What will be the use of Unesco inscribing Talaiotic Menorca as a world heritage site? If it’s great news, which it undoubtedly is, why does it leave a bittersweet aftertaste?
Menorca is at a crossroads since in the eighties it went from living with tourism to living off tourism. We are not discovering the garlic soup here if we say that today the sustainability debate has erupted in parallel with the misgivings of Menorcans who feel expelled from their land, which is more expensive, less intimate, less theirs. They fear that their well-being may disappear one day if they do not put limits on a model that, paradoxically, feeds them and traps them at the same time.
That Unesco declared Menorca a Biosphere Reserve in October 1993 was key to not losing the north. The mandatory protection area shielded the easternmost Balearic Islands from possible development temptations, while putting an end to a model where the preservation of the natural environment became a central and non-negotiable issue. Allow me the slogan: “Menorca is not touched”.
Now, Unesco itself is offering Menorcans another golden opportunity by admitting 280 Talayotic sites to the select club of world heritage. This should involve more access to European funds for the preservation of an exceptional legacy, the guarantee of the preservation of the pieces and more excavations. Monday from Prohens to Iceta congratulated each other. Formidable, it will now be necessary to demand objective and measurable results from each and every one of the administrations involved, with the added difficulty that the vast majority of monuments are privately owned.
The stones give food, a colleague of the newspaper Menorca wrote on Tuesday. Indeed, investing in stones from 4,000 years ago can be profitable. But you have to believe it. At the moment when only tourism remains, the island is forced to succeed itself without losing its identity. Perhaps Unesco has given the Menorcans the remedy to cover the crater that has begun to open with the sun, the beach, the all-inclusive bracelet and the masses of TikTok. It is summed up in one word: culture.
