When Munar pressed the button to 'blow up' the Monnàber hotel 25 years ago

PalmIf there was one thing the former president of the Consell de Mallorca and the defunct Unió Mallorquina (UM), Maria Antònia Munar, did well, it was staging political actions. When she learned that the Consell had won the court battle to demolish the illegal Monnaber hotel in the Tramuntana mountains, it was clear to her that a montage practically worthy of a movie was needed.

And so it was. This Tuesday marked the 25th anniversary of one of the most emblematic moments of Balearic environmentalism, when 60 kg of dynamite destroyed in a matter of seconds a ship, a skeleton of a building, of great visual and environmental impact: the Monnàber hotel. Located on the estate of the same name in the municipality of Fornalutx, it was reduced to rubble on July 29, 2000. The one who pressed the button, amidst great media expectation, was Munar herself. It was in compliance with a decision the institution had made in 1994, just a year before the UM leader took office.

An illegal construction in the middle of a protected landscape

The building was constructed during the 1960s without any planning permit or administrative authorization, in an area of great environmental value that would be recognized as a picturesque landscape a few years later (1972). The construction company never completed anything but the structure, which remained half-finished and remained for decades like an open wound in a unique natural setting.

Over the years, the hotel became a symbol of urban speculation and the lack of institutional control at the time. For a long time, the building remained abandoned until the Consell de Mallorca initiated legal proceedings to demand its removal. At that time (1994), the president of the Consell was Joan Verger, and he wanted to set an example of compliance with the law, even though unlicensed construction was common on rural land.

The legal battle

On October 3, 1994, the plenary session of the Island Council of Mallorca formally approved the demolition order for the structure. The agreement was based on the illegality of the building and its environmental impact, and was defended as an exemplary action to restore the landscape's balance.

Despite opposition from the developer, Isabel Colom, the courts gradually ruled in favor of the Council. The High Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands definitively authorized its demolition on April 29, 2000, and even approved the use of explosive techniques, given the high cost and difficulty of removing the building manually.

The demolition: a symbolic act

On July 29, 2000, the hotel's structure was blown up in a controlled manner in just three seconds, thanks to the actions of a technical team from the Catalan company Pasquina SA, a specialist in this type of demolition. 58 kilos of rubber-2 were used, placed at 854 strategic points throughout the building.

As Maria Antònia Munar pressed the button, dozens of journalists and authorities watched and immortalized her image. Munar wanted to present herself as the protagonist of a symbolic act: it was the first time in the Islands that an illegal construction of this magnitude was removed in a protected natural environment.

The then president of the Consell de Mallorca even organized transportation for the media and other authorities who wanted to see the demolition up close, dressed in a commitment to the territory. At that time, it seemed impossible that Munar would end up being convicted for various cases of corruption, specifically with urban planning as the background in some cases.

Restoration and creation of the Agency

Following the demolition, a landscape regeneration project was launched: debris was removed, the slope stabilized, and native vegetation planted. The case of Monnàber is remembered today as an important precedent in the defense of territorial planning and an example of the institutional will to end urban planning impunity. It also generated a strong social debate about the role of institutions in the face of environmental aggression.

This debate, regarding the need for a territorial control agency, materialized years later (2008) with the creation of an autonomous body to address urban planning irregularities on rural land. On November 10, the Agency for the Protection of Urban and Territorial Legality of Mallorca was officially approved.

The Agency began operating on April 8, 2009, with the functions of monitoring, inspecting, sanctioning and restoring urban planning legality in rural areas, both at the island level and delegated by municipalities.

Finally, on January 12, 2017, it adopted its current name, Agency for the Defense of the Territory of Mallorca, maintaining its powers intact and reinforcing its role as guardian of urban planning legality on the island, which has now become an essential element in restoring order to an island where for decades no illegal building, no matter how large, was erected on rural land.

Munar, from wanting to represent legality in the symbol of corruption

Maria Antònia Munar, a key figure in Mallorcan regionalism and one of the most influential politicians in the Balearic Islands during the 1990s and 2000s, ended her career surrounded by numerous corruption cases that led to her imprisonment.

For years, she presided over the Island Council of Mallorca and the Parliament of the Balearic Islands, and was the leader of UM. From 2009, she was accused in several cases of urban planning corruption and waste of public funds. Her image was finally damaged when she was sentenced to five and a half years in prison in 2013 for the Can Domenge case, related to the irregular sale of public land.

Subsequently, she accumulated other convictions, such as those in the Maquillaje case, the Voltor case, and others derived from her management of UM. In total, she was sentenced to 14 years in prison, although she ultimately served six years in Palma prison (from 2013 to 2019), when she was released on parole. The political impact of her case was enormous: UM was dissolved, and its fall symbolized the end of an era marked by opacity and clientelism in the island's institutions.