Along with the serious drought that Catalonia is experiencing, the Hard Rock recreational and tourist complex, planned next to Port Aventura, between Vila-seca and Salou (Tarragona), is starring in the final stretch of the Catalan legislature. The project hinders the approval of this year's new budgets and, reinforced by the water crisis, has fueled the political debate on the weight of environmentalism in the productive model of Catalonia, one of the underlying issues -with permission of the amnesty- that will occupy the Catalan parties before the next appointment with the polls.
The Government, which says it is committed to “green transformation” and reindustrialization, is carrying out a tourism project that includes the construction of a complex with a large casino, shopping centers and hotels, which would consume 1,086,000 cubic meters of water per year. , according to data from the Climate Action Department, as well as the city of Reus. Furthermore, there are those who add problems associated with gambling to this project, such as insecurity or gambling addiction, but the majority of Catalan parties endorse it. Last Thursday, PSC, ERC, Junts, PP, Ciudadanos and Vox voted in favor of the Government maintaining its commitment to the project, with the CUP and En Comú Podem voting against.
Although Hard Rock is far from the embryonic Eurovegas that Artur Mas presented in 2012, PSC and Junts fully support a project that today would dedicate only 4% of the land to gaming, 16% to leisure, 6.7% to commercial uses and 57% to hotels. From the millions of square meters of buildings projected at the beginning, it has grown to the current 700,000 m2 with large areas of environmental protection.
“It is a more Catalan-style project,” they justify in Junts. “We must make things happen,” claim the socialists, who warn that Catalonia is losing the race with Madrid in investments and large projects, “like Formula 1,” they recall.
President Pere Aragonès admitted last week that Hard Rock will move forward although “we do not embrace it with enthusiasm,” and in ERC they privately confess that they would prefer to bury it even if it were Oriol Junqueras who rescued it in 2016: “Those were other times. “We were in the midst of an economic crisis and there were thousands of unemployed, but now…”
On the other hand, the commoners, spurred after having lost the mayoralty of Barcelona, play the ecology card stronger than ever, looking askance at the next appointment with the polls.
Electoral interests intersect. The commons, who fight on behalf of the electorate of ERC and the PSC, see that environmental sensitivity is permeating Catalan society.
According to the CEO, the generations that vote the most – baby-boomers, generation X and millennials – reject prioritizing economic growth over environmental protection. Generation Z (between 16 and 26 years old) and the silent generation (from 77 years old) have the opposite opinion. What is relevant in any case is that there is room for electoral growth through respect for the environment.
“Do we have to stop the country because of the drought? There will not always be one and, in fact, in Tarragona the emergency situation of Barcelona does not exist. Furthermore, in the territory they are in favor of Hard Rock,” they point out in the PSC. But it is not easy to quantify the support that the project generates in the area.
The entire Camp de Tarragona is closely following the fate of the macro complex, where the Aturem Hard Rock platform, emerged from left-wing social movements, has fought against it for more than a decade with the support of the commons and the CUP. If Hard Rock ran aground in court, it was precisely because of the tenacity of this platform. But the weight of the commons in the province of Tarragona is less, with barely twenty councilors.
Despite the delays, American investors maintain their interest in the project. “They are not going to back down now,” explain leading political and economic sources on the Costa Daurada. But the drought has modulated the local reception of the project. In the primary sector they are very irritated to see that the tourist sector continues with record numbers and with hardly any restrictions.
The political parties of the territory with aspirations to govern or already in the government of municipalities and institutions do not feel comfortable when they have to speak in public about Hard Rock, except for the mayors of Salou, Pere Granados (Sumem per Salou-PSC), and Vila-seca, Pere Segura (Junts). Granados even sets a date: “It will be operational in 2027.” On the other hand, ERC does not like it because it would be a hard blow for the powerful commercial lobby of Reus, but in public they avoid taking a clear position against it because that would reduce their credibility and friendship with the economic powers of the territory.
The Hard Rock has brought to light the difficulty of some parties in adapting their traditional economic development model to the ecological challenge, while others assume environmentalism as a religion even at the risk of falling into degrowth. Nor has any administration been able to explain in detail a project that has undergone important modifications and had an environmental reprimand from the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia.
The TSJC overturned the initial Urban Master Plan (PDU) in 2020, forcing the Generalitat to adapt it to climatic convenience, but the ERC's reluctance about the Hard Rock has meant that the new PDU remains in the drawer beyond the recent elections municipal, failing to comply with the budget agreement with the PSC from last year.
The Government is obliged to comply with the administrative procedures, in addition to being conditioned by the PSC to approve this year's accounts. That's why they apologize for keeping it alive: "We can't do anything else, we risk a fine" if we don't process the project.
Although the content is unknown, various sources, also from Tarragona, assume that there is a confidential clause that would penalize the Generalitat if it backed down, not to mention the possible judicial consequences it would face if it did not comply with the obligation to process the PDU.
The ERC Government reluctantly takes on the project to have the PSC votes for the budgets, but the commons demand to paralyze it in exchange for their support. Even so, Jéssica Albiach's group approved a resolution in Parliament on Thursday with the votes of ERC, the CUP and two, by mistake, from the PSC, which proposes stopping "any modification of urban planning in the tourism sector" for the duration of the drought. This could be a solution to clear the accounts but I would keep the Hard Rock in the drawer until the rain gives it another chance.
