Paradise in the Spanish Siberia

They plan to create Elysium in the Spanish Siberia. Elysium City will cost 18,000 million euros. It will occupy 1,185 hectares. It will create 26,000 jobs in addition to the 32,000 for the construction. It will have hotel accommodation, it’s said, for up to 30,000 people. It will have a residential area and schools. It will have seventeen kilometres of ‘coast’ as well as a marina. It will be “100% sustainable”.

In May, just before the elections, representatives of the Extremadura government will apparently gather for the ceremonial laying of the first stone. This is in a place called Castilblanco. It has a population of around 860. To offer a comparison, it is more or less the same size as Ariany. Would an Elysium ever be contemplated for Ariany? Not a hope in hell - or Hades, if one prefers. Apart from environmental impossibilities, Mallorca could not (will not) sanction 19,000 new accommodation places. Quite the opposite, as Mallorca would quite like to lose a few thousand - some 8,500 new places will not be taken up when the current government moratorium on new places ends. There could always be a swap - lose 19,000 elsewhere - but no, there would never be an Elysium City in Mallorca.

There was, there is something approximating it. Ciudad de los Lagos, City of the Lakes, was what they called the development in Alcudia in the sixties. This might have occupied getting on for 1,185 hectares had common sense not finally prevailed and there was a halt that prevented expansion in Playa de Muro and in Alcudia itself - the land around Club Mac and Hidropark was at one time designated for development. Albufera, that which hadn’t been reclaimed, was spared and the protected nature park is now almost twice the size of the planned Elysium City.

Nowadays, there is of course far more awareness of sustainability - no one had heard of the word in the sixties - and with awareness, one trusts, comes full commitment to maintenance. The City of Lakes underwent decades of neglect. Further development was stopped, but the wetlands suffered degradation. Millions of EU Next Generation funds are to now be ploughed in to rehabilitating the area and creating a productive use for the big lake as a major centre for canoeing. Elysium City will doubtless be aware of mistakes that failed to take sustainability into account.

There again, this assumes that this paradise in the Spanish Siberia materialises. There has had to be specific (and controversial) land legislation to enable what is known as an LEGIO, a grand leisure installation, while the financing of the whole venture is shrouded in some mystery. And there is some previous where such schemes are concerned. As Elysium will also have casinos, there is a reminder of the failed Eurovegas (Madrid) and Gran Scala (Zaragoza) projects.

Why does Extremadura want this? Employment is one reason. An increase in tourism is another. In 2019, the region attracted 1.94 million tourists. Of these, only 348,000 were foreign. At a regional level, Extremadura’s tourism equates to only 11.75% of tourism in the Balearics. But would people go there? How would they get there? Badajoz Airport currently handles around 65,000 passengers a year - 0.2% of Palma - on internal routes. The AVE high-speed train doesn’t go there. Which leaves the roads. And then there is also the climate. There were nine red alerts for high temperatures in Extremadura last summer. From June 1 to September 30, there were 37 days when an alert for high temperatures applied - 30% of days.

Put an Elysium in Mallorca and it probably would be successful for the simple reason that there is such good air and sea connectivity. But there never would be such a project because it would be impossible to develop it. Even when schemes involving less land have in the past been projected, there have also been question marks about developers and suitability. Anyone remember ‘Tierra Santa’, the Christian theme park, or the Danish company and its idea for a theme park on 110 hectares somewhere between Llucmajor and Campos? Jaime Martínez, the Partido Popular candidate for Palma mayor in May, was at the tourism ministry at the time of those plans. Nothing came of them and Martínez was to later say that there can never be anything of this nature. And the regulations are tighter now than they were then.

The Isles of the Blessed in the Med could conceivably host Elysium. But it’s precisely because they are blessed that they never will.