Decrease in tourism to grow better

On Sunday, July 26, a historic demonstration took place again in Palma, with 50,000 people, which is as if 500,000 had demonstrated in Barcelona. The unanimous shouts of ‘Enough is enough’ and ‘These have done nothing and will do nothing’ were led by a crowd of Majorcans from Palma and its towns in a demonstration of civility and pacifism that in no way deserved the final police charges provoked by the police themselves. That said, we want to focus on the political importance of the demonstration, which is a clear denunciation of the inaction of the PP Government with Vox, even though they say “that they do not feel implicated” after practically reaching the end of their term without having done anything, or worse, approving laws that indicate that they do defend the interests of those who “want more”!First point: the elephant in the room, "tourist degrowth"

Our economic architecture, as everyone knows, has a main beam: tourism. It's as if we said that the size of this main beam determines the total size of the building. And, in a capitalist economy, what determines the total size of the building is the investment in search of the profits generated by that investment. Everyone also knows that, as long as tourism generates profits —and it generates many profits— any expansion of the main beam will end with a bigger building. This is how it is, and it will always be this way as long as the governments in power are dedicated to not stopping this dynamic, because employers are fine with it, and as long as citizens swallow the idea that thanks to tourism we live better and better. Economists have known for a long time, and have denounced it, that since 1985 this is no longer the case: since that year our per capita income compared to the Spanish average has fallen by more than 50 percentage points. What is new, now, is that a sufficiently important social majority, which will continue to grow, has said "Enough is enough".Second point: if they have done nothing and will do nothing, then the question is what do we have to do to be able to grow better

First of all, to know who we can trust and who we cannot. As Fuentes Quintana said, “first you need a good diagnosis to be able to act”. In other words, first consult where excellent scientific, technical and holistic thinking is concentrated, and then agree on these proposals with the citizens; once a “roadmap” has been agreed upon, we must have the political courage to move forward with a strategic plan that allows us to “decrease tourism in order to grow better”.Where do we have in the Balearic Islands the best scientific, technical, and holistic thinking to make the best diagnosis? Undoubtedly at the UIB, at CSIC-UIB centers such as Imedea, IEO, and at technological infrastructures like SOCIB; in the case of Menorca, at OBSAM. Nowhere else. This exercise has already been done and specified over three years in Opinion 5/2020 of the CES on the economic, social, and environmental foresight of the societies of the Balearic Islands by the horizon 2030 (H2030), an exercise in political governance praised by the European Economic and Social Council. The key question is, therefore, why have politicians not heeded the most possible quality and independent diagnosis they had available, in which more than 40 UIB professors from more than ten areas of knowledge have intervened, and there has been a desire to tangle things up and a new diagnosis has been requested again from a foundation partly dominated by the employers' association to miserably waste time for six years.In view of this lack of political will, there has been a reaction from civil society with the creation of the Forum of Civil Society, which has gathered the contributions of the CES opinion and has focused its efforts on two crucial issues that have been worked on in two very important congresses. The first, focused on tourism and how tourism can decrease, obviously without forgetting that for many years it will continue to be our main beam, but smaller. The second, focused on the housing problem. The third is now being prepared on how to grow better and that it cannot grow without the democratic participation of civil society in the Balearic Islands. It is scheduled for early December and is open to everyone's participation, with the intention of agreeing on a roadmap that will oblige political parties to commit and not neglect the citizens of the Balearic Islands once again. Enough is enough of being fooled!