The largest McDonald's in Europe
In these days of tourist and mental saturation, with strikes and canceled flights slowing down the infernal machinery of airports like Palma, a piece of news takes on the status of an explanatory metaphor for who we are and what happens to us: Palma airport now has the largest McDonald's in Europe.
It's not just another record set by those stupid, traditionally masculine individuals (let's see who has the biggest one!) for surpassing 19 or 20 million tourists this year, but a reflection of the thousand contradictions within "our" economic and tourism model, which, incidentally, permeates our entire society.
To begin with, what does a McDonald's have to do with the image of a "sustainable" and unique destination that, for example, the Consell de Mallorca (Mallorca Council) promotes with that logo it unveiled a few months ago featuring a web of tongues? And that's exactly it: nothing. We're talking about one of the most indisputable symbols of neoliberal globalization versus another Nostradamus symbol that's actually used to attract more people with "essence" marketing. But, ultimately, both feed the same seats that become increasingly richer with a "development" model that leaves more and more poor people along the way.
George Ritzer, an American sociologist, explained to us in the 1990s that McDonald's represented much more than a simple fast-food chain. In reality—expanding on Max Weber's theories on rationalization—what we should be concerned about is the McDonaldization of society. Ritzer explains that this phenomenon operates based on four variables: efficiency, predictability, calculability, and technological control.
The efficiency of McDonald's compared to other types of catering establishments is defined by achieving the goal of "feeding us" with the minimum possible investment: why sit down and be served by someone when we can pick up our food in our car, for example? This, applied to the logic of mass tourism, once again contradicts recent business discourses on tourism, which speak of the importance of visitors' "experiences."
In reality, it's increasingly easier to predict what you'll find if you come to Mallorca in July or August, and that connects us with the second variable: predictability. This also affects the configuration of our streets and towns: whether you go to a McDonald's in Brazil or one in Mallorca, you'll find the same menu. And so our urban landscape is being reconfigured: illegal tourist rentals, "Italian" ice cream shops, souvenir shops, and various franchises where there used to be life and neighbors, as well as local commerce.
Calculability is the acid test for those who only use the terms "sustainability" or "containment" for convenience: just as the "Big Mac" is the star of the McDonald's menu, in turbo-capitalist tourism, the more, the better. In fact, note that for some time now, the new circular fashion does not seem to contradict the accumulation of all kinds of tourism: mass, luxury, cycling... Because tourists can fit even more; it's all a question of calculation and "regulating their flows." Note that Palma airport has not been expanded for a few years now, but its capacity to carry more people is increasing all the time.
Finally, there is the issue of control through technology. And yet, algorithms, when Ritzer wrote about it, did not control our lives, nor those of Amazon or Glovo delivery drivers. Soon, algorithms will evaluate the performance of any worker based on criteria as subjective as the absenteeism wildcard so often used by employers. Just imagine how easy it would be to assess the workload of chambermaids—incidentally, a flagrant violation of the previous hospitality agreement—if the tools for doing so weren't provided by the owners.
Ritzer's conclusion is that despite all the above, so much "rationality" leads us to irrationality and the dehumanization of society, which would largely explain the mix of fatigue, indignation, and frustration felt by islanders, but also by many other societies.
Where was it decided that while McDonald's loses millions as a result of consumer punishment for its collaboration with the genocide of the Palestinian people, in Mallorca we would settle its accounts by authorizing the largest fast-food establishment on the entire continent? Where did it come to be decided that this doesn't affect our tourist image or that it's simply decent? Where did it come to be decided that the entire island should become a sort of metropolitan area around the airport?
Perhaps the key lies in another characteristic of McDonald's-type establishments: the "employee of the month" award. The prize here is evenly distributed, between our current government and the director of an airport under construction in the middle of the season, who is capable of blaming an accident on the last worker in the chain. And also among some businessmen who pretend to be saviors of the country and who, in reality, don't do anything too different from McDonald's.