se to inhabit a street-level apartment: a thoroughfare in Puerto Alcúdia is probably a case in point. But even this ignores the fact that houses, of older stock, open out onto narrow pavements right next to busy roads all over the island.

The downside of the regulation, apart from adding to the unnecessary supply of units, is that the buildings end up creating an impression of reducing desirability rather than the one that you would hope they would – that of increasing desirability. And this applies not just to the building itself but also to the general environment. Empty units benefit no one, but the mystery is why anyone thought that they could keep being created and keep being filled. Where they have been occupied, and some have been in Puerto Alcúdia, they have then become unoccupied. The crisis is not solely to blame; there is just no point to most of them.

The surfeit of bars and cafés should be enough to make any prospective tenant of the under-apartment “locales” wary of handing over his traspaso or, if he has any sense, just the rent. Other types of commercial exploitation should be met with a far bigger “buyer, beware” sign. What, for the most part, have they been? Fashion shops, if Alcúdia is anything to go by. They might also have been gobbled up by the johnnies-come-lately of the estate agency world, but the carnage in this market has robbed the units, as it has the island’s high streets in general, of their absurdly excessive presence. For the fashionista chicas who take on a unit, there is something else to bear in mind, not just the fact that their shops are an irrelevance. This is the relaxation of rules on commercial centres. Out of town, in other words. The pointless units become even more pointless as consumers shift their own centres of operation.

The law needs to be changed, but any reform should be more fundamental in terms of more coherent appraisals as to the style of towns such as Puerto Alcúdia where residential and commercial building has created a functionalist mish-mash of architecture. Attention should be paid to greater harmony in terms of the look of buildings and also to the introduction of semi-pedestrianisation. This might, for example, enable the apartment blocks to be shielded by gardens at their entrance, enhancing their appearance and greening the dominant and characterless sense of concrete.

If a change means the government and town halls interfering with the market and telling owners that the ground-floor “locales” have to go, that they have to stick to reasonable prices and they lose the rents from the units, then so be it. They’re not gaining rents as it is, while everyone else is losing out.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Saltbreakers

Albufera once stretched as far as the port area of Alcúdia. The remaining undeveloped wetlands near the port are those close to the horse roundabout. Albufera was created from the sea; its water is partly salt, the Lago Esperanza is one of the few saltwater lakes in Spain. The sea has influenced the geography, the landscape and the ecology of Puerto Alcúdia and elsewhere on the bay of Alcúdia – Playa de Muro and Can Picafort, for example. Albufera is essentially a lagoon, divorced from the sea by the formation of dunes, forest and dried-out areas of salt deposits (“salinas”). 

 

This is no idle lesson in geography. Take some words from the above – “the sea has influenced”, “dried-out areas of salt deposits”. Why take them? Well because they are fundamental to what is threatening to become a major legal issue. The law on the coasts, that law under which, for instance, the chiringuito in Puerto Alcúdia is deemed illegal and therefore to be demolished, applies not just to beaches and what may or may not be built on them or within a certain distance of the shore line, but also to land – public land – that is deemed to be influenced by the sea. And this brings us to the “salinas”. 

 

Some 1,400 “private fincas” in Puerto Alcúdia, reports “The Diario”, are potentially sitting on what is such dried salt land. Fincas, in this context, refer to plots of land, on which real estate has been built. This may all sound rather arcane, but being understood by few (a definition of arcane) could well lead to a legal minefield. Those who had not understood are likely to understand rather more clearly and are already being made to understand.

 

We have to track back a bit. The law on the coasts was actually enacted in 1988 but for all practical purposes it was hardly applied until 2004. It is now being applied with far more vigour. The law is a national one and was designed – in the late ’80s -to attempt to rectify the building mistakes of the preceding three decades of development – mistakes in terms of the effects on the environment and in terms of legality. There is a distinction, under this law, between property developed before and after its enactment. It has already been established that certain properties, seemingly built legally before 1988, are in fact on so-called public domain. Owners have been granted rights for up to 60 years but they are unable to sell the properties. Under the law they would be demolished at the end of this period. After 1988? Well that’s a different matter, and it is what has led to the horror stories of developments on the costas being flattened. 

 

But to come back to those “salinas”. The debate now centres on whether these were naturally or artificially created; if the latter then there is not a problem, if natural then there is. How on earth are they ever going to sort this out? Because of the geography in the bay area, it is only natural to conclude that much if not all of what is now Puerto Alcúdia and Playa de Muro is indeed on land that was influenced by the sea and in some way in the public domain, naturally created dried-out salt land or not. 1,400 fincas constitute a whole load of properties. 

 

The good news is that the director responsible for decisions on demarcation under the law seems to respect the fact that some of these fincas are of “cultivation” and generate “riches”, by which one presumes he is referring to hotels. On the other hand, there are fincas felt to be “unproductive” and “abandoned”. What is unproductive? Someone’s house? He, the director, is in discussion with various owners and the likes of the hotel assocation in Muro. 

 

Unlikely though it is that this will lead to orders for mass demolition, the fact that the discussions are being held emphasises how seriously the law is being taken. But to what end? That there may have been breaches, indeed have been, no-one really doubts. Yet to pursue this with the vigour that is being suggested in this instance can lead only to colossal legal wrangling. The very fact that the 1988 law was basically held in abeyance for some 16 years only goes to prove that Spanish land laws over decades have been a complete mess and usually disregarded, and that land rights were, in all likelihood, the subject of anything but the law. To now be invoking something as obscure as what may or may not be public domain dried-out salty land just adds to the mess.