September sounds like relief. Even if it is a bit forced. In a way, it is as if after the overflow that summer represents in Mallorca, the water returns to the tide when September arrives. I know, however, that this is a very subjective feeling: for teachers, a tense school year begins, hospitality workers do not yet see any sign of relief on the horizon, those looking for a house to live in have no hope that as the season ends, opportunities to rent an apartment or a house will appear, rather they know that prices will continue to rise and possibilities, to decrease. Perhaps the only thing that will go down a little is the temperature, but even that is not entirely certain right now. Living on this island –especially in summer, but not only then– increasingly resembles a matter of resistance rather than existence, and everyone adapts to it as best they can. Some, those who are able, leave to seek cooler geographies with fewer people per square meter; others (those who have them) self-isolate in their homes, clinging to air conditioning. Others, among whom I count myself, enter a sort of period that we could call summer lethargy, much like little animals (which is what we are) in the process of adaptation. That is to say, we enter, as the definition of lethargy states, a “period of inactivity or reduction of vital functions to adapt to unfavorable environmental conditions, such as extreme temperature.” Everyone adapts and resists as best they can this fake paradise that is at the same time a hell for too many people. Those who are now, precisely, working the most, and in the harshest conditions, either have no home or shelter, no time or possibility to doze off, or arrive on a small boat with a hope that fades along the way. The world is, in general, increasingly harsh, and Mallorca, despite the postcard images, is not alien –although it is privileged– to the true foundations of the violent architecture that builds these worlds, also of false paradises, that some of us (still) have the luck to inhabit. This Friday the 4th, the documentary Enduring Paradise, by Marga Melià, premieres at the CineCiutat cinemas. The documentary recovers conversations between Marga Melià and Majorcan artists and places them in dialogue with the current state of touristification and gentrification on the island. We sell a paradise, whether it be from a postcard or a real estate catalog, it makes no difference. We have specialized in this. So much so, that even our anti-tourism demonstrations—and if it hadn't been for the Police's eagerness this year to inject a dose of raw reality through beatings, as a display of the true repressive response they would like to apply to all those who dare to disturb the image of paradise—become more of a flashy catalog of creative expressions of islander fed-upness for the photos (who knows if they will end up turned into postcards?!), than truly incisive mobilizations that would shake the political responsibilities regarding the disastrous ecological and social consequences of this model.For some time now, the collateral effects of the absolute touristification of our economy and our reality have been politically accepted, and with them, the summer demonstrations and actions. Although it is true that there are increasingly more critical voices and collective articulation in the face of these consequences to which they try to make us adaptable, those who govern have long since turned tourism, not into a means, but into an end in itself. We could say that, also politically, it is becoming increasingly evident that what determines decision-making and economic policies is not that we 'live off tourism', but that it is shamelessly accepted that tourism lives off the territory and the society that sustains it, and that it must be sacrificed (and some tantrums in the form of demonstrations endured) so that it continues to be the 'tractor' of the economy. Not of the society that votes for them and whom they are supposed to represent, but of the public limited and commercial companies, investor 'families', and 'vulture' funds. All of them concepts usurped to disguise the true actors of this movie. Furthermore, they also count on the fact that when September arrives, there arrives (at least in our collective imagination) the beginning of what was previously known as the low season, and with it, the spirits of protest and vindication also lower, and they will have guaranteed, for some, a good profit, one more season.
