White Elephants: Can Ramis in Alcúdia

Of the local town hall administrations, Alcúdia tends to enjoy greater harmony than the others. There are not the shenanigans that arise in Santa Margalida, not the controversies of Muro, such as the golf course, not the close to fist fights of Sa Pobla and not the seemingly daily criticisms of Pollensa’s poor mayor Cerdà. However, there is one matter in Alcúdia that stubbornly refuses to go away and which has returned as a brickload of contention.

To remind you, Can Ramis is the new building by the market square. It cost, in the end, a whacking great two and a half million plus euros (a figure I think I’m right in saying includes the cost of redoing the square next to it). It was meant to have cost more than a million less. To say that the building is unattractive is an understatement; it is an abomination. When it finally opened towards the end of April, there was a singular lack of fanfare. You could understand why. A rotten building, delayed, vastly over-budget and not doing what it was intended to. A grand, official opening was the last thing that was needed, except as a way of exposing some sheepish and embarrassed expressions. There was no grand opening.

The opposition Partido Popular has been on the Can Ramis offensive for some time. In 2008, the party issued a “denuncia” in respect of what it claimed were irregularities. The accusation was “archived”, but the PP, as reported in “Ultima Hora”, intends to get the case re-opened.

Other than relocating the tourist office, which was envisaged under the original plans, the building has two exhibition areas which are of questionable value given other display areas in the town, and an office for the town hall’s markets and fairs department. The town’s service agency, EMSA, is meant to be moving in at an additional cost of 30,000 euros. Can Ramis is therefore ending up as overspill accommodation for the town hall. The main feature of the construction, some sort of bus station, along with a waiting room and a café all failed to materialise. In the case of the café someone came to the conclusion that it wasn’t necessary, given the number of bars nearby. Why it was ever thought necessary, who knows.

The thrust of the PP’s accusations centre, one understands, on what happened to the original budget, which was spent even before the actual construction of the building started. There are other questions that arise in respect of Can Ramis. Who approved the design? When was it clear that there would be a change of use? And was there consideration given to a re-design when this became clear?

Can Ramis, you would have hoped, would have been a symbol of civic pride. It is anything but. It is unlovely and, as the PP point out, under-utilised; not quite a white elephant but a sickly elephant calf. It was a mistake, and a ridiculously expensive one, to boot.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Toy Story – The Can Ramis Building

There was I suggesting yesterday that Miquel Ferrer’s period as Alcúdia mayor has been relatively successful, and forgetting of course the slight blip of the fiasco that was/is the Can Ramis re-development in the old town.

This involved the demolition of the old Ramis houses by the car parking and the creation of something new. It has been a farcically tortuous process. Firstly, the budget was too low, most of this going – in advance – to the building firm which then went bust, the money itself being eaten up, not by the new construction, but by the new plaza by the market. Secondly, there was the collapse of part of the building last March, there having been a hiatus to allow further funding to be put in place. Thirdly, there is what we now have. Not quite finished but close to being so. A piece of Legoland in Alcúdia. The new Can Ramis looks as though one is invited to take it apart and re-do it in a different shape, just like Lego. What do you get if you take some large blocks of wood, attach a load of glass and put it all inside a great slab of concrete in one soulless oblong? The Lego Can Ramis. Maybe Lego is an official sponsor, and the town hall will sell naming rights. They should do in order to re-coup the budget overspend. It’s not as if it’s going to do all that it was intended to. Buses were meant to use it as a station. There was a change of idea, so I am told. Shame, the buses might have managed to knock it down.

No doubt some sap will come along at the official opening, whenever that is, and announce that it is “emblematic” or some such rot. Emblematic yes. Of a Danish toy company. It may well be that it falls to the new mayor to make an announcement. Another Miquel, always a Miquel. Once one Miquel, Ferrer, finally divests himself of the mayoral gown and slides his feet full-time under the tourism ministry desk, another is likely to be mayor: Miquel Llompart.

What will be going into the Lego Can Ramis will be the tourist office, a bus waiting-room and a café; this much we know. Getting on for one-and-half-million euros (the later budget, that is) to house something that already has a house, something that is useful but did not require such a lavish spend and something that is utterly unnecessary. Perhaps there will be more. Something a bit more emblematic. We will have to wait and see. Admittedly, though, the tourist office will be better sited in the new building, but it didn’t need the expense that it has involved.

But more than anything, there is the architectural barrenness and pointlessness of the new building. Situated just outside the walls, it was not covered by the heritage law that protects Alcúdia. They could, therefore, do what they like, and so they have, thanks to Lego. There is not one iota of context to the building, a functional-only rectangular series of blockheaded building-blocks of an edifice with more than a hint of British 1960s town-centre architectural vandalism; all that’s missing is the graffiti. Give them time.

Perhaps Ferrer has timed his run perfectly. He won’t have to be the one pretending that this is any good when it comes to the opening ceremony. Unless they drag out the tourism minister.