All of Mallorca will be a city: the model that is destroying the island
The entire island of Mallorca will end up being a large city. I first heard it about thirty years ago, and I couldn't say from whom. A spokesperson for GOB? A professor from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University? A 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 that the industrial revolution brought. Shoes, pearls, textile industry, furniture... The urban centers hosted 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 persisted in the countryside, with lords who administered the large estates inherited from the time of the estate system society. All of that, however, crumbled, and the large estates 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, romantic travelers became mass tourists; the prime plots of land on the seashore became mines that, instead of being exploited by excavation, were exploited by accumulation. Exorbitant hotels destroyed paradise while filling the valleys and the furrows of the hands of the until-yesterday miserable peasants with money. Making money was easy. Shops of souvenirs, restaurants, bars, inns, small hotels, flourished on the seashore. The season was concentrated in two or three intense months in summer and in very localized spots on the island: Playa de Palma, Cala Millor, Can Picafort, Calvià, to name a few.
At the end of the 20th century, the disaster occurred. Hoteliers lost their monopoly. Vacation rentals arrived, which supposedly democratized 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-quarters of a hectare was enough land to build a villa with a swimming pool. First, the locals signed up. 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, the equivalent of the municipality of Consell, and the island of Cabrera, if you want another simile. 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, today, are already mass-produced. A developer buys a dozen acres 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 dispersion, as single-family homes in the countryside, without services, without running water, but with a swimming pool, exponentially multiplying mobility, with new access roads 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 garbage collection point nearby or will be outraged because water enters their homes when it rains a little, because they had built in a flood-prone area.
The purpose of cities, towns, and villages has a name: community. People do not gather, in this case, out of longing or for company, but out of the need to share resources. Grid 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 people who live on rustic land do so in houses that do not exist, because they have not contributed to the common good, they have destroyed the landscape, they have dismembered the territory, and they have sterilized the larder 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 can pay their siblings the share they have inherited at market price. And they sell, which is always easy, and they leave.
Every quarter of a fanega we have sold has no return. 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 León. In Fraga, or in Lérida, in the best of cases.
It is time to take measures in this matter. Not two plots, not four, not ten. Shall we prevent the construction of single-family homes on rustic land? Let's prevent it. It is enough. Is there anyone in the island's political room who is going to work? Terraferida says: a line of correction fluid over the Territorial Plan of Mallorca would be enough. Do we want to be able to dare?