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article_detail
Date Published: 04/12/2020
ARCHIVED - Ecologists oppose plans for new 5-star hotel in San Pedro del Pinatar
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
Construction of a hotel next to the salt flats of San Pedro would be senseless, say ANSE
Earlier this week plans were revealed for the construction of an 18-million-euro 5-star hotel next to the Regional Park of the Salt Flats of San Pedro del Pinatar, and almost as soon as the news was published the project was criticized as “senseless” by the ANSE naturalists’ association.
The Los Imbernones area of San Pedro, where the hotel is planned, is already home to the Pinatar Arena sports complex, which offers training facilities for football professionals, and the addition of a 400-room luxury hotel would turn it into one of the main tourism hubs of the Mar Menor area in competition with La Manga Club, which has currently closed its own luxury hotel for the winter and has been struggling to compete with Pinatar Arena and other training facilities just over the border in Torrevieja.
With a maximum of six floors, large areas of the proposed hotel would be devoted to dining rooms, kitchens, a spa facility and a gymnasium, and it would also include conference rooms, banqueting halls and outdoor leisure areas and pools.
Among those expected to stay at the hotel would be the football clubs from all over Europe which come to train at Pinatar Arena, and an extra pitch is planned at the hotel itself. Access would be from the main road between San Pedro and El Mojón, on which Pinatar Arena is located.
The developers intend to make the new development compatible with the regional park despite their project including half a hectare of “Ramsar” wetland (decreed to be of international importance) by creating a botanical garden. This 100-metre-wide strip would be planted with native species of flora, and would also function as a drainage channel in times of heavy rain, according to local councillor Ángela Gaona, who anticipates that alongside the hotel there will also be a 20,000-square-metre campsite.
However, Pedro García, spokesman for ANSE, rejects the whole project out of hand. Its location, he points out, is in exactly the spot where ANSE proposed the creation of a green filter to protect harmful substances from running off into the salt flats and the Mediterranean, and while he recognizes that in the past the regional government have allowed building on similar land, times have now changed.
The fragility of the marine environment in the Mar Menor is a constant reminder of the need to protect the wetlands, and Sr García believes it would be “brainless” to continue hemming in the regional park, which he describes as the “oxygen balloon” thanks to which there is still a tourist industry in the area.
The regional las Salinas Park which fringes the wild beaches of the coast is the principal tourist attraction of San Pedro del Pinatar and the development would “eat up” yet another pocket of its shrinking environment.
It makes no sense, he goes on, to plan a botanical garden on Ramsar wetlands which already have their own vegetation, and he is adamant that the triangle of undeveloped land between the Calle del Puerto and the road to El Mojón should remain undeveloped. To build on it, he adds, would be to further diminish the natural drainage it offers and thus increase the risk of flooding, and in consequence ANSE intends to lodge objections to the environmental impact plan accompanying the project.
Other voices are questioning the logic of the project when the Thalasia Hotel in San Pedro del Pinatar is already so close to the site of the training grounds and existing 5-star hotels in nearby golf resorts of Torre Pacheco have been forced to close; transferring coachloads of footballers from nearby hotels is a simple alternative they say and would make use of existing luxury hotels which currently lie dormant.
Will the project receive financial support from regional business development funds when projects to save the Mar Menor are stalled due to lack of cash, they ask????
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