The Club de Vela Puerto de Andratx sends a distress message for the sake of its continuity

The Club de Vela Puerto de Andratx sends a distress message before the critical situation in which it’s found and asks Ports IB to adhere to the resource that has been presented to be able to guarantee and have a sports area and continue with its mission and sportive and social duty.

The concession of the public space that the club occupies hangs on a thread, or better said, of the definitive sentence of Ports IB, who has two proposals on the table and the objective of defining the adjudication of the space. In one of the options, the club would keep a defined area and it could keep up with its sportive activity, and in the other one, the physical space is reduced to the minimum, making it impossible to continue their mission.

To contextualize how the Club de Vela Puerto de Andratx has arrived to this limit situation we have to go back in time to the year 2002, when, after having their first concession expired, the facilities of the club were given in 2006 through a public contest in which the entity from Andratx achieved a new concession for a period of 30 years. But this sentence was not definitive, since, after a very long judicial process, the IP3M group, disputed the accord and in 2017 had a favorable failure of the Supreme Tribunal, which gives exploitation to the facilities. 

In addition, during these years of litigation, the club has carried out many investments in their facilities, improving the quality of their services and amplifying the space up to 30%, an investment and an area that were not contemplated in the public contest of 2002. The president of the Club de Vela Puerto de Andratx, Ginés Martínez, explains this fact and in which moment of the process they are. “We have always reinvested and we will surely be compensated by the quantities that are not amortized of the great works, which is precisely the only thing the club does not want” ensures the president.

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For the last 8 years, the club as well as the group IP3M has interposed different resources until arriving at the current situation, in which the sports entity could lose the totality of its current facilities. “Currently, at the Superior Tribunal of Justice of the Balearics there are two proposals. In one there’s the possibility of a non-profit entity, which does not mean that it will be us, to continue with sport and to have basic income through three docks and develop the rest of the facilities for the marine that has legally won this lawsuit” the president explained, adding that “this option fully complies with the Supreme Court ruling.” In contrast, the other alternative would grant them two floating pontoons and a mooring field, “which is a contradiction, since it would leave us without access to the sea when our very motto is a sea without barriers,” Martínez argued.

For this reason, the Club de Vela Puerto de Andratx is exhausting all possible avenues and has filed a new, and possibly final, appeal “so that the judge considers the option that allows the sport to remain in a non-profit entity, since the other alternative is entirely harmful and counterproductive to the future of our mission and what we stand for,” clarified the president. He urged both Ports IB and the judge “to support the appeal we have submitted and to follow the same court chamber that previously ruled that the area could be divided into two facilities, allowing a sports zone so we can continue fulfilling our mission.”

This request has the backing of most organizations that promote community sailing, such as the Association of Yacht Clubs, the Balearic Sailing Federation, the Royal Spanish Sailing Federation, and the Fishermen’s Guild.

The club’s main mission has always been to serve as a gateway to the sea. As its president emphasized, the Puerto de Andratx Sailing Club has an unlimited commitment to promoting nautical sports. “Our schools, which host over 300 children each year, are practically free of charge. We also have our sailing and canoeing teams, with more than 50 athletes who train and compete around the world, including our adapted sailing team, which is an international benchmark,” he explained.