In one of the flowerbeds of one of the accesses to one of the busiest motorways in Mallorca, the one to Palma airport, 55 years ago an entire post-Talayotic sanctuary was moved there. Buried forever under the second runway of Son Sant Joan airport, Son Oms was not a site formed by a single monument, but a large prehistoric complex, occupied and reused for centuries.

The keyboard chords of a version of Whitney Houston coming from the Hotel Mariant Park are mixed with the notes, at full volume, of Barbie Girl, a hit from the 90s coming from the surroundings of the Hotel Playamar. The August night is heavy and the hotel terraces are full of tourists looking for the promised entertainment. Right in the middle, immutable and eternal, oblivious to anachronism, remain the millenary stones of the Talayotic settlement of l’Illot.

Not a single graffiti. Not a broken window. Not a single argument with the hundreds of tourists who were strolling through the center of Palma. Tens of thousands of people paraded this Sunday for more than two hours through the streets of the city in one of the most massive demonstrations in recent years without any incident occurring. The contrast with the end of the protest was absolute. When thousands of people were trying to reach Les Voltes to hear the reading of the manifesto, the National Police blocked the entrances and, a few minutes later, charged against the demonstrators with batons. Several videos recorded by attendees also show detonations during the police intervention.

Tens of thousands of people, up to 70,000 according to the organization and 25,000 according to the always conservative calculations of the National Police, have taken the center of Palma and have shouted all kinds of slogans against the excess of tourism, with one idea above all others: a significant part of the island's society is tired of the collapse. The end of the demonstration turned out to be a real chaos because the planned space, les Voltes, has absolutely insufficient capacity for such a massive demonstration. The Police have closed the accesses to les Voltes, which has caused a strong confrontation among the demonstrators, because, after walking for more than an hour, most of the demonstrators have not managed to reach the end and have been dispersed throughout the Parc de la Mar, which has been filled with banners.

For more than ten years, in the summer, we no longer go to Cala Varques. We stopped going there before admitting that it had been taken from us. Just as we have stopped going to Caló del Moro, Es Trenc, Formentor and so many other places. In conversations these days, while WhatsApp groups organize carpools to go to Palma on Sunday, organizations prepare buses and groups of friends paint banners, an intimate and endless list appears of everything we have stopped doing, swallowed by the collapse.

“Everyone who comes to Mallorca and wants to take a typical souvenir: let them take a cyclist, there are many... To a whore's house, the bicycle!”. This is how Lluc Aparicio (@parisioproductions) ironically states in an Instagram video that has over 26,700 likes and nearly 10,000 shares. The publication accumulates hundreds of comments, some very harsh. “There are always people who get angry, but I don't want to pay attention to them. They criticize me if I talk about tourist saturation and also if I speak Catalan, but they are people who don't understand that I'm doing humor,” he explains.

The mayoress of Campos, Francisca Porquer (PP), burst in this Sunday in the middle of the reading of the manifesto of the human chain in defence of Trenc and starred in the only moment of tension of a mobilization that took place in a calm atmosphere. Porquer placed herself next to the writer and columnist of ARA Balears Sebastià Alzamora, who was reading the manifesto, and the spokesperson for the GOB, Tonina Siquier.

10,000 people, according to the count made by the organizing entities, gathered this Sunday at Trenc beach to demand that its protection be maintained and that the Government of the Balearic Islands refrain from making any downward modifications to the Natural Park, as civil society suspects, after a regulatory change that allows intervention in this protected space without going through Parliament.