The musicians of the Balearic Islands say enough to mass tourism

PalmaThis March, singer Júlia Colom published a tune on social media that is not part of any of the albums she has released to date. It is a song written by her and her brother Martí, in which she speaks of a Mallorca that cries, of historic records, and of what, Colom says, we all know we have to do when the day gets longer: “stay inside at home so as not to bother them too much”. In a video that begins with a close-up of her and ends with an image of a hotel on the Majorcan coast, the singer from Valldemossa states: “Mallorca, you have been punished, / for getting the maximum profit: / a seasonal product / that now lasts all year round”. It is just the latest example of a whole series of songs with which island musicians and singers have demonstrated against mass tourism in recent years.

Since the 80s of the last century, there have been groups that have released songs in this vein. Los Ocults, for example, were already singing it almost 40 years ago: “they arrive by plane without stopping / before in summer, now it's all year round”. And also bands like Ossifar or Raphel Pherrer and Carlos Garrido in Mallorcatur manifested themselves in the same vein between the 90s and early 2000s. During the last decade, however, everything has accelerated, and more than a dozen songs have been published against saturation. It has also been during the last decade that we have gone from 15.3 million visitors in 2015 to more than 19 million in 2025: a 25% increase that has been registered in parallel with the growth of citizen discontent.

Generational inheritance

In 2017, Joan Miquel Oliver released the album Atlantis, which includes the song ‘Posidònia’, where he sang that “wherever you look, a plague of foreigners”. A year later, songs like ‘Noves Venècies’, by Da Souza, included in the album Futbol d’avantguarda, or ‘Mallorca s’enfonsa’, by Tomeu Penya, appeared. With a festive tone, the one from Vilafranca says: “This mess with this crowd / with wrinkled skin / will drown us all” and adds that “if we don’t sort it out / we’ll all burst”. Shortly after, at the end of summer 2019, singers and musicians Joana Gomila and Laia Vallès composed an anthem to this issue, the Jota dels hereus, where the review of some of the names of hotels and chains that fill the Majorcan coast –“Saratoga, Iberostar, Barceló and Sometimes”, says the end of the first stanza– is combined with phrases like “I have a house / that needs to be made / aqueduct, columns / and walls too”.

According to Gomila, the song began to take shape after watching the documentary Tot inclòs, released a few months earlier. “We had seen it recently and one day while walking around the Illot we came across a ball de bot dance. And there, between the Talayotic settlement and the sea, there are many buildings, all along the promenade up to La Coma. There are hotels, but also shops, restaurants, souvenir shops… All this made me think about all these contrasts we have: there were tourists watching us dance next to some talayots. And suddenly I thought what would happen to all these hotels, to all these places, if one day planes stopped arriving. We would have kilometers and kilometers of ghost constructions all over the island. This is the legacy of our generation. And you don't choose your legacy, it comes to you and you have to decide what to do with it. We, for the moment, have made the Jota dels hereus,” he says.

The song is part of the album Paradís, released in 2020 and also marked by the impact of tourism, right from the song that gives it its name. “Tourism has not determined that we make one type of music or another, but the fact of living on a tourist island that has become overcrowded and collapsed has also affected us, and our music,” shares the woman from Manacor, for whom the situation has reached a point of no return. “It cannot be reversed, it can only move forward, but now we have to decide where we are heading. We live in a moment of paradigm shift that is tremendous, brutal,” she assures.

“They leave us nothing”

Since 2022, musicians like Salvatge Cor, Antònia Font, or Maria Jaume i Fades have also released songs denouncing the current situation in the Balearic Islands. The band led by Llorenç Romera included ‘Magaluf Summertime’, where they sang that “all-inclusive and a balcony and a few corpses”, on the album Cruïlla, while among the songs of Un minut estroboscòpica, the return of Antònia Font, was ‘Cultura silenci’. “Eating sobrassada / going without a shirt, / normal, everyday life / is suicidal luxury. / And what do they give us / They give us nothing. / And what do they leave us? / They leave us nothing”, sings Pau Debon. For their part, the Mon Cheri, Go Home by Maria Jaume i Fades has been distinguished with the Cerverí 2025 award for best lyrics in Catalan, awarded by the Prudenci Bertrana Foundation, and with the Enderrock of Balearic Music award for best song of the year.

Also Rudymentari with Let me live peacefully, Llampuga with Gui Apocalypse and Xisk i Trapella with A.G.A.B. – where they say that “Mallorca will always be dirty with people who don’t love it”– have joined this current which, during 2025, added at least two songs: Open bar, by the Lloseta band Toc de queda, and It would be convenient, a composition that brought together a good number of Menorcan musicians. Anna Ferrer, Verlaat, Frank Pons of Pèl de Gall and some members of Bon Ball Tenim united, precisely, under the slogan “it would be convenient to have a song to say no”. “It was a beautiful exercise of renunciation by the record label representing the three projects to focus on the need to communicate and popularize such an important message”, explains Anna Ferrer, who assures that “it was a cry that many people needed to be able to make and that the song facilitates”. In this sense, the Menorcan values positively that it has been possible to make this song. “It is a joy when it happens, finding a way to say what burns inside many people”, she concludes.