The Ministry puts its foot down on the Menorca Council and urges it not to "jeopardize" the World Heritage status.

CitadelThe State has put its foot down in the Menorca Council and, through a letter signed by the Minister of Culture himself, Ernest Urtasun, asks the president of the island institution, Adolfo Vilafranca, to halt the project with which he intends to resume construction work on the Rafal Rubí viaduct and thus "not jeopardize" the island's declaration of heritage.

Urtasun recalls in Vilafranca that the decision of the World Heritage Committee calling for the demolition of the half-built bridge on this section, which the PP government in the Consell now wants to continue building, "remains fully in force." Specifically, the minister recalls, the agreement still in force urges the Council to "remove as soon as possible the partially completed roadworks, as well as the poles and power lines between different archaeological sites that negatively impact the views of the landscape."

Urtasun points out that the Consell (Spanish Consell) was supposed to report on these actions before December 1st, and although it has submitted a preliminary report with explanations about the situation of the section where the prehistoric navetas of Rafal Rubí are located, "today we are still awaiting an official assessment from the World Heritage Center, so it is inappropriate to move forward with favorable decisions from UNESCO."

In this context, the recent decision by the Consell government to definitively approve the project and to resume work on the Rafal Rubí viaduct has forced the Ministry to intervene. It does so to ask the Consell to "act with the necessary diligence to avoid jeopardizing the World Heritage status and to ensure strict compliance with what was agreed upon by UNESCO." "Avoiding any action that could compromise the conservation of the asset or damage its international image," says the minister, "is not only a requirement, but an institutional responsibility of the highest order."

The previous left-wing government in the Consell de Menorca attempted to scrap the half-built viaduct affecting the Rafal Rubi navetas (boats) and instead proposed a lower-level solution with a lower environmental, landscape, and heritage impact. But it was unable to implement it before the 2023 elections. Thus, upon regaining control of the island government, the People's Party (PP) was willing to push ahead with the project without following UNESCO recommendations. It will rely on reports from the Department of Highways, which always considered that "the visual impact on heritage is not comparable with the risk to people's safety posed by maintaining the road in precarious conditions," and therefore endorsed the bridge designed by the PP. To justify this, the island government also commissioned various reports that did not sufficiently analyze the alternatives to the viaduct. In fact, the heritage assessment report commissioned by consultant Jordi Tresserras, former president of ICOMOS in Spain, failed to mention all of the previous reports and construction projects.

Rafal Rubí's project was initially approved in April "without prejudice to its possible supplementation, where appropriate, by the considerations of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee." On July 21, it was finally approved, with the corresponding declaration of public utility prior to the works being put out to tender and executed. However, there is still no record of UNESCO having issued a statement on whether or not it will accept the Menorca Council's new proposal.

Más por Menorca has denounced the "imprudence" of the PP government for wanting to approve the project without UNESCO's approval. He also warned that the Tresserras heritage report "is tailor-made and has serious methodological and conceptual deficiencies," as it "deliberately hides documentation" and does not consider all the alternatives.

The Rafal Rubí project that the Consell wants to implement between kilometers 5.7 and 7.7 of the main road costs 6,594,330.33 euros.