On October 25th, at the seminar that the Grup Blanquerna holds every year, Damià Pons said a few words that are still bouncing around my head. Although he was supposed to be participating in a panel on the forty years of the 1986 Linguistic Normalization Law, he ended up talking to us (I don't quite know why now, but it made all the sense in the world) about the difficulties that political Mallorquinism has historically had in taking off. Our luck, he said, was having the exceptional circumstance that, between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, some of the clearest minds we have ever had coincided in this country of ours: Miquel dels Sants Oliver, Joan Alcover, Gabriel Alomar, Antoni Maria Alcover, and Costa i Llobera.

The last general policy debate of the legislature has ended with the President of the Government, Marga Prohens, highlighting the importance of the little things, with a list that included the Ronald McDonald family room at Son Espases. No one will deny the importance of treatment for butterfly skin, of pediatric palliative care, of treatment with the pediatric exoskeleton, of the ambulance of dreams to fulfill the last wishes of people before dying, or of the reintegration of the long-term unemployed into the labor market. They are very important.

At the beginning of 2011, I found a note one day under my office door about an event called ‘The State of Malaise’. Added by hand was: “This is it!”. It came from a student, frustrated for some time by the lack of channels for political—and intellectual—expression for his generation. Shortly after, this same young man launched the hashtag #acampapalma, and in no time, Plaza de España became the Plaza of Iceland, in the wake of the 15-M movement.

For a good part of society, housing is currently 'The Problem'. There are those who have lost their home, who are waiting to lose it, who do not know if they will lose it... The social outburst has surprised no one. In any case, what is surprising is that it has been a civic outburst. Unfortunately, for a good part of the politicians, housing is the star topic of the campaign, the weapon to throw in the rival's face, an empty word. Because the bricks of the building of this economic sector that we call politics are precisely that, words that the professionals of speeches have emptied of content: 'democracy', 'freedom', 'equality', 'rights', etc.

The President of the Government, Marga Prohens, has applauded the calling of early general elections on November 29th and has expressed her hope that the polls will put an end to a Spanish government that, as she has asserted, "has abandoned the Balearic Islands." "At last!", she wrote on her X account after the President of the state executive, Pedro Sánchez, announced the early election in an institutional declaration. "The countdown begins for change to reach Spain", she asserted.

Abascal is a surname of toponymic origin with roots in the Basque Country. The first Abascal that those of us who are boomers like myself remember is José Manuel, a Spanish middle-distance runner who, despite not having the finishing speed that other athletes of his time like Sebastian Coe, Said Aouita, and José Luis González could have, managed an agonizing bronze medal in the 1,500-meter race at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, the same ones as Carl Lewis, Michael Jordan, and Juan Antonio San Epifanio, Epi.

The death of Franco in November 1975 awakened many hopes. In the Balearic Islands, the PSI (Socialist Party of the Islands) was already founded in 1976. One of its founders was the sociologist from Palma, Antoni Tarabini, now 82 years old. “It was,” he says, “a very plural party. It was, however, more federalist than nationalist. A year later, ahead of the first general elections scheduled for June 1977, two other colleagues and I were summoned to Madrid. The PSOE leadership proposed that we form a federated party like the PSC of Catalonia, led by Joan Raventós. I agreed, even though I knew we would lose the elections.”

Psychologists Lynn Hasher, David Goldstein, and Thomas Toppino named the illusory truth effect in 1977. According to this cognitive bias, people tend to perceive information they have heard repeatedly as more true and reliable than information they receive for the first time. In other words, repetition is an effective tool of persuasion: it makes a message gain credibility through the act of hearing it. That said, I do not know if our politicians have ever studied the illusory truth effect, but they certainly master it to perfection, even if only intuitively.

Joan Simonet has not changed his phone number: almost the entire agricultural sector has his personal contact. The Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries has his own profile that, in recent months, the Government has tried to exploit by publishing videos where he appears hunting snakes, soaking at Es Trenc and walking around the port. “A star is born”, assure sources from the Executive, who consider the goal that Vox would not gain a foothold in the countryside—one of the far-right's obsessions—to be fulfilled. But despite the minister's popularity, the crisis in the primary sector does not subside. After the closure of iconic companies such as Agama, Piema, S’Esplet, and Carob, it is now also in doubt whether the agrarian law will go ahead, a regulation on which Simonet has worked throughout the legislative term.

