Speculators should not be integrated

PalmIn any town or city in the Balearic Islands, you can see how a large portion of the new construction is the work of a foreign developer. German, Swedish, and English families fill the construction signs, except for apartment blocks. We see it in coastal towns, with villas that will sell for at least five million euros, but also in traditional neighborhoods. In the Terreno de Palma area, there are about ten projects that consist of taking a traditional house, part of the urban landscape, with its roof and shutters, and turning it into an eyesore as large as the regulations allow. These speculators are known as investors. People who buy properties taking advantage of the insatiable demand from northern countries and sell them for five or ten times the price. This keeps happening in the name of the free movement of goods and people within the European Union. The trickle of dispossession doesn't stop.

Meanwhile, in the streets and in Parliament, the debate is about whether those who act as pawns for these speculators, or those who will act as gardeners, should integrate. It's as if the latter, migrants from the south, indispensable to those who will pocket the surplus value, were the cause of all evils.

Those who will live in the mansion, which they will also rent out as an illegal tourist offering, and of course the investors who make a fortune at the expense of disfiguring the landscape—these don't need to integrate. At least that's how it seems, since they never come up in the debate. In the bar, nobody criticizes their customs, as is done with those who have darker skin. Perhaps because in the bar there's someone who has sold the plot of land or the house of the godmother where the daily football match of the Balearic territory is staged.