Residents of Son Sardina and Sa Garriga in Palma will be holding a meeting on Thursday to consider protest action against a proposal to reactivate the project for a further section of the Via Cintura which would directly impact them.
Also referred to as the second ring road, this first came up as long ago as 2003. The president of the Son Sardina residents association, Agustina Fernández, explains: "The 2003 proposal intended to cross the space between Sa Garriga and Son Sardina, but in the end the project was stopped. Now they intend to connect this new section with the Inca motorway passing through the Son Castelló industrial estate and right next to us."
The proposal to reactivate the project has come from Vox at the Council of Mallorca, where a Son Sardina resident, Antònia Roca of the Partido Popular, is a vice-president. When protests were held back in 2003, she was one of the protesters. Another Son Sardina resident is Lourdes Roca of the PP, who is the second deputy mayor at Palma town hall. Fernández says that both of them have assured residents that the road won't go through Son Sardina. "But we don't trust this."
Concerns among residents have increased since the elections led to political changes in administration at the Council and town hall.
The residents insist that they are against any new road that threatens land and the environment. "We do not agree that the solution to jams entering and exiting Palma is to create more sections of the road." Instead, there needs to be a focus on developing existing roads and on committing to public transport.
The PP-led administration at the Council of Mallorca has said that no new motorways will be built on the island but that the second ring road will be completed. The PP mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez, is highly critical of the fact that the previous administrations did "nothing" to solve traffic problems in Palma or elsewhere in Mallorca.