The season no longer begins

The first of May used to mark the start of the tourist season, which ended on November 1st. It was a radical change; hotels opened and taxis began to make trips compulsively. Today, thanks to the de-seasonality we so longed for, things are more diffuse. Not only because there are tourists all year round, but in terms of space occupation. As Professor Nofre Rullan well diagnosed, in a few decades we have gone from having tourists concentrated in a dozen Balearic locations for six months, to having them scattered everywhere, all year round.

Among many other factors, it is the result of an intense campaign of repeating the message for years. Millions and millions of euros have been spent telling Europeans that better in winter, and that they should come whenever they want because there is a lot to do. The argument was that there would be more quality employment (year-round jobs), and that the summer pressure would be somewhat distributed.

The reality, obviously, is very different. The public money invested has served to unleash tourism, promote the occupation of public spaces like terraces where one can no longer pass and traditional markets that are now an absurd and artificial spectacle. But, above all, this obsession with filling and filling the low season has robbed us of rest, residents and the land, recovery and peace.

It is curious that politicians, regardless of their party, repeated this discourse of de-seasonality for years, without anyone at any point questioning whether it was really better. Today, when many workers cannot even pay rent precisely because apartments have been touristified, we have already learned that spreading out the season was not such a good idea.