The Hotels’ Beachhead

Change of government is still a month away, but the tourism industry has gone into overdrive in anticipation of all sorts of liberalisation that may be ushered forth by a Partido Popular victory.

As far as the hoteliers are concerned, Mariano Rajoy may as well already be prime minister. The Meliá plans for Magalluf are partly dependent on legislative relaxation, and the specific plans Meliá has for the beach would almost certainly require some changes to the Coasts Law.

When it was announced that Meliá wished to “exploit” the beach, a thought which occurred had to do with what the Costas Authority would make of it. This is a body which, while it does, quite rightly, seek to protect the coastal environment, is also the source of obstruction and of much that runs counter to the wishes of the tourism industry.

If a likely change of government were not in the offing, the chances are that Meliá’s wishes would have been stamped on from the great height that the Costas has come to assume; or probably, the wishes would never have been made public. Without knowing for sure, one gets the sense that the Costas might find its seemingly all-embracing powers being cut back.

Meliá wants, among other things, to be able to provide temporary moorings next to its hotels. The Mallorca hoteliers federation, very much to the fore in driving a national agenda, wants a change to the Coasts Law which would not only remove any obstacle to Meliá providing its moorings but would also permit other hotels to exploit other beaches for leisure purposes.

The proposal, much as it may make good business sense for the hotels and for the tourism industry, does run up against a difficulty. Essentially, the beaches would be privatised and there has to be a risk, somewhere along the line, that the principle of free public space on the beaches might be endangered.

Where the Costas has been doing a good job is in ensuring this free space. Together with town halls, it has also kept the sea itself free. And by free, one means open and accessible. It is the open to access principle that comes into question if the hotels have their way. With Meliá’s moorings, where would they go exactly? Would they in some way impede public use of the sea?

A further factor in the hotels’ ambitions for beach exploitation is the Costas’ bureaucracy. An aspect of this does badly need to be changed, and it is that which relates to the annual rigmarole that is gone through to establish provisions for beach management and for licensing operations.

The annual bureaucratic procedures have the effect of inhibiting investment. If a beach operator cannot be sure of running a beach from year to year then it is understandably reluctant to commit itself too heavily. Meliá wouldn’t, one would imagine, put up with such uncertainty.

If there were to be a relaxation of this bureaucratic burden, it could only be a good thing. It would prevent, one would hope, the kind of delays that have bedevilled beach management operations in Puerto Pollensa, and it might also be hoped that further relaxations would get rid of the nonsensical situation whereby an operator such as Sail and Surf in Puerto Pollensa cannot put out buoys for larger craft out of high season, so restricting its ability to extend the resort’s tourism season.

This constraint is another of the Costas’ domains, just one that has consistently placed it at loggerheads with business and especially the hotels. In Mallorca, there is an added dimension. The local head of the Costas is Celesti Alomar, the former (socialist) tourism minister who was responsible for the despised eco-tax that the hotels were charged with collecting and which, in some cases, they never handed over.

The Costas locally has brushed up against some heavy hitters, not least in Muro where its interpretation of coastal demarcation and the almost unworkable notion of land that is “influenced by the sea” have threatened hotels’ interests. To put it mildly, there is no love lost when it comes to the hotels’ attitude towards the Costas.

So now the hotels can sense the opportunity to get the law changed and also bring the Costas down a peg or two. As a protecter, it does a valuable job, but its role as enforcer has created too many enemies. If the law does change and if the Costas finds itself with a diminished role, this may be no bad thing. But would things go too far in the other direction? The privatisation of the beaches and of the water.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Johnny Foreigners

It is fun reading what the British press has to say about expat life. Fun because it can be withering in its damnation. You need to have a thick skin if you live in Mallorca and to accept that you can be the object of satire, and at times vicious satire.

The other day, I mentioned Clarkson and his post office blag gag. There have been others, such as A. A. Gill and his character assassination of the by then ex-Keith Floyd and lampooning of Brits assembling for their all-day benders. The “Daily Mail” whipped up a storm two years ago when it addressed the shallowness of life in Mallorca’s Portals Nous, only for it to be accused, at best, of misinterpretation. But it served a purpose. And with any of this, there is some basis in truth, and the truth can hurt.

The British press takes a certain delight in attacking the collective Aunt Sally that is the Brit expat community and giving her a periodic knocking. Fair enough. I do the same. But there is a difference. One of being here or being there. Distance, you might think, lends a greater objectivity. Perhaps. But it can also generate ignorance or prejudice. Not everyone is, for example, a Portals airhead.

On a tangential note, it was “The Sun” what did it over the fallout from the bombs two summers ago. The paper ran a most extraordinary item in which it reckoned that the bombs could spell the end of tourism in Spain and Mallorca. What was doubly extraordinary was that it was written by the paper’s travel editor. The item wasn’t so much irresponsible as complete drivel.

I treat travel pages in newspapers with great suspicion. Unless the writer is blessed with genius, like Adrian Gill, and demands to be read regardless, I wonder what the agenda is. Generally, and unlike the expat have-a-go, the travel pages are positive towards Mallorca. But there is always the punchline, as in so-and-so travelled with such-or-such a company. And if the writer is not Adrian Gill but, say, Louise Redknapp, then you do really have to wonder, especially when Louise, the boy Jamie in tow, discovered (in “The Mail”) some “authentic” Mallorca. Where? Portals Nous.

All of which brings me to Christina Patterson. She’s a good writer and penned a recent article in “The Independent” that was, notwithstanding the odd dig at some lousy tapas, highly positive. It still came with the punchline caveat, but it didn’t matter. However, Ms. Patterson has some previous.

She once wrote an article about expats, the thrust of which was the old chestnut of integration (expats not speaking the language and all that) and of the expat treating Spain (and therefore also Mallorca) and Johnny Foreigner as though empire still existed and the pith helmet was de rigueur headwear.

I despair of the integration thing, not because it isn’t an interesting topic but because it is used as a term without any attempt being made to define it. Suffice it to say, if expats couldn’t care less about learning the lingo or prefer to spend their evenings watching “Corrie”, then quite frankly who am I, or indeed is anyone, including Ms. Patterson, to say they’re wrong.

But what was particularly galling about her invective was that she implied that people who had found their lives ruined because of what had turned out to be illegal housing pretty much had themselves to blame. She then mocked those who, on discovering they were in such a parlous situation, levelled accusations of corruption without appreciating that this is how things are in Spain.

Up to a point, she was right, but she should also know that plenty of Spaniards and Mallorcans complain about corruption and that they also stand to lose, or have lost, as a consequence of both corruption and illegal housing. Furthermore, another ingredient in the strife caused by buildings near the coasts is the old 1988 law, newly interpreted by the Costas’ authority. A demand from Mallorcan landowners (not expats) means that the Costas now have to explain themselves to the European Parliament.

There are plenty of expats who do bring upon themselves the ridicule of the stereotype, and it is great fun to indulge in such ridiculing, but sometimes their lot is no laughing matter, especially when there is an issue of natural justice at stake; one that affects expats and also plenty of Spaniards and Mallorcans.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

On The Dunes: Can Picafort and Playa de Muro

I am looking at some old photos of Can Picafort. Circa 1960. Two people are walking along what is recognisable as a road but which has no tarmac. It is made of sand. It became the Via Suiza. In the distance you can’t make out the sea. Not because of buildings, because there aren’t any, but because of something else that is obscuring the view. In another photo there is a boy sitting on a deckchair on the beach. You might expect to be able to see, in the background, the Via Suiza from a different angle. But you can’t. Because there is something in the way. Dunes.

Can Picafort, in keeping with much of the bay of Alcúdia and with other stretches of Mallorcan coastline, is made up of dunes. Or rather, it used to be. The only dunes now are at the resort’s eastern Son Bauló end, extending into what is the “rustic” coast past the Son Real finca. The dunes in Can Picafort can no longer be seen. Because they are no longer there.

The loss of the dunes along the bay is evident in Alcúdia. But here the beach is wide. Nothing sits on top of the sea. Nor does it in much of adjoining Playa de Muro. Only once past the canal that connects Albufera with the sea does the beach start to become appreciably narrower. This is what has now been lovingly signposted as “Sector 2”. The resort as military installation.

Where the hotels in Playa de Muro finish there is a stretch of some two kilometres of rustic beach, backed by dunes and forest. There are no buildings. They only re-emerge as you come into Can Picafort. The dunes end abruptly. Can Picafort is built on dunes.

The creation of the resort was not so much environmental vandalism as environmental rape and pillage. The dunes were levelled and what was formed was a generally charmless front line of barn-style restaurants only a short distance from the shoreline. The restaurants, for the most part, are unremarkable. And there is probably a good reason. Being so close to the sea and being so undefended, in winter sand and water encroach. Until recently, before some new drainage, there used to be regular and damaging floods. Why create something of beauty if it’s going to be ravaged by nature.

Behind the front line is a town. Shops and hotel after hotel. The dunes and what lay behind them were destroyed in constructing an urban development.

One of the points of contention surrounding the Costas demarcation plan for Playa de Muro is Can Picafort. With no small amount of justification, the murers point to what happened to what was once hardly even a village, just a bit of a fishing harbour and the old fincas of Sr. Picafort. In Playa de Muro, where the environmental destruction has been less extreme, it might just be that the destruction is reversible. In Can Picafort, it can’t be reversed. But the targeting of Playa de Muro by the Costas strikes many as supremely unfair when compared with the wholesale degradation of the natural environment just a few kilometres away.

The language and the actions of the Costas in Playa de Muro have been ratcheted up since the demonstration against the demarcation took place. Celestí Alomar, the boss of the Costas in the Balearics, talks of there being “many people and organisations without any sort of consideration”. He has taken particular exception to the fact that gardens have been created and that volleyball is played on the dunes. But note the words. On the dunes. They are still there. They may be subject to what Alomar calls “degradation”, but they haven’t all been taken away. Unlike in Can Picafort.

Meanwhile, Alomar has been suggesting that the holiday homes of Ses Casetes des Capellans could have a reprieve by their being ceded to Muro town hall and escaping any threat of demolition. Good news perhaps, and aimed at the ordinary people of Muro who own the bungalows. But it smacks of politicking, driving a wedge between the holiday-home owners and the businesses and residents of the resort.

Alomar wants an improvement to the beach in Playa de Muro, one that will create “tourism of more quality” and one that, with greater respect for nature, will offset the seasonality that local hoteliers bemoan. Who is he trying to kid? The nature is now just something to admire from a distance. The Costas has made and is making the dunes no-go areas in Playa de Muro. There may be sound environmental reasons for doing so, but what they are becoming are things to just look at. You can no longer wander in the forest and dunes areas in the way you used to be able to. Yet isn’t this public land? Isn’t there meant to be public access? It’s contradictory, just as much as a short walk along the beach from where dunes do still exist confirms that there is a place where they no longer do.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Wacky Races: The Alcúdia-Puerto Pollensa coast road

The Wacky Department’s at it again. It seems to be the only department in the Spanish Government that’s expanding during the “cree-sis”. What it has now dragged out, courtesy of the dreaded Costas and their “demarcation”, is a revival of an old tune – the elimination of the coast road between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa. This was something that had gone ominously quiet since being given plenty of airplay a couple of years ago (for example, 9 May 2008, Road To Nowhere). But it’s back on the playlist – and racing up the charts.

The idea that the coast road should be removed and nature allowed to reclaim the coastal area is one that goes back some years, but it has never really attracted serious attention. This is about to change. The Costas, as reported in “The Diario” yesterday, are embarking on two studies – one into the socioeconomic implications of getting rid of the road, the other a technical proposal for doing so.

The environmental context for the road’s elimination is clear: the road runs right by a line of coast that is “rustic”, i.e. not made up, and by the Albufereta wetlands and finca of Can Cullerassa, itself recently cleaned up after years of neglect following the abandonment of a building project that dated back to the seventies. The non-environmental ramifications of eliminating the road are also obvious – Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa would in effect, unless there were an alternative road, be cut off from each other. And quite what the owners of the Club Pollentia Resort, the Club Sol Apartments, the Can Cuarassa restaurant and various fincas make of the idea, God alone knows.

Pollensa’s mayor Joan Cerdà, for his part, has expressed his scepticism regarding the plan and is also concerned as to what an alternative road might mean for finca owners and for the virgin land that exists beyond the Albufereta. Any new road, and there would surely have to be one, would have to cut across this land while probably also having to have feeder roads. Solving one environmental problem would merely create a different one, to which would be added the costs of expropriation and the inevitable legal challenges.

What needs to be established, above all else, is whether the continued existence of the current road represents genuine potential for long-term environmental harm. If not, then one would have to conclude, and not for the first time with the Costas’ diktats on demarcation, that the road’s elimination would be an example of over-zealous application of that demarcation. The project demands an independent enquiry, not one under the auspices of the Costas.

There are other issues to be taken into account. The current road can be dangerous and also a nightmare when the weather is bad and stones are being hurled onto it. It might be no bad thing if there were an alternative road, but the existing road is also important for tourism, a point that Mayor Cerdà has made.

The logic of the Costas’ position would, one might think, place the continued existence of the hotels and the restaurant in peril. Leave them, but without the coast road and with a new one to their rear, and that logic would be undermined; they are as much a part of the environmental issue along the coast road as the road itself.

But there may also be another factor, one lurking in the background, and that is the European Union. The recuperation of Can Cullerassa was part of what the EU had determined to be a priority in terms of environmental regeneration.

While common sense would suggest that Cerdà is right to be sceptical as to whether the project will happen, there are sufficient forces potentially lining up that might just make it happen.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Plastic Beach: Alcúdia’s beach bars

The beach bars of Alcúdia are to become smaller. The Costas’ authority, the guardian warriors of beaches and anything else it can lay its legislative hands on, has said that the bars must be no bigger than 150 square metres. Some are bigger. Loss of size will probably mean loss of interior seating, which shouldn’t necessarily be a negative for those who prefer to sit outside. But it could still mean another loss – of earnings. A few square metres here or there. Do they really matter? Alcúdia has a lot of beach. The bars do not exactly make a difference in terms of how many people can pack themselves in on the sand.

The reduction in size of the beach bars is one change. Another is to be the look and materials. The wooden balnearios are to be replaced with those made of concrete (and glass). This, apparently, is a law, one dreamt up by the Costas.

There is something distinctly odd about this. Firstly, there is the fact that there any permanent structures on the beach at all. The beach bars have a special dispensation to be there, which didn’t stop them tearing down the Café Playero, which wasn’t even on the beach. Secondly, there is the visual element. Is wood not a bit more appealing than concrete? You might have thought so. You might also have thought that wooden structures appeal more to a romantic sense of what the beach should be – any beach, not just Alcúdia’s. Concrete? It seems to fly in the face not only of the Costas’ own remit but also of what a tourist might actually wish to encounter.

Nevertheless, there may well be a practical side to this. Wood is not the most practical material to be let anywhere near a coastline. It rots, it warps, it expands, it contracts. Damp air and salt are not friends to wood, be it for shutters, gates, doors, whatever. Increasingly, one sees wooden shutters that have been replaced with alumunium. Steel roller shutters are becoming more popular. They may not look as attractive as wood, but they are considerably more sensible and more secure, and they are also more attractive than wood that has become scarred, chipped, broken and bent.

So the replacement of the wooden beach bars with concrete ones may also be sensible. Yet the stipulation for these new bars also covers the colour. They are to be white-washed. White. White, which discolours so easily. White, which may look brilliant when it is new but soon fades and looks anything other than brilliant. Why white? Here we seem to have another example of the trend towards neutrality of colour on the landscape. Could they not be more in keeping with the beach? Sand-coloured, brown like the wooden ones, blues or yellows.

Smaller beach bars. The size may not be that important. But white concrete ones? Could be worse; could be plastic. Now there’s an idea – plastic beach bars; even the Costas wouldn’t sanction that. Whatever. At least, rather than white, put some colour back into the beach.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Gonna Tear Your Playero Down

Well, they went ahead and did it, as they said they would once the season had ended. The Playero Club, aka Boccaccio Snack Bar, in Puerto Alcúdia has been duly bulldozed into oblivion. This was a story highlighted back in June (16 June: Demolition Man); the Playero was to be one of three “chiringuitos” to not escape the demolition men of the Costas authority. All that remains are two kiosks, and maybe they’ll be torn down as well.

It’s all rather sad, and the impression given by the bulldozing is almost one of vandalism; they managed to knock down a litter bin in the process. Why have they done it? For an answer, you have to go back to the law on demarcation and also actual permissions, but the difficulty is knowing what is what. Strictly speaking, there is not meant to be any building within 100 metres of the shoreline, unless it is on so-called urban land. The Playero was along a line of buildings, apartments mainly, roughly 50 metres from the sea. Perhaps there was just never any permission for it to be there, but there are any number of buildings and additions to buildings that have never received permission. As mentioned previously, it was not actually on the beach, indeed it was behind the pavement (urban land?) that runs at the back of the beach, whereas some of the chiringuitos or balnearios – call them what you will, they are all, to Brits, beach bars – are on the sand and are also permanent buildings. Beach, sand, it is not urban land.

The confusion as to what should or should not be allowed to stay has been heightened by different “plans” and bits of legislation which appear to contradict others, and there is now this business of what are natural or artificial salt deposits (“salinas”) which exist right along Alcúdia bay. It is this, as much as the 100 metres rule, that draws into question the strict legality of many buildings and the determination as to whether they occupy urban or public land or land influenced by the sea (the controversy over Ses Casetes des Capellans in Playa de Muro is an example of all of this). The Costas authority is not completely mad though. It accepts that many buildings that might actually be on naturally created salt lands are, in its words, “productive” (which can be interpreted many ways one supposes), and the hundred or so chiringuitos that were under threat have been spared (save for the Playero and a couple in the south). But what good does knocking down the Playero actually do? None, as far as anyone can make out.

* Thanks to Ben for drawing to my attention that the Playero had gone. I knew it was planned but didn’t know when.

 

Real Mallorca – the nonsense continues

“The Diario” ran a splendid piece yesterday. It concerned two Catalan businessmen in their thirties who apparently specialise in the acquisition of insolvent businesses. They have asked to see the books, but why they would be interested in Real Mallorca is far from clear, though some associated with the club seem to know the answer. Publicity. All they want is to have their photos taken and to get their names bandied about. Moreover, they are “two unknown youths (or young men)”. The word “joven” covers a wide age range. These are two thirtysomethings, but a “joven” could just as easily be a teenager.

The implication is that there are likely to be prospective buyers who may be anything but. Their interest will be in gaining publicity, as is being said in this instance. And Real Mallorca has had its fill of questionable suitors and indeed failed purchasers over the past year or so. The club has been made to look ridiculous, and interim owner Alemany has vowed not to make the same mistakes that let in the disgraced Martí Mingarros.

Killing Them Softly

Further to yesterday. There is some disquiet that there was not a cohesive message coming from the various political parties in Muro against the Costas demolition plan. Only the Unió Mallorquina got involved, something for which it was criticised as it appeared to make Ses Casetes the party’s own issue. Maybe that’s why others stayed away. Something else that came out was that, while Ses Casetes is threatened by the definition as to what is public domain or land, a hotel next to the area is excluded. One presumes that this means the Hotel Platja Daurada, a hotel operated by the EIX group, which so happens to have its offices next to the hotel.

 

Even if this not the right hotel – and there is no other hotel that joins onto Ses Casetes – it is hard not to get the impression that maybe Ses Casetes is something of a soft target. For the very reasons that it is not a hotel and is not an urbanisation of expensive real estate or of the fabulously wealthy, perhaps it is a convenient fall-guy in the Costas wish to do some cleaning up of public land along the shorelines of Mallorca. Killing the small houses softly. 

 

Yet for all this, if one takes a stroll around Ses Casetes, and the photo** from yesterday does give an impression of the place – unmade tracks as roads for instance – then one does wonder as to the legitimacy of the development. It does seem hugely anachronistic, which is of course part of the charm. That it has not been developed in terms, say, of roads, does not mean that it does not have legitimacy, but there is also something that is not quite right there. The original or oldest small houses around the parking area and just off are one thing, but some tracks go into the forest, and next to some tracks are houses that are not like the small houses. They are in fact new; certainly by comparison. 

 

** To be found on the main blog site – http://www.alcudiapollensa.blogspot.com.

 

 

The land itself was ceded to the town many years ago. A question may well be what that land actually was. Some of the buildings would certainly appear to be in possible conflict with what is meant to be the wider nature park of Albufera. 

 

Whatever the real legal situation, the people of Ses Casetes deserve support. One thing that came across vividly during the demonstration was the strength of the community that is Ses Casetes, of the vast age ranges that tell of the history of ownership and of the generations who have summered (and also wintered at holiday times) in the small houses. It is definitely a place worth preserving.

 

 

Some hours after the Muro demo, there was the other one – in Sa Pobla. This was a gathering of “demons” in a defiant act of fire-running against the European directive that would limit the participation of children and general interactivity during fire-runs at Mallorcan fiestas. 3,000 people are estimated to have attended. Further to what I said on 23 October (“Feel The Fire”) when I wondered about the safety of fire-runs and of bonfires, I was told by Kevin at JKs about how the Santander bank in Puerto Pollensa nearly once copped for it, while John MacLean has sent an email specifically about fires in Sa Pobla during Sant Antoni. I quote: “We were absolutely gobsmacked to see a roaring fire, surrounded by the usual crowd of partygoers, slap bang on the forecourt of the Repsol filling station”. (Yep, that’s right, filling station as in petrol station.) “It could not have been more than ten feet from the pumps. At that point, I realised that the Mallorcans and the ‘poblers’ (as the folk of Sa Pobla are called) are not only a different breed but totally off their heads. Needless to say, we didn’t hang about!”

 

And they’re complaining about a bit of European health and safety that might stop kids setting fire to themselves during fire-runs. Tradition is one thing, but madness is another.

Don’t Take It Away – This Is Your Land

And the people of the little houses made their way to the little plaza in front of the Pedrissos bar. The man with the conch had blown his loudhailer trumpet. Everyone had searched in the bottom of wardrobes for a dispensable sheet and had blackened it with a slogan. Those without sheets had stuck brown wrapping paper together and had used biros. Two hundred or so formed a semi-circle and had their photos taken. One chap with long dreadlocks tied into a ponytail had the biggest photographic kit of all. Local TV smoked and waited for their interview. Small children, an afternoon spent with cardboard, sticks and marker pens, were thrust into the circle. One had her sign reversed, revealing a patchwork of different coloured tape. Someone helpfully turned it the right way. The conch was handed to a man with a grey goatie who started a song no-one seemed to know. There was some applause and he tried again with a bit more success, but maybe the people were shy when it came to singing for the telly. The local police, half-a-dozen strong, stood about and grinned. One came forward and took some photos with a small digital camera. Perhaps it was a requirement – evidence of the demonstrators – or maybe they were of his family. There was one of the girls from the Eroski near to Playa de Muro. Her family has a “caseta” and has had it for years. It’s a place where children can play freely, as she used to, this Ses Casetes des Capellans. It’s a place that’s very Mallorcan, very Muro. One felt like an intruder into an essentially Muro occasion. Barely a word of Castilian was being uttered, just the chatter and chirrup of the Mallorcan char-char sound, but without any sense of choler – no anger as such, it was a pleasant afternoon in late season, the sun was out and warm, and the “cassettes”, if one might call them that, took a stroll from their casetes and were taped for posterity and for transmission on the evening’s news. 

