The main reason why the plan to extend the railway from Sa Pobla to Alcudia collapsed in 2009 was because Alcudia town hall and the Balearic government couldn't agree on the route. At the time, funding from the Spanish government was available. All that was needed was this agreement. As none was forthcoming, the project was scrapped.
Even with agreement it is highly questionable whether it would have gone ahead. There was a change of government in 2011. The Partido Popular of José Ramón Bauzá, it was observed by many, treated the Balearics as an austerity test bed for Mariano Rajoy's PP Spanish government; it was clear that the PP would win the 2011 general election, seven months after the regional election. The other great rail project in Mallorca, Manacor to Arta, was scrapped by the Bauzá government on financial grounds. Sa Pobla to Alcudia would surely have gone the same way.
Fifteen years on from the collapse of the project, it is sometimes erroneously stated that it was a victim of financial crisis austerity. But it wasn't; not in 2009 anyway. The clash between the town hall and the government owed much to the rivalries between the Unió Mallorquina, the conservative regionalist party before it spectacularly imploded thanks to numerous corruption scandals, and the PSM Mallorcan socialists, the main forerunners of eco-nationalists Més.
Alcudia had a UM mayor, Miquel Ferrer. The government's minister for mobility and territory was Gabriel Vicens of the PSM. There were basically two options for the route. The southern route, favoured by the town hall, would have taken the railway by or even through Albufera. The northern route, the government's option, would have seen the railway next to the main road from the motorway.
The latter was always the most obvious. There were reports to support it and to rule out the southern route. Factors against the southern route included risks from flooding and the greater cost. This said, there were certain complications with the northern route, one having been the location of the terminus. Again, there was a pretty obvious option - by the Horse Roundabout. But the government was talking about a terminus somewhere behind the auditorium.
Expropriation would have been necessary whatever the route. This, allied to the impact of the development, prompted the tractor protest by owners in the Son Fe area, an action that didn't just get tacit support from the town hall. There was open support and it extended to a poster announcing the protest having been displayed at the entrance to the town hall building. Ferrer said: "Alcudia town hall doesn't accept ultimatums and maintains its wish for the train to pass by Albufera." The protest as good as ended the scheme. The government knew it wouldn't get its way.
Before its defeat in May last year, Francina Armengol's government had come up with its master plan for mobility in Mallorca. Sa Pobla-Alcudia was back on the table. Technical studies and reports were to be conducted. They still are being conducted, as far as one is aware. Yet most of this work had been done years ago.
Very little has been heard about the rail extension since the change of government. Marga Prohens is now on to her second minister for mobility and territory, José Luis Mateo, who is also the housing minister, as was his predecessor, Marta Vidal. Who would be a minister trying to balance the massive challenges posed by housing and public transport? Does housing take priority? It's a headache to say the least, and as there has been silence from the government, Més are seeking to exert pressure and get a response. Més councillors at six town halls will be proposing council meeting motions about public transport, and a demand for the Sa Pobla-Alcudia extension will feature in these motions.
Will this do any good? I have my doubts, as I have my doubts that there will ever be a rail extension. Funding probably wouldn't be an issue, but there will always be opposition from one source or another. The Son Fe tractor boys haven't gone away, for instance.
Go back some ninety years and it almost certainly would have been built. A plan existed from the time of both the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and the Second Republic. Then came the Civil War, and that was that.