Posidonia leaves lose their characteristic green color and turn whitish in some shallow areas of the Balearic Islands. This is the disturbing phenomenon that researcher at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA, CSIC-UIB) Núria Marbà has observed again this summer at the port of Cabrera, in front of Pagès beach, where the water reaches especially high temperatures, a phenomenon that has been repeating in recent years. “The leaves are whitening, it seems they are losing their chlorophyll,” she explains. It is not a new alteration, but its causes and consequences are still not known with certainty. “We don’t know if it is because of the temperature, but it seems so, because it happens in the summer,” she points out.

It has been eight years since the Sant Llorenç flash flood. The tragic death of 13 people brought to the table how poorly things have been done for decades, and how we have accumulated people and homes in places where it was not only already prohibited to do so, but where common sense also dictated it was not a good idea.

There is an old military barracks in Palma that has been waiting for more than two decades to be converted into public housing. It is Son Busquets, an immense state-owned plot where 831 protected homes are currently planned. 20 years of announcements, projects, and discussions between administrations that have not served to make the apartments available to the public. Meanwhile, housing has gone from being a significant problem to becoming a social emergency.

The Balearic Islands tourist rental employers' association is satisfied with the application of a 10% VAT on holiday homes, because it believes that the measure "will further professionalize the sector." The president of Habtur, Antoni Barceló, admits that the new tax may slightly reduce profitability, especially for small owners who directly manage a single home, but considers that the impact will be less negative than it may initially seem. "It is true that you will have to deduct this 10% from the prices already agreed upon, but the measures are aimed at greater professionalization of the sector and that is not bad," he points out.

Having 14,000 square meters of common rustic land will no longer be enough, on its own, to be able to build a house of more than 100 square meters. If the agrarian law bill approved by the Governing Council ends up passing parliamentary processing, building a new large-scale dwelling in the countryside (the majority of those being built are) will be linked to an agrarian obligation that must be maintained for 15 years.

A couple with two children, one of whom has a disability, had to face this week a situation for which no one is prepared: being evicted from their home. The eviction, scheduled in Palma, was suspended. It had already been postponed in July, when activists gathered in front of the building, and now the court has once again halted the eviction. According to Stop Evictions Mallorca, the new state regulation approved by Pedro Sánchez's government this week, which Vox, the PP, and Junts overturned in a debate in Congress that will go down in political history, was one of the legal arguments taken into account.

Administrative simplification is not noticeable. At least, not enough. Companies, farmers, and self-employed workers start from a system that is so cumbersome, with so many accumulated procedures, administrations that do not always share information, and procedures that are duplicated, that the measures promoted in recent years by the Government are, for a good part of the sectors consulted, a drop of water dissolved in a bureaucratic sea built over 40 years. They do not deny that steps have been taken. What they question is whether they have managed to substantially change the daily relationship between the administered and the Administration.

Computer robots have already taken on the equivalent of more than 45,500 hours of work from public employees of the Autonomous Community in just two years. This is one of the most concrete figures with which the Government defends the results of its administrative simplification policy: the automation programs implemented at the CAIB have intervened in more than 432,000 files and 70,000 documents, mainly to take on repetitive tasks that until then had to be done manually by civil servants, according to data provided by the Executive to ARA Balears.

Nearly 25,000 families in the Balearic Islands can gain two years of breathing room before having to face the renewal of their rental contract, if the Congress of Deputies does not overturn the measure approved this Tuesday by the Council of Ministers. The Balearic Islands, according to the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and 2030 Agenda, was where the highest increase was expected for contracts ending in the coming months: the State had calculated that moving from a contract ending this year to a new one at market prices could mean an average additional cost of 4,615 euros per year for the Islands, about 385 euros each month, the greatest impact of all the autonomous communities. The state average stood at 1,735 euros per year, about 145 euros per month.

The GOB has formally requested that Palma City Councilhalt the processing of the Sustainable Water Management Plan (PGSA), with which Jaime Martínez and his team aim to obtain the necessary technical justification to have more water and be able to move forward with the 9,000 to 10,000 extra apartments from the strategic projects. Projects that are already being processed by different developers, but which both the City Council and the interested parties know cannot obtain a license at this time if the amount of water available in the municipality is not increased. This Sustainable Water Management Plan (PGSA) was initially approved by Cort on March 26th, but, according to the environmental organization, it contains very significant errors that force "its withdrawal". MÉS per Palma had already warned that this Plan did not meet all the requirements and denounced its approval due to the increase in consumption it foresees.

Joan Carrero is a pacifist activist and founder of the S’Olivar Foundation, based in Estellencs, from where he has worked for decades for peace and justice in the Great Lakes region of Africa. He was one of the first conscientious objectors in the country and his career earned him several nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2013, he received the Gold Medal of the Council of Mallorca. He promoted a lawsuit against the Rwandan president Paul Kagame and has repeatedly denounced the looting of minerals taking place in the Congo with the connivance of the Western world. He has just presented his new book ¿Is humanity heading towards Armageddon? Or towards the fullness of the Omega Point?You say that this is "the book that Pere Sampol was waiting for" and that he wanted to recommend to his colleagues. What is in this second volume that you believe Sampol considered especially necessary to explain?

Twenty years are enough to understand to what extent the size of the Balearic Islands' airports has changed. Between January and August 2006, 20.9 million passengers passed through the airfields of Palma, Ibiza, and Menorca. In the same period this year, 34.3 million have already passed through. That is 13.4 million more travelers in just two decades, an increase that in the island airports as a whole stands at 64.3%.

The Civil Guard is already investigating the two complaints that GEN-GOB filed regarding water management at Ibiza airport, as confirmed by the entity to ARA Balears. The Nature Protection Service (Seprona) has opened proceedings on the two fronts that the environmentalists have brought to their attention: on one hand, the water supply of the airport premises and the management of the saline waste generated by its treatment and, on the other, the wastewater and spills detected in the surroundings of Es Codolar. The Environmental Prosecutor's Office has also confirmed to this newspaper that it is investigating the case.

The GOB has formally requested from the Andratx City Council the urban planning license and the complete file that authorize the large excavation works being carried out on a hillside in Port d'Andratx. The environmental organization wants to clarify to what extent the deep clearing of the mountain, visible from various points in the area, was foreseen in the authorized project and whether the works being done there comply with the conditions of the license.

When Joan and Blai Ferrando arrive in Port d'Andratx on a Wednesday, they have already put in twelve hours of work. The crates are full of fish and a van is already waiting to load them. The largest part of the catch goes to Palma, where it will be sold at the fish market the next morning. A small part is reserved for the point of sale at the Port d'Andratx fishermen's guild itself, which opens for an hour or two each day.

In January of this year, Joan Gaià, general secretary of the Farmers' Union (UP) and businessman, paid an average of 0.90 euros per litre for agricultural diesel. It was practically the same price as in August 2025. In May, however, it was already 1.24 euros. This week the figure has reached 1.70 euros. In nine months, one of the essential costs for running an agricultural holding has become 89% more expensive. Since May alone, the increase is close to 37%. "This is a very big blow for those of us who still believe in the countryside," laments Gaià.

The presentation a few days ago of the new section of Palma's second ring road recalled, as ARABalears explains, those times indelible in our memory of the “Majorcan-style roads” of Maria Antònia Munar. Works presented with good canapés, marquees and, above all, a lot of nerve. Because they intended to make citizens believe that laying more asphalt was solving mobility.