Visitors at the Sant Antoni museum in Sa Pobla. | MDB

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Sa Pobla wishes to boost its tourism, both local and foreign. A way of doing this is by having routes around the municipality, with the aim that they will benefit shops and bars.

Mayor Biel Ferragut has been talking to tour operators about cultural, heritage and gastronomic routes, and one particular option that seems attractive involves French tourists. Each year, a tour operator brings some 3,000 French tourists for meals at a well-known restaurant near to Can Picafort. The town hall wishes to tap into these tourists. Before they go for their lunches, they would visit Sa Pobla, where they could take in the church, the Can Planas museum and shops and bars.

In terms of local tourists from the island, last Saturday a group of twenty from Palma went by train and were treated to a short organ concert and then visits to Can Planas and the Sant Antoni museum. The mayor met them and they concluded their stay with a meal at a Sa Pobla restaurant. A group of fifteen from Colonia Sant Jordi will be on a similar trip next Tuesday.

Sa Pobla, where there is very little tourism, has in recent years been pursuing a strategy of encouraging holiday rentals. This has been quite successful, as the number of places has increased. The town hall will be hopeful of more places in benefiting from the Council of Majorca's zoning.

Tourism in Sa Pobla could have been very different. In 1954, under orders from the Franco administration, there were negotiations to set more clearly defined municipal boundaries. These involved Alcudia, Muro and Sa Pobla. In what were later to be described as having been at best "poor" negotiations, Sa Pobla town hall managed to give Muro a whole load of its land. This was a stretch which included Albufera as far as the coast. Sa Pobla used to have its own beach. From 1954 it no longer had this beach. Muro acquired it, and what is now the main part of Playa de Muro ceased to belong to Sa Pobla.