Pollensa’s ‘second’ homes - a cause for concern?

In Pollensa, the percentage is 53% - 7,307 out of a total of 13,772. Of the fourteen, Pollensa ranks second in terms of resident population behind Felanitx but has the highest number of dwellings. This number brings the percentage down, as in much smaller municipalities it is over 60% - 67% in Fornalutx, 65% in Deya, for instance. Even so, it is a high percentage.

Ten years before, only Deya had an imbalance whereby second homes exceeded the number of main residences. The reasons for the increase to fourteen are varied - tourism, investment, an increased tendency for Mallorcans to sell properties in villages that they may have inherited (and which themselves may well have been second homes).

Whatever the reasons, the consequences are pretty clear. Housing prices in general are pushed up; gentrification supplants a former resident population; people have to look elsewhere for places to live; there is a cultural dislocation. The term “residential anguish” has been adopted to apply to this dislocation and to a process of displacement - moving somewhere else.

Ultimately, one does have to wonder who benefits most from this sort of situation. The real-estate sector is very important to the municipality’s economy, the size of which - according to a Fundació Impulsa report earlier this year - is 337 million euros. Forty per cent of this comes from real estate. Yet the sector represents only three per cent of local employment.

How is it possible to get the location of an old factory so wrong?

In Pollensa, the reaction to a Balearic government report denying restoration of the old Can Morató textile factory was, to say the least, not positive. The project for restoration, presented by Colonya Bank, which was founded in Pollensa and has been a much-respected institution in the municipality for more than one hundred years, would see the factory converted into the bank’s headquarters and a social-cultural centre. It would solve a problem as to what to do with the factory, where operations definitively ceased in 1967 and which has become derelict.

The bank’s senior management have met the Balearic president, Marga Prohens. The meeting had been planned before the bank was made aware of the objections of the government’s water resources directorate, but it provided an opportunity to press the case for the restoration project to go ahead.
Prohens voiced her support and said that the government will seek to find a solution to the currently frozen project. The reasoning of her water resources directorate is that the factory is in a flood zone. At present, given the fact that it is unoccupied, there isn’t a great risk. But there would be a significant risk, if it were to be occupied.

Understandable, you might think. But it has emerged that the report from the directorate locates Can Morató in the wrong place. It is some 150 metres from where it actually is, the report placing it by the Can Berenguer roundabout (the large roundabout at the entrance to Pollensa).

People may not be entirely familiar with the factory’s location, but they could all have told the directorate that it is not next to the roundabout. So, how has it managed to get it so wrong? Good question. Nevertheless, this doesn’t remove the fact that the factory is in the vicinity of the Vall d’en Marc/Sant Jordi torrent. In a way, the wrong location was more beneficial (the roundabout is further from the torrent), but the bank stresses that work to the old bridge next to the factory has prevented - for the past fifty years - any overflow from the torrent. Moreover, there are retaining walls in the way (which aren’t shown by the directorate) and there are also some twenty metres of oak wood between the torrent and the factory. It is also stated that there has never been any record of flooding at the factory, either when it was operative from 1922 to 1967 or since.

It can’t, I guess, be entirely ruled out that there would be flooding in the future, and one supposes that the directorate is taking this into account. However, whether the factory is located in the wrong or right place, it is the case that there are other properties. If Can Morató is deemed to be at risk, aren’t other buildings as well?

Alcudia racism row and a test of the coalition

The verb ‘reprobar’ means to reprove in English. Not a word often used in English, it is common in Spanish (as is the Catalan ‘reprovar’) when it comes to matters of a public authority nature. A reproof is a mechanism whereby the likes of council meetings condemn someone for certain actions but stop short of, say, votes of no confidence.

At Alcudia town hall, opposition parties raised a motion to reprove the Vox councillor for the police, Juan Sendín, for remarks he made at a recent council meeting. These were taken to be racist. At the time, the mayor, Fina Linares of the Partido Popular, said that there were ways of saying things, making clear that Sendín was out of order. He later apologised.

The motion was defeated, Linares observing that the administration condemns any form of racism and adding that she believed in people’s ability to learn and correct mistakes. Sendín had “acknowledged his mistake and made a public apology”.

Should the matter have therefore been put to rest? Quite possibly so, but the opposition pursued it nonetheless. That the motion didn’t prosper wasn’t surprising. The three parties of the coalition administration voted it down. But I can’t help but feel that this was an opposition attempt to test the coalition, as the third party is Unió per Alcudia, led by Carme Garcia. Unlike the other parties, she is of the left. Had she still been in opposition, would she have voted differently?