The Consell de Mallorca approved this Friday in an extraordinary plenary session the law to limit vehicles on the island, which after this step will be sent to Parliament. Curiously, the plenary session was on the verge of being canceled because the president of the insular institution, Llorenç Galmés, arrived almost half an hour late. The reason? He had to arrive in Palma from Manacor and encountered traffic jams due to "three accidents", as he himself explained.

It can be listed in any order, but the fact is that housing, saturation, and mobility are the major structural problems that the citizens of the Balearic Islands have been dragging since the beginning of the last legislature, that of the Pact. Governments, headlines, announcements, and press conferences have passed, but the difficulties have shown their resilience and public policies have not even been able to diminish them.

Jaime Palomera (Barcelona, 1983) is part of the Urban Research Institute of Barcelona (IDRA) and is one of the founders of the Tenants' Union. A year ago he published the book The Housing Heist (Pòrtic Editorial), which attempts to explain how the gap is widening between rich landlords, who are getting richer and richer, and tenants, who are getting poorer and poorer.

The PP's decision to allow companies and investment funds to buy housing at a regulated price is the latest example of the change in housing policy model in the Balearic Islands, driven by Marga Prohens's government, with political role models like Isabel Díaz Ayuso's Community of Madrid. The Popular Party has opted to increase supply and private initiative over protected housing, a strategy that the left and experts consulted by ARA Balears have criticized.

The Palma City Council has advocated for the forced eviction of the old prison, where about 80 people currently live, even though the Bishopric of Mallorca has requested it be done in stages, as reported by Europa Press. The spokesperson for Cort, Mercedes Celeste, referred to Bishop Sebastià Taltavull's request after the Governing Board meeting. Taltavull maintains that the residents' reception must be done in a "personalized" way and in small groups to offer specific attention. "We cannot receive 100 people en masse because we wouldn't know where to put them," said the bishop, who reiterated his willingness to collaborate in assisting those affected. Despite the request, Cort has approved the forced eviction "through direct compulsion on individuals." That is, there is the green light to remove residents using physical force.

The Vice President of the Government, Antònia Maria Estarellas, referred this Monday to the 0.9% increase in tourist arrivals in the Balearic Islands until April and recalled that the Executive "does not speak of a decrease, but of containment" and that its model "is not in the figures", but in how they want there to be an increase in tourism. "The Government's model is not in the figures, it is in how we want this increase in tourism to come, in extending the months and in deconcentrating the massive influx in very specific months," she commented.

The human "pocatraça" has no limits and the Palma City Council is a good example of this. It is enough to listen to a plenary session to confirm that the municipal government does not like groups that are on the margins of what it considers a decent society very much. Cort has not shown much esteem for immigrants, shack dwellers, caravanners, or street artists – at this point, it is worth making a digression: if it is not very, very, very expensive, for the City Council it is not art.

The Government's Marine Conservation Plan, which was intended to position the Balearic Islands as an "international benchmark in marine environmental protection", as stated by the Executive, was nothing more than "a declaration of intent", according to the Director General of Fisheries, Antoni M. Grau. The plan was conceived without any budget allocation and has not been made public, despite requests from parties such as the PSIB, which has repeatedly called for it without the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Natural Environment, headed by Joan Simonet, facilitating access to the document. The Government, conservation organisations, and representatives of the fishing sector signed the plan on February 16, and little has been heard of it since President Marga Prohens presented it.

Ben Amics has lashed out at Palma City Council, accusing it of attempting to expel the LGTBIQ+ collective from Pride Day, after Cort announced it is organizing its own festival. According to the association, which issued a statement this Wednesday, this decision "breaks the social and political consensus" that until now guaranteed the balance between the demonstration and the Pride festival.

The culmination of the legislature with the Popular Party at the head of the Government has arrived one year before the elections with the approval of the Law for the acceleration of strategic projects by the Parliament this Tuesday. It is the last omnibus law that Marga Prohens will be able to push forward before the May 2027 elections. Precisely for this reason, the popular party, hand in hand with Vox, has taken the opportunity to modify about fifty laws, amid the opposition's complaints, even though the PSIB has also taken the opportunity to introduce amendments that have nothing to do with the reason for the initial decree-law.