The enormous influence that Balearic politicians allow the hotelier guild to have, which can be called 'hotelism', explains why the tourism model has not changed for more than seven decades. Also why so many directly related problems have been created, from the very business that now impoverishes the social whole to the captive economic structure of a monoculture that dangerously weakens its potential, passing through so many others, such as demographic substitution. None of this worries hotelism in the least, for which the only thing that matters is satisfying the greed of these entrepreneurs.It is worth saying that the responsibility lies not so much with the hoteliers as with those who allow themselves to be influenced and often determined, the politicians. The right-wing have never hidden their submission, while the left-wing and nationalists may be ashamed of it – some – and deny it, but practice when they have governed betrays the same vassalage. This docile brotherhood has been a reality since 2003, although the influence is older.The first time it manifested was in 1955: peak of the dictatorship, beginnings of mass tourism, first travel operators who brought more visitors each year, inns that from one day to the next became hotels, houses rented whole or by rooms and that each year grew with new attached rooms – there was no urban planning control – the Mortgage Bank that granted generous credits to build hotels and each season a handful of them appeared on the sand of some beach...The progression of the business was so rapid and uncontrolled that some politicians of the Diputació – who must not have had hotel interests, neither direct nor indirect – began to worry about the growing disorder. And since they thought – ingenuously – that it was up to them to remedy it, they decided to approve the Report and project of the Provincial Charter – published in the official provincial bulletin on December 30, 1955 –, in which, among other measures, a special tax was launched for tourist establishments – hotels, pensions and others – and the prohibition of building on the coastal sandbanks.The hoteliers saw it more or less like the advent of the Soviet revolution. They allied themselves with the cream of institutional fascism – the Organization movement and the Civil Government – and directed the Foment del Turisme against the initiative. The Foment presented allegations – it had the official Madrid behind it – and the outcome was as predictable as could be: the attempt to limit hotel greed was aborted and the president and other members of the Diputación resigned – for ‘personal reasons’ – the following year.In practice, it was the green light for absolute chaos. In the following 20 years, the hotel industry sowed the first line of new constructions: 'Balearization'. With the 1973 oil crisis, tourism declined and did not fully recover until 10 years later, coinciding with the invention of autonomy.Back then – in 1983 – other de facto powers still existed. For example: Vaticanism and Banca March. The financial institution, for instance, determined who would be the first President of the Government, Gabriel Cañellas – from Alianza Popular, AP, today PP – when the general director, Carlos March, forced a meeting in his Madrid office between Cañellas and the head of Unió Mallorquina – which had the key deputies – Jeroni Albertí, who had bank guarantees that – according to what he said in an interview in Memòria Viva. Mallorca des de la mort de Franco fins avui, Promomallorca, 1995– did not allow him to be "economically free" and he had no choice but to make Cañellas president, closing off the options for the socialist Fèlix Pons. And his own, not least because he aspired to force a deadlock that his election could break.Forming the Government in such a ignominious manner cannot be surprising that the tourism policy it launched was also infamous: satisfying hotel greed. The left opposed it and when it came to power, in 1999, it began the conflict strategy with the hoteliers – designed by a Catalan consultant, from the PSC – which involved imposing an ecotax as a first step of the future reform of tourism. But the PP of Jaume Matas won in 2003 and the losers assumed that the war against the hoteliers had been the cause.From then on, the hotel industry reached its maximum splendor. The PSOE, the far-left, and progressive nationalism joined forces with the right and paid them homage. The second Pact of Progress (2007-2011) and the subsequent left-wing Governments (2015-2023) certified this.More than 70 years have passed since the first failed attempt to limit hotel power, in 1955. Many things have improved since then, but there is one thing that, if it has changed, has only gotten worse. And it doesn't look like it will improve in the coming years: triumphant hoteliering.

The attack of sincerity by Ferran Rosa, Lluís Apesteguia's right-hand man, last week on a podcast has revolutionized MÉS per Mallorca. He has been heavily criticized for saying that not enough was done to curb tourