Going To Waste (25 November)

Between the two town halls of Alcúdia and Sa Pobla, the company Tirme, which provides rubbish-treatment services on Mallorca, is owed in the region of 4.6 million euros. The amount is divided roughly evenly between the two administrations, a difference lying with how much interest they both owe (Alcúdia more than Sa Pobla).

This is not the first time that Tirme has gone in pursuit of outstanding debts from town halls. At the end of May, Inca got a demand for not far off two million. Just one strange aspect of the non-payments is that they relate to the period from 2008, in the case of Alcúdia, and from 2009 where Sa Pobla is concerned. How many other town halls are similarly in debt to Tirme? And if there are others, but even if not, how does a company operate when it is not being paid such vast sums?

Alcúdia and Sa Pobla are both negotiating payment terms, and the respective administrations are of course blaming the previous administrations. Which seems fair enough, but, just as one wonders how Tirme copes with not being paid, one wonders how it is that town halls can apparently just not bother paying. Sa Pobla is also in for about 1.35 million to three other service providers, including the rubbish collectors.

One gets the impression that the whole business world in Mallorca – that which has anything to do with the town halls or other public bodies – is surviving on the promise that they might one day actually get paid. But promises don’t amount to a great deal and they certainly don’t amount to cash flow or reassurances to lenders, if they are applicable.

Tirme, though, isn’t quite like other businesses. Most would find 4.6 million plus the couple of million from Inca and whatever else might be outstanding rather too much debt to bear. Tirme doesn’t. Or doesn’t appear to. This may be because of who owns it – Endesa, Iberdrola, Urbaser and FCC. Tirme is also a monopoly, and its concession for waste treatment lasts until 2041.

Tirme’s monopoly position is understandable in that its operations do demand heavy investment, so it has every right to be able to expect to have a period in which it can make a return on its investment. But not everyone is happy with this monopoly nor with how Tirme prioritises its investment and its operations.

A key part of Tirme’s remit is recycling. Mention the R word and you can be sure that one organisation will prick its ears up: GOB, the environmental pressure group. In August, GOB issued a statement attacking Tirme for what it claimed was the company’s concentration on incineration as opposed to recycling. GOB maintained that recycling plants were operating well below capacity, while the ovens were going full pelt in optimising as swiftly as possible the investment on incinerators at the Son Reus plant in Palma. Moreover, reckoned GOB, the incineration was allowing for the generation of electricity that was being commercialised.

GOB has accused Tirme of engaging in misleading marketing where its operations are concerned and has accused the Council of Mallorca, which, and truly bizarrely, has managed to extract a reduction in the cost of waste treatment for 2012 of slightly less than two centimos, of complicity.

But then, the story of waste management and treatment is far from straightforward; you wouldn’t expect it to be, because nothing ever is in Mallorca.

In January this year, the anti-corruption prosecutors embarked upon the so-called “Operación Cloaca”. This had to with allegations of false accounting centred on waste management operations sanctioned by the Council of Mallorca. Of those detained at the time, and I would make it perfectly clear that Tirme was not implicated in the Cloaca investigation, was an executive with FCC-Lumsa, one of the companies with a concession for recycling collection; FCC, which is a shareholder in Tirme.

Cloaca highlighted the dual system of waste collection (door to door as well as from green points) which had resulted in effect in payment for recycling doubling. Cloaca also revealed that town halls had been pressurised by an individual at the Council of Mallorca into adopting this dual system.

What Cloaca also highlighted was the sheer complexity of arrangements for waste management on Mallorca. Perhaps town halls simply don’t understand what it is they are meant to be paying for. Now, though, Alcúdia and Sa Pobla accept that they have to pay Tirme. But you wonder how many other town halls owe the company and whether the reason for non-payment has been more than just an inability to pay.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Rotarvator: Theme park scepticism

The first rule of any plan for a new development, be it major or minor, be it housing or commercial, or be it theme park, is that the environmentalist group GOB will find some reason to get it strangled before it’s even born.

The theme park between Llucmajor and Campos would be illegal. Well, what a surprise. You wouldn’t need to be intimately acquainted with the arcane nature of Mallorcan land law to yourselves be able to announce that the plan was illegal. You wouldn’t, because somewhere along the legal line it’s almost bound to be illegal. Everything is in Mallorca, if you look hard enough.

What might come as a shock to GOB, however, is that legal objections may no longer hold much sway. Illegal? Fair enough, we’ll make it un-illegal, we being the regional government. GOB is in danger of waging wars it has not the slightest possibility of winning. Has it not noticed who’s running the island now?

The environment bit is not what really interests about the theme park plans. The first rule of any plan for a new development involving foreign investors, who may not be immediately well-known, is to assign to them the possibility of their “doing a Davidson” and to look hard enough to find some reason, however tenuous, to support the Davidson theory.

In case you need reminding, Davidson was Paul Davidson, he who made fools out of Real Mallorca football club (not, admittedly, that difficult to do) with his wild ambitions to buy the club. The few fools who weren’t taken in hook, line, sinker and plunger by the otherwise-known-as “Plumber” were the Spanish press. They were hostile to him from the outset. Rightly as it turned out. But now, the chance to find a further example of “doing a Davidson” is leading the press to express scepticism and to dig for support to justify it.

What we are getting, therefore, are questions as to business credentials (not unreasonable) and to hints of some sort of Rotarian carve-up (almost certainly utterly unreasonable).

Setting aside any proclivity for xenophobia (and many a Mallorcan is guilty of it), the Rotarian ruse is extraordinary. Or, on the face of it, it is. To explain: The main man behind the Theme Park Group (TPG) is one Per Michael Pedersen. It just so happens that he is a Rotarian. So also is the president of the Balearics, José Bauzá. QED, some sort of accommodation of a Rotarian nature.

To understand the Rotary angle, over and above any hugely dubious suggestions of influence being wielded, one needs to appreciate a spot of Rotarian history, especially where the Spanish are concerned, because they have form. It was Spanish bishops in 1928 who, convinced that the Rotarians were “satanist” and “execrable”, got the then Pope on-message enough to go along with the idea and thus bracket them with the masons.

The Catholic Church has since softened its stance, but there remains a tendency to equate Rotarians to the masons. Some might be both, but few would be their numbers. In the Balearics, there are said to be around only 400 masons. Rotary International, on the other hand, has any number of members locally. As its regional co-ordinator said in a recent interview, they have “nothing to do” with masons.

But in the scramble to find some means of supporting scepticism, poor old Pedersen’s Rotary membership makes him a target for the seekers after a new “Davidson Effect”. I can accuse Bauzá of many things, and do accuse and will continue to do so, but to suggest that there is anything more to the coincidence that he and Pedersen are both members of Rotary International is absurd.

Where there is more reason for scepticism relates to the business credentials. Pedersen has been involved with grand plans for a commercial centre in the Danish town of Greve. They have ground to a halt because of local town hall objections. But to use this as a rod with which to beat him is also pretty absurd. How many developments in Mallorca grind to a halt because of objections, be they from GOB or whoever?

What matters, or should do, are the financing of the theme park, the partners involved (and they have ample and relevant experience) and the plans themselves. It is these which raise my own doubts, such as the notion of the park being open most of the year, but they are practical ones, nothing more.

The worry that another Davidson might be done is understandable, but Davidson was some sort of fantasist. The theme park may have its fantasy world section, but it is a very different beast. As for the Rotary stuff. Just forget it.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Mouthing Off

Certain acronyms for organisations don’t do these organisations any favours. The FA, for instance, can all too easily represent what critics claim it does, or rather doesn’t do. And it’s sweet.

Acronyms come in different forms. Some, like the FA, are spoken as individual letters; others are spoken as words. One of these is GOB. Its full name is a mouthful – Grup Balear d’Ornitolgia i Defensa de la Naturalesa. The D and the N have been discarded in allowing for a simpler pronunciation and in also allowing for an Anglicisation and for jokes at its expense. Got a hell of a gob on it. It’s got a gob on. A gobby bunch of environmentalists.

Whenever an environmental issue emerges from some threatened undergrowth, and sometimes when it doesn’t, GOB has a lot to say for itself. It is in the nature of the work of nature’s defenders that it should feel compelled to make utterances against the designs of government, constructors, hotels, tourists, buses, road builders, drivers, and whoever else happens to loom onto the potentially harmful environmental horizon. It is work that is never done.

Mallorca For Sale is GOB’s latest campaign. Not that it wants to sell Mallorca of course; it is fearful that Jolly Joe Bauzá and his Partido Popular chums will. GOB is outraged that Bauzá is contemplating creating some dynamism for the moribund Mallorcan economy by easing laws to enable the building of theme parks, more commercial centres and even a Formula 1 circuit. Consequently, it has started an online petition against the forces of development.

Some of this is dreadfully old hat. In the case of Muro’s golf course, the hat dates back to the nineties and we’re still no nearer knowing who might actually get to wear it. So old are some of the projected developments that GOB complains about, and so tedious are the endless arguments, that most people gave up long ago taking any interest in them.

It’s not to say that GOB doesn’t engage in good works. It does. But its constant carping has a touch of the cry-wolf; the public might believe in what GOB says but it withdraws its sympathy because there is so much carping and precious little by way of alternative solutions, save for the we should all go back to the land and live off wind and solar energy variety.

Nevertheless, it is an indication of the degree to which the environment plays a key role in decision-making in Mallorca, that of both business and government, that GOB’s voice is given such prominence. Because the environment is such an important issue to the island, it is only right and proper that a strong environmental lobby exists to try and prevent excesses. GOB serves this purpose, and it does its job well in looking to meet its objectives of the “conservation, dissemination and study of nature and the environment of the Balearic Islands”.

However, the centrality of the environment to the decision-making process has pushed GOB ever further towards politicisation. It is a charity, but its independence and indeed its objectives have become potentially compromised.

The Muro golf course was a case in point. When the PSM (Mallorcan socialists) assumed control of the environment department in the last regional government, the immediate decision to put a halt to the course’s development came as absolutely no surprise; the closeness between the PSM and GOB and the similar statements the two were coming out with made it appear as though GOB was like the PSM’s provisional wing.

The left having been pretty much eclipsed at the last election, the strongest voices of opposition are emanating from groups which are, in theory at any rate, not political, e.g. GOB. And when the established political left has managed to raise its weary voice, there too is GOB to add its support. But to issues that have nothing to do with GOB. Go back and look at its objectives. Where in any of these is there anything about the TV Mallorca radio and television station? Yet, there was GOB leaping to the station’s defence. When an anti-corruption platform emerged last year, which was one of the groups? Yep, GOB. Again, there is nothing in its objectives about corruption.

In the past, GOB has been challenged to basically put up or shut up by coming out and making itself a political entity. It won’t do, and nor should it, because it does perform an important function. But as it allows itself to be so constantly involved in the political process and to be involved in matters which are not within its remit, then its function does become open to question.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

When In Rome: Climate change

Two euros per night per guest in one to three-star accommodation. Three euros a night for four and five-star hotels. Sounds familiar? It is. But this is not Mallorca, this is Rome. The Italian capital’s council introduced its own version of the unlamented eco-tax on 1 January. Rome’s tax is earmarked for keeping the city clean and for urban improvements; it should raise 82 million euros per year. It hasn’t exactly met with universal approval. Just as Mallorca’s eco-tax was met with a level of hostility that saw it booted far out to sea a year after its introduction.

The eco-tax was flawed for different reasons. One was that the revenue that it might have generated, while not insignificant (60 million euros a year in the Balearics as a whole), was not that significant. Think of it this way. Had it been distributed to each town hall in Mallorca and the Balearics in a proportionate manner, it would have failed to bridge town halls’ funding gaps. A second reason was that it was discriminatory and based on the principle of “polluter pays”. It was also potentially pernicious in that, applied unilaterally, it would have placed Mallorca at a disadvantage.

The eco-tax was an example of attempting to apply fiscal measures to tackle environmental problems. Legislatures and executives reach out for more law and more tax in the hope that they can turn back the rising tides of environmental damage and climate change. The eco-warriors of Mallorca, GOB and its fellow campaigners, are now calling on the regional government to introduce a climate change law, one akin perhaps to that now operating in the UK.

There isn’t a specific climate change law either in the Balearics or nationally. What there is, in addition to a whole raft of previous laws and policy documents, are measures designed to promote energy efficiency and the use of renewables; these form part of the new law on sustainable economy. GOB and its enviro-fighting allies want the Balearics to go a stage further in bringing in what Friends of the Earth were calling for last year for the whole of Spain.

GOB has specifically fingered the power station of Es Murterar in Alcúdia as the greatest offender when it comes to emissions. Notwithstanding the possibility of the power station converting away from coal, GOB is right to identify it as a major contributor to environmental damage in Mallorca.

However, the resort to legislation and taxation is an essentially mechanistic response to the problem of climate change. The debate is impoverished, partly because of the primacy of the legislature as arbiter of policy and partly because of the nature of the debate itself – you are either a climate change believer or atheist. In the latter camp, for instance, is the leader of the Partido Popular nationally, Mariano Rajoy.

The mechanisms of tax and legislation, combined with political confusion and the inconclusiveness as to whether climate change exists or the degree to which it presents a threat, prevent a far more challenging discussion and far more searching policy decisions.

What if the predictions for climate change are right? It is the inability to answer this question that leads to the impoverishment of the debate where Mallorca’s future is concerned. The most dire predictions of rising sea levels and temperatures would create, by the middle of the century, a very different Mallorca. Introducing laws and taxes now might go some way to stalling the inevitable, but if the inevitable is indeed inevitable, then what on earth is going to happen?

It takes little imagination to consider the impact on coastal resorts and on tourism. The impact would affect thousands of homes and businesses. It takes little imagination, but for Mallorca’s policymakers it seems to remain unimaginable. They don’t have to imagine though. The centre for scientific investigation at Palma university set it out in pretty simple terms last summer. A 20 centimetre rise in sea levels, a 20 metre loss of beach and coast, extended periods of drought, a greater propensity for hurricanes and tsunamis. All by 2050.

If you own a property by the sea, you might be well advised to try and get shot pretty sharpish and hope no one asks any awkward questions. While the Costas authority yomps across the coastal regions in its bovver boots, threatening demolition here and there, it may as well not bother. Something else will do its work for it. The worthless properties caught under the Costas’ thirty-year law will be worthless anyway. As will any other that might find its owner sharing its terrace with some jellyfish.

The problem is that you, and others, may well prefer to play at ostriches on the beach. It won’t happen. But can you be so sure? Your head in the sand and an almighty great tidal wave suddenly washes up and fills your lungs. Because it seems unimaginable, it won’t happen. Maybe it won’t. Or maybe it will. Rather than taxes and pieces of law, the government should have a plan. The worst-case scenario. Does such a plan exist? No, it doesn’t. Has it even been considered? Not as far as I am aware. Instead, rather like Nero, it fiddles with legislation or is told to do so by GOB while its own Rome drowns and is set ablaze by rising mercury.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Crazy Golf: Too many courses in the Balearics?

Where do you go in Spain to have a quiet round of golf? The Balearics. Whole courses uninhabited by the one thing they should be inhabited with – golfers. Golfers of a local variety that is. Ignoring overseas players, a survey by the information company 11811, reveals that there are fewer registered golfers on the islands, relative to the number of courses, than any other region of Spain. The finding is slightly misleading as a further discovery of the survey is that the number of registered players per head of population is the sixth highest in the country. But what really gives the game away regarding how unused courses are in the Balearics is the fact that there are more courses for each and every resident of the islands than anywhere else in Spain.

The revelation as to the low numbers of golfers is nothing new. In April 2008 a different survey came to the same conclusion. Golf, far from booming, seems to be standing still. Is the relative unpopularity of the sport among residents, however, important in the wider debate surrounding golf courses? Local golfers are really only a sub-plot to the main story of golf tourism, but the fact that they are spread so thinly across the islands’ courses – 387 registered players per course – represents a weakness in the “home” market and raises the question as to whether Mallorca and the islands need more courses.

A year on from that previous survey, the Balearics business confederation (CAEB) issued its own report which stated that as many as five more courses were needed in Mallorca alone. These were courses, it said, that were necessary for the development of golf tourism, and it received support from the then tourism minister Miguel Nadal. The support was not unexpected; Nadal’s party, the Unió Mallorquina, has been cast, alongside the Partido Popular, as the devil of golf expansion by both the left and environmentalists.

The arguments advanced by CAEB for the islands as a whole are those echoed in the endless row regarding the development of the Muro golf course. These are well-rehearsed arguments: higher-value tourists; diversification of the tourism offer; a means of countering tourism seasonality.

The problem with these arguments is that they are just that – arguments. What invariably seems to be lacking is evidence as to what more courses would actually mean in terms of increased tourism. One would hope that a business confederation could be capable of presenting a sound business case in favour of more courses, just as one would hope that the Muro course developers could do the same. If so, then where is it?

Beyond the claims and the prospects of some employment being created, the pro-golf lobby has failed to win hearts and minds by pointing to serious numbers. Were it to, then it might do better in the propaganda war with the anti-golf lobby, bolstered recently by a report from an international organisation (the Ramsar Convention on wetlands) which recommends that Muro should definitely be scrapped because of the environmental impact. Furthermore, it is the no-to-golf side which attempts to come up with figures that dispute the yes-to-golf’s arguments.

In September the environmental watchdog GOB produced what it reckoned was proof that golf does nothing to increase low-season tourism. Based on hotel occupancy figures, it argued that were there golf tourism demand in the likes of Alcúdia or Pollensa then hotels would be open, which with some exceptions they are not. It wasn’t proof because GOB had overlooked non-hotel accommodation and figures from November to March, but it did nevertheless suggest that the quieter months of April and October did not show any real benefit from golf tourism.

Though tenuous, GOB’s findings do deserve some attention, while more rigorous research for the off season would not go amiss. And to these findings, we have to take into account what appears to be the lack of a bedrock of support for golf in the local market. One wonders to what degree, if at all, the apparent unpopularity of golf is a reflection of the environmental case. It would also be interesting to know how many of the registered golfers in the Balearics are foreign residents.

What do local people think about the development of new courses? Are they ever asked? In Muro a flavour of opinion was evident in October last year when townspeople demonstrated against the possible demolition of the bungalows in Ses Casetes des Capellans. One prominent banner read: “A golf course is for the rich. Capellans is worth much more”.

Local demand for golf is only part of the equation, but it cannot be overlooked. If one takes Muro’s course, what might this demand be? Excluding the population of neighbouring Alcúdia, where a course exists, the combined population of Muro and its other neighbours – Santa Margalida, Sa Pobla, Búger and Llubi (where there are no courses) – is around 35,000. Extrapolating from the figures in the latest survey, this would mean a course that might attract 260 registered players. 260 across five towns. It doesn’t sound like much of an argument for building a golf course. You would need an awful lot of golfing tourists to make it work. An awful lot of golfers that no one seems able to put a figure to. Crazy.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Hand Of GOB: Coals to Alcúdia

Old king coal is not a merry old soul for the residents of Alcúdia. They would rather the old boy’s pipe of transportation through the town were fiddled with and made less noxious, be it in the middle of the night or at any time of the day.

The old king coal of Alcúdia has long been making its way from the port to the Es Murterar power station – 30 years or so. In a shuttle of trucks it chugs along the three kilometres of road, sometimes straining, as with the incline leaving the port itself, and letting bits of itself go and skip onto the road and into the verges. Once upon a time, before they built the by-pass next to the Puig Sant Martí, the trucks used to take a different route, right through the resort. Things are better nowadays, but only in that the trucks are less intrusive.

Given how long coal has been transported to the power station, it seems a bit odd that it is only now that Alcúdia residents have decided to denounce its movement. In fairness it has long been a matter of discontent, but the current complaint against the dirt, an alleged absence of control, and the deposits may be a case of maintaining a momentum that started in the summer.

In August, there were protests against the emissions from the power station and against the transportation of coal. There was also a level of support from business for the proposal that Es Murterar should be gradually closed and its coal and oil-fired electricity generation be replaced by that from renewables. The proposal and the protests were the work of the environmental pressure group GOB. Has the hand of GOB touched the denouncing residents of Alcúdia? If so, then rightly so.

The trucks are mobile monstrosities, while Es Murterar itself is a panoramic affront, a blight on the landscape. Wander in the tranquility of the Albufera nature park and it is hard to ignore, rising from the park’s west side, the chimney of the power station. Albufera and Es Murterar are in surrealistic juxtaposition; it seems inconceivable that the power station would be built today. Not where it is, at any rate.

For all the visual unpleasantness of the lorries and the power station, the actual level of harm to the environment is open to debate. The regional government’s environment ministry maintains that particles of coal dust from the transportation are within limits that might be prejudicial to health. The power station has cut significantly its carbon emissions. Albufera is thriving. It wouldn’t be were it being polluted.

As you might expect, however, not everyone is of such forgiving opinion: GOB for one. It believes that Es Murterar is responsible for some 60% of local greenhouse gases. The power station is also responsible for generating a half of the electricity consumed in the whole of the Balearics. But GOB also believes that local production of energy can be scaled right back so that renewables are the only source of electricity. It is the prospect of the majority of energy requirements being met by supply from the mainland via electricity cabling and natural gas that leads it to conclude that supplementary energy creation in Mallorca could avoid the use of coal.

The regional government doesn’t dispute the possibilities of GOB’s argument, but it has said that there needs to be some realism. Nevertheless, the day does seem to be coming closer when the level of electricity production at Es Murterar is reduced if not eliminated completely. Were it to stop though, a question would be what would be done with the site. The old power station in Alcúdia seems no nearer to being converted into the science and technology centre it is meant to become, and it has been abandoned for years.

For now though, the coal will continue to be transported and Es Murterar will continue to hum. Old king coal’s pipe will remain lit, and the residents of Alcúdia will be less than merry.

But there’s one other thing. Behind every good nursery rhyme there is another story. It is one that just about surfaced a few years ago but was then given greater prominence at the start of this year. You know those trucks. Who owns the company which transports the coal to the power station? Coincidental to the Alcúdia residents’ denunciation is the start of the court case involving the former president of the Council of Mallorca, Maria Antònia Munar. The company belongs to her husband, 15% of which is hers.

Timing is everything.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Adopting Positions: Chopin should have played golf

Chopin is to be made an adoptive son of Mallorca. No doubt he’ll be rubato-ing with contentment in his Parisian grave, well away from where his interred non-missus, Amandine Dupin (aka George Sand), will be cursing the fact of his joining her in adoption but rejoicing in her having secured the gig before him; she was made an adoptive daughter of Mallorca some years ago. Beat yer to it, Freddie, you sexual inadequate.

Chopin and Sand were simultaneously enchanted and appalled by Mallorca, and specifically Valldemossa. It’s the enchantment that gets hyper-brochured, alongside mentions of Chopin’s output while in his mountain retreat and of Sand’s legacy to the island, commemorated in the annual Winter in Mallorca cultural programme, named after her book. The selective writing of the history of the Chopin-Sand stay in Mallorca disguises the brevity of that stay and the deterioration in Chopin’s health during it, a consequence of a miserable and cold winter. How he actually managed to play the piano, rubato or otherwise, is a mystery. Or perhaps he was blessed with warm extremities. Well, a couple if not one other, if George is to be taken at her word.

Chopin was from Poland. It’s a happy coincidence. Name some of the “new” markets from which Mallorca hopes to attract more tourists, and Poland will appear high on the list. Having an adoptive son to boast about doesn’t presumably harm that objective: the tourism juan-ies should be frantically casting around for a few Russians or Chinese who might have some adoption credentials, other than members of the Russki Mafia or owners of shops in a Mallorcan McDonald’s style – the Chinese bazar; one on every street.

While Chopin and the not-missus Chopin are invoked as part of the island’s cultural and winter tourism, they might have greater contemporary impact had they played golf. Perhaps someone could conveniently unearth a 170-year-old pitch ‘n’ putt in Valldemossa; it would do wonders for the golf tourism project. Possibly. Golf, though, holds the key to greater off-season riches than piano playing. Or that’s what they would have you believe.

It’s doubtful that Chopin ever made it as far as Muro or the north of the island. But it is here that the battle for golf tourism is being waged – as if you weren’t aware of this already. Muro’s golf course development is going through yet another eighteen holes of it’s on, then it’s off; the promoters threatening to sue is the latest. Not, I imagine, that you care. No one much does any longer, except the main protagonists, one of which is the enviro doom merchants GOB.

The pressure group has been playing its own statistics game. What it has found, it reckons, are figures which “prove” that golf doesn’t do anything to bolster tourism off-seasonality. I had hoped that the figures would be proof, as at least it would have been evidence of someone making a hard case one way or the other as to whether the Muro course, or indeed others, are of any significant tourism value.

The statistics show that in the lower months of the “summer” season, i.e. April and October, occupation in hotels in Muro and Santa Margalida (for which, read Playa de Muro and Can Picafort) is higher than those in Alcúdia and Pollensa. From this, GOB argues that golf does not benefit either of the latter two resorts, ones where there are golf courses extant, while it also argues that Muro and Can Picafort are already doing nicely thank you by comparison, and therefore, by dubious extrapolation, don’t need a golf course (or courses). It then goes on to extol what are the highly limited business virtues of small niche tourism in the resorts, e.g. bird-watching.

What this argument overlooks is the fact that the early-season occupancy of hotels in Playa de Muro and Can Picafort can be explained by these resorts being centres of cycling tourism, more so than the other two resorts. By concentrating on hotel occupancy figures, it also neglects the fact that Pollensa has a far lower number of hotel places by comparison with the other resorts. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the fact that golfers might stay in other types of accommodation (and GOB doesn’t take this into account), the findings do underline a point that I have made in the past, which is precisely the one that GOB is implying. Were there real tourist demand for golf in Alcúdia and Pollensa, then more hotels would open. Wouldn’t they?

GOB’s argument is persuasive up to a point, but there is one big hole in it – there are no figures for the months of November to March. The seasonality issue is a twelve-month affair. Winter tourism, or the lack of it, cannot be defined in terms of April and October. Which brings us back to Chopin and Sand. Has anyone ever attempted to prove a link between Winter in Mallorca and winter tourism? Maybe they have, and they’re keeping schtum. GOB’s claims are based on some science, but they seem post-hoc. However, they are not without a dash of merit. There ought to be more science, but one suspects that certain vested interests would rather there weren’t.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Old King Coal: Alcúdia’s power station

In passing yesterday I mentioned that GOB is wishing to have the power station (Es Murterar) in Alcúdia closed. It isn’t so much the closure of the station as putting an end to carbon emissions. The power station runs on a mixture of coal and oil.

GOB has a strong case. By any environmental standards, including those of plain, layman common sense, the power station is something of a nonsense. While the environmental arguments have raged for ages regarding the building of a golf course on one side of Albufera, they are as nothing compared with what goes on on another side, i.e. at the power station.

If you drive along the road to Sa Pobla, past Murterar, you will see the grass verges stained with coal dust. To the back of the station are whole “fields” of ash which is used, decreasingly, in the making of cement. Lorries that move the ash and the coal from the port are in regular motion. There is something that is particularly absurd in having these filth-generators shuttling along the roads of Alcúdia every three minutes.

GOB is calling for, and is apparently getting some support from industry, the elimination of the coal and oil firing and for its replacement by renewables, wind farms most notably. It is not the only ecological power that has been attacking the power station and the use of coal. Greenpeace have, in the past, tried to disrupt the shipping of coal to the port.

Whether the wind alternative makes economic sense will doubtless be open to scrutiny as will the feasibility of changing the generating source. What it might all cost and who might pay for it are other questions. But, for once, GOB are likely to be able to call on widespread support, politically, from business and from anyone who believes that the emissions can make little sense, especially given the location of Murterar.

More on ducks
Well, pity a poor old duck in Albufera which finds itself covered in coal dust. It needs to go and have a swim in the clean waters of Can Picafort. The fallout from Sunday’s shenanigans continues, “The Bulletin” drawing attention to the fact that Can Picafort council is not taking the actions of the illegal duck tossers lightly. Unfortunately, there is no Can Picafort council. Ho hum. But what of Santa Margalida council?

While it is obliged to set plod off in pursuit of the miscreants, it is open to question quite how determined Santa Margalida town hall is. “The Bulletin” would have it that its actions are “another example of how the local authorities are cracking down on local custom involving animals”. Of course they are. The same actions that inspired the sympathetic Power Rangers poster for the 2008 fiestas, that prompted the head of fiestas to declare, after this year’s tossing, that “there always have been ducks and always will be” (and he wasn’t referring to rubber ducks) and that suggested to the town hall’s delegate in Can Picafort that he should be photographed with duck supporters.

The town hall opted for rubber ducks only reluctantly and only after it had been fined for allowing the live ducks to continue to be used. Its attitude now is equivocal. “The Bulletin” devotes little attention to matters Can Picafort or northern, and it’s a shame that when it does it can manage to get things wrong and to fail to understand what the situation really is. Poor.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Sign Here: Petition against the golf course

I’ll forgive you for switching off now. It’s the golf course – again.

Still with me? Ok, here goes. All manner of political wrangling has occurred since the subject last appeared on the blog. The might of the centre-right (the Partido Popular and Unió Mallorquina) has combined to pass a motion in parliament to the effect that the Muro course should go ahead, as it is in the interest of the island for it do so. The left has retaliated by attempting to get the Son Bosc finca brought under the auspices of the Costas’ authority, that which “protects” the coastal areas. This despite the fact that the finca isn’t actually by the coast. There is also the matter of the bee-eater bird that breeds on the finca during the summer. This, in itself, is enough to bring any work to a halt.

More than the political to-ing and fro-ing, the environmental group GOB has been soliciting tourist support for the finca to be included as part of the protected area of the Albufera nature park. At the weekend it got tourists coming into Albufera – some 400 or so – to sign a petition against the course. These tourists were then also told about the hotels who were behind the development and given a card to deliver to their hotels (assuming, presumably, they were ones involved in the project) in support of the anti-course position.

What good, frankly, does this do? For one thing, it has the effect of driving a wedge (sand or otherwise) between guests and their hotels. Maybe GOB hopes that the petitioning tourists will go to a different hotel in future. Or a different resort, thanks a lot. Or that the hotels suddenly think: “oh my God, 400 tourists, we must abandon all thought of a golf course”. One imagines not.

Getting some nature-admiring tourists to put their mark on a petition would hardly have been difficult. Visitors to Albufera are, pretty much, a captive market for an environmental campaign. Easy-peasy. One doubts that the tourists were given a balanced argument to consider. Of the 400, nine, apparently, admitted to being golfers, and only one of the nine, a Mallorcan, declined to sign the petition. GOB, as stated in the report from “The Diario”, reckoned this was “curious”. It might also be that the Mallorcan knew a bit more about the story – from both sides.

What was curious about the report was that there was reference to there being hotel companies behind the golf development, but it did not identify them. Why is there such a reluctance to name them? GOB does. Go to its website, and you can discover, under Golf Playa de Muro S.A., the names of hotels associated with Grupotel, Garden and Iberostar. It’s common knowledge in the public domain.

Right, finished that bit, you can switch back on again now.

Still with an environmental theme, let us turn, shall we, to pollution from vehicles, in particular that from buses. And one bus in particular.

Driving along the main road through Puerto Alcúdia yesterday, I was forced to slow down and drop back, for in front was a bus belching out rather unpleasant fumes. You’ll know the one I mean. Blue, tourist, sight-seeing. What a splendid advertisement this is, and how splendid for those that advertise on the bus. Come take a trip around the sights of Alcúdia and hopefully the fumes will blow – volcano like, one might also hope – in the opposite direction; otherwise a no-drive zone should be declared.

To be fair, this is not the only bus that offends in this way. When the older buses get pressed into public service during the season, there are some frightful old boneshakers billowing bluey stuff in their wake. So if you happen to see drivers putting many a metre between themselves and a bus, you will know why. Perhaps pedestrians should be issued with face masks.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Taken As Read: A new party and a new law

Stuff that has been taken from the Spanish and put into English does have to be treated with a bit of care. There were two things yesterday. The first was a piece in “The Bulletin” which referred to an anti-corruption “party” being formed. It also, more accurately, stated that this was an anti-corruption “movement”, but the headline with the “party” was what grabbed the attention, which is, I suppose, as it should be. The trouble is that it can give a false impression. Going on past experience, it is always wise to go and take a look at what the Spanish (or Catalan) sources actually say because you are likely to get a rather different slant on things.

This “party” is in fact a “citizens’ platform” (a literal translation of “plataforma ciudadana”). There are many such platforms knocking about across Spain. What they are designed to do is to provide a, yes platform, for the people to participate in public debate in the sense that they are given a voice, even if they are not actually parties or formally part of the political process. In Mallorca, the Council of Mallorca, earlier this year, approved a new regulation that brought a forum of “social entities” into this participation process. This forum comprises, among others, the environmental pressure group GOB and the Catalan promoters OCB, Obra Cultural Balear. Both these groups are also in this anti-corruption “plataforma” along with some others, such as the Lobby de Dones, a women’s group against domestic violence. Other platforms in Spain tend to be concerned with environmental matters alone, and indeed the Council of Mallorca’s approval of the participation process referred specifically to environmental and socio-economic sustainability.

Associations, movements, call them what you might, have and have had every right to form. The Council’s approval was something rather different, but there is a bit of a coincidence that the likes of GOB and OCB, having come rather closer to the political process, should now also be a part of something highly political – anti-corruption. What, one has to ask, does the corruption issue have to do with an environmental pressure group or, come to that, a group against domestic violence?

This anti-corruption platform is very Catalan. GOB, while it has received international recognition for its efforts, has a website which really only offers a nod in the direction of Castilian, the same strength of nod as it reserves for English and German. Otherwise, it is firmly Catalan. The OCB, obviously as a promoter of Catalan language and culture, is strictly Catalan only. Nothing wrong with this. But the OCB, while it might argue otherwise, is a highly political body. It has also, you may recall, had its brushes with the defenders of the Spanish state, i.e. the Guardia Civil.

GOB has always looked to keep out of the direct political process, even if it can seem quite close to some political parties on the left. It has also been challenged in the past to either put up, by becoming a party, or shut up. What “The Bulletin” has perhaps inadvertently done is to indicate that GOB, and other groups, may indeed have a wish to get closer to the wider political process. Maybe they do see themselves becoming a party. If so, they need to be clear. While corruption is a worthwhile subject for individuals to address, it is – one would have thought – not within the terms of charitable status (that GOB has) to become so identified with a political issue, while this is also an issue which goes beyond what the Council of Mallorca had in mind with its forum.

Whatever the real motives, there is to be a human chain formed in Palma this evening by members of the platform protesting against political corruption.

The second bit of possible Spanish misinterpretation concerned the new smoking law. Ben alerted me to this on Facebook, linking a note from an English site. It had taken the information from a Spanish news site. The English version included a line about smokers making a note for their diaries to the effect that 22 June would be the day when smoking in public places was outlawed. It did then also contradict this by mentioning a meeting on that day involving the health ministers of the different regions. But by making such a bold statement, this was, naturally enough, likely to be taken as gospel. Now, unless the Spanish parliament is minded to approve the new law before the health ministers have been shown the draft of the bill, which is what is to happen on 22 June, then I think it’s probably safe to say that 22 June will not be the day for stubbing-out. What is also safe to say is that it won’t be long after that the day will actually dawn. This is an issue on which there is political agreement.

And as a footnote, the new smoking law will not make provision for compensation to businesses which invested in creating no-smoking areas under the previous law. Cue any amount of anger from the bar and restaurant associations.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.