A friend from the Principality who has a great pull towards the Islands once told me that being Mallorcan basically meant three things: suffering, going to pick up people at the airport, and being told more often than you'd like that “you would know her if you saw her”.I believe the first idea explains itself, and it goes far beyond dialectal particularism: one only needs to look at the situation the Islands are going through in areas such as housing, environmental destruction, and the social use of language to understand that we fully meet this requirement. The other, the one that says "if you saw it, you would know it," is perhaps just as annoying, but sooner or later it comes true: the thing about telling someone from Catalonia or the Valencian Country where you are from and them saying "oh, yes, I have a friend from Mallorca, maybe you know each other," and after denying it, realizing that yes, indeed, you know that Xisca from Sencelles or Sineu. Or someone from your own town or neighborhood, whom you might not know by name, but by appearance.And the airport? That was the idea that impressed me the most, because it went beyond the traditional everydayness suggested by the other two (“a way of being”, as the very wise and pacifying current Government would say) and captured an experience that is certainly true, but which has not been so for so many years.After the tourist boom of the sixties, the natural, economic, and social appearance of the Islands has changed from top to bottom, and airports, those non-places that are not places because they precisely take us to other places, have played a key role. For decades, hotel companies and airlines have enriched themselves by dividing the cake as they pleased, and the same has been done by Aena, the company responsible for their management. A company, yes. A commercial society that is public, but that does not always respond to everyone's interests. Who decides how many flights can pass through an airport each day? Who decides where the money is invested? Where do the profits of the busiest airports in the State go, among which those in the Catalan Countries (Barcelona, Palma, Valencia, Ibiza…) win by a landslide?It seems that with this spirit of oversight and reinforcement of public service, from the minimal sovereignties recognized by the 2007 Statute, Parliament has just approved an organic law proposal for the co-management of the Archipelago's airports, at the proposal of Ara MÉS. An initiative that should allow the Government of the Balearic Islands to decide on the flight cap, master plans, and the load capacity of these facilities, and which will add the voice of the councils and town councils in decision-making.The proposal has moved forward and now begins its path to Congress. Will it have as much luck as the recognition of its own senator for Formentera, despite the complications in its processing, or will it be like the other twenty times Parliament has spoken in favor of the issue? Time, and above all, the consistency of each party, will tell us. Sovereignty, aerial in this case, was also that.
