Mallorca: many Torre Pacheco
Last July, before the Palma City Council plenary session began, a significant and important demonstration took place in front of the Cort (City Council): citizens and civil society expressed their rejection of the land law recently approved by the Parliament with the votes of the People's Party (PP) and Vox. Neighborhoods such as Son Sardina, Establecimientos, and Secar de la Real, among others, and municipalities such as Llucmajor, Campos, Manacor, Felanitx, Inca, and Calvià could become amorphous agglomerations of new construction, erected without any order other than the arrival of the projects at the corresponding entry registers, as a consequence of this law. Areas that were previously protected and emblematic, such as the Tramuntana Mountains and the Trenc Natural Park, so hated by the right, are also seriously threatened by the spirit, letter, and intentions contained in this law.
We said the demonstration was important because it was the first of many that will be necessary to provide a citizen response to the so-called Land Acquisition Law. Its proponents justify the law by the need to address the housing problems in the Balearic Islands. This need exists and is urgent, but the law is not only useless in addressing the problem, but it actually makes it exponentially worse. It represents a new, traumatic population increase, with consequences that are difficult to foresee today. Palma's population could grow by a third more than it currently has, going from over 400,000 inhabitants to over 600,000. It is interconnected, with access to what remains of the natural spaces of Migjorn, Llevant, Pla, Raiguer, and the Tramuntana mountain range. A kind of large year-round holiday resort, with the population dedicated half the year to the service sector and the other half to unemployment and/or the underground economy, as they have long done.
Among the problems this plan entails (a shortage of natural resources, primarily water; a lack of services on an island precarious in almost every way), one must consider the increase in social inequality, which is already very pronounced. With out-of-control prices and a significant portion of the population becoming increasingly impoverished, social fractures like the one recently seen in Murcia, in the municipality of Torre Pacheco, would predictably become the norm in New Mallorca. It is ironic that those who hate immigrants, and shamefully refuse to welcome them, would pass a law that is a true pull effect, attracting many more people to try their luck in unskilled jobs in the service sector. It is also ironic that Prohens complains to King Felipe that Mallorca is overpopulated, when his government has passed the law that could lead to the definitive demographic collapse of the island.
It's better explained, of course, when we remember that the patriot Manuela Cañadas, of Vox and enthusiastic promoter of the land law, is a partner in a real estate agency. Or that the spokesperson Sebastià Sagreras, of the PP, is a construction entrepreneur. It's also important not to forget that the PP has been out of power for eight years, and this is a rather severe diet for an organization like the main party in the Spanish political system, accustomed to swallowing huge amounts of public money. In fact, Feijóo's haste to govern Spain has more to do, you see what it is, with that yearning for power than with the desire to save the threatened homeland.