It is enough to spend a few minutes in Carrer de la Lluna in Sóller to realize how difficult it is to find any 'native' there. There isn't a tourist guide that doesn't recommend visiting this spot in town, and it shows. It's also hard to walk without bumping into someone, and finding a traditional shop is now almost impossible. “About four businesses close a year on this street. My mother has a haberdashery there, and when she retires, no one will take it over. They'll put in another souvenir shop. The photography shop closed, and the clothing shop geared towards the island's residents. In fact, I used to be able to buy a book in Sóller. And now there's no bookstore,” explains Bartomeu Miró, a resident of the town and spokesperson for SOS Sóller, a citizen movement that has not stopped denouncing that the situation is unsustainable.

The legislature of 'containment' approaches its final stretch with a record number of tourists, of illegal activities, resident discontent, and housing prices in an escalation whose end does not seem near. However, if there is one thing the Government is clear about, it is that it is not its fault, and it is true. To say that the Executive is not to blame for having reached this point is almost an obviousness, but the problem is that politics does not end with the diagnosis. The Government is not to blame, but it is responsible for thinking, designing, developing, and applying measures to rectify the situation. If the measures do not work, new ones must be tried. The collapse is not solved only with discussions in Parliament.

Patients arriving at the Emergency Department of the Eivissa hospital Can Misses are fully facing the shortage of healthcare professionals, a situation that public healthcare in the Islands has been dragging on and for which no solution is found. The Pitiusan health center lacks doctors with the MIR (a training system that doctors undertake in Spain after finishing their degree to specialize), a situation that does not violate legality, but which does hinder the daily functioning of the center, as socialist deputy Irantzu Fernández denounced this Tuesday in the Parliament session. The usual practice is for professionals attending Emergencies to have completed the MIR and to have a specialization in family medicine – in 2030, the first cohort of doctors specializing in Emergencies will graduate.

I like elevators. If you think this statement is banal, even vulgar, I won't deny it. You are right. In fact, banality and vulgarity can also please me if they are well contextualized. In my defense, I must explain that I don't like elevators for their obvious function, that of saving you from having to climb stairs. What I like about them is the possibility they give me to hide. If I'm lucky enough to go up alone, and there's no one to see me enter, for a few seconds there isn't a single being on the planet who knows where I am. While the metal capsule takes me to the floor I've indicated thanks to a button of dubious design (usually), I am completely disappeared, I cease to exist in the world.

While the Parliament began to process the reform of the Law of capital of Palma, a hundred people had already received the order to leave the old prison without knowing where they will live when the judicial process ends. This image summarizes the political moment that the Balearic Islands are going through. The capital that the mayor Jaime Martínez claims as the economic and institutional engine of the Islands is also the scene where many of the tensions that have marked the PP's return to the main institutions are concentrated: the housing crisis, tourist saturation, demographic pressure caused by the need for labor in the tourist economic model, the fragility of public services, and a discourse increasingly obsessed with poor migrants.

The Mallorcan group Fades will be in charge of giving the opening speech for the 44th edition of the Palma Book Fair on May 29th in Plaça d'Espanya. The trio, formed by Vicenç Calafell, Ferran Pi, and Àngel Exojo, will officially inaugurate the event with a ceremony hosted by journalist Margalida Mateu at 6:30 PM.

The Parliament has called on the Government to prepare and publish the Report on the State of the Environment of the Balearic Islands before the end of 2026, thanks to the approval of a Non-Law Proposal (PNL) by the PSIB in the Commission for Territorial Planning, Housing, Mobility, the Sea, and the Water Cycle. Although Vox was the only party to vote against it, the PP has maneuvered to avoid carrying out the study, which is mandatory by law, during this legislature. The Popular Party has presented an amendment to remove the deadline for submission that was included in the first point and, as the PSIB rejected it, they abstained (the Popular Party did vote in favor of the other points of the initiative).

As it did last week, the PP has assured that it will await the reports on the personal use of the Consell de Mallorca's cars by the island institution's vice-president, Pedro Bestard, to make a decision on the matter. The popular party continues to avoid taking a stance on the information accusing Bestard of using the vehicles for private matters and party events, while the PSOE has demanded that Llorenç Galmés dismiss him immediately.

A 70% of the 101 people living in the old Palma jail do not have access to social services or an alternative housing, according to statements made this Monday by the mayor Jaime Martínez. Despite Martínez assuring that access to social services depends on the "voluntariness" of the residents, he also pointed out that "there are people who cannot access social resources because there is a regulation" and that "people in irregular situations cannot access them." It was Martínez himself who emphasized that "70%" of the residents of the old jail "are in an irregular administrative situation."