Spain and Portugal for Visitors

Posted by : John Ross on Apr 27, 2008 - 10:13 AM HumanInterest

The appalling Gran Scala casino development plan for the Monegros semi-desert in Aragón has "deflated," reports El País. The main reasons the Spanish newspaper cites are opposition from locals and ecological groups and, especially, the suspicion that the consortium behind Gran Scala is a sham. I am sure El País is right, but I have another reason to add: the bursting of the Spanish property bubble. It is too early to let our guards down altogether but, whatever the explanations, all right-thinking persons will rejoice that the wonderfully unspoilt Monegros are less likely to be desecrated by what was intended to be the second-largest casino complex in the world, the Las Vegas of Spain. More of this good news story.

The Gran Scala project was welcomed with wide-open arms by the Aragonese government, for apparently respectable reasons. On the face of it, Gran Scala would have brought wealth, employment and development to a dramatically impoverished area, so compensating for the ecological devastation it would have caused, at least from a political point of view.

ILD, the consortium behind Gran Scala, promised an investment of 17,000 million euros as long as the Aragonese government provided the infrastructure - roads, electricty supply, water - to make the development viable. The Aragonese government did its political sums - money, wealth, votes, on one side of the equation, ecology, a remarkable flora and fauna, otherworldly landscapes and a centuries-old way of life on the other - and the result was a foregone conclusion. But since the project was made public last December, ILD has not bought a single plot of land, and it has become ever clearer that it does not have the capital to do so. Meanwhile, an opposition group - Stop Gran Scala - has been formed and attracted a growing number of adherents, and has not just challenged the project before the Tribunal Superior of Aragón but has done so - and this is the clever bit - in the Fiscal Division, alleging that the government is negligent in not verifying the consortium's solvency. Meanwhile, spokespersons have simply stopped mentioning Gran Scala, much less its supposed start date in September this year.

But, hang on a sec. What has really changed since last December? Not ILD, the same consortium with the same miserable capital of 50,000 pounds. Not the opposing groups, however well they have played their cards. Not even the Aragonese government, now as then in the hands of the PSOE, the Spanish socialist party. The only element of the game that has radically altered is the Spanish property market, which last autumn looked as if it could remain in nearly the same buoyant state as it has enjoyed for the last decade, but no longer. So perhaps all along the real business lay not in the 35 casinos and highly improbable 25 million visitors a year Gran Scala was supposed to attract, but in a simple, sordid real estate project, thousands of homes to be built in a city created out of nowhere. It is after all, a common strategy to reinforce this kind of development with a real-estate component - Terra Mítica, Parque Warner, the examples go on and on - and sometimes one has the suspicion that these projects only exist to put money into the pockets of builders, as at Xanadu Madrid. But the market has collapsed, and large-scale developments like the megalomaniac Seseña in Toledo are languishing without buyers.

And, while we're thinking this kind of nasty, suspicious thoughts, these projects seem to find the backing of politicians with remarkable ease (just don't get me started about what the bastards have done to Madrid's skyline, it's too upsetting). It couldn't be that briefcases full of 500-euro notes are finding their way into the possession of party-political fundraisers, could it?

More:
Stop Gran Scala, anti-Gran Scala group
Go-Ahead for Enormous Leisure City in Spanish Desert, original article on Spain and Portugal for Visitors