The flowery garden that Menorca knows how to preserve

Menorca has taught us islanders many lessons. The most important is being able to find a territorial balance that today offers us a landscape, a harmonious economic activity, and a society focused on culture. It hasn't been as easy a path as it may seem, although it's true that maintaining agriculture and industry at higher percentages than the rest of the Balearic Islands, and not blindly embracing the combination of tourism and concrete, have been key. But decades ago, a series of political and social leaders saw that the threat of greed and easy money could send everything spiraling down the drain. And they created a true work of art, the fruit of much prior work: the 2003 Territorial Plan.

Among the requirements established in the document was something unthinkable in the rest of the islands: making rural land unbuildable. Just take a walk around Menorca and see the results. But nothing lasts forever, and the current governing team of the Menorca Council decided to "boost" the economy, which in the Balearic context only means one thing: being able to build more and carry out more urban planning pilot projects.

But once again, Menorcan society demonstrates its vision. Far from giving up and complaining that the PPi Vox wanted more cement everywhere, a veritable avalanche of citizen mobilizations (including folk songs), chain reactions, meetings, Council technicians taking a stand, and even popular games in the middle of the square have been launched to explain that the Menorcans know how to take care of their flowery garden and, contrary to what the sad ballad that gives it up for lost says, it will fight forever.