Posada de Verano in Alcudia, Mallorca

Posada de Verano, a great location but saddled with problems for years. | Lola Olmo

Andrew EdeAlcudia10/05/2024 19:18
TW
6

It's weird. Type Posada de Verano Alcudia into Google and you get various bookings websites that are apparently offering it. Take Tripadvisor, for instance. Click on its link and under the heading Hostal Posada de Verano is a photo of people in the sea. So badly chosen is this photo that the resolution is poor, the beach in question has yellow flags flying, and the beach bears absolutely no resemblance to that which is actually by the hostel - Sa Marina, where the kiteboarders go.

Enter dates and you will find, be relieved to find, that you can't book it. "Contact accommodation for availability," advises Tripadvisor. However, there are no contact details. And that's because there is no one to contact. There is no accommodation. The Posada de Verano is there sure enough, but this summer place - the literal meaning is inn or hostel of summer - has been abandoned for years.

A haven for graffiti vandals, it has known its share of addicts and squatters who have gathered there. Virtually a ruin, the appalling state of the Posada is a crying and scandalous shame. The location is good, the area is quiet. Veterans can remember its past with fondness, but any lingering affection evaporates as soon as one sets eyes on the building. The past, it has to be said, is a very long time ago. Forty years since it was last open? No one can quite remember. What it was ever doing on Tripadvisor and other websites is anyone's guess.

It was ten years ago when Joan González, then Alcudia's first deputy mayor, said that the town hall would be left with no other option than to brick off entrances if it couldn't get the owner to take responsibility. A problem was locating the owner. González explained that the situation with the Posada - a highly complex one - stemmed from the fact that a buyer had taken it on but was then confronted with outstanding debt that he (or she) was either unable or unwilling to pay.

This was in the early 2000s. The property was seized by a bank and ultimately ended up with Sareb, the so-called bad bank that was founded in 2012 to manage high-risk assets of banks that were nationalised during the financial crisis.

Joan González is back as deputy mayor, his party, the Partido Popular, now making moves to try and resolve the problem of the Posada once and for all. Since the town hall acted to try and ensure that it would cease to be a risk in 2014, precious little or any institutional attention has been devoted to the Posada. The mayor, Fina Linares, says the intention is to acquire the building and to then demolish it and create a green area in its place.

In order to finance this acquisition, the town hall has presented a project for EU Next Generation funds, which it successfully obtained for the redevelopment of the six beach bars. However, there is little hope of success for funds under the 2024 programme. The complexity of 2014 hasn't gone away. There is in fact greater complexity because of the availability of EU funds and because the site is now 'outside municipal ordinance'. In other words, there is no building planning for the site. Redevelopment would be impossible, as the site is now classified as a green area under municipal planning regulations.

Into this story comes Sareb. It plans to auction the building, but a local authority - Alcudia town hall in this instance - cannot take part in the bidding. Therefore, the town hall will have to wait for there to be a buyer, assuming there is one, and then negotiate the purchase from this buyer. The Balearic government has meanwhile taken the view that it would not be possible to develop a project for EU funds to meet the 2024 deadline. The government has also ruled out subsidising the project; for now at any rate. This means that it would be up to the town hall to meet any shortfall in funding the acquisition. But as an application for EU funds this year looks as if it will not be made, a subsidy is somewhat irrelevant.

Could the town hall not pay on its own? In theory, probably yes. Without knowing the valuation for the property, a town hall budget surplus of around 120 million euros in the bank would more than adequately cover the cost; way more than cover it. This said, would the Posada represent good value for town hall funds? Can it really be defined as a priority for taxpayers' money? It isn't as if the situation with the property is one of the town hall's making, except that it has taken decades for us to now arrive at the prospect of acquisition and demolition.

This smacks of institutional inertia, but there is mitigation - the complexities that have surrounded the case. And the Posada is hardly unique in this regard. Es Fogueró is another example. The old tennis courts and buildings on the Carretera Arta (home to squatters) form a more recent one.

The one certainty regarding the hostel, in that anything can ever be that certain in municipal administration, is that it will be knocked down at some point. The crying and scandalous shame no longer holds true because too many years have passed. It relates to a time when the Posada de Verano might have been resurrected. That time has gone.