The street is mine. And the heritage, too

It is a way of governing: when a decision is made, any obstacle becomes a nuisance. Technical reports, warnings, recommendations from international bodies... All of this can wait or can be pushed aside. In Menorca, the viaduct built right next to the Rafal Rubí settlement is proof of this. The settlement is part of Talayotic Menorca, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The surrounding area is also part of the asset that must be protected. And yet, the Island Council, governed by the PP, pushed ahead regardless, and that infrastructure, which was halted by protests and heritage objections, is today a viaduct where cars, trucks, and motorcycles have been circulating for a few days now. UNESCO and ICOMOS had requested its demolition; the Ministry of Culture, too. None of the warnings have been heeded.

The criteria of the Heritage experts have weighed less than those of the Roads Department. The protection of a millennial cultural landscape has had to yield to a road crossing that could have found other routes. It is not just a poorly located work, it is a way of doing politics: first, it is decided what is to be done, and then the Administration is ordered to make it possible. There is a type of ruler for whom, when they want to carry out an operation, they rarely lack hands. They always find a civil servant, one, willing to sign off on it; if an expert does not cooperate, they can be moved to another position and tried with another; if a position might be inconvenient, it is left vacant. And if the managing director of the Talayotic Menorca Consortium might remember what the protection obligations are, it is better not to appoint him. There is no need to give explicit orders when everyone understands what is convenient. It is the attitude of “the street is mine.” The policy of the steamroller, of “because I say so,” and of “we will fix it later.” A way of governing that reappears when power confuses having a majority with having a blank check. And there are always those who benefit from it: when the public interest is sidelined, the private interests of some party members do not seem like a strange suspicion.

It is not the first time we see this way of doing things, nor the hundredth. In Palma, for years, all possible movements have been made to avoid the demolition of La Feixina, even though preserving this Francoist monument represents an immense grievance towards democratic memory and violates the law. In Menorca, the institutional machinery has been forced to push a road over the recommendations of the bodies that watch over heritage. The cases are different, but they share a way of understanding power, when institutions are not there to guarantee the general interest, but to execute the political will of those who govern them.

What must a World Heritage site be, for the current Council of Menorca? A label to show off in tourist brochures? If not even this recognition serves to stop a simple viaduct, the message reads loud and clear: there are certain powers that when they want to pass, they pass. Even if it is over history.