The purpose of this research is to study the importance of the first campaigns for the defense of the territory on the island of Menorca within the sociopolitical movement of the end of the Franco regime, and its influence on the subsequent gestation of a structured environmental movement. Since 1977, thins new environmental movement will be the opposition to the urban development that will happen to the island as a result of the prominent role of the tourism industry.
Specifically, our research focuses on the first mobilization of wide scope that takes place in Menorca for the defense of a natural space: the Albufera des Grau, located in the municipality of Maó, and one of the most relevant places from the point of view ecological and landscape of the island, around which begins, at the beginning of the 70s, the construction of a large residential urbanization with the name of “Shangri-la”. Since 1974, a conservation campaign against this project has taken off, led by a group of naturalists and people committed to the protection and conservation of the natural heritage, with the aim of achieving the paralysis of the works and the modification of the qualification planned for the area to the Pla General d’Ordenació Urbana (PGOU) of the municipality, then in process of processing.
The case of s’Albufera des Grau is paradigmatic to understand the emergence and evolution of the ecologist movement in Menorca. Its duration in time (it will take almost 12 years until its definitive protection is reached) goes hand in hand with the final years of the Franco regime, the years of the Transition and the restoration of democracy and, in particular, the gestation and consolidation of an ecological associative movement, headed by the “GOB-Menorca”, that will be the one who will lead this mobilization in later years.
In this sense, the chronological delimitation that we propose, 1974-1975? The first two years of the campaign during which the paralysis of the already advanced works and the sending of the first reports and protection reports by the competent authorities are achieved, obeys a clear intention, on our part, to deepen at the origin of this mobilization in order to analyze its characteristics and its role in generating a first conservationist dynamic. Otherwise, the detailed analysis of the process allows us to understand the consequences that these first actions against urbanization will have for the achievement of the first protection measures for the Albufera des Grau.
