Balearic govt claims Greenpeace has “got it wrong”

Speaking at a prize-giving for the design of Palma's Molinar subsidised housing project, Carbonero said that the Greenpeace report was “out of date” because the Balearic government's housing development programmes had already been allocated to urban land. “What Greenpeace had been referring to,” said the minister, “is the fact that there are tracts of land in the Balearics which take the overflow if room for subsidised housing can be found nowhere else.” Such plots, he said are neither urban nor rural because they remain uncategorised, but as it is they have not been necessary because the government has found space in territory which is already classed as urban. “It would seem,” said Carbonero, “that Greenpeace have not heard that we have already settled the housing issue - it seems that they are the ones wanting to insist on an issue that makes no threat to unspoiled land.” The Greenpeace report had, however, not simply targeted Balearic government housing policy. It had also pointed to infrastructure developments which threaten the region's environment. Plans to develop Ibiza port, the ecologists claim, could have a serious impact on the Salinas nature reserve.