The price of success cannot always be more expensive

For decades, a large part of the islanders assumed that tourism was much more than an economic activity. It was the foundation of prosperity, the guarantee that the Balearic Islands could offer opportunities and a good standard of living. With many nuances, because the benefits have never been distributed equitably, the majority accepted that the costs of the model were offset by the well-being it generated. For a long time, however, this balance has been broken. We are paying the price for what has been considered a success, but this price should not be paid eternally, nor can it become increasingly expensive.

The mobilizations against tourist overcrowding do not express a rejection of tourism itself. They express the certainty that what was supposed to guarantee a better life has ended up making it more difficult. It is so hard to find housing that a very important part of the population, if they do not have a property or family support, cannot think about building a life project. Public services suffer constant pressure. Commutes are getting longer and shared spaces are being lost.

There is also a less quantifiable, but equally real loss. We have stopped going to beaches where we used to spend hours because we know we will find traffic jams and a crowd. We have changed habits, we have given up places we felt were ours, and we have started to organize our lives by avoiding moments and spaces of maximum saturation. It is not just a matter of discomfort, it is the feeling that the territory where we live is no longer responding to the needs of those who inhabit it all year round.

However, societies evolve and territories too. But a transformation is only progress if it improves the living conditions of the community. When growth ends up degrading the well-being of residents, when the right to decent housing becomes a privilege, and when living in the Islands requires ever greater efforts to maintain a normal life, we must ask ourselves whether the model continues to serve the country or if it is the country that has ended up in service of the model.

This is, perhaps, the big question that the protests raise. It is not about recovering idealized Balearic Islands that no longer exist, nor about denying the economic importance of tourism. It is about remembering an evidence: the success of a territory cannot be measured solely by the number of visitors or by turnover records. It must also be measured by the possibility for people to live there with dignity and looking to the future without the feeling that, year after year, they are losing a little more of the place they consider their home. If the economic model that was supposed to guarantee our well-being ends up eroding that well-being, there can be no doubt whether limits should be imposed and a degrowth planned. We must assume that the consequences of these limits are not worse than not establishing them.