United Airlines will strengthen the direct connection between Palma and New York in the summer of 2027 with a daily flight between Newark airport and Son Sant Joan. The company plans to operate three weekly frequencies starting in March and increase them to seven from May 26 until October. The route, launched in 2022, is currently the only non-stop connection between Mallorca and the United States.

The plenary session of the Ibiza Council approved this Friday the declaration of three tourist areas in the municipality of Vila as "saturated tourist areas and areas for redevelopment," which means that plans, projects, and redevelopment actions must be considered of insular strategic interest.

Platges de Comte almost tripled its estimated physical capacity this summer, with 1,513 people at the same time, according to a pilot study by the Ibiza & Formentera Preservation Sustainability Observatory. The data was recorded on August 4 at 3:00 PM, when the beach far exceeded the 537 people it is considered able to accommodate according to the criteria applied in the study.

The presentation a few days ago of the new section of Palma's second ring road recalled, as ARABalears explains, those times indelible in our memory of the “Majorcan-style roads” of Maria Antònia Munar. Works presented with good canapés, marquees and, above all, a lot of nerve. Because they intended to make citizens believe that laying more asphalt was solving mobility.

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".