Portmán Bay regeneration will begin in October

La Unión, the next step: Following regeneration -tourism development

Consejeros for tourism, infrastructure and the council,  have formed a working commission to develop the tourism potential of the area

Francisco Bernabé, the Mayor of La Unión, has announced that the regeneration and environmental rehabilitation program of the bay of Portmán will begin in October and is expected to last approximately four years.

Sr Bernabé was speaking on emerging from a meeting with various regional ministers, including Pedro Alberto Cruz, the Minister for Culture and Tourism, Salvador Marín, the Minister for the Economy, and Antonio Sevilla, Minister for Land Registration and Classification. During their meeting agreement was reached on the creation of a special working committee to coordinate all the regeneration work on the bay, which has been put off for more than thirty years since the mining activity closed, leaving its ghastly legacy behind it.

According to Sr Bernabé the first phase of the regeneration will take place between October 2011 and March 2012 with a budget of a little under a million euros, and will consist of the waterproofing of the quarry known as "La Corta" so that the sterile residues dredged from the bay can safely be deposited there. The budget for the whole of this operation is 180 million euros.

The Mayor also reported that the project for the marina, which will have over 700 mooring points, is now far advanced, and construction should start in 2014. At the same time it is hoped that construction work will begin on various luxury hotels and a golf course. When they are up and running they could generate as many as 2,000 direct, steady and permanent jobs in the area, as well as many incidental and indirect offers of employment.

The announcement has been slammed immediately by the IU-Verdes, the environmental spokesperson for the party, Victoria Rodriguez, calling the construction of 2000 houses , a golf course and hotels around Portmán " a barbarity which only serves the interests of politicians and builders."

She went on to say that , "the urban complex which they intend to build has nothing to do with the initial idea, " and that "the pretension of making a golf course breaks with the idea of regeneration of the Sierra Minera, at the same time as it responds to the model of an obsolete and predatory environmental project."

It´s a bizarre conundrum, the rehabilitation of the Bay of Portmán will do nothing for the economic prospects of La Unión other than create a more attractive environment for the few who live there unless it is then followed by tourism developments which will create work for La Unión residents and in turn totally change the natural habitat which the regeneration has created.

Without regeneration, the land is worthless.

With regeneration the land is of high value for tourism development, although the tourism development then destroys the wild landscape the ecologists have fought so hard to achieve.

But for a municipality like La Unión with just this one tiny opportunity to create tourism revenue and jobs based around their one beach, the value of the regeneration lies not in the regeneration of the bay, but the regeneration of the building industry it will provide.

Not the kind of regeneration the ecologists had in mind