Just when you thought that the plan for the new bus station in Puerto Pollensa was done and dusted, along has come an objection. For mayor Miquel Àngel March, a former spokesperson for the environmentalist group GOB, it will be particularly galling that it is GOB who are raising the objection.
Reinforcing the idea that GOB as an organisation has moved a long way from its origins as protectors of bird life and as pure environment campaigners, it argues that it will be impossible to build the bus station where it has been proposed because the land is classified for health, cultural or sports use and not for transport.
GOB are proposing that an alternative site is used - that of the one-time Motonáutica Bonaire in the La Gola area, which the town hall, say GOB, is obliged to expropriate. A change to urban planning would allow this site to be used as a bus station. Moreover, it would have a more central location: a criticism of the planned bus station is its location.
Tomeu Cifre Bennàsar, the councillor for urban planning, has expressed his surprise at GOB's criticisms. The alternative in La Gola is an area with environmental values and so is neither a reasonable option nor the right place. The municipal architect, he adds, has made it clear that it is a bus stop which is being planned and not a bus station. He has? So, it isn't a bus station after all. But how can one tell the difference? What constitutes a bus station and what doesn't? Very odd.