SHANGRILA  AlBUFERA

The name means 'an imaginary paradise', and imaginary it has turned out to be. Conceived in the tourist boom of the 1970s as an up market golf resort on the shores of the S'Albufera lake Shangrila was the subject of years of legal and political argument before being finally halted on the  grounds that it represented illegal development in a conservation area. By this time many of the houses had been built; some were already lived in.

The victory for Menorca's environmental campaigners proved to be a landmark, as the island realized that tourism had to be controlled. But a half built urbanizacion is even worse than a finished one, and if you wander around Shangri La today you are bound to be struck by the air of desolation, with the golf course overgrown and villas abandoned when the money ran out. In a vain attempt to Improve its image, the resort is now known as Albufera. It serves as a lesson to anyone else tempted to create a new 'village' and call it paradise.