Tourism On An Industrial Scale

"Zone industrielle." Despite my insistence that we make a detour, we never got to see any industrial zones. This was at the end of the 1970s. In the Dordogne. My wish to take in some industry was vetoed in favour of the hunting out of a chateau or several.

Winemaking is industry, but it's not the sort of industry that I had in mind back then. I wanted to see plant, machinery, things that went clank and made noise and mess. I was an industrial tourist, without ever having heard the term and without ever managing to become one; not then at any rate.

Industrial tourism is growing. There is a European congress devoted to it; the fourth gathering will be in Portugal next year. The European Tourism Day, celebrated at the end of September, concentrated on the promotion of industrial heritage and on how it can contribute to the diversification of tourism in general.

The growth in interest is to be welcomed. But unfortunately, much which goes under the term industrial tourism simply gets shunted into a museum. Sometimes workings are preserved or simulated, but for me the far greater interest lies in the industrial sites themselves, whether they be in ruin or maintained.

Spain does quite well when it comes to industrial tourism; Toledo, for example, is a major centre. The French do it rather better than the Spanish, and not just in a town's local "zone industrielle". Every year some 20 million people visit 1400 sites and museums of different sorts. Sadly, Mallorca doesn't have much to offer. Or rather, it has quite a bit, just that no one much knows about it and next to nothing is done to let them know about it.

Mallorca's forgotten industrial past sounds like a contradiction. The island's industry, pre-tourism, was predominantly agricultural, but by no means exclusively. There is a charity, the Foundation for the Recuperation and Study of Balearics Rail and Industrial Heritage, that attempts to promote the island's forgotten industry, which, at the start of the 1950s, involved some 35% of the population working in factories producing the likes of chemicals.

Most towns have evidence of old industry, if you look hard enough. Some of it has fallen into a poor state, such as the carpet factory in Pollensa. Closed in 1960 and posing a danger as it might collapse at any time, the town hall wants it declassified as an "asset of cultural interest", so that it can be demolished and then rebuilt. This would be a shame. Far better would be to perform restoration work and then promote it as a site of tourism interest. But of course no one's got any money to do anything with it.

Elsewhere on the island there are disused mineworks - in Alaró and Felanitx. Though mining dates back to the start of the nineteenth century, it was stopped until the Franco years, and the mineworks are evidence of the economic strategy of self-sufficiency (autarky) that for many years Franco sought for Spain.

But you don't necessarily have to go hunting for such sites. In Lloseta, for example, you can hardly miss the giant cement works. Not that this is disused. It benefits from using coal ash from the Es Murterar power station by the Albufera nature park, the power station that took over from the old one in Puerto Alcúdia and which has been all but abandoned for years.

The old power station, though, is arguably Mallorca's foremost industrial site. It has been named among the one hundred most important industrial heritage sites in Spain; it was symbolic of Mallorca's more recent industrial development in the 1950s, which is when it was constructed.

Plans to convert the power station into a museum have fallen foul of economic crisis. These plans, if they are ever indeed realised, are sympathetic to the architecture. The chimneys, for example, would be preserved. Though it can be argued that the power station forms something of a blot on the landscape on the sweep of Alcúdia Bay, its main structures should stay. Indeed, it should all stay.

If finance is going to be such an issue for its re-development, and it is going to be, then consideration might be given to a less ambitious scheme; one by which the site is made into one of tourism interest and is open to visitors. It could also include a museum, but on a smaller scale, one devoted to the history of the power station and to all the forgotten industrial heritage of Mallorca.

Industrial tourism is growing, Mallorca has little of it, so why not create some.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.