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Menorca usually starts its autumn rhythm after the Gràcia festivities. The school year begins, cultural activities get under way, and people think of things of interest to face winter. In the summer break that we now leave behind, there have been many festivities, dances and singing.
The singing predisposition of the Menorcan population makes it easy to intone well-known songs that everyone joins in. Most people have learned them by ear, not by studying them with a score. They usually speak of traditions, love, loss, nostalgia.
To be performed by any audience, melodies must not be too complex, and strategically placed silences are needed. The moment when the melody or the voice stops serves to properly organise the musical sentences, so that the texts make sense, and so that those who sing can take a breath to continue. Silences are also music.
The landscape of Menorca is formed by a mosaic of pieces that fit together like a tune alternating long notes with shorter sounds, silences and rests, rhythms and intensities. The combination of altered areas with perspectives of production and spaces given over to nature ends up creating a harmony that many people hold dear.
Now, the open fields will soon be filled with fresh pastures with the late summer rains. With cows and sheep, small newborn tortoises will also appear, the geckos that will live among the wall stones, or some of the butterflies that prefer this season to spring.
The olive trees are starting to have the olives ready for this year’s oil harvest, while the wild olive trees are ripening their small fruits for the starlings and thrushes that will soon arrive from the north. Nature and culture live closely together, like musical notes and silences.
As with popular songs, no expert knowledge is required to connect with the landscapes the island offers, to be moved by the sensations that certain settings provoke on an intimate, non-rational level. And science has been able to prove the therapeutic effects generated by living in a harmonious landscape.
To avoid losing this cherished heritage, which benefits the resident population and enhances the territory for visitors, the landscape is studied in certain academic fields and criteria and regulations are developed to prevent short-term vision from irreversibly degrading its value.
With this aim, the European Landscape Convention was born at the turn of the century. An international agreement ratified by the Spanish State a few years later, and which has been gradually transposed into regulations.
In Menorca, a whole set of provisions was incorporated into the Territorial Plan to provide the island with landscape guidelines to safeguard this richness. With the amendment now being promoted by the Consell Insular, they are disappearing.
They call it administrative simplification, but it is a cutback in a quality regulation, a serious setback for our territory.
Ignoring an international commitment, disregarding major work, forgetting that notes and silences, nature and culture must be combined to create music and landscape. It will be necessary to work so that Menorca’s landscape continues to sound.