The “Subida al Puigmajor 2022”, a motor racing event in the Balearic Mountain Championship, organised by the Serra de Tramuntana racing team and backed by the Balearic Islands Motor Racing Federation (FAIB), is scheduled for the 1st and 2nd of October.
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This year the FAIB calendar includes 24 races on the roads of Mallorca, and 13 of them run totally or partially through the Serra de Tramuntana, an area protected in principle by various legal figures (Natural Site, UNESCO World Heritage Site, Special Area of Conservation and Special Protection Area for Birds are the most important).
Sporting traffic on the Serra de Tramuntana’s roads, especially motorbikes, is a problem that local residents and conservation organisations have been denouncing for years, without the different administrations having adopted efficient measures to deal with it. The roads, and especially the MA10 where the problem is particularly serious, are the responsibility of the Consell de Mallorca, an administration which has so far not only been incapable of promoting and coordinating an effective strategy to suppress illegal racing and dangerous sporting driving in general but also continues to authorise sporting competitions promoted by the FAIB, thereby promoting the Serra’s roads as a suitable area for sporting driving.
On the other hand, the delimitation of the Serra de Tramuntana Natural Park, declared in 2007, excluded the roads, and therefore the management of the protected area does not have the capacity to intervene in traffic. They are, however, affected when they run through Natura2000 network areas (Special Areas of Conservation and Special Protection Areas for Birds), although in these cases the degree of effective protection and the procedures for achieving it is still far from ideal.
Beyond the privative use (training and competition sessions imply the closure for hours of circulation to other citizens) and annoying especially for the neighbourhoods, which cannot access their farms or make the planned trips and that in the best of cases must be diverted by other roads and paths (increasing the time and cost of travel), it is also necessary to properly assess the environmental impact of this sporting use to a space of the utmost ecological importance.
We, therefore, call on the Regional Ministry for the Environment and Territory to intervene to ensure that motor racing events that take place in protected natural areas are subject to appropriate environmental impact assessment procedures, whether the tarmac is part of the protected area or not. It is clear that the effects of these races and of sporting traffic, in general, extend to the environment, and it is therefore irresponsible not to intervene on the grounds of lack of competence. On the other hand, we also call on the Consell de Mallorca, which champions the protection of the Serra de Tramuntana as a Unesco World Heritage Site, to reconsider its position regarding the authorisation of these competitions. The Serra de Tramuntana, and the rest of the natural areas by extension, are not the ideal place for motorsports competitions, nor for the promotion of sports driving.