Source of the Cetina River – Veliko Vrilo (Glavaš)

The largest spring of the Cetina, explored to a depth of 115 m, Veliko vrilo (the “Great Spring”) or Glavaš, promoted in the media as one of the most beautiful places in Dalmatia, could leave you disappointed, especially if you form your expectations based on Instagram photos. The problem isn’t the spring itself — everything is fine with it. The problem is everything else.

The first time I visited the source of the Cetina was more than 25 years ago. That was a time when hardly anyone knew that the Cetina even had a source. Not much has changed since then. Apart from the arrival of Instagram and the fact that you’ll now be greeted by a wooden platform serving as a viewpoint on the western side, everything else has stayed the same. With natural attractions that’s usually a good thing, but here man intervened a very long time ago, so this “staying the same” carries negative connotations.

The wooden platform looks nice. As far as I understood, it was built as part of some broader cycling-trail project, in which the source of the Cetina is just one waypoint along the way. Sad, because a natural wonder like this deserves to be the main star!

The most beautiful natural attractions are those where man has intervened not at all or only minimally, but once he does intervene, it should be done properly, as it ought to be. It’s obvious that no one thinks about the source of the Cetina in that way and that tourism here happens haphazardly, like most things in Croatia. It simply cannot be that a natural jewel like this is flanked by some grotesque structures made of concrete blocks, scrawled with graffiti. Likewise, it cannot be that further down the river there are no trails, or that they are completely overgrown and impassable, that fritters are fried on a gas burner under a fig tree, and the like. Equally unacceptable is the free-for-all in which tourists (foreign and domestic), driven out of their minds by Instagram photos, throw themselves into the spring playing at being models and muddy the water — the same people who wouldn’t bathe a hundred metres downstream because the water is too cold for them. Those who understand the perspective of Instagram photos buzz around with drones, so you’re in constant dread that one won’t land on your head. These are all unacceptable things and a reflection of the total disorganisation and incompetence of the local authorities and the tourist board.

To bring a “semi-destination” like this up to the level of a decent destination doesn’t even take much money. Clear a couple of kilometres of trail from the spring down along the Cetina, tear down the monstrosities of concrete blocks that surround the spring, legalise the guy making the fritters and put him in some kind of wooden kiosk… With minimal encouragement, the local community would begin to organise itself. Some accommodation would open up too, to start with perhaps in the form of a campsite somewhere downstream. A restaurant or two would open, local products and souvenirs would start to be sold… With additional promotion of the surrounding attractions such as the Church of the Holy Saviour, a gem of pre-Romanesque architecture that locals speed past as if it were some “Turkish graveyard”; the Pločasti most (the “Slab Bridge”), which — if we set aside those two grotesque houses on the neighbouring hill — is surrounded by beautiful nature; the promenade that runs alongside the Cetina and its waterfalls downstream from the Balečki most, passing the ruins of a mill; the offer of off-road horse riding; the immediate proximity of Dinara Nature Park, Lake Peruča and Vrlika as a beautiful slumbering town with the Prozor fortress above it — a real step forward towards sustainable tourism would happen, where tourists would stay much longer and spend much more. The benefit for the whole area would be enormous. Young people would stay, everything would get moving. All this takes is a little vision, willingness and good will!

Punchy drone photos of the source of the Cetina are more attractive than photos of many world-famous attractions, but the visitors’ disappointment is all the greater when the spring greets them in the state it’s in. So let’s stop thinking of jobs in local administrations and tourist boards as good places to land a cushy public job, doing work for form’s sake to pull the wool over the eyes of superiors and the electoral base and justify our existence, and instead get down to work for the good of all, because only that way can we move forward! Until then, the source of the Cetina will remain just a “semi-destination” or, at best, merely an unpolished gem of the Zagora.

Incidentally, the Cetina has several other springs, but their problems are the same. If you’re passing through anyway, Vukovića and Batića vrilo are places worth stopping at and reflecting on whether we have really deserved all these beauties that have been given to us.