Mallorca environment: Demonstration to protect Pollensa Bay

Protest against degradation of Pollensa Bay in Mallorca

Protesters on Saturday. | Lola Olmo

Andrew EdePollensa04/09/2022 09:15

On Saturday, some two hundred people on paddle boards and in kayaks demanded that action be taken to conserve the marine ecosystem, especially in Pollensa Bay, where two studies have confirmed that there are serious threats to biodiversity.

The protesters highlighted tourist overcrowding and a lack of urban planning for having made Pollensa "one of the most gentrified municipalities in the Balearics". "And this directly affects the marine ecosystems. We are now beginning to see the real ecological scale of all the impacts on the bay, as some of them have existed for decades."

An example was the construction of an artificial breakwater to create a beach "without understanding or studying the impact that this could have on the seabed." The beach was created with sand from quarries, and this clouds the water and prevents light from reaching the seabed, "turning it into a mudflat".

They also attributed the ecological decline to the growth in the population of Puerto Pollensa - 47 per cent over the last 20 years - "without the sewer system being able to deal with this". Illegal uncontrolled anchoring and incessant nautical activity were also highlighted.