All that we have left to do in Mallorca

PalmaFor more than ten years, in the summer, we no longer go to Cala Varques. We stopped going there before admitting that it had been taken from us. Just as we have stopped going to Caló del Moro, Es Trenc, Formentor and so many other places. In conversations these days, while WhatsApp groups organize carpools to go to Palma on Sunday, organizations prepare buses and groups of friends paint banners, an intimate and endless list appears of everything we have stopped doing, swallowed by the collapse.

The Mallorca that we can no longer transmit

Those of us who no longer knew pre-tourist Mallorca grew up learning that we had forbidden spaces. Hotels, housing developments, and stretches of coastline had been colonized before we were born. But we also believed we had the privilege of enjoying real Mallorca for most of the time, also during July and August. Our parents took us to the unspoiled coves, to the rocky inlets, and to the squares decorated with paper lanterns for the summer festivals. They instilled in us a love for clear water, rocks, and tamarisks. Once every summer: bread and a packed lunch in Cala Varques, an excursion to Es Trenc, and a sunset in Sant Elm, (ad)miring Sa Dragonera.

All this today is an obstacle course, a scene from Mad Max on the scorching asphalt. One of the collateral victims is the cultural transmission of geographic space. The question is painful: if today's children have not been able to live the land, how will they be able to love it?

An island that expels those who sustain it

The data turns this personal experience into collective evidence. The Balearic Islands are the territory in the State where the difference between the price of protected housing and that of free second-hand housing is greatest: it reaches 70%. The square meter of free housing is already worth, on average, 3,885 euros, 13.1% more than a year ago. The much-vaunted social polarization is not ideological, but economic: on top, the rich; at the bottom, those denied the essential right to have a home.

This Mallorca expels young people who cannot become independent, families, public workers who cannot find accommodation, and workers who arrive to sustain an economy that each year demands more hands, roads, housing, and services. As if that were not enough, the same machinery that has called them points them out as culprits.

The population of the Balearic Islands has grown by 48% since the year 2000: more than 404,000 new inhabitants in a quarter of a century. This growth is not the result of inexorable destiny, but of an economic model that needs to grow at full speed, of the laws approved, of the urban planning authorized, of each license granted and of each tourist spot blessed. Attacking the people who arrive and not the causes that make them come is, in addition to being unfair, an effective way to protect those truly responsible. While we discuss origins, profits continue to add zeros and hectares continue to be shredded.

Who bears the collapse and who profits

Mallorca has become the social laboratory of a model based on selling every inch to the highest bidder. The political profit from discomfort is tempting, and the right wing has already shown its hand. This is how empty slogans fuel the displacement of conflict. “Mallorca for the people here,” proclaims the Council in a campaign about future vehicle restrictions, while announcing that residents will be exempt from controls. The border is placed according to origin, when the decisive border is between those who endure the collapse and those who profit from it.

The Territorial Plan still allows for the consumption of 637 hectares of new land to create developable areas. This is not the entire pending construction capacity: vacant urban plots, already classified developable land, and unexhausted building potential must be added. This, without considering everything we can still prune, that entelechy that, out of habit, we continue to call rustic land. To this, we must add the Law on Strategic Residential Projects, which allows for an increase of up to 45% in building capacity in certain areas. An example of how Prohens' Executive has used the housing emergency to accelerate projects and expand capacities.

All this, while Mallorca dries up. A tourist can consume up to six times more water than a resident. Research by the UIB estimates that tourism accounts for approximately a quarter of the urban water consumption in the Balearic Islands, but in the most touristy municipalities, the percentage approaches 60%. Palma's hotels have an Emaya tariff that allows them to pay up to nine times less than they would, with a progression similar to domestic rates. And while residents are asked to turn off the tap, urban planning continues to open pipes that we don't know what they will drain.

Marga Prohens' government speaks of containment, sustainability, and flow management, but approves massive legalizations and deregulates with the aim of continuing to make money from land. However, not everything is their responsibility. Nor were progressive governments brave enough to face structural policies of degrowth. The left set Mallorca's ceiling at 430,000 tourist places, a figure that Llorenç Galmés, despite promises, has not dared to lower either.

Daring to set limits

This is why civil society is pushing and leading, once again. We saw it a few weeks ago at Trenc, when nearly 10,000 people exceeded expectations and turned a human chain into a political warning. And we are seeing it again now with the reaction to the disproportionate detention of the two young women from Santa Maria for the graffiti on five real estate agencies. The accusation of belonging to a criminal organization and the handling of the case by the Civil Guard, far from demobilizing, have acted as a spur.

We are living exceptional moments if even the CAEB admits that “you cannot grow indefinitely”. That the main employers' association of the Islands verbalizes the limit reveals to what extent Mallorca's diagnosis is already close to sepsis. However, acknowledging it while defending the activities that make us grow is just a way of doing linguistic contortionism.

Everything indicates that the demonstration this 26-J will be massive, because the social thermometer has long been marking an unsustainable temperature. Less Tourism, More Life does not evoke a happy Arcadia or a frozen Mallorca: it sets a precedent in the face of the evidence that territories have limits, resources are exhausted and a society can be reconfigured to the point of no longer recognizing itself. Surely, many people do not want to continue making the list of what they have stopped doing. Because loving Mallorca, right now, also means daring to set limits.