The National Police and the Government's Housing Inspection Service have detected an overcrowded and precarious dwelling in Manacor where, according to the occupants, up to 30 people had lived together at certain times.

Enjoying the cool air to denounce the loss of spaces for residents. More than 1,300 people took to the streets in Palma this Saturday to protest against tourist overcrowding and to demand measures to curb the pressure that Mallorca is suffering. They did so with their chairs, sitting in the center of the city and forming a large human chain that began in Plaça d’Espanya and advanced to La Llotja.

Argentinian Maia Reficco and Spaniard Fernando Lindez star in The Last Sunrise, a summer romance that, in addition to addressing themes such as loss and illness, incorporates a reflection on excessive tourism in Mallorca. "It's not just a romance," Lindez (Madrid, 2000) explains in an interview. "The film, I think, touches on other topics and also teaches us to take care of the places where we come from, where we originate, the natural reserves in this world, and not to abuse them," he adds.

This never-ending summer has been a time of laments and litanies. We are more saturated than ever and have protested more than ever. But the gatherings, the demonstrations, the al fresco dinners, and the demands have only served to confirm the abyss between the street and the offices of those who decide about our lives, a gap that began to open legislatures ago and has now reached grandiose dimensions. This is not the land of brave politicians and those who truly command do not usually run in elections.

Madò Farta attacks again. After a summer marked by numerous mobilizations against mass tourism, the activist joins to citizen initiatives, such as those organized by Brunzit, and has called for an action to collectively cool off on August 29th in the Plaça d'Espanya in Palma.

There were reasons to fear the worst: an exceptional total solar eclipse coincided with one of the days of greatest human pressure of the year and with the Islands, especially Mallorca, becoming the center of world attention. It was like a stress test for islands that live at the limit of their capacity. And yet, the balance of August 12th is, despite the incidents, very positive.

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.

The violent outburst at the end of the last and successful demonstration called with the aim of achieving less tourism, more life, is another indicator of a whole series of contradictory policies implemented simultaneously in our Autonomous Community. When the CAIB was constituted (1983), it assumed, among other things, competences in urbanism and territorial planning, but the State reserved the cards that could condition, directly or indirectly, urban and territorial plans: economic policy, taxation, justice, police, and large inter-community infrastructures, including the energy distribution network and ports and airports of general interest. Since then, the objectives of the policies implemented by both administrations have not always been consistent.

The Balearic Sea also suffered the overcrowding caused by the solar eclipse. Images captured during the day by the Civil Guard show entire stretches of coast packed with boats, with thousands of boats anchored a short distance from each other and a particularly high density in some of the points with the best visibility of the phenomenon. A scene that turns into reality one of the main concerns that experts and environmental organizations had expressed before the eclipse: the possibility that the tourist overcrowding that is usually experienced on land would also extend to the sea.

The second vice-president and Minister of the Presidency, Antònia Estarellas, evaluated this Monday the demonstration that last Saturday gathered thousands of people in Sóller against overtourism. In a press briefing collected by Europa Press, she assured that she shares the demands against the touristification of the municipality and expressed "maximum respect" for the protest. She also defended the Government's action in containment matters.

The forecast that the Serra de Tramuntana will be one of the most crowded areas in Mallorca during the total solar eclipse on August 12 has led the Government to prepare an exceptional traffic restriction device. The objective is to avoid a collapse, but the foreseen exceptions have generated much controversy. While thousands of residents of municipalities located a few minutes from the Serra will not be able to access it by vehicle, tourists who have paid hundreds or even thousands of euros to stay in a hotel in the area will be exempt from the limitations. Thus, the exceptions set by the Government project, once again, the idea of a privatization of the territory of the Balearic Islands and reinforce the perception that those who pay have more rights to transit this territory than those who live there. "Once again, the rights of tourists who pay are above those of the residents who live on the island," remarks Joan Moranta, president of GOB.

The sailboat that has been stranded since January on the coast of Son Servera has now appeared with various graffiti such as 'Mallorca for those who live there', 'SOS Residents' and 'Go Home'. The vessel, which has occupied this stretch of the Serverí coastline for months, is still awaiting removal while the City Council demands that the necessary procedures to extract it be accelerated.

More than 10,000 boats will set sail off the coast of the Balearic Islands to witness the eclipse on August 12, a meteorological event that could have "very negative" environmental consequences. This is explained by Raquel Vaquer, a biologist at the Marilles Foundation, who assures that "the destruction of marine flora and fauna that could occur if the rules are not respected during the 1.5-minute eclipse will take decades to recover".

When you ask AI to create a drawing about Mallorca 50 years from now, the result is a polluted island full of buildings, much like Hong Kong. In 1978, when only natural intelligence existed, this same scenario was already described by the Palma-based cartoonist Pere Joan Riera, better known as Pere Joan. “I–he recalls today in his seventies–was 22 years old and still studying in Barcelona. One day Basilio Baltasar came to see me. He was one of the leaders of the anarcho-ecological formation Terra i Llibertat, which the previous summer, in July 1977, had occupied the small island of Dragonera near Andratx to prevent its development. He asked me for a poster that would reflect the direction Mallorca would take if the construction fever, initiated with the boom of tourism, was not stopped”.

The massification to live the eclipse of next August 12 will not only be lived in the Serra de Tramuntana, the Balearic Sea will also be another hot spot. According to estimates from the sector and authorities, more than 10,000 boats are expected to sail simultaneously along the coast of the Archipelago during the afternoon to experience the meteorological phenomenon. Although it is impossible to have a real calculation of the number of boats that will go out to sea that day (as no permit is required to navigate), both Ports IB and the Association of Nautical Companies of the Balearic Islands (AENIB) and the Association of Navigators (ADN) agree that "if the weather is good, more than 40% of the current fleet of the Balearic Islands, which is 31,000 boats, will go out".

The demonstration called by the Moviment Jove de Sóller and the platform Menys Turisme, Més Vida for next Saturday, August 8 arrives surrounded by controversy. After the tensions derived from the multitudinous protest against tourist overcrowding on July 26 in Palma, marked by the charges of the National Police at the end of the route, the controversy has now moved to Sóller. Just over a week before the mobilization, the Association of Merchants of Carrer de la Lluna has requested to modify the itinerary or the schedule of the march for security reasons and the impact it could have on commercial activity, a request that the organizers reject and interpret as an attempt to displace the protest from the main commercial axis of the municipality.

One of the more than twenty people who were injuries during the police charges with which the demonstration against tourist saturation on Sunday in Palma ended is still hospitalized. The affected parties are now considering the possibility of filing a collective complaint against the National Police officers who participated in the operation. This was announced this Tuesday by one of the spokespersons for the platform Menys Turisme, Més Vida, Jaume Pujol, during the rally that brought together nearly half a thousand people in front of the government delegation to demand the resignation of the delegate in the Balearic Islands, Alfonso Rodríguez.

The National Police attributes the charges made on Sunday at the end of the demonstration against tourist saturation to a "radical minority". Police sources consulted by Europa Press assure that a group integrated within the tens of thousands of participants threw stones, cobblestones, and sticks at the agents, four of whom were injured.

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.