Which is Mallorca’s most iconic beach? One refrains from asking which is the best beach or the beach most favoured by influencers whose activities totally undermine the very unspoiled character they may claim to be highlighting. Most iconic does not, therefore, mean Caló des Moro with its queues of influenced beachgoers seeking a lounging area on what is only a small beach. It doesn’t mean Playa de Muro, a regular list-topper on Tripadvisor and which has merits in terms both of offering urban and ‘rustic’ beach. The rustic is that part which is backed by a dune system and forest which come under the protected Albufera Nature Park. Very popular, but the most iconic?
Es Trenc has assumed this accolade for many a year. It was already popular before Instagram invaded this stretch of the Campos coastline. The popularity was in no small part due to the fact that here was a long beach that was entirely rustic. There was nothing backing it other than the natural world, and so naturists were drawn by the appeal of communing with this nature, just as they have been on Playa de Muro’s Es Comú - communing with common land, that of a beach.
There is a certain similarity in that Es Trenc and Es Comú are close to wetlands. In the case of Playa de Muro, these wetlands are separated by a main road. At Es Trenc there is no such obstacle associating the beach with the Salobrar de Campos. In 2017, almost thirty years after Albufera was given protected status as a nature park, the Es Trenc-Salobrar de Campos Nature Park was legally established.
The Balearic Government at that time comprised PSOE and Més in coalition. The latter were and remain an amalgamation of nationalist-minded Republicans and socialists as well as greens. Eco-nationalist is the sobriquet that is most conveniently and frequently attached to Més, who in 2017 had control of a ministry that would have been a non-negotiable for them in reaching coalition agreement with Francina Armengol’s PSOE. As much as tourism was a Més aspiration, so also was environment.
Enter, therefore, Vicenç Vidal, whose environmental qualifications were indisputable. His CV includes a degree in environmental sciences and a masters in the management of nature parks. Es Trenc and Salobrar de Campos were waiting for him, the demand for a protected nature park, it was said, having been in existence for many a year. Two years into office and Vidal produced the law by which the nature park was to be declared.
In June 2017, the minister said “justice had been done”. The declaration marked an “historic day”. A demand of “environmental struggle”, he explained, had been ongoing for forty years, longer therefore than the history of the Albufera park. For Vidal, it was “the last great fight”. “From today, Es Trenc will be a nature park and it excites me because I never thought I would be able to say this.” His Més colleague, David Abril, observed that he and the party were “very proud of the legacy that initiatives like this represent”.
The law consisted of nineteen articles in five chapters. These covered, among other things, rules for the protection of the terrestrial and marine area; the management of the park; and penalties for breaches. It was passed with the help of Podemos, who nevertheless expressed reservations about car parking; they were against this. El Pi, a party in opposition, believed the whole bill was political and criticised the absence of the assessment for car parking. Another opposition party, Ciudadanos, argued it was an “empty” project without a management plan for protection measures. “He (Vidal) has brought us a bill empty of usefulness.”
The main opposition, the Partido Popular, were against the project, they and others having been symptomatic of a lack of consensus. There wasn’t a rejection outright or anything of the sort, but the fact that politically the law amounted to division was an issue that hasn’t gone away. Controversies about car parking were themselves to be symptomatic of holes believed to have existed in the law.
As well as the government, the state Costas Authority had been hovering in the background. A combination of regional environment ministry and strict application of national coasts law was to raise the hackles of the town hall in Campos. Governed by the Partido Popular, as the town hall still is, Campos bemoaned its tourism lot. Ironically so, as Campos has done much in preventing a situation akin to that in Playa de Muro with its urban-rustic beach mix. The Costas demanded the removal of the permanent beach chiringuitos. The environment ministry was fully supportive of this in the framework not just of the Es Trenc legislation but also an objective of strengthening protection elsewhere - Mondragó in Santanyi, for example.
In April 2022, and so a year away from parliamentary elections that would see the PP returned to office, the mayor of Campos, Francisca Porquer, was joined on the beach by a native of Campos, Marga Prohens. The Balearic president-in-waiting and the mayor attacked the government’s “tourismphobia” and lamented the fact that Campos was to be deprived of much of the little revenue the town hall actually generated from tourism. Demolition of the permanent chiringuitos commenced the same year as the law was passed. Campos was now faced with three of the six beach bars disappearing altogether.
The last remaining permanent bars went in 2022, the demolition having been mandated under the management plan for the nature park. In March 2024, the town hall announced that it wanted the six beach bars with terraces that used to exist to be rebuilt (rather than demountable bars minus terraces). In making this announcement, the town hall referred to the PP government’s review of restrictions on the use of natural areas. The town hall filed a legal challenge against the management plan, aware that the government was looking at expanding the uses.
So we now come to the environmentalist organisation GOB having denounced the government for what GOB claim to be the intention to reduce the level of protection for the Es Trenc-Salobrar de Campos Nature Park. They argue that “radical change” is contemplated. Deregulation is planned by lowering the regulatory threshold. The environmentalists fear there will be an expansion of recreational, tourist and commercial activities in the park.
The government denies this. Proposed amendment is said to be “strictly legal” and an administrative matter that doesn’t impinge upon protection. But GOB clearly believe otherwise, the government being in the process of drafting a different management plan which will be in accordance with a key, general objective of administrative simplification.
Where this actually goes remains to be seen, but the fact is that despite the “last great fight” having apparently been won in 2017, despite the chiringuitos’ controversies, despite regeneration of the dune system, there are still the several thousand beachgoers a day. The popularity and the iconic status are undimmed, so much so that Es Trenc was selected for the piloting of a government beach capacity monitoring system. The beachgoers arrive. They wander at will. And as for the car parking and traffic...