This summer is the first that the Deya Council has fully implemented the anti-saturation measures in the cove, which were installed two years ago, but which until now had only been applied experimentally. This is an automatic barrier located at the access to the cove, next to the Deya-Soller road, which closes when the car park is full and opens when there are free spaces.
According to the mayor, Lluís Apesteguia, “the cove has improved a lot thanks to this measure, as there is no longer the same agglomeration of non-resident vehicles trying to access or park, and everything is much quieter”. But this measure is not accepted by some tourists. The council has detected that, unless the local police are present, some visitors raising the barrier by hand in order to get in. Of course, when they arrive at the cove they cannot park and have to go back up or leave their cars in places that are not authorised, causing problems for users and neighbours.
But according to Apesteguia, this is not the main problem, as most of them respect the closed barrier. The problem is that, if the barrier is down due to lack of parking, many stop irregularly on the main road, interrupting traffic and endangering other drivers. “Every time a vehicle leaves, another one can enter, but the barrier closes immediately and many continue to stop, in violation of traffic regulations,” explains Apesteguia. The mayor has asked the Directorate General of Traffic to deploy more police to control traffic and prevent accidents.
The mayor told the Bulletin last summer that he was extremely concerned about the future of one of the most popular and beautiful villages in Spain, never mind Mallorca. “I am extremely proud to be the mayor and, along with the local residents, we are more than happy that so many people from all over the world want to come and visit our wonderful village. But we are facing some serious problems which need to be taken seriously.
“I’ve brought this up time and time again with the various institutions and administrations but they tend to look the other way. They think that it’s just a problem for four months of the year and they are quite happy to allow Deya and neighbouring villages to continue being the golden goose for Mallorca. But if that goose is killed, then there are not going to be any more golden eggs,” he warned.
“And we all have to be very careful in the message we send out. This is by far not an anti-tourism stance, it’s a call for help from the authorities. Deya has a population of 700 and that balloons to 2,400, due to the number of hotel beds and holiday homes during the summer, and this has been going on for years.
“The main problem is that the institutions are taking the same approach to tourism as they did during the last boom in the ‘90s, but we’re now in 2022 and the problems and the challenges are totally different. It is not fair on the local community, visitors , the environment and natural resources. Yet again this year I’ve had to introduce a hosepipe ban on water for non-human consumption and when the cove car park is full, the Local Police close the road. And that is for various reasons.
"I don’t want people stuck in a traffic jam all the way up and down to the beach plus I have to consider safety issues. If an ambulance or the police have to rush to an incident, how will they get down the narrow road to the beach? We have an electronic system controlling cars in the municipal car park which also gets closed when it gets full, but there is only so much the local council can do. And now we have the large sightseeing coaches coming through and the bikers; it all adds to the human pressure on a precious area.”