Manacor recovers the municipal swimming pool after paying almost 150,000 euros
The facility will remain closed beyond 2026 and will require works that could exceed one million
ManacorBeing able to swim again in the Manacor municipal pool will still take time, but the City Council has already taken a decisive step to recover the facility. The municipal plenary session has approved the agreement with the bankruptcy administration of Esquitxos de Blavor SL, the former concessionaire, which will allow the Consistory to regain full rights to the sports space.
The City Council will have to pay 64,697.57 euros to the former managers. The amount is less than both what was initially planned and what Esquitxos de Blavor SL had claimed, which at times raised demands up to 1.2 million euros. To this figure, however, 85,000 euros in legal costs must be added for the proceedings that the Consistory has been losing in different instances. In total, recovering the pool will have cost nearly 150,000 euros.
The conflict has been dragging on since 2020, when the pandemic worsened the problems that the management of the facility was already accumulating. A year later, the concessionaire renounced the 30-year contract prematurely, which was due to end in 2027, after repeatedly requesting financial collaboration from the City Council to maintain the infrastructure.
The next step was the sudden closure of the pool and the filing for bankruptcy. Thus began years of neglect and disputes to determine who had to assume the different expenses. The mayor of Manacor, Miquel Oliver, highlights that the reversal of the concession has not been the result of political work, but of the work of technicians, municipal legal services, and the comptroller. "They have dedicated a lot of time to it," Oliver points out.
According to the mayor, the municipal technicians have evaluated and endorsed the external report commissioned to determine the amount to be paid. "Despite the judge's criticisms, it has been what has led us to reach an agreement to recover the pool," he defends.
Oliver also claims that the final amount is far from the figures that were put on the table during the conflict. "In the end, neither the 73,300, nor 336,000, nor the 1.2 million euros that were mentioned had to be paid," he states. The mayor directs criticism at the Popular Party, but also at their current PSOE partners, who, when they were in opposition during this same legislature, denounced the high cost that the City Council would have to assume to judicially recover the facility.
Roadmap
The agreement smooths a path full of potholes and uncertainties, but it does not mean that the swimming pool can reopen immediately. The first step will be to finish evaluating, based on the external report already prepared, what reforms the facility needs to be in usable condition again. It is foreseen that the works may exceed one million euros.
Once rehabilitated, the City Council plans to re-tender its management through a concession. This time, however, it would not be for as long a period as the previous one. The 30 years of the concession to Esquitxos de Blavor SL were set so that the company could amortize the works it carried out to cover the municipal park's swimming pools, which until then were open-air.
The City Council therefore maintains a management model that has generated disagreement among citizens over the prices of season tickets. Both the works and the process for awarding the new concession will extend beyond this year, according to the Sports Councilor, Llorenç Mesquida. This forecast leaves behind the initial announcement by the same councilor, who had placed the possible reopening of the swimming pool within 2026.