A line of correction fluid
The entire island of Mallorca will end up being a large city. I first heard this about thirty years ago, and I couldn't say from whom. Some spokesperson for GOB? Some professor from the University's Department of Earth Sciences? Some militant from the PSM? It doesn't matter now.
Contrary to what one might think, Mallorca comes from being an industrious island. Surely the only one in the Mediterranean that embraced the progress brought by the industrial revolution. Shoes, pearls, textile industry, furniture... The urban centers welcomed factory activity, which exalted the opposition between bourgeoisie and proletariat, coinciding with the advent of liberal and free-thinking ideology. A modern way of confronting the conservatism of the old regime, which survived in the countryside, with groups of lords who administered the large estates inherited from the time of the estate society. All of that, however, went to waste, and the latifundia were parceled out to give money and oxygen to those people who insisted on the privilege of living without working.
The 20th century was crossed by a devastating civil war, and the island, especially the countryside, lived in unfathomable misery, which lasted until the late fifties. Then, the romantic travelers turned into mass tourists, the small plots of land by the sea became mines that, instead of being exploited by excavation, were exploited by accumulation. Ugly hotels destroyed the paradise while filling the hamlets and the furrows of the hands of the peasants, miserable until two days ago, with money. Making money was easy. Shops of souvenirs, restaurants, bars, inns, small hotels, flourished by the sea. The season was concentrated in two or three intense months in the summer and in very localized points of the island: Platja de Palma, Cala Millor, Can Picafort, Calvià, to name a few.
At the end of the 20th century, disaster struck. Hoteliers lost their monopoly. Vacation rentals arrived, supposedly democratizing wealth. Residential tourism grew. The rich of the world saw Mallorca as an affordable destination with lax legislation for building on rustic land without excessive problems. Two 'quarterades' (a unit of land measurement) were enough land to build a villa with a pool. First, the natives joined in. Then, the rest of the world. In Mallorca, a single law prevails, that of money.
Meanwhile, Terraferida has returned to action and has done so with force. In their campaign ‘Foravila fora grues’ they show the results of a study that concludes that constructions on rustic land built in the last nine years occupy an area of 14 square kilometers, equivalent to the municipality of Consell, and the island of Cabrera, if you want another comparison. Another study, Houses that do not exist, by Miquel Rosselló Xamena from Pollensa, determines that there are 55,256 houses on the rustic land of Mallorca. Calculating three people per dwelling, more than 150,000 inhabitants. By a large margin, we are talking about the second city on the island. Chalets in the countryside are now mass-produced. A developer buys a dozen ‘quarterades’ (plots of land), fences them with dry stone walls, and builds six chalets at the same time. This is what is known as urbanization. But in terms of dispersion, as single-family housing in rustic areas, without services, without running water, but with a swimming pool, exponentially multiplying mobility, with new accesses and without ceding land for roads or service areas, which they enjoy without problem or prior notice in the nearest town. Afterwards they will complain because they do not have a waste collection point nearby or will be indignant because water enters when it rains a little, because they had built in a flood-prone area.
The purpose of cities, towns, and villages has a name: municipality. People do not gather, in this case, out of longing or for company, but out of the need to share resources. Networked electricity, running water, waste collection, schools, health centers and hospitals, public administration, shops and supermarkets, and the vast majority of jobs. Travel is done on foot. The 150,000 who live on rustic land live in houses that do not exist, because they have not contributed to the common good, they have destroyed the landscape, they have quartered the territory, and they have sterilized the pantry of the place where they live. Only fifteen percent of the food we consume is produced in Mallorca. Agriculture is not profitable. Inheritances cannot be divided. No native person can pay their siblings the market price for their share. And they sell, which is always easy, and they leave.
Every plot of land we have sold is unrecoverable. None of us will be able to buy it back. Where will our children live? Now they say in Asturias, or in Galicia. Perhaps later, in Extremadura or in Leoón. In Fraga, or in Lleida, in the best-case scenario.
It is time to take sides in this matter. Not two plots, not four, not ten. Are we banning the construction of single-family homes on rural land? Let's ban it. Enough is enough. Is there anyone in the island's political chamber who means business? This is what Terraferida says: a line of correction fluid over Mallorca's Territorial Plan would be enough. Do we want to be able to dare?