Celestí Alomar, the friend, the politician and the country

One evening, while dining together in Madrid, we looked at each other with a certain perplexity. Celestí Alomar was Director General of Tourism and I was Vice-Rector of the University. I don't know if we said it exactly like that, but we must have both thought more or less the same thing: what are we doing here? We had met many years before, when we were two lads from Pla de Mallorca, he from Llubí and I from Sant Joan. And another scene came to our memory, also distant: the bust of Franco emerging from the balcony of the University of Barcelona's Rectorate towards the street. We had gone from all that to Madrid, with ties, positions, and responsibilities. "Two suited up little lizards," he said.

Our life has had a bit of this air of an improbable journey. He went from Pla to Barcelona, from student organizations to Bandera Roja and then, to island socialism, to the PSI. He led the campaign of Unió Autonomista of Josep Melià Pericàs and, when Melià joined Adolfo Suárez's government, he ended up working with him. Then came other landscapes and other jobs: Mexico, where he spent six years linked to the Spanish embassy; RTVE; Mallorca; the tourism administration; Madrid again and, the general directorate of Tourism with Jaume Cladera, from the PP, and finally, the Ministry of Tourism of the first Government of Francesc Antich. It's not a bad resume for the son of the Llubí apothecary.

What was interesting is not only where he went, but what he was thinking during the journey. Celestí was not a one-photograph politician. He went through organizations, parties, administrations, and different responsibilities. He knew power up close and also its limitations. He had a concern that, over the years, ended up becoming the center of his public life: what were we doing with Mallorca. He was a geographer and, perhaps for that reason, he had the bad habit of looking at the territory. Looking at it not as a postcard, nor as a simple surface available for continued building, but as something limited. An island cannot be stretched. Perhaps his entire tourism career can be summarized, after all, in this very elementary evidence. Mallorca is not infinite and our economic model has worked for decades as if it were.

The ecotax was his great public battle. The battle was considerable. And, as often happens, at those moments politics and certain economic interests did not spare him blows. During the most heated debates about the ecotax, moments of great verbal tension were experienced. In the Balearic journalistic and political sphere, the literal phrase of a hotelier was recorded, who, out of resentment at the time, exclaimed at a meeting rejecting the tax that "the president had to be removed or the minister killed". Later the ecotax disappeared, and years later a similar figure again became part of the fiscal reality of the Islands. Time, sometimes, has these ironies: what one day seems an extravagance ends up becoming an evidence. To reduce Celestí Alomar to the ecotax would be a bit like reducing a life to a photograph. The tax was a tool; behind it was a much more uncomfortable question: how far can tourism grow without ending up eating the territory that sustains it? That question brought him problems. The battle was tough and economic and political interests did not spare him blows. But time has a curious way of modifying some certainties. The ecotax disappeared and, years later, a similar figure returned to form part of the fiscal reality of the Islands. And, in the meantime, the debate has become even bigger. Tourists have continued to arrive, planes have continued to land and Mallorca continues to discuss, perhaps with more urgency than ever, its own limits.

Twenty-five years after that battle, Celestí was even clearer. It was no longer just about imposing a tax. He openly advocated for reducing the number of visitors and the excessive weight of tourism in the Balearic economy. It was not, therefore, a matter of longing for an old measure of government. It was a way of continuing to think about Mallorca. And here, probably, lies an important part of his legacy. Not so much for always being right—none of us are always right—but for insisting on a question when many preferred to consider it resolved. When I think of that dinner in Madrid, I still find it amusing to imagine us both. Life, at times, has these strange journeys, and Celestí, despite his positions, travels, and offices, remained that man with whom you could discuss politics, Mallorca, or anything else.

He was the father of four children, he had a family, friendships, and affections that are another part of his biography and that no political résumé can explain. And he also had his convictions, his disagreements, and, like everyone who doesn't just go with the flow, his contradictions. He was a geographer, a politician, a counselor, a high-ranking state official, and one of the men who most clearly wanted to introduce into public debate the need to rethink tourism and its limits. Now he is gone. And perhaps the best tribute is not to turn him into a statue or limit ourselves to listing his positions. Perhaps it is to continue asking ourselves the question that he, in one way or another, kept alive for so many years: how long can we continue to grow on an island that is not growing?