Dream of a summer nap

This is a romantic and utopian vision of Mallorca. It starts from a remote possibility: that politicians impose taxes that make it more interesting to plant tomatoes than to expand a hotel. It is fiction...

In the year 2038, half of the hotels had become empty. Newspapers spoke of disaster and people wondered what we would do in the face of that hellish situation. “What will we do now?”

With the taxes collected from the hotels that were still operating, the Government had agreed to the transfer of those that had remained vacant so that people could live there for free. In reality, they did it because they did not know what to do with them. They had tried to sell them among themselves, but everyone already had some.

You would join two or three rooms and you already had your home, with views of the sea and a telephone next to the toilet. Some dedicated one to the kitchen-dining room; others were satisfied with a studio with a minibar. Downstairs there was the public dining room, the games rooms, the terrace, and the laundry room. The buffet no longer closed at ten.

The swimming pools remained open. There were surplus water reserves, even though it rained little. In the minigolf courses, the neighborhood people played, and the night bar opened on Fridays for the locals. After thirty years of preparing vacations for others, they had discovered that sitting down for a while also pleased them. There were those who still woke up early to reserve a sunbed with a towel. Bad habits were hard to break.

The hotels that remained open were those that provided social or landscape value: they took care of the environment, provided good jobs, and had some relationship with Mallorca beyond the connection to the airport. Tourists paid well there, ate well, and could take a selfie without having to drive other tourists away.

Some former hoteliers had become farmers. With the help of the eco-tax they recovered land and planted tomatoes that they sold to the hotels at a good price. One had tried to apply dynamic pricing to the zucchinis. He ended up giving them away to his family, like everyone else.

It rained little, but between the well-thought-out irrigation, the subsidies, and decent prices, the countryside was starting to pay off again. Those who had carob trees no longer hoped for the land to be buildable. They waited for September. 

The fishermen sold the mahi-mahi for 50 euros per kilo. The tourists found it excellent and the fishermen also found the tourists excellent. The relationship had improved a lot since there were not so many of them.

We architects had also moved to the countryside. I had six chickens and a chicken coop project that I had to simplify at the suggestion of the chickens.

Mallorca received fewer people, the countryside was coming back to life and the residents had their homes. Growth indicators were worried. People were sleeping quite well.

I lived on the third floor of the old Paradise Hotel. We had removed the stars from the facade, but we had left the name, since it was starting to make sense.