The Majorcan poet Marcos Augusto debuts as a novelist with Te hice dios (Random House), a work that explores desire, illness, guilt, and moral limits through a story that is as uncomfortable as it is ambitious. Two men meet in a chat looking for sex, but the encounter goes further: one wants to infect himself with HIV —he is one of the so-called bug chasers— and the other promises him that he will. It is the starting point of a relationship marked by destructive impulses, lies, and the need to love and give meaning to loss. We talk to the author about literature, love, and the limits of fiction.

Amidst the chaos, we must do our part to find moments of happiness (whoever seeks a continuum of bliss, one can already forget it, I'm sorry). Epicurus recommends that we distance ourselves from politics, because it only serves to stress us out. And this is despite not having lived through the disasters of the 20th century or the amnesia of the 21st century, which has revived fascist obsessions. It is obvious that we cannot remove the government of the polis from our lives, but we can create bubbles of time dedicated to much more important matters, like a little breeze when the sun sets, the murmur of the sea when the beach empties of people, paying attention to the sounds of birds, getting lost in the pages of a book, crying with emotion, and laughing at will.

"Pride without LGTBI+ people is not Pride". This is how the technical coordinator of Ben Amics, Jan Gómez, has summarized the feelings of the collective at Sunday's demonstration, after the Palma City Council opted to commercialize the date and hold a party without a reivindicative character. Cort's event on Saturday did not bring together more than 150 people in a Plaça Major that was left empty, while the two protests on Sunday – called by Ben Amics and the platform Orgull Crític Mallorca – gathered almost 3,000 people in the streets of Palma.

A PSIB in flames. This is the party preparing for the 2027 elections with Rosario Sánchez as the new candidate. Francina Armengol's electoral succession can be read in a friendly way, as renewal and generational change. The usual narrative when a party tries to turn an obligatory change into a strategic decision.

The GOB, Terraferida and the Less Tourism More Life Platform have called a protest on July 5 under the slogan 'es Trenc NO es toca' (the meeting will be at 10 am at the parking lot of the Ràpita Nautical Club). Participants will form a human chain at Es Trenc in defense of the island's protected areas, affected by the provisions that the PP has incorporated into the Omnibus Law. The three entities have once again warned that this norm will reduce the protection of the natural areas of the Balearic coast, especially in areas like Es Trenc, in addition to making coastal uses more flexible.

"Today I want to talk to you about pride. And not about that pride that LGTBI plus and more plus collectives claim to be able to live in freedom without anyone caring about their sex life". This is one of the fragments from the column that Antoni Martorell published on June 20, when his company AgenciaCom had already submitted a bid to the Palma City Council to organize the LGTBIQ+ Pride party.

I like to imagine bad things happening to people, with the peace of mind that my wishes will not influence reality and that they are not dramatic at all.

Amidst traffic jams, saturation, housing shortages, healthcare waiting lists, and the anticipation of a new record number of tourists, Parliament bid farewell to the political year on Tuesday with a squabble among deputies over holidays. Citizens' problems will not disappear and will await September, after three months without parliamentary activity, which does not mean that there isn't some absent-minded person who will work during this time. Even the vice-president of Vox of the Consell de Mallorca, Pedro Bestard, will be able to enjoy a quiet summer after the final decision that the PP and Vox have made on his case. Lest anyone forget, Bestard used three public vehicles exclusively, for both public and private matters, while his department (Environment) has about twenty unusable cars and officials suffer from the shortage.

The Consell de Mallorca does not find "any notable relevance" in the private use of the island institution's cars by the vice president of Vox, Pedro Bestard. To reach this conclusion, it has been necessary to wait weeks, until the two reports commissioned by president Llorenç Galmés were completed. The first was carried out by the Technical Secretariat of the Department of Environment and states that Bestard still keeps three cars for his exclusive use, that he lied about their signage and that he has made unjustified use of them unrelated to his position, in addition to keeping them to the detriment of the needs of the officials in his area. The second report was carried out by the General Secretariat and the Council's Intervention, and it is precisely this one that indicates that it cannot be deduced that the use of the cars is improper. This document is limited to recommending that an instruction be issued to regulate the use of Council vehicles.

Bestard has three cars for his exclusive use, while his department has 19 unused ones and suffers the consequences of an aging fleet that urgently needs renovation. This is one of the conclusions in the report by the Technical Secretariat of Environment of the insular institution, which highlights the inappropriate use of cars by Bestard, to which ARA Balears has had access. A Dacia Sandero (acquired at the end of 2023), a Ford Ranger (2024), and a Subaru Crosstrek (2026) are the three cars that the vice-president of the Consell de Mallorca has arrogated to himself, even though he can use an official car for his travel. In fact, the document points out that, in the case of the Dacia, only Bestard has the keys and that on one occasion he lost them (this incident involved an expense of 430 euros).

“We want Spain to continue being Spain, that our streets be Spain’s. Our society is built on the pillars of Greco-Roman culture and Christian tradition”. The person responsible for these words is Vox spokesperson, Manuela Cañadas. A radical far-right politician who attacks the feminist lobby, denies gender violence – if the male individual is Spanish – and who is concerned about women’s rights when it comes to the presence of the burqa and niqab in the streets of the Balearic Islands, which is nil. Vox presented a bill to ban these garments and had the support of the PP, which noted that it has advocated for years for the prohibition of full veils, so that no one doubts their consistency and thinks that the popular party is acting out of political opportunism.

285,000 people living in Palma – two out of three, if we take the 430,000 inhabitants of 2023 as a reference – do not have access to green areas of more than one hectare, according to the report How to guarantee the right to nature?, which compares the green areas of cities according to the population's income and which was made public this Wednesday by Friends of the Earth. Income determines diet, education, housing, opportunities, and also something as seemingly simple as living near a park. The entity's analysis is based on the recommendation of the World Health Organization, the 3-30-300 rule: being able to see 3 trees from the window, 30% vegetation cover in the neighborhood, and a park of at least one hectare no more than 300 meters away.Palma has large parks, but proximity vegetation is scarce in neighborhoods with higher population density, which are also those with lower incomes. "In lower-income neighborhoods, the green space per inhabitant is lower than in higher-income areas due to population density," says the report, which notes that "the situation is especially worrying mainly for vulnerable people, who have fewer green spaces and fewer options to adapt to climate change," explains the head of Participation and Projects at Amics de la Terra Mallorca, Lucía Ami. These are people who do not have the "right to nature" guaranteed.

It is the first time that an independent leads a list since MÉS per Mallorca was founded. David Pujol (Palma, 1980) will lead the MÉS per Palma candidacy in the municipal elections of 2027, with Xisca Mir as number two. He says these are tumultuous times and that precisely for this reason he is taking this step, in search of a broad left-wing front. However, he is also aware that he is racing against time and that the far-right wave is difficult to stop.

Mallorca is one step closer to being able to limit the entry of vehicles to the island, after the plenary session of the Council approved the law regulating vehicle influx on Friday. The norm must go through Parliament to come into force and cannot be implemented this summer. The question here is whether the president of the insular institution, Llorenç Galmés, will have the law ready for next season, because the legislature could end without the popular leader fulfilling one of his most important commitments. Be that as it may, Mallorca continues to be stuck, as the Council acknowledges in the preamble to the law, where it points out that “the number of tourists Mallorca receives each year has not stopped growing” and that the island “suffers notable and growing pressure on its road structures”.

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 cancelled because the president of the island institution, Llorenç Galmés, arrived almost half an hour late. The reason? He had to arrive in Palma from Manacor and found 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.