Pretty, pretty, isn't she?

A few weeks ago Ignasi Aragay published an unusual view of Catalonia in ARAIt was a description—partly concrete and partly paradigmatic—of the first hour of the train journey from Barcelona to Girona. The title practically makes reading the entire article unnecessary: The ugly CataloniaThe tone and content are easy to imagine, and yet it's not a skimpy read.

Abandoned factories and fields, uncontrolled landfills, industrial warehouses, obsolete facilities, flaking nature, greenhouses made of ripped plastic, scrap metal, gutted cars... It all sounds bitterly familiar.

As much as the Flowery path which has just been launched by Ánimos Parrec and which, under the clickbait Llompartiano, hides the desolate and desolate landscape that the Mallorcan outskirts have become: cans, bags of manure, septic tanks, PVC pipes... Widespread attacks that crush and degrade the landscape, turning it into a sad panorama that is difficult to contemplate.

In Mallorca, practically nothing is spared from ugliness. Not the capital, nor the Part Forana, nor the Foravila, nor the coast; nor the residential areas, industrial estates, commercial or marina ports, roads...; nor the historic centers, the suburbs, the conurbations, the isolated villas...; neither the histrionic luxury neighborhoods nor the pathetic, ultra-degraded suburbs. Ugliness is an epidemic.

It seems that an idealized image of the landscape before the defeat still lingers in the collective memory, but it's not advisable to live in such delusion. If we could see the current Mallorca through the eyes of the first dawn, we would lucidly and resignedly conclude: Beautiful, beautiful, it isn't.

The attacks of the last 60 years have been lethal. The emerging tourist demand demanded "beachfront" hotels, and we enthusiastically sacrificed the sandy beaches, the salt marshes, the marinas, and the rocky outcrops. But it also required extensive labor, and thus entire neighborhoods were born, rocking the city and causing it to founder. And they all demanded "services": reservoirs, power plants, gas stations, warehouses, landfills... and roads—many ugly roads—and large ports and airports, so they could constantly travel from one place to another and generate the false illusion of justified and efficient mobility. All of this—let us remember—signed by architects and engineers, and blessed by urban planning regulations that—let us also remember—have been emanating from democratic institutions for 48 years now. And regional governments, to boot, for more than 41 years. More than enough time to fix it ourselves if we had wanted to and put in the effort.

But not all of the tragedy has been macro-level, and, as with all forms of violence, we have also managed to generate low-intensity attacks, which have spread with impunity and now seem impossible to eradicate. These are the "microugisms"—irrelevant but omnipresent—that distort any view: the air conditioning units on facades, the overgrown electrical wiring, the illegal signage (Palma has exquisite regulations on this matter, scrupulously flouted by individuals and institutions), the overload of space, the anarchic closures, the stacked balconies, the feces (not just animal feces), the graffiti, the hipster whims of restaurants, the filth, the "improvements" by city halls, the ridiculous roundabouts, the inappropriate sculptures, and the... Could we also add it to contextual "microugism"?

It's not easy to know when we cease to have good taste. The history of landscapes clearly demonstrates that nature always diligently plays its part: geology, climate, flora, and fauna are impeccable agents. We cannot blame them for anything. And for millennia, the human hand—from the pyramids of Giza to the terraces of Biniaraix—was also working. It was precisely the symbiosis between nature and human action that often generated the most beautiful landscapes. However, something must definitely have gone wrong.

Aragay's reflection includes a hopeful—or disturbing—observation: "In France, the peri-urban landscape is much cleaner and more regulated. It doesn't have the neglected appearance of ours." I would add: "Nor in Menorca."

It's true that ugliness is an epidemic, but it hasn't, and doesn't, affect all territories with the same severity and intensity. It's worth pausing to consider what may have helped them evade widespread condemnation.

In the case of Menorca, infinitely more contained growth and the scrupulous protection of rural land for agricultural uses—building on plots of just two acres is absolutely inconceivable—have certainly been decisive.