What do nuns and volleyball have to do with each other?

ManacorWhat about the covered pavilion that has been due to be built for years around the Torre dels Enagistes sports area? What are the problems that mean a project so necessary for Manacor's sport still hasn't even had the land bought?

We could list a whole series of urbanistic causes, which also involve the Consell de Mallorca, but which have the municipal General Plan as the main obstacle.

At the end of 2021, the Manacor town hall approved the new regulations to govern and organize local urban planning. A minimum plan to start functioning after decades without updated regulations (the last one was from the 80s). So much so that a new sports zoning area was not mapped out. An oversight that is even more serious if we consider that for this reason (because the current sports center did not meet the adequate conditions for the highest competition) the team that is now Palma Futsal had to leave Manacor.

But returning to the beginning... And what do the nuns have to do with all this? And the Sisters of Charity of Son Macià in particular? Well, at this point, one could say a lot. It all begins when in 2016 they decided to leave the Macianense convent due to a lack of vocations, and put up for sale a building that they had made their own despite being built by the town itself, as a school and for initial care. An announcement that alarmed the village, which asked for help from both the Town Hall and the Consell.

Looking again at the data from the current General Plan, the nuns' plot is registered as 'common residential land', which means that a block of flats could be built, which would break the village aesthetic and possibly further increase prices in the area. To avoid this and to be able to buy it with guarantees, Miquel Oliver's Consistory wants to achieve a modification of the urban planning plan, which would affect the convent... but also the future pavilion.

And it is that within the same procedure, the old convent would go from being registered as ‘public health and socio-educational facility’, a change of use that would allow the building to house a day center or a health care point. Something similar would happen with the rustic lands at the back of the Enagistes, which with the modification of the planning would be considered ‘for sports facilities’. According to the technical reports held by the City Council, this modification would begin before the end of this legislature (May 2027) to then go through the Consell de Mallorca.

What will it cost and what will it have?

To tell the truth. The technical and constructive aspects of the new pavilion seem spectacular. The built area will triple the current Miquel Àngel Nadal (considered an M4: that is, three transverse basketball courts and one main lengthwise court), with a macro area with multipurpose rooms, a swimming pool, and a climbing wall, and a budget that would be around 10 million euros. For now, the president of the Govern, Margalida Prohens, has already stated that she is willing to finance a good part of the work once the City Council presents the project to her.