Palma has at least three interpretation centers in operation

PalmTurning the city of Palma into an "interpretation center for itself." This is the ultimate goal, in the words of the General Coordinator of Culture and Tourism of Palma City Council, Fernando Gómez de la Cuesta, of a project that not only involves existing facilities, such as the Es Baluard Museum, Can Balaguer, and Bellver Castle, but also plans to incorporate at least three new ones: these are different interpretation centers. Major. The information that Cort has been willing to share about all of them, at the request of ARA Baleares, has been scarce and imprecise.

In general terms, Gómez de la Cuesta states that the idea is to "provide each of the interpretation centers with specific features" that allow them to "intermediate with citizens, whether residents or visitors," from multiple perspectives and in the "most novel and contemporary way possible." Regarding the content these centers will offer, the Culture and Tourism Coordinator of Cort specifies that the Temple Towers Center "will address medieval mediation focused on the Order of the Temple," while Can Serra Center "will focus on medieval Christian life, focusing on family life, decorative arts, and other topics."

Finally, regarding the Plaza Mayor, the idea is to house the Palma City Interpretation Center, the epicenter of the network of museums and centers project that will serve to "explain the multiple cities that the city contains," according to the interviewee. "It will be a place to explain the successive cities that have taken place, which also serve to define and understand the current city," adds Gómez de la Cuesta, who does not rule out the possibility of incorporating other centers into the network, although they will be announced "as the facilities are incorporated and the projects on which the City Council is working are finalized." It should be remembered that the person in charge of this area is, in any case, Pilar Ribal, General Director of Heritage and Interpretation of the City of Palma City Council.

A network of museums and centers

The first of these future interpretation centers to open its doors will likely be the Temple Towers interpretation center. Almost twenty years after the City Council acquired this iconic 12th-century building—it was in 2007, through a swap deal—and after numerous delays and various problems in the various planned restoration projects, the current governing team led by Jaime Martínez is confident that the restoration work will be successful. "Until the building has been delivered, we will not be able to specify the museum project it should contain," explains Gómez de la Cuesta, "although there is already a preliminary project that we will link to the definitive characteristics and that we will present once it has been completed." Like the future interpretation center at Can Serra, the Temple Towers interpretation center would be linked to the medieval period, although in this case it would be more closely linked to "defensive systems"—Cort declined to elaborate further on this approach and its contents. Even so, the intention is to open it at the end of next year.

As for Can Serra, a building listed as a Site of Cultural Interest (BIC)—as are the Temple towers—the project is even more in the works, although Mayor Jaime Martínez announced last December that it would also become the home of a "city history museum." This was at the presentation of the building's renovation project, which will have a total investment of more than €10 million from the Sustainable Tourism Tax. Shortly after the announcement, however, the bidding process had to be halted due to an appeal from the National Construction Confederation, which resulted in changes to the tender specifications and administrative clauses. Currently, "the project is moving forward and work is underway," according to City Council sources, without providing further details. The intention to convert both this facility and the Temple towers into part of a network of city history museums, in any case, dates back a long time: it had already been announced by the previous government in 2020.

Regarding the epicenter of this network, announced as a fundamental part of the remodeling project for Palma's Plaza Mayor, the idea already appeared in the electoral program of the Popular Party's Jaime Martínez for mayor and pursued the objective of "showing residents and visitors our history, its evolution, the characters who mark it, neighborhoods, etc." Having resolved the ideas competition, which was won by Barceló Balanzó Arquitectes and Scop Arquitectura i Paisatge, as announced last March, sources from Cort ask to wait until the public exhibition of the final project to provide more details about the contents of this center. They only advance that it will have facilities that allow for "the interpretation, study, analysis, and dissemination" of the city and rooms that can host "from temporary exhibitions to poetry recitals or conferences." Furthermore, they clarify that the organizational chart and composition of this center have not yet been designed, although work is being done "in parallel with the construction project."

When asked about the potential tourist interest in this interpretation center located in Palma's Plaza Mayor, the General Coordinator of Tourism and Culture became visibly annoyed and stated that "it will be a center for everyone who wants to get to know the city, and the most interested party is the citizenry itself." "We're not looking for more tourists to come, but we do want the tourists who come to have a wider range of options and opportunities to get to know the city they're visiting, and that's also working for the citizens," he clarifies.

The rise of 'paramuseums'

However, since their emergence, interpretive centers have been the subject of numerous debates regarding both their definition and their objectives and content. Emerging in the middle of the last century in the United States—known there as "visitor's center", that is, visitor centers– and extended throughout the Spanish state especially since the 90s, the proliferation of heritage interpretation centers is directly related to the rise of cultural tourism. This is reflected in Carolina Martín Piñol, PhD in Teaching of Social Sciences and Heritage, in her thesis Descriptive analytical study of heritage interpretation centers in Spain, published by the University of Barcelona. There, Martín discusses the "impact of cultural tourism on museums and their planning" as the starting point for the emergence of heritage interpretation centers, spaces that the author describes as "paramuseums," a clear reference to parapharmacies. "In the case of pharmacies, this hybrid arose due to the lack of licensing for professionals, which led to the creation of 'parapharmacies,' which are establishments with less stringent legislation and where pharmaceutical products can be sold without a prescription. The case of Interpretation Centers is identical." And she speaks of heritage interpretation centers as a "very ambiguous concept, similar to that of a museum, but which does not require a collection and, therefore, neither does it need a curator nor legislation." "Any building can be an interpretation center, research requires less effort, the absence of pieces on display can be replaced by replicas, and the maintenance of these facilities is much simpler and depends not so much on the needs but on the availability of municipalities or administrations," explains the same author in the book. Interpretation Center Manual (Ediciones TREA). However, he asserts that these spaces can become "great educational tools" provided there is planning and resources appropriate to their intended purposes. "Interpreting isn't just about informing," he asserts.

In any case, according to the Balearic Islands Museum Law, interpretation centers are "spaces open to the public, linked to places and monuments that, provided they have the necessary infrastructure and human resources, can provide citizens with the keys to understanding their cultural values." Unlike museums, interpretation centers in the Balearic Islands are not required to have permanent collections nor are they intended for conservation or research purposes. Most of those existing in the islands, in fact, are linked to natural spaces, such as the Cala Lladó interpretation center in Dragonera; the Alquería Vella de Baix interpretation center in the Levante Peninsula Natural Park; and the ses Salines interpretation center in Cabrera. However, some are also linked to historical heritage, such as those in Son Real and the Caimari Ethnological Park, among others.