The perfect storm over the Balearic Islands: The double plunder that leads us to self-hatred

Living in the Balearic Islands has become, for the majority of their historical citizens, an almost impossible exercise in resistance. Beneath a layer of blue sky and idyllic postcards for tourists, a dramatic reality beats: the Archipelago suffers from an economic and social pincer designed from the outside that hollows us out from within. On one hand, a Spanish state that keeps our hands and feet tied (with the ‘you more than me’ of generalized corruption); on the other, a European Union that uses us as the playground and luxury residence of its elites (in exchange for European funds directed at national and European strategic points).The result of this formula is the systematic impoverishment of the local population. The double trap: wages from emptied Spain, prices from wealthy Europe.The Balearic plunder cannot be explained without understanding a bloody paradox. The Spanish state maintains a salary structure in the Islands that does not differ from that of the so-called ‘emptied Spain’. It is expected that a teacher, a police officer, or an administrative worker lives in Palma and Ibiza with the same salary they would have in Teruel or Zamora.This lack of real compensation for insularity has caused an administrative and social collapse: State civil servants no longer want to come to the Balearic Islands, because coming means, directly, losing purchasing power and brushing against the threshold of precariousness.While Madrid keeps us tied to wage poverty, Europe presses the accelerator on the cost of living. The legal avalanche of new wealthy residents—coming from northern Europe and half the world—has sent housing and basic service prices soaring to prohibitive levels. We find ourselves trapped in an invisible mousetrap: we earn like in inland Spain, but we pay like in the most opulent Bavaria.Faced with this scenario of asphyxiation, many Balearic families have been forced into a sad reality to survive and emigrate again, or to maintain a minimum standard of living: parting with the family heritage. Selling the grandparents' house, the lifelong land, and the small local business have gone from being an option to being a matter of strict necessity.It is here that the most perverse mechanism of the colonizing machinery is activated. Instead of pointing out the structural causes, the official narrative points to us."You are Phoenicians who would sell your own mother", they throw at us with the condescension of the unintegrated outsider.It is one of the oldest psychological manipulation maneuvers in history: blaming the victim for their own exploitation. The miracle of installing self-hatred in the hearts of the Balearic people has been achieved, making us believe that we are the only ones responsible for this consented plunder.But if there is one element that borders on collective masochism, it is the political behavior in the Islands. As a society, we have not only bought into the narrative of guilt, but we continue to reward at the polls the parties that perpetuate this situation.Political forces of state obedience —especially fueled by the vote of newcomers from the peninsula who often look at the local identity with suspicion— continue to monopolize power. The PP, Vox, the PSIB-PSOE, and Podemos systematically act as branches of Madrid.Even those who presented themselves as the "saviors of the people", like Podemos, have ended up turning their backs on the Balearic people. The latest sign of this betrayal has been the party's rejection (joining other right-wing state blocs) of the bill proposed by MÉS to establish a specific interprofessional minimum wage for the Balearic Islands that is adapted to the actual cost of living here.While the Balearic social fabric is unraveling, the Parliament of the Islands prefers to look the other way and obey the dictates of the offices in Madrid. How long will we apologize for having to sell to survive? How long will we feed with our votes the same parties that condemn us to be second-class citizens in our own land?The first step to stop the looting is, without a doubt, to banish self-hatred and begin to point out, once and for all, the true culprits.