The sea of idiots
PalmA stroll along Palma's seafront no longer means seeing the sea – yes, the sea that was once its main attraction. From Porto Pi to the Muelle Vell (Old Wharf), what you see now are boats moored, tightly secured. "A port with more than 2,000 moorings!" boasts one website. And yes, what you see are thousands of boats, small, medium, and many outrageously large, with names like "Libertà," "Eterna Primavera" (Eternal Spring), "Sweet Dreams," or "Goldene Meerjungfrau" (Golden Meerjungfrau), which obscure the horizon. This isn't just happening in Palma. Next come El Molinar, Can Pastilla, El Arenal… You can travel around Mallorca or the Balearic Islands, and one after another, there are ports, harbors, and coves serving as marinas. And thousands of boats that spend a good part of the year waiting for their owners to arrive for a week or a couple of days. There are no figures on the total number of moored boats, but the ports are overflowing and the sea is suffocating. In islands where there is no available housing, how many 'floating homes' are there exactly? Official statistics are confusing – as always, due to a lack of data – but they invariably point to the Balearic Islands' leading position in recreational boat registrations compared to the rest of Spain, with hundreds of new registrations every year. This is to say nothing of the waiting lists, stretching for years and decades, for a mooring berth. Paradise, if it dies, always dies of success.
Furthermore, in 2025, voices were raised about a phenomenon even more striking than the number of new registrations: that of abandoned vessels. If it is estimated that there are around 10,000 dead or permanently moored boats in the Balearic Islands, there are hundreds more with a boat moored there, abandoned, half-sunken, further contributing to marine pollution with fuel and plastic. In Pollença, they started dismantling them in 2025.
And now, as if that weren't enough, the Spanish government has decided to make it even easier to rent private boats. "Great," some owners will think, "finally, they'll be able to recoup some of what their boat costs them each winter in the dock." As always, making a profit. But, in practice, it means more boats, more disturbance to the seabed, and less sea to enjoy its original scent.
Meanwhile, the large ports of the Balearic Islands continue to receive cruise ships, and now, to make matters worse, Palma is planning a water bus service that will run from the cruise terminal to five points in the bay. This way, the cruise passengers who already clog up the city center will end up clogging it even more. After all, more boats passing through and occupying a space that should be infinitely freer and more natural.
In any case, it doesn't seem like anyone wants to put a stop to this excess: a maximum number of boats, regulations to prevent this absurd overcrowding. The question is, what are we doing with our sea? Or rather, what are we failing to do to protect it from our own excess? We are the sea, probably the sea of idiots.
