The possibility of being able to arrive by car during the summer to some virgin coves of Menorca that can now only be accessed by shuttle bus has generated controversy on the island because it affects one of the emblems of Ciutadella, Cala Macarella in a special way. , in the south of the island. This beach is one of those that, together with Cala Mitjana and Cala en Turqueta, supports the most tourist pressure given its natural beauty.
The new mayoress of the municipality, Joana Maria Pons (PP), has confirmed that she will commission a study on the feasibility of allowing traffic to circulate again along the access road to the cove.
The decision to veto access by private car to avoid overcrowding in the area and therefore its environmental deterioration was made in 2018. Hundreds of vehicles collapsed daily on the natural road that leads to the beach area from Ciutadella. A shuttle bus network was chosen.
Before the ban, signs were posted indicating whether the beach car park was full or not, but many tourists ignored these signs and the result was traffic chaos, with hundreds of cars stuck, some of them parked in the shoulders, making it even difficult to exit.
This summer could be the last in which these restrictions are in force. The new mayoress of Ciutadella assures that citizens should be able to go to the area by car, not only by bus, and specifies that the study commissioned will determine the load capacity of the access roads to the coast, but also if In some of the narrowest points that cause the retentions, some type of work must be done to widen the roads.
"Until the study is complete, we will not make any decision, so it may be that next year they will not be able to open to traffic either," he told La Vanguardia. The mayoress adds that these limitations on movement approved by the previous town hall, governed by a pact of the left, have very negative effects on mobility in Ciutadella, where hundreds of users of the cove leave their cars there to take the bus to the beach . "We have a huge parking problem in Ciutadella and we have to find a balance," she says.
Miquel Camps, spokesman for the GOB in Menorca, the main environmental organization on the island, considers that the proposal of the new municipal team is "nonsense". "It won't solve anything and it will create a problem where there was no problem," he says. Camps assures that, when it was possible to go by car, access to the cove was practically closed first thing in the morning due to the massive presence of vehicles from 7:30 am.
Precisely, the GOB spokesman believes that the island should go in the opposite direction and limit the entry of cars that arrive in summer, both for rental and private cars that arrive by ferry with tourists on vacation.
The Balearic Parliament approved a law last legislature, the Biosphere Reserve, which gives options to island institutions to limit the entry of vehicles to the island, as has already been done in Formentera, but the PP and Vox pact that governs now in Menorca he has already said that he wants to change it, although without specifying in what aspects.
