Celestí Alomar, a brave politician
There is an easy way to write about Celestí Alomar these days: to recall that he was the father of the ecotax, to explain that this idea, which seemed like an extravagance twenty-five years ago, is today part of the political landscape of the Balearic Islands, and to conclude that time has finally proven him right. All of this is true but insufficient; because perhaps the best way to honor Celestí Alomar is not to remember that he was the political architect of the ecotax, but to remember why he defended it.
And here the distance between that ecotax and the current sustainable tourism tax becomes politically interesting. The 2001 ecotax was not born to make the tourism we already had more sustainable. It was born from a much more uncomfortable idea: that mass tourism had costs that could no longer be borne solely by residents, the territory, and natural resources; and that, therefore, those who benefited from this model should also contribute to repairing its effects.
Alomar explained it with a clarity that is worth recovering today. The new tax was justified, he said, by the solidarity of visitors with the territory they occupied and with the people who lived there. And he added an even more significant idea: general interests must prevail over private ones. That was the ecotax. It was not simply charging the tourist one more euro. It was introducing a political question into the tourism debate: what price does a society pay when it turns its territory into a mass tourist destination? And another: what do we do with the money generated by this model?
Alomar did not seem to be satisfied with the usual answer: build more, offer more, sell more, receive more visitors… because he understood that the Balearic Islands could not grow indefinitely within a finite territory. His ecotax aimed to obtain resources to recover heritage, rehabilitate tourist areas and protect the environment, but it was also part of a broader conception: the need to transform the tourism model. Alomar himself would explain it years later with a forcefulness that today seems almost prophetic: mass tourism generated negative impacts and it was necessary to move towards a model of tourist degrowth. That is why that ecotax was so fought against; not because one euro was an extraordinary amount, but because it questioned a certain conception of tourism. In 2001, when Parliament approved the tax, the hotel sector and the Popular Party opposed it head-on. The Aznar central government even appealed its application before the Constitutional Court. The tax finally came into force in May 2002 and was repealed in 2003, after the change of Government.
Twenty-five years later, history has taken a curious turn: that the ecotax has survived does not necessarily mean that Alomar's idea has survived. The difference is not minor. The ecotax he defended in 2001, when it seemed like a provocation, is today part of institutional normality. But I think this way of remembering him falls short, because Alomar not only got ahead of his time, his time has not yet caught up with him. Celestí Alomar had a certain way of understanding tourism policy. A year after the tax was approved, Alomar was already talking about a new model based on sustainability and long-term results. And he said something that today seems written after all the demonstrations against mass tourism: "The number of visitors and constructions cannot continue to grow." This was the original ecotax: not a way to make the same tourism model more sustainable, but a tool to start changing it.
Today we talk a lot about sustainability, but not about setting limits. There is a fact that remains uncomfortable: the problem is not just how we grow, but that we continue to grow. Alomar had already reached this certainty a quarter of a century ago and always maintained it. When asked if he was for degrowth, he was even clearer: "Absolutely." "We have reached a point where so much massification generates an impact with many negative aspects," he explained. For decades he maintained the same underlying idea: that the Balearic Islands could not indefinitely confuse tourist growth with progress.
That is why I think we should be alert when we celebrate that the ecotax has survived. Yes, the ecotax has survived. But the question is whether ambition has also survived. Because, in the end, Alomar's question remains ours: do we want Balearic Islands adapted to tourism or tourism adapted to the Islands? He had already chosen. Now it's up to us to see if we do too.
