To love Mallorca is also to take care of the GOB

Surely these days you have heard about GOB Mallorca. This writing aims to explain why a group of 10 women resigned from the board of directors on May 22 at the extraordinary assembly of the entity: a resignation that does not respond to differences regarding the defense of the territory or environmental campaigns, but rather to a sustained internal situation of confrontation, personal wear and tear, and lack of respect that has made the continuity of the project we defended unsustainable.

As you know, GOB Mallorca is a historic entity and a benchmark in the defense of the territory and the natural environment in Mallorca. It is made up of thousands of members, who each year elect new members to form a board of directors whose objective is to guide the entity's political and organizational project. Apart from the members and the board members, GOB has 10 employees on staff who support the daily operation of the organization.

The project driven so far by the board members who resigned last Friday had received majority and historic support from members in previous assemblies. A fact that shows that the majority of the GOB's social base was committed to a more ecofeminist model, consistent with current ecosocial challenges.

Contrary to some published accounts, the situation experienced is not due to a confrontation between two GOB models regarding environmental, territorial, or social campaigns. Our project has not renounced mobilization, defense of the territory, or active presence in environmental conflicts at any time. (GOB Mallorca Activity Report 2024, GOB Mallorca Activity Report 2025).

However, in the last year and a half, the new people who had joined the board were part of a critical group or sector: critical of our governance and the transformative project that members had endorsed in previous general assemblies (the project that had led to a long-term strategic plan, commensurate with the ecosocial crisis Mallorca is facing). This project, launched in 2023 and which we collectively proposed, aimed to strengthen an organizational culture based on care, collective work, trust in the technical team, an ecofeminist perspective, and shared strategic planning. Our resignation is the result of receiving a continuous attitude of disregard, an aggressive tone, and repeated disrespect. For months, we have suffered systematic opposition and a strategy of personal and emotional wear and tear towards those of us who held responsibilities within the organization.

We consider it particularly serious that this sector has opted to constantly confront, scrutinize, and question the functions of the GOB's team of workers, which thus weakens the organization's internal functioning and creates an unsustainable situation. But it is even more alarming that they have decided to ignore the team's communications requesting updated labor conditions in accordance with current laws, especially since progressive organizations should be at the forefront of improving workers' rights.

We expressed and continue to express today, now that the board is in the hands of the critical sector, special concern for the situation of the female workers and for the departure of four professionals in less than a year with long careers and a high level of specialization within the GOB due to the unsustainable internal situation. The entity is losing valuable human and militant capital, reinforced by years of work done as a benchmark in the defense of the territory, the conservation of biodiversity, and ecosocial transformation.

We now resign with great sadness from GOB Mallorca, but before leaving, we felt the responsibility to alert the assembly to the state in which the entity finds itself. We would wish that this would initiate a process of self-criticism in order to face the internal conflict and begin with a new perspective a process that allows for the construction of a GOB that is more appropriate and up to the times and can confront the political and social situation we are experiencing in Mallorca.

We sincerely thank the support received from so many members during these difficult days.