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.

When water is not enough, room for manoeuvre runs out. It is the most basic limit any society has. And the Balearic Islands have started this summer closer to that limit than in recent years. Water reserves have dropped again. Menorca registers the worst levels. Almost fifty municipalities – 47 out of the 67 that exist – entered the summer in a state of alert or pre-alert for drought. The Government itself admits that climate change will make droughts longer, rainfall more irregular, and aquifer recharge more difficult. These are not catastrophic forecasts, they are official data.

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.

Almost a hundred Menorcan privateering ships hindered Spain and France from helping the American colonists in the revolt against the British, led by George Washington, who would be the first president of the United States and would give his name to the capital. The islanders, and specifically the Menorcans, played a prominent and perhaps not very well-known role in the early days of the USA, which celebrates on Saturday, July 4, 250 years of its declaration of independence, in 1776.The revolt of the inhabitants of the 13 colonies was not an isolated event. On the one hand, it stemmed from the certainly groundbreaking ideas of the Enlightenment philosophers, such as Voltaire and his peers. On the other hand, from a previous conflict, the Seven Years' War, between France and Spain on one side and Great Britain on the other, in which the colonists had supported the metropolis, but for the expenses of which – wars are always expensive – it wanted them to pay the bill. This led to the rupture of hostilities in 1775 and the unilateral declaration of independence the following year.

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 Sant Joan festivals of Ciutadella lowered the curtain this Wednesday evening with the celebration of the traditional Jocs del Pla, the event that puts an end to two intense days of horses, crowds, and emotion. More than 25,000 people filled the old port's basin to closely follow one of the most emblematic and spectacular moments of the Minorcan festive calendar.

The festival has already broken out in Ciutadella. The first call once again marked this Tuesday the official start of the Sant Joan festivities with a packed Cathedral square and thousands of people waiting for one of the most anticipated rituals of the Menorcan calendar. The contained emotion of the previous hours turned into euphoria when the piper, Sebastià Salort, made his usual tour through the streets of the historic center until he reached the stately home of the Olivar Despujol family, the starting point of a tradition that mobilizes the entire city every year.

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.

Via Menorca kicked off the 'N'estam fartes' campaign this past Saturday with a rally in front of the Consell Insular de Menorca. According to GOB Menorca, around 1,200 people gathered in the square to express their discontent with the island's direction and to demand measures regarding the housing crisis, tourist pressure, water management, and the worsening living conditions.

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".

“Some kind of activism is being done, doing it from the territory and in our language”, says Menorcan Anna Ferrer, who in ‘Glosa a Menorca’ from her previous album Parenòstic (2024) already sang two years ago: “For an island that is a reserve / and is in danger of extinction [...] that there are fish that are already floating / in s’Albufera des Grau / its posidonia is dying / that preserves the coast / It talks to me about housing / and cries to me for the youth / that whoever doesn't have an inheritance / has it very very bad”. A contemporary glosa that cries for the local effects of global warming and the housing emergency. “It inspires me to sing about present-day Menorca, truly. And it’s no longer that green Menorca where there was almost no one. Menorca is already something else”, she confesses to ARABalears.

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".

There is not enough water for everyone. Even more so in Maó, where the City Council has decided to bring forward the usual restrictions of these past summers. It is already prohibited in the city for companies and establishments to clean cars in the street and for individuals to clean boats and water gardens. Cruise ships can no longer refuel at the port either. Even so, a good part of the water served to the population continues to be non-potable and is mixed with water from other wells, even from outside the municipality, to guarantee at least the quantity, if not the quality, that is needed.

The new Ports Law, which plans to extend the private management of some marinas and sports ports in the Balearic Islands until the age of 75, has coincided with the abrupt end of the concession of the 270 moorings at Lago Resort in Cala en Bosc, Ciutadella, the only one that had been in force for 30 years without any economic consideration from the company to the Administration.

The rise of artificial intelligence as a tool for planning trips is not only changing how vacations are decided, but is also beginning to have a direct effect on which territories receive more tourist pressure. A study on tourist consumption trends points out that Sant Antoni de Portmany, in Ibiza, and Ciutadella in Menorca, are among the destinations recommended by AI agents to travelers, a fact that places the Balearic Islands within a new ecosystem of automated recommendations that may end up conditioning tourist flows even further.

A worker died this Friday after falling from the roof of an industrial building in the Alaior industrial estate, in Menorca, where he was carrying out repair work.