This year's 'pujada' - it literally means rise, climb or ascent - is on September 9. A Saturday, this is the start date, but it is an overnight event, as is also the case with the equally famous walk to Lluc from Plaça Güell in Palma in early August. As it is overnight, specific safety measures have to be in place. It is these measures and demands being made by the Balearic government's emergencies directorate that are threatening the staging of this year's pujada and ones in the future.
The organisers are the Associació d'Antics Blavets, the association of one-time members and friends of the monastery choir. Its president is the current mayor of Sa Pobla, Llorenç Gelabert. He points out that this is a non-profit association that doesn't have the means to meet requirements now being imposed by the directorate. "We do not have the infrastructure to coordinate over forty municipalities and assume the safety of the participants."
The directorate has issued a report highlighting "inaccuracies and omissions" in respect of the route. Detail of this includes, for example, whether there happens to be a full moon. Basically it is concerned with road conditions and visibility as well as with accurate numbers of walkers.
The association states that "difficulties are added each year", the report saying that there needs to be a reconsideration of safety for people at night who only have the accompaniment of vehicles from the Civil Protection volunteer service.
Faced with the government demands, the association is considering an approach to the Council of Mallorca's department of classified activities and to get the Council to close the main road from Inca to Lluc. There is anger and frustration among the walk's volunteer groups who argue that there are no problems in ensuring that roads in Mallorca are regularly closed for "events which make money", e.g. the Mallorca 312 and Ironman 70.3.
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