 

The signs said what the people thought. “We don’t understand the Costas’ criteria”; “We want to conserve Capellans as it is”; “Capellans is our Capellans, it is for the people of Muro and for everyone”. Rather more politically, one read: “A golf course is for the rich. Capellans is worth much more”. The latter sign was a reference to the permission granted to build the golf course on the nearby Son Bosc finca. Casetes is for the ordinary people, their summer homes of white-washed walls, their bungalows with green or red trimmings and brightly-coloured gates. And it is these curious and humble little houses that the Costas authority would like to see demolished. It may take years for that to happen, if happen it ever does. But the people of Ses Casetes have expressed their views. There is traditional Mallorca and there is traditional beach and summer Mallorca, not the beach and summer of the hotels and the resorts, but of holiday for the local people as it once was, and still is – for the children of the Murers and the owners of the Casetes. One boy’s sign said that Capellans is “like a playground for the boys and girls, please don’t take it away”. This is their land. Please don’t take it away. It brought a tear to the eye.  

 

 

* This is a follow-up to the piece of 21 October.

Little Boxes Made Of Ticky Tacky

Not for the first time, the odd little area of Ses Casetes des Capellans in Playa de Muro has aroused some passions. It has, in the recent past, been the site of an outcry over the raising of a flag with Francoist associations on one of the small houses. There has also been concern as to the fact that the sand area, around which many of the cottages are arranged, has been a free parking space for those destined for the beach. Indeed, the regional government’s own tourism website has advised that it be used for parking. Muro council has now decreed that only residents of the town, with a permit, can use the parking area. 

 

To remind you, Ses Casetes sits at the border between Playa de Muro and Can Picafort. The houses not only encircle the parking area but also make their way into the forest that, itself, is part of the wider nature park of Albufera. As such, all the residences occupy dune or formerly dune land, which can also – almost certainly – be classified as “salinas”, dried salt lands. Those of you with sharp memories may realise where this is all leading. Yep, it’s them again – the Costas authority, the one that oversees and determines what is rightfully or wrongfully built in the general area of the sea. (This is, by the way, something of a follow-up to a piece from 5 May: Mean Streets.)

 

Ses Casetes has history. It was originally designated as a holiday retreat for clerics (strictly speaking, I guess, chaplains, which would be the closest translation of “capellans”). That the houses may have passed into private hands as holiday homes is not the issue. What is, is that they contravene what the Costas has established to be land in the public domain. Ses Casetes could be bulldozered. 

 

The Unió Mallorquina (UM) party at the town hall is leading the fight against the Costas’ stance. And it is a fight, in its own words, “for the peculiarity” of Ses Casetes. Nicely put. It is this, the very peculiarity of the area, that makes it something worthy of preservation. The socialists at the Mallorca Council have now weighed in as well, arguing that Ses Casetes is not only unique to Mallorca, it is unique to Spain, too. Perhaps it is, though it may be overstating its significance. As such, it has little merit in terms of architecture, but that very peculiarity should be sufficient to have a heritage site protection stamped onto it. 

 

What has riled many is the fact that the Costas have given only a month for representations to be made against the “demarcation” order, officially announced on 8 October, and that the authority has planned a meeting with residents for 30 November, i.e. some three weeks after the process of representation has finished. As a minimum, the UM is pressing for a month’s extension. Meanwhile, there is to be a protest this coming Saturday.

 

Even were the Costas to reject the opposition, Ses Casetes would not suddenly disappear. Indeed, the rulings on demarcation allow for a maximum stay of execution, so to speak, for up to 60 years. You might ask, therefore, what the fuss is all about. Apart from anything else, the owners cannot, were they inclined to, sell their properties. But the most important aspect is that oddness. Mallorca should cherish its curios and not have them demolished, even if the prospect is some way in the future. The Costas often appear to act in a heavy-handed manner. In the case of the “casetes”, it is heavy-handed and short-sighted.

 

 

Tiki Taka

A few days ago, Andrés Montes, the Spanish football commentator, died. Some of you may recall him being the object of my ribbing during the 2006 World Cup**. He was one of the Three Tenors, as helpfully dubbed by correspondent Alastair I think, the threesome of commentators (which also included Julio Salinas) who would burst into song during a match. Montes it was who coined “tiki taka” to describe the short passing game of the Spanish team, and which he would frequently drop into his commentaries. He was infuriating, but he was certainly different.

 

** (This was on the main AlcudiaPollensa blog – http://www.alcudiapollensa.blogspot.com)