El Trenc, a revenge

A few days ago, MÉS per Mallorca warned that Marga Prohens's Government is preparing to deprotect El Trenc or, at the very least, modify the Law declaring it a Natural Park to reduce its protection. They are doing this within the so-called Decree-Law on Strategic Projects, an omnibus regulation which (as you may have already read in ARA Balears) actually hides a profound legislative reform that seeks to overturn or modify about seventy existing regulations by presenting 88 amendments that, in the vast majority of cases, have little or nothing to do with the strategic projects that are the subject of the decree-law. The aim is to satisfy the demands of Vox and the PP's own agenda on issues relating to urban planning, tourism, public services, immigration, and the Catalan language. In the specific case of El Trenc Natural Park, the stratagem involves adding a final provision to the Law declaring the Natural Park (Law 2/2017): this final provision will bear the title (alas!, so suggestive to the ears of the stale right-wing) of ‘Dese-legislation’, and it will seek to allow the measures contained in the regulation to be modified by a simple decree, which can be approved by the Consell de Govern. In short: legislative sleight of hand and parliamentary filibustering, in search of shortcuts to satisfy their own interests and those of Vox's partners. Interests that can be pecuniary or ideological, or both at the same time.

This is news that can leave us open-mouthed at the audacity: the maritime-terrestrial Natural Park of El Trenc-Salobrar de Campos, which is its full name, is an area included within the European protection network Red Natura 2000, and this means that any modification to the regulations affecting it requires the approval of Madrid and Brussels. As hostile as they claimed to be to the state of autonomies, the people of Vox (the PP is barely its not-very-bright executive arm) do not hesitate to use regional legislation to subvert the established order in Spain and Europe when they deem it necessary. For now, they would like to relax the regulations regarding the installation of beach bars and the collection of Posidonia, two of the battlegrounds of the Spanish right and far-right in the Balearic Islands.

The initiative (against which MÉS per Mallorca has announced litigation to the Constitutional Court) we said is surprising, but at the same time not surprising at all. From the very first moment, the PP of the Balearic Islands, and particularly the Mallorcan PP – and even more particularly, the Campaner PP –, experienced the declaration of Trenc as a Natural Park as a tragedy. They think that the beaches of Campos should have been allowed to be like those of the Bay of Palma and to build wholesale tourist and residential complexes there. For them, the lack of protection of Trenc is a historical claim, a grievance that must be compensated. Where has it been seen, we cannot fill all of Migjorn de Mallorca with concrete, asphalt, and tourists?

What is surprising in part is that young rulers, like Prohens and Sagreras, have inherited intact the bitter resentment of their predecessors and want to make amends as if it were still the 80s or 90s, when they used to defame the poet Damià Huguet for being one of the promoters of the ‘Salvem el Trenc’ campaign. That campaign was not just one of the great successes of GOB and environmentalism: it was a success for all Mallorcans and for all of the Mediterranean. Our right-wing, however, has not relented in its determination to destroy Trenc (and fill their pockets, in passing). Now, moreover, they want to do it hand in hand with a fascist party that lives by exploiting, from the lowest political maneuvering, hatred against Mallorcans. It is a revenge.