This week in Parliament, the Minister of Tourism, Jaume Bauzà, exclaimed with strong words at the fact that the opposition (in this case MÉS per Mallorca, through its spokesperson, Lluís Apesteguia) expressed the idea that public services should be prioritized for residents, over promotions for tourists. “They want to pay for their bicycles too”, the minister scandalized, and he sarcastically remarked: “If they are locals, if they vote here, red carpet. They don't overcrowd, they don't saturate, they can run everywhere. Beware, though, if they are from northern countries!”. He said all this with shouts that wouldn't have needed a microphone, and he finished it off with a very typical outburst: “Coño!”. Like other members of his executive, Bauzà seems to have trouble distinguishing when he is in Parliament or when he is at a picnic with friends in the countryside. It is said, incidentally, that this man is also the Minister of Culture.The idea that Minister Bauzà was trying to express is not exactly new either: it boils down to the fact that prioritizing the needs of residents over the leisure of tourists is a sin of selfishness. “Mallorcans, you live in paradise and you want it all to yourselves”: this phrase was often repeated during the SOS! Turisme campaign, in the years of the pandemic. The minister has added a quality touch, which consists of lamenting the good life that we residents enjoy, in contrast to the contempt suffered by the poor people who come to visit us from “northern countries”: these, as is well known, do nothing but endure impertinences, scowls, and tourismphobia. However, they continue to come, because they are selfless and good people, and they do so in ever-increasing numbers each year. All this, according to the minister, would have a clear electoral motivation, because –attention– residents vote here, these bastards. They do so, as can be seen, to maintain their status as an unjustly privileged caste, to the detriment of the suffering people “fro  northern countries”, who are always left in the corners. A tourist is no longer a friend, as in the old slogan. Now it would be: let us pity the tourist, to whom we owe everything and in return has nothing.On the other hand, immigrants who already live in the Balearic Islands and can now benefit from the regularization legislated by the Spanish government do not deserve such consideration. According to the denunciation of the Popular Party of Madrid, and as the Popular Party of the Balearic Islands obediently repeats, this regularization is once again an electoral maneuver, this time by the perfidious Pedro Sánchez, to win the votes of supposed grateful immigrants. This idea is misinformation, since regularized immigrants do not acquire the right to vote until they obtain Spanish nationality, a process that can be delayed for up to ten years. Worse than inventing false voters, however, is that the PP wants to spread the suspicion that all these regularized immigrants are potential criminals, “victimizers of women”, as Feijóo said, a man always overwhelmed by the circumstances. The criminalization of immigrants is, as everyone knows, a typical slogan of the far-right.The ranking of citizens, however, is clear. The worst are immigrants from the south, who are criminals, followed by residents, who are spoiled. Those, on the other hand, who have been underestimated, despite all they have done for these Islands, are our brothers from the northern countries. For them will be the attention of the Government and the promised land (served in succulent real estate promotions).

When Israel and the US began the Iran war, last February 28, the whole world shuddered, but in Mallorca the shiver had a particular tone: “Will this affect the tourist season?”, was the question that the businessmen of the tourist sector and their servants, also known as elected rulers, were anxiously asking themselves. And many ordinary citizens, pure and simple taxpayers, were asking themselves the same question, because they have internalized an ancestral fear similar to that of the small Gallic village in the Asterix comics. Indeed, if those warriors of the Gallic forests lived in fear that one day the sky would not fall on their heads, many Majorcans today anxiously think about the possibility that one day tourists will stop coming. They have assimilated the idea that tourism is their source of sustenance (“tourism feeds us,” they repeat, like a responsorial psalm) and that dedicating themselves to economic activities other than tourism is equivalent to a return to a life of scarcity and deprivation. (Due to age, most have not experienced scarcity or deprivation, but within the repertoire of prejudices they have incorporated, it also includes intense aporophobia).Since then, the Iran war has continued its course, becoming more uncertain and alarming each day, and yet, tourists have come. With Easter, the tourist season properly begins: this year we can say, therefore, that the season runs from March 31 to October 31. That's seven full months, in contrast to the three months that the traditional summer season lasted (which was limited to the two strict months during which people usually took vacations, July and August, with the addition of the second fortnight of June to open and the first of September to close). Now it lasts more than double, and the long-standing objective is to make the tourist season last twelve months. Indeed, before we learned to say ‘de-seasonalization’’ without stumbling, reality has made it clear that it was a mirage: we will not manage to distribute tourists better across the different seasons of the year, in order to avoid overcrowding, but rather we will have overcrowding all year round. De-seasonalization was another self-deception (in this case, of progressive origin) on par with ‘cultural tourism’: by promoting this, we have not obtained tourists who come to participate in our reading clubs and buy season tickets for the Principal Theatre and the Manacor Auditorium, but rather tourists who visit prefabricated exhibitions, susceptible of being set up and visited in interchangeable destinations: be it Malaga (the model to be followed by our current rulers) or Palma, for buyers of the holiday package for lovers of cultural and gastronomic experiences.When Iran began to fire its long-range missiles, a local media outlet published a report trying to warn that these rockets have enough power for one of them to fall on Mallorca. And much worse, it could fall in the middle of the tourist season. There is a not very subtle (but well-rooted form of self-hatred), which consists of believing that we are too small to be affected by what happens in the world, or that our lamentable condition as a mature tourist destination makes us sweet and harmless. Neither is true: Mallorca, although a significant number of Majorcans find it hard to believe, is part of this convulsive, violent and unpredictable world that appears in the news. It is not only part of it, but it is a strategic point in the middle of the Mediterranean. And its tourist season is too.

A new award is added to the career of Sebastià Alzamora (Llucmajor, 1972), already recognized with awards such as the Carles Riba, the Sant Jordi and the Jocs Florals de Barcelona, among others. But upon receiving the Josep Maria Llompart for best poetry work in Catalan for Sala Augusta, followed by Llengua materna (Proa), awarded by the Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC) within the framework of the Cavall Verd awards, the writer considers that he is the one who is added to a list of authors who, he says, he hopes not to disappoint. Miquel Martí i Pol, Vicent Andrés Estellés and Antònia Vicens, among others, have received it before him. “It gives a special thrill because those who recognize your work are your colleagues, the people with whom you share your profession,” he confesses.

If the PP leaders are bothered by being labeled the ideological heirs of Francoism, they'd better get used to it. They will be considered as such, and more than deservedly so, as long as they make such government decisions. anti-democratic, vengeful, and painful like the one that prevailed, with the votes of Vox and the PP itself, in the plenary session of the Catalan Parliament on Tuesday, March 10. democratic memory lawThe law, finally repealed in this session after several back-and-forths of low-level politicking, was not a law against anyone, but a reparation law that offered, after more than eighty years of pain and oblivion, recognition to the victims of Francoism and their families.

The Spanish government's announcement of the regularization of 500,000 immigrants prompted an immediate reaction from the Catalan government. It reacted in its usual fashion, with much grandstanding and threats to challenge the measure in court, etc. Everything outlined, point by point, in the talking points sent from the People's Party headquarters on Génova Street in Madrid. But then the spokesperson for the Catalan government, Antoni Costa, wanted to add his own perspective. He stated that he felt the Spanish government was "giving away" residency to immigrants and that more requirements should be added to the regularization process: for example, that immigrants learn Catalan. "Here we have, and I say this clearly, our own language. And those who want to obtain legal residency in Spain, and in this region in particular, must demonstrate a willingness to learn our own language." He said this with dramatic pauses and facial expressions for emphasis. He also asserted that "here we have customs and traditions, and it is those who sell [these things] who must adapt, not the other way around."

The right-wing Spanish nationalist parties governing Palma City Council, the PP and Vox, have approved a "comprehensive study" of the book collections in the city's municipal libraries. Their stated reason is that they find "too few books in Spanish." The initiative to carry out this unusual audit of public libraries came from Vox, but the PP has joined in, once again, without hesitation. In reality, it's not that Vox and the PP find few books in Spanish in the public libraries, but rather that they believe there are too many in Catalan. Like everything these people say, this is also a lie, and it's easy to verify: Palma's municipal collections total 265,545 items, of which 150,004 are in Spanish and 86,945 in Catalan. as you can read in the information published by ARA Baleareswhich compiles the official data on this matter. Books in Spanish, therefore, constitute the overwhelming majority of Palma's municipal library catalog: 56.4% books in Spanish compared to 32.7% in Catalan (the rest are books in other languages).

On January 1st, the body of a 52-year-old man was found dead in a park in the Camp Redó neighborhood of Palma. He was homeless and, according to news reports, died from various illnesses. And also, evidently, from the effects of living on the streets and spending nights outdoors during a cold snap.