PalmaThose of us who no longer knew pre-tourist Mallorca grew up learning that we had forbidden spaces. Hotels, housing developments, and stretches of coast had been colonized before we were born. But we also thought we had the privilege of enjoying real Mallorca most of the time, including during July and August. Our parents took us to virgin coves, to the rocky inlets, and to squares decorated with paper lanterns for the summer festivals. They instilled in us a love for clear water, rocks, and tamarisk trees. Once every summer: bread and a packed lunch in Cala Varques, an outing to Es Trenc, and sunset in Sant Elm, (ad)miring Sa Dragonera.
All of this today is an obstacle course, a scene from Mad Max on scorching asphalt. One of the collateral victims is the cultural transmission of geographical space. The question is painful: if today's children have not been able to experience the land, how will they be able to love it?
The data turns this personal experience into collective evidence. The Balearic Islands are the territory in Spain where the difference between the price of protected housing and that of second-hand free market housing is greatest: it reaches 70%. The square meter of free housing already costs, on average, 3,885 euros, 13.1% more than a year ago. The much-vaunted social polarization is not ideological, but economic: at the top, the rich; at the bottom, those barred from the essential right to have a home.
This Mallorca spits out young people who cannot become independent, families, public workers who cannot find accommodation, and workers who arrive to sustain an economy that demands more hands, roads, housing, and services each year. As if that were not enough, the very machinery that has summoned them points to them as the 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 passed, of the urban development plans authorized, of every license granted, and of every tourist spot approved. Attacking the people who arrive and not the causes that make them come is, besides being unfair, an effective way to protect those truly responsible. While we discuss origins, profits continue to add zeros and hectares continue to be destroyed.
Mallorca has become the social laboratory of a model based on selling every inch to whoever pays best. The political profit from discontent is delicious, and the right wing has already shown its face. This is how empty slogans fuel this displacement of conflict. “Mallorca for the people here,” proclaims the Council in a campaign about future vehicle limitations, while announcing that residents will be exempt from control. 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 new hectares of land to create developable areas. This is not all the pending construction capacity: vacant urban plots, already classified developable land, and unexhausted buildability must be added. This, without counting everything we can still trim from that utopia that, by 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 buildability 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 from the UIB estimates that tourism accounts for approximately a quarter of the Balearic Islands' urban water consumption, 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 cash in on land. However, not all responsibility lies with them. Progressive governments were also not brave enough to face structural degrowth policies. The left wing set Mallorca's ceiling at 430,000 tourist places, a figure that Llorenç Galmés, despite his promises, has also not dared to lower.
This is why civil society is the one that, once again, pushes and leads. 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 see it again now with the reaction to the disproportionate arrest 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 management of the case by the Guardia Civil, far from demobilizing, have acted as a spur.
We are living in exceptional times if even the CAEB admits that "unlimited growth is not possible." That the main employers' association of the Islands verbalizes the limit reveals the extent to which Mallorca's diagnosis is already close to sepsis. However, acknowledging this while defending the activities that make us grow is just a way of performing linguistic contortionism.
Everything indicates that the demonstration on 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 firm precedent in the face of the evidence that territories have limits, resources are exhausted, and a society can become so deconfigured that it ceases to recognize itself. Surely, there are many people who do not want to continue making a list of what they have stopped doing. Because loving Mallorca, right now, also means daring to set limits.