It is easier to look for external enemies to make excuses than to engage in self-criticism. And even more so if, from the outside, they cause changes that may affect the business. This is the reaction that businessmen and merchants in Menorca have always had when the Administration's decisions have transformed the space or the conditions in which they have to work. The latest example we are experiencing this summer in Ciutadella, where the resistance of a group of 22 businessmen to accept the pedestrian zone of the city's main square, the Born, has led the court to have to force the City Council to turn back and allow the space recovered 14 months ago for the enjoyment of the citizenry to be filled with cars again.

Menorca will limit car entry from June 1, 2027. This is the common objective of the PP and the PSOE, who have hastily agreed to modify the Biosphere Reserve Law to make it possible. For various reasons, Més per Menorca and the renegade Vox councilor have voted against it.

The stubbornness of the councilor gonella Joan Pons Torres to declare menorquí and the salted article as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Menorca (BICIM), and thus protect it from the 'threat' of standard Catalan, is about to explode in his hands. The legal subterfuges he has sought in order to impose his initiative against the official linguistic and academic criteria of entities and institutions have backfired.

The moratorium that has been in effect since 2022 has resulted in the loss of over 2,800 tourist places in Menorca in the last four years, which this season offers 81,261 beds to visitors, below the 84,000 mark that had been surpassed just after the pandemic.

Menorca consumes 35% more water than provided for by the Hydrological Plan of the Balearic Islands. It is, by far, the island that presents the greatest imbalance between the current reality and the maximum supply flow for urban and residential uses that, in theory, it should support. The report from the Water Alliance, which compares extractions with the quotas established by the Hydrological Plan, makes this very clear. The situation has gotten out of control, much more so than in Mallorca (which only exceeds the forecast by 8.5%) and Ibiza (15.4%).

The Biosphere Reserve Law, which was supposed to compensate Menorca for the capital status recognized for Mallorca and Ibiza, will be modified again without having been practically applied in its first three years of validity. Reduced by the Urgent Measures Law of 2024 —first— and by the coastal law announced for this autumn —later—, now the Menorca Council itself will modify it.

The second week of August Menorca has welcomed a new large-format music festival, Ukalari Live. The managers of the theater of the same name in Ciutadella, Alberto Gómez and Miriam Torres, dare to program 10 days of concerts, from David Bustamante to The Tyets and the tribute This is Michael, in a venue set up at the Sporting Maonès football field which can hold 4,000 people. These days employ about thirty people and cause the indirect creation – they estimate – of 300 more jobs. A significant leap, but they say it is controlled, compared to what they are used to at the old Calós theater, now Ukalari, where in two years they have managed to regularly fill its 575 seats and have attracted nearly 25,000 spectators.

Joan Pons Torres, the gonella councilor of Culture, Education, Youth and Sport to the Council of Menorca from the PP who outside of politics promoted insular variants of Catalan against the standard, now driven by the Consell de Menorca, that Menorcan and the article 'salat' be declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Menorca (BICIM). He assures that “young people are already too influenced by central Catalan,” that “they say 'soc' and not, 'som'” and that attention must be paid to the statute, which defends the need to "promote our linguistic varieties". "Menorcan unites and identifies us and we cannot lose it," he adds.

Some 400 privileged individuals were able to watch the eclipse from the top of El Toro, Menorca's highest peak, where attendees responded with applause to the spectacular moment when day suddenly darkened, as the Moon covered the Sun, which was already beginning to set.

The sudden death of a horse in the middle of the square during the Fornells jaleo has reopened the debate on animal suffering in Menorca's festivals. The fatal heart attack suffered by the 22-year-old equine named Emperador, the constant complaints from animal rights groups, and the high temperatures recorded during the summer due to successive heatwaves have highlighted the need to take additional measures beyond those already in effect with the entry into force of the Animal Welfare Law.

Menorca will be the first place where the total solar eclipse of August 12 can be seen, starting at 8:30 PM. If nothing new happens, for 66 seconds, the Moon will cover the Sun and the sky will darken. None of us have ever seen it.

The Omnibus Law not only threatens Trenc. In Menorca, where citizen mobilization in defense of protected areas began in the 70s, there is also a natural site that could be altered by the prevailing political casuistry at Consolat de Mar, the old – aborted in time – Shangri-La urbanization, in the Albufera del Grau Natural Park.

Water reserves have never been so low in Menorca, only at 34% of capacity, and the pre-alert situation is beginning to alarm everyone. The Administration has arrived late to act and has not listened in time to specialists like engineer José Antonio Fayas, who had long warned that in the last decade practically nothing has been done to stop overexploiting aquifers, limit swimming pools, increase the cost of water, and reuse the regenerated water that comes out of treatment plants.

Water reserves have hit rock bottom as never before in Menorca. The island ended the month of June with water reserves at only 34% of its capacity, the same situation it already had in August of last year. In the records of the Ministry of the Sea, such a low level has not been remembered for at least the last 10 years.

Today marks one year since the Plaça del Born in Ciutadella became pedestrianized. An emblematic public space practically free of cars and reclaimed for the citizens, but which is still being challenged in the courts of justice. The lawsuit filed by a group of 22 business owners and private individuals grouped as Ciutadella Viva and, above all, the unexpected ruling by the High Court of Justice (TSJIB) which partially accepts the precautionary measures they were requesting and orders the City Council to "restore" the square to the state it was in a year ago, with cars, keeps the entire municipality in suspense.

The Hauser & Wirth art center, inaugurated five years ago in Menorca with an exhibition by Mark Bradford, now opens its sixth season on Illa del Rei in the port of Maó. It does so alongside Rashid Johnson, a multidisciplinary artist born in Chicago who lands in Menorca with Directionless, a large collective exhibition that he wanted to share with Charles Gaines, Firelei Báez, and Cristina Iglesias so that they could bring the work of artists external to the gallery. Up to 28 creators from ten different countries are represented. Together they shape the largest exhibition ever mounted in this emblematic location, as it occupies both the galleries and the outdoor space of the islet.

The president of Quesería Menorquina, Paco Tutzó Bennásar (Maó, 1940), is the living witness and driving force behind the legacy left by the founder, Pedro Montañés, at the old El Caserío cheese factory in Menorca. Gold Medal of the Autonomous Community and one of the fathers of the Statute, he can finally breathe easy. After two decades of initiatives and business alliances, he has managed to guarantee the future, in the medium and long term, of the historic curd and processed cheese factory in Maó. The former president of the Consell de Menorca, who saved the company after Kraft's departure and survived the passage of Ruiz Mateos' Rumasa through the island, has found in the new Balearic investors who have relaunched the factory the necessary guarantee to continue the production started almost a century ago. A success worthy of the Economic Initiative award granted by ARA Balears. "It is a distinction that I deeply appreciate," he says. "ARA Balears has shown itself to be sensitive to the efforts of people who fight so that the productive fabric of a territory, in this case an island, does not disappear."

In Ciutadella, this year there has been no controversy about Sant Joan. Not even the public defense by the Councilor of Festivities, Esther Mascaró, in favor of female participation in the procession has caused a stir. The debate opened by the unexpected court ruling that forces the City Council to reverse the pedestrianization of the Plaça del Born has overshadowed everything.

As summer is about to begin, Menorca is once again knocking on the door of mobilization against tourist saturation. The Via Menorca platform, driven by the GOB and an enthusiastic group of young people, is the promoter of the first of the major demonstrations and protests – that of Saturday, June 13 – which are being announced throughout the Islands to demand effective and immediate measures in defense of housing and natural resources. The first public outcry has been in Menorca, where, says the GOB's territorial policy coordinator, Miquel Camps, "we still have time to avoid becoming a new Ibiza".

The territorial coordinator of GOB, Miquel Camps Taltavull (Maó, 1963), is warming up to launch from this Saturday, June 13 (7:30 PM), the new summer of mobilizations announced by Via Menorca. An army of ants "fed up with mass tourism" are already walking towards the Biosphere Square in Maó to demonstrate in defense of the right to housing and against those who "suck our water dry until the aquifers are left dry" and those who "condemn us to precarious jobs to barely live off tourism".