With the severe drought that Catalonia is experiencing, the Hard Rock recreational and tourist complex, planned next to Port Aventura, between Vila-seca and Salou (Tarragonès), is starring in the final stretch of the Catalan legislature. The project hinders the approval of this year’s new budgets and, reinforced by the water crisis, has fueled the political debate about the weight of environmentalism in Catalonia’s productive model, one of the background issues – with permission from the ‘amnesty’ – which will occupy the Catalan parties before the next meeting with the ballot boxes.
The Catalan Government, which says it is stuck in “green transformation” and re-industrialisation, drags out a tourism project that envisages the construction of a complex with a large casino, shopping centers and hotels, and which would consume 1,086,000 cubic meters of water per year, according to data from the Ministry of Climate Action: as much as the city of Reus. In addition, there are those who add problems associated with gambling to this project, such as insecurity or gambling addiction, but the majority of Catalan parties support it. On Thursday, PSC, ERC, Junts, PP, Ciutadans and Vox voted in favor of the Government maintaining its commitment to the project, with the CUP and En Comú Podem voting against.
Although the Hard Rock is a long way from the embryonic Eurovegas that Artur Mas presented in 2012, PSC and Junts give seamless support to a project that today would dedicate only 4% of the land to the game; 16%, at leisure; 6.7%, for commercial uses, and 57%, for hotels. From the millions of square meters of buildings projected at the beginning, it has gone to the current 700,000 m2, with large areas of environmental protection.
“It’s another Catalan project”, they justify to Junts. “We need to make things happen”, claim the socialists, who warn that Catalonia is losing the race with Madrid in investments and big projects, “like Formula 1”, they remember.
The president Pere Aragonès admitted last week that the Hard Rock will go ahead even though “we do not embrace it with enthusiasm”, and ERC confess privately that they would prefer to bury it, although it was Oriol Junqueras who rescued it in 2016: “Those were other times. We were in the midst of an economic crisis and there were thousands of unemployed, but now…”.
On the other hand, the commons, spurred on after having lost the mayorship of Barcelona, ??play the card of ecology stronger than ever, looking forward to the next date with the ballot boxes.
Electoral interests cross. The commons, who stand on behalf of ERC and PSC voters, see that environmental sensitivity is waning in Catalan society.
According to the executive director, the generations that vote the most – baby boomers, generation X and millennials – refuse to prioritize economic growth over environmental protection. Generation Z (between 16 and 26 years old) and the silent generation (from 77 years old) have the opposite opinion. What is relevant, in any case, is that there is room for electoral growth through respect for the environment.
“Should we stop the country because of the drought? There will not always be one and, in fact, Tarragona does not have the emergency situation of Barcelona. In addition, in the territory they are in favor of Hard Rock”, they point out to the PSC. But it is not easy to quantify the support the project arouses in the territory.
The entire Camp de Tarragona is closely following the fate of the macrocomplex. The Aturem Hard Rock platform, which emerged from left-wing social movements, has been fighting against it for more than a decade, with the support of the commons and the CUP. If the Hard Rock got stuck in the courts it was precisely because of the tenacity of this platform. But the weight of the communes in the province of Tarragona is lower, with barely twenty councillors.
Despite the delays, American investors remain interested in the project. “They will not back down now”, explain leading political and economic sources on the Costa Daurada. But the drought has modulated the local reception of the project. The primary sector is very irritated seeing that tourism continues with record numbers and almost no water restrictions.
The political parties in the territory with aspirations to govern or already in the government of councils and institutions do not feel comfortable when they have to speak in public about the Hard Rock, except for the mayors of Salou, Pere Granados (Sumem per Salou-PSC), and Vila-seca, Pere Segura (Together). Granados even puts a date on it: “It will be in operation in 2027”. On the other hand, ERC does not like it, because it would be a hard blow for the powerful commercial lobby of Reus, but in public they avoid coming out clearly against it, because it would reduce their credibility and friendship with the economic powers of the territory.
The Hard Rock has brought together the difficulty of some parties to adapt the traditional economic development model to the ecological challenge, while others assume environmentalism as a religion even at the risk of falling into decline. Nor has any administration been able to explain in detail a project that has had significant modifications and received an environmental warning from the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia.
In 2020, the TSJC overturned the initial Urban Master Plan (PDU) and forced the Generalitat to adapt it to climate convenience, but ERC’s reluctance about the Hard Rock has caused the new PDU to remain in the drawer beyond the recent municipal elections, which is why the budget agreement with the PSC last year has been breached.
The Government is obliged to comply with the administrative procedures, in addition to being conditioned by the PSC to approve this year’s accounts. That’s why they apologize for keeping it alive: “We can’t do anything else, we risk a fine” if we don’t process the project.
Although its content is not known, several sources, also from Tarragona, assume that there is a confidential clause that would penalize the Generalitat if it backed down, not to mention the possible legal consequences it would face in case of not fulfilling the obligation to process the PDU.
The ERC Government reluctantly takes on the project in order to count on the votes of the PSC for the budgets, but the commons demand to stop it. Even so, Jéssica Albiach’s group approved a resolution in Parliament on Thursday with the votes of ERC, the CUP and two, by mistake, of the PSC, which proposes to stop “any modification of urban planning in the tourism sector” for the duration of the drought in Catalonia. This might be a solution to unjam the accounts but it would keep the Hard Rock in the drawer until the rain gives it another chance.
