The conservation organization ARCA has asked the Town Hall to preserve the facade of a rationalist building in Palma which has been authorized for demolition and which is located on Calle 31 de Desembre, on the corner of Calle Antoni Marqués. This is, according to this association, the only canton located at this intersection of the original Ensanche of the city, as indicated by the heritage entity in a press release.
ARCA declared that this building was planned in the detailed urban plan (POD) with environmental protection and pointed out that a meeting of the Historic Center commission, a few weeks ago, ratified this conservation.
“The decline of the POD during this legislature jeopardized the expansion of the catalog that included the POD and that is why it was guaranteed that the filter of the Historic Center Commission would guarantee protection if necessary,” they argued.
This building is part of a linear apple that remains “intact” and that’s where the Llull pastry shop was located, in the opposite corner is the Mavi cafeteria.
“The loss of this building would be another hard blow “Unforgivable for the Eixample, one of the historic neighborhoods of character that the administration has not been able to protect and preserve,” they criticized.
In this sense, ARCA has declared, on “numerous occasions”, that the Eixample is a “little gem” that must be “preserved and improved”, because, according to it, it is “absolutely insufficient” the number of protected buildings which are located on Blanquerna Street or Bartomeu Pou Street.
Likewise, they emphasized that the building benefited from environmental protection that “did not prevent its growth in height” and although they warned that the “disfigurement would already be significant”, at least “part of our memory of the city and its history would be preserved.
“The Town Hall has the tools to act and avoid irreparable loss and should have already acted following the decisions of the Historic Center”, they stressed.
For these reasons, ARCA argued that it would take “appropriate measures” to avoid this demolition and recalled that the law on heritage says “clearly” that, even if an element is not protected by any figure as as an asset of cultural interest or in the Catalogue, if it “presents demonstrable heritage values, it must be preserved”.
“The rights of the individual to obtain economic remuneration are not incompatible with the protection of heritage, quite the contrary. Preserving the original implies added value for both the city and the developer,” they argued.
