The interior of Mallorca, at a turning point

PalmaSome data from recent studies should not go unnoticed. Mallorca has lost 189 km² of agricultural land (1990-2018); 46% corresponds to new urban land (Chair of Insularity, UIB). Today, there are 55,256 buildings counted on the island on rustic land (Houses that do not exist, Miquel Rosselló). And, according to Terraferida, the rustic land has been denatured at a rate of 180 hectares per year (2021-2024). These are not anecdotal figures: they portray a rural world immersed in a context loaded with unsustainable trends that provoke a deep territorial transformation.

Surely, the Pla de Mallorca is the region that has remained most on the margins of the island's intense process of touristification. Currently, however, this dissonance regarding the general drift is fading. At this moment, the transformation is materializing in multiple impacts. On one hand, urban pressure on rustic land has never stopped growing: plots are not valued for agricultural income, but solely based on real estate expectations. The rural landscape, traditionally devoted to agricultural activity, is now forced to adopt new uses, mostly residential and tourist. Chalet-ism has definitively settled in the countryside –voluminous buildings, with large pools and extensive gardens–, and for some years now, it has been built in series: a developer raises two, three, and even half a dozen cloned chalets at once. On the other hand, the lucrative tourist use of existing buildings entails, as was foreseeable, countless expansions, attached constructions, new roads, pools, landscaping, and other elements, often excessive or inappropriate for rustic land.

Socioeconomic dynamics

Urban centers are not left on the sidelines either. Touristification generates such pressure that, sooner or later, it subjects inland villages to intense speculative processes of buying and selling housing, sky-high prices, and sharp demographic increases. The repercussions, however, are not limited to infrastructure; they also disrupt the socioeconomic dynamics of the territory. The effects on agriculture, traditional commerce, neighborhood life, heritage, and culture are becoming increasingly manifest. All things considered, nothing that wasn't to be expected: touristification always acts as an excellent cultural and identity solvent. Today, in many places in Mallorca, cultural and linguistic depersonalization is absolutely alarming.

At this point, the scenery of territorial change in the interior of Mallorca is quite evident. Another thing, however, is the political and institutional response that should be expected. If we truly want to avoid or, at the very least, mitigate this process, social awareness and activation will be necessary. Awakening local populations and encouraging associative networks, neighborhood groups, and many other actors in the territory is essential. It is about pooling capabilities, about reinforcing collective influence to achieve a change of course. Otherwise, the inertia – which, in territorial matters, usually ends up consolidating what will later become irreversible – will determine the final result.

It is high time to put on the table topics that until now political discourse has not dared to address. The residentialization of rustic land, to name but one, makes it urgent to propose much stricter restrictions on the construction of new chalets and isolated dwellings – or, simply, to opt for non-buildability on rustic land, just as was done in Menorca. But this is not the only issue. It is urgent to address many other topics such as regulating uses on non-developable land (a greater definition and more effective protection of the agricultural, forestry, and non-urban vocation of rustic land is needed); determining appropriate requirements so that constructions and facilities adapt to the rural landscape (and do not entail a detriment to traditional environments); setting limits on tourist and recreational uses; curbing macro-industrial uses on rustic land (mega-farms, mega-photovoltaic parks, battery storage plants); guaranteeing water sufficiency for the towns of the interior and for agricultural activity (tourist consumption cannot continue to set the priorities); executing urgent investments in water purification and aquifer protection; reviewing the delimitation of territorial and agricultural protection figures (AIA, ARIP, ANEI...); increasing public ownership of areas of natural interest (currently, insignificant in the Pla de Mallorca) and recovering attention to the countryside by the town councils (devoted almost exclusively to their urban centers), among others.

In fact, given the alarming degree of transformation, failing to address these and other territorial issues in the upcoming elections would be as inexcusable as it is irresponsible. Inland municipalities need to share their own planning strategy and, on the other hand, demand commitments from the other competent administrations. It is not just a matter of dealing with the invasion of chalets and wild olive trees (the binomial: tourist-residential pressure and abandonment of agricultural land), but of promoting common policies that allow facing future changes without renouncing the personality of the territory, the predominantly agrarian character, and the environmental quality that have, barely, resisted until today.