Indigenous people and guests

In the book The wonderful landing of the Greeks in Empúries, Published in 1925, journalist Manuel Brunet demystified the arrival of the Greeks on the beaches of the Gulf of Roses, which at that time was usually presented as a scene somewhere between romantic and ridiculous. The Greeks who arrived in Empúries were not philosophers or poets but merchants, and their baggage was not lofty ideas or verses but "all the science of brothels, dice, ports and prisons," says Brunet, and explains that the indigenous people of the future Catalan land did not welcome them with songs, did not welcome them with songs of beginning a future.

Many years later, around 1992, during the period of Spanish and Spanish-speaking celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America—which social movements renamed the 500th Deception of the Plundering of America—a cartoon became popular depicting Christopher Columbus kneeling in Castilla de Arrojo, naked Indians roaring with laughter. One of them, turned to the others and pointing at Columbus, said to his companions, tears streaming from his eyes: "Ha ha ha, he says he's come to discover us!"

Both comics tell us about the relationship established by indigenous people with an unknown visitor. In contrast to the dominant discourses that, in the respective context of these two works, legitimized subjugation or emphasized the superiority of the foreigner, the tables are turned here. Both Brunet and the (to me unknown) author of the American joke mock the presentation of the colonists as civilizers of ignorant peoples. The first wave of Noucentistas portrayed the indigenous people of the Empordà as Galifardians who had marveled at the arrival of those sensational foreigners, but in Brunet's writing, as Josep Pla observed, the one who felt an impression of wonder at the moment of disembarking was the Greeks, rooted in their land, a people who knew so much who they were that it would never have occurred to them to ask for it. The other joke, the anti-imperialist one about the Fifth Centenary, satirizes the Spanish view of America, which at best was paternalistic and at worst, genocidal. In both cases, the common element is that the indigenous people and the visitors discover each other, enter into a relationship, and establish a bond, whatever its nature.

I've been thinking about all this now that the tourist season is ending. What are we Menorcans doing with tourism, and what is tourism doing with us?

I'm almost convinced that the Menorcan view of tourism has changed as we indigenous people have come into contact with visitors. Tourism is no longer new, but the intensity of the indigenous-tourist relationship perhaps is. A large portion of the tourists who traditionally came to Menorca would check into the hotel on the first day and barely leave until the last. You only found them if you went looking for them, and therefore, interaction was minimal. Few tourists crossed the threshold of Menorcan intimacy to establish any kind of relationship that wasn't strictly commercial and service-based. I think the Menorcan territorial model has a lot to do with this: villages for living and residential areas for tourists.

But everything has changed since (oh, historic mistake!) we allowed tourism into towns—boutique hotels, tourist rentals, seasonal businesses—progressively blurring the distance that separated tourist areas from the spaces of local life. The growing feeling is that, without having left home, we no longer live in a town but in a theme park—a feeling more intense in some towns than in others—and that we are no longer the inhabitants of a country with a natural sense of belonging, with an identity that was so normal we didn't even consider, because we have done the worst thing we could do: convert by creating an artificial and affected self-image that, despite the veneer of authenticity, is little more than the apotheosis of the most ridiculous provincialism.

When we stop saying Son Saura to say Son Parc, when we believe that it is more in offer a brunch than a snack, when we don't know what to give to our closest friend and we end up giving him a sunset to someone spa, when we can no longer go for a walk in that square because it is saturated with tables and chairs from all the bars that have colonized it, and when, ultimately, we are willing to sell our souls because tourism is our bread, we have taken decisive steps, perhaps irreversible, to stop being indigenous and convert (forever?).