The parties will also always be ours

PalmaIt is public and notorious: Mayor Martínez's team governs against the citizens. It considers Palma a city-stage, a money-making machine, a soulless showcase designed to attract investors (read 'predatory speculators') where natives are in the way. Success is measured by the number of visitors, by the number of expats who do us the honor of buying or renting our homes at the price of young Canary Islanders, by pharaonic projects that put Palma on the map (as if it weren't already there), by multinationals opening franchises or gentrifying works 'to improve the lives of neighbors' which only cause demographic substitution. Palma as a large, gray, soulless theme park, a consumer product suitable for those who can afford it.The current government of Cort has taken another step and has declared war on citizen participation. It is not enough for us to be expelled from homes, shops, bars, or even public spaces, now they also attack what they fear most: a vibrant and beloved city. A vibrant city is not defined by the number of terraces occupying a square or the volume of business it generates. It is defined by its organized inhabitants, popular initiatives, neighborhood solidarity, and the capacity to weave a collective network. And they do not want this in any way, because an articulated, critical, and relational citizenry is a citizenry that loves and defends its city and its inhabitants, that organizes to defend the right to housing, that denounces uncontrolled touristification, that demands dignified public spaces, and that questions municipal priorities. An atomized population, where each individual relates to the city only as a consumer, is much easier to manage and ignore. The suffocating situation currently suffered by most popular entities or movements in our city, hidden behind increasingly absurd and insulting bureaucratic excuses, is not the result of simple inefficiency, but rather part of a strategy to tire out, discourage, and deactivate Palma's associative fabric, which manifests on three clearly identifiable fronts. First of all, we find administrative hurdles. Organizing a popular festival, an event in a public place, or a neighborhood dinner has become an odyssey of impossible procedures, unattainable technical requirements, and requests that get trapped in administrative silence. Meanwhile, concessions for large private (or privatized) events are resolved with surprising agility. How lucky they are not to be sent from one department to another or that coordination between areas never fails to resolve their requests!Secondly, we are witnessing a rigorous application of restrictive regulations that operates with a double standard. The same administration that is inflexible with the schedules of a self-managed party or with posters put up by a neighborhood association is the one that looks the other way in the face of the saturation of public space by the private sector. The street, which should be the meeting place for the community, is privatized and rented out to the highest bidder, while neighborhood life is treated as a nuisance.The third front consists of the appropriation of popular festivals. The City Council systematically boycotts and obstructs until it manages to get the promoters to want to desist. Then it positions itself as a savior and proceeds to finance and manage them, transforming a popular initiative into another showcase event, focused on private business and disconnected from the associative fabric. When the festival ceases to belong to the neighborhood to become that of an event management company, the city loses an essential part of its soul. And we still have to thank the City Council for stealing it from us.It is time to claim the right to the city, to popular festivals and to the occupation of public space. The neighborhood network and collective solidarity are the only shield we have left to prevent Palma from finally becoming an empty, gray, and sad theme park.