The saturation, 'que'est-ce que c'est'?

Last year, the Balearic Islands broke records again: more than 19 million tourists, a volume that represents an increase of 1.73% compared to 2024. In Maria Llull's article in ARA Baleares It has all the relevant information, as well as a very interesting overview of the Government's attitude regarding tourist overcrowding: in two years, it has gone from announcing a grand Pact for Sustainability with great fanfare to simply remaining silent: not about sustainability, overcrowding, or the Pact. Not about raising the ecotax, nor about limiting the number of rental cars. Nothing has been done, and now that the situation (as was to be expected) has worsened, the chosen option is not exactly silence, but rather boasting about the boom in tourism. Two years ago, when we had 17.8 million tourists, President Prohens stated that "reaching 20 million is not sustainable," and presented herself as the first president of the Balearic Islands to commit to combating overtourism, although her predecessor, Francina Armengol, had already implemented policies in this area. Now that we're up to 19,053,592 (the data comes from the Balearic Institute of Statistics, Ibestat), the president and her government congratulate themselves for having "changed the course of tourism" (towards what?) and having achieved "deseasonalization".

Deseasonalization has turned out to be yet another of the great traps we've set for ourselves regarding tourism. A few days ago, the organization Terraferida—which has spearheaded a return to activity as necessary as it is melancholic due to the painful reality that motivated it—shared another official Ibestat statistic on social media. This is the human pressure indicator, a graph that shows how there were more millions of people in the Balearic Islands in the winter of 2025 than in August 2000. Adding to the starkness of the data, Terraferida issued a stark warning: "Mallorca has developable land for more than 5 million buildings."

Indeed, we can now confirm that the Pact for Sustainability was merely a typical distraction tactic to push through the legislature's true agenda, which is none other than to greenlight a new phase of rampant construction. The Law on Administrative Simplification and the Law on Land Acquisition, along with a decree-law allowing the number of apartments that can be built on each plot of land in Palma to be doubled, constitute a legal framework designed to encourage speculation, whether by local or foreign developers. From small real estate agencies set up by opportunists trying their luck to large international vulture funds, everyone knows that these islands have become a bargain for opportunists thirsty for easy money. This political-administrative maneuver to sell off these islands to anyone who wants to buy them has been justified, with utter cynicism, as a response to the housing emergency.

Meanwhile, the government is also fueling low-intensity xenophobic rhetoric (when it comes from the PP) and higher-intensity xenophobia (when it comes from Vox) by blaming immigrants for the fact that young people and working families can't find decent, affordable housing—a constitutional right we see being trampled on every day. The idea of ​​deseasonalizing tourism, which we once wanted to believe meant organizing a well-structured tourism and real estate industry, has ended up meaning that every day of the year should be like the busiest day of August. As for overcrowding, that's a headline from two years ago.