Tag Archives: Politics

Residents 1, Urban developments 0 – 13/06/26

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It is difficult to get people who are spending a few days on holiday to understand that the place they are visiting has water problems. Perhaps they could get an idea if the surrounding context suggested it, but that is not the case.

The progressive loss of drinking water in Menorca is directly related to the economic development model that is being promoted. The resident population is making efforts to reduce consumption, but spending is increasing in tourist areas.

On Saturday, June 13, at 7:30 p.m., a protest action has been called in Biosphere Square in Maó. A great deal is at stake for the immediate future. Please help spread the call.

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Sustainable distortion

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Almost 40 years have passed since the concept of sustainable development was spread worldwide by the United Nations. However, fears about the distortion of the term have gradually come true, and there are still people who equate it with sustained growth.

Ancient philosophers already said that when words lose their meaning, citizens lose their freedom.

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I would like to return to Menorca: 13/06/26

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Official statistics show that Menorca has grown by 80% in the number of tourists over the last 15 years. Increasing overcrowding is not a feeling, it is a reality that is degrading the island in various ways. We already know that this path leads to the models of Ibiza and Mallorca.

But there are people who do not accept this destiny and will take to the streets to protest on Saturday 13 June, at 7.30 pm, at Plaça Biosfera in Maó. This is a new call by Via Menorca, the campaign that aims for the island to once again find a differentiated path, as it had for many years.

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Profitable devotion

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The world is a combination of many viewpoints. Each person focuses on the part that seems most suggestive to them.

Some read the islets surrounding the main island as laboratories of evolution, where the original lizard has taken on its own colours and learned surprising survival strategies, but for others they are potential hunting grounds.

In the past, those who managed to kill one of the last specimens of the monk seal took photographs, proud of an achievement that today we interpret as testimony to the extinction of a spectacular species from our seas.

Cultures and geographies shape the way we see what surrounds us. There was a time when the habit of understanding life as an experience decided by an ethereal and external being began to give way to more empirical interpretations. In the end, it seems that we have chosen to replace the gods of the past with the economic religion.

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‘Not even the cove, which was my world’: 13/06/26

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The romantic failure sung about in la balada d’en Lucas (Lucas’s ballad) includes a lament for the loss of values and identity that tourism-driven development caused on the Costa Brava. It is a song sung with deep feeling in Menorca as well, a land that is also being harmed by the impact of mass tourism.

On Saturday, 13 June, a protest event is being organised against the direction the island has been taking in recent times. No one who wants a dignified future for Menorca should be missing.

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Encouraging fires in natural areas

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A new legislative amendment has been presented by the Partido Popular proposing changes to the Law on the Conservation of Environmentally Relevant Areas of the Balearic Islands (LECO). With the amendment to Article 52, deliberate fires of arboreal forest mass inside protected natural areas would no longer be considered an infringement.

As will be recalled, a few days ago the GOB made public parliamentary initiatives by the same political group to allow hunting on islets and other sites of high natural value. Now, some additional measures of particular gravity are being added. Eliminating or reducing sanctions for those who intentionally burn protected forests implies conveying to public opinion a highly dangerous sense of impunity.

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The cross-cutting issue

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Spring has begun, leaving behind meetings, conferences, studies and debates on important issues in Menorca. Menorca’s winter brings a remarkably active pace of events that encourage reflection and analysis. And in all these initiatives, when one takes a moment to think, a common factor emerges—one that runs through all these issues and fills them with a sense of concern.

We struggle to find solutions for aquifer management, access to housing, waste reduction and recycling, beach overcrowding, and the gradual loss of purchasing power.

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Cutting the flower

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The President of the European Commission says that nuclear energy is strategic for Europe. Next month will mark 40 years since the very serious accident at the (formerly Soviet and now Ukrainian) Chernobyl plant, when a radioactive cloud larger than the entire Iberian Peninsula was released and drifted across the West as far as the United States. The radiation was equivalent to hundreds of bombs like the one in Hiroshima.

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The Rafal Rubí documents

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In relation to the controversy over the works at Rafal Rubí, GOB wishes to recall that UNESCO has spoken very clearly about the documentation that the Island Council sent regarding the road works. There is no doubt that an opinion was issued on the information sent from Menorca.

The international body clearly warned that the indication was that the works already begun should be dismantled as soon as possible.

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