To welcome tourists to the point of exhaustion and to do business, speculate, and sell off natural, cultural, tangible, intangible, real estate, material, common heritage… whatever it may be, and at whatever social and ecological cost.
Anyone would say that our rulers have entered the institutions as plunderers of common and public goods, not because of the goods themselves (like so many other thieving predecessors who prevaricated and collected commissions in episodes of political corruption that have marked the history of this small land): but because of one or more of the laws necessary to make it possible, to make it legal, so that it is not a crime, so that it does not appear to be theft. But it is. The policies of the Prohens Government are unprecedented in the history of our autonomous community (or they become timid precedents when making the comparison), both for the materialization of the most blatant neoliberal policies, and for the multitude of fronts they have dared to touch in order to dismantle them (laws, regulatory frameworks for planning, acquittals); Also because of the speed with which they are doing it; and because of the magnitude of the regulatory defeat that has taken years to overcome and will take just as many more. And perhaps not only years but also money, because trying to reverse some of the most perverse operations consolidating urban planning and property rights that stem from the application of the Prohens decree laws will not come cheap for the citizens. All, or almost all, have been imposed by decree laws. Decree laws that have cynically and perversely hidden behind the social problem of housing (and I will not tire of repeating this because I find it significant and very illustrative of the discursive and political character of those who govern us) or administrative simplification, which they use as justification to dismantle social and environmental safeguards. Of this modus operandiThe draft agrarian law and the proposed ports law are exceptions, at least those we are aware of so far. They wanted to promote, they said, a new urban planning law, but for whom and for what purpose, when, in terms of territorial and urban planning, they have blown the regulatory frameworks to smithereens with bombs of new developments, reclassifications, and amnesties.
Of those that were not made by decree-law, however, the only difference is the way they are processed. Apparently, the excuse of housing no longer worked to justify the draft agrarian law. They must have found it was too obvious and haven't found another reason for urgency (when from an ecological point of view it would be the highest and most urgent priority!). So they've quietly drafted the text, but not with what farmers or environmentalists expected. Instead, they've followed the same philosophy as the regulations that came before: dismantling environmental safeguards, repurposing supposedly agricultural land for real estate, energy, and tourism, and extracting profit from building plots. Thus, we have the least agricultural law in the history of the Balearic Islands (and Company had already tried). This law, using the acronym AC (Complementary Activities), is gradually planning the replacement of agricultural activity with real estate, tourism, or energy development, with a clear message: producing food, achieving food and economic sovereignty, and ensuring future resilience are not profitable for those who own the islands' fertile lands, so they'll sort it out themselves.
What they're doing is effectively robbing us of the possibility of reversing the (un)productive economy that, in order to sell everything and/or commodify everything for tourism, expels us, empties the soul of the land, and fills it with large and small governments or with pirates lining their pockets. Because there are many people who right now, while many of us are throwing our hands up in despair at defeat, are making a lot of money, simply from the possibility of opening up housing laws, strategic residential projects, administrative simplification, agriculture, ports… and we still have almost two years of this legislative term left.
It's time to start opening our eyes and understand clearly that these aren't policies for the people, that they don't really intend to solve the housing problem, nor to achieve energy or food sovereignty, nor a resilient territory capable of facing floods or whatever else may come. They want us increasingly precarious, unprotected, dispossessed, and fragmented so they can carry out their schemes and then use the racist hatred of their government partners to finish dismantling society. These partners are perfect for justifying the nonsense they might not have dared to do or say on their own. We must be aware that they are plundering our land and our ability to continue living here, and we must rise up now, if only for dignity.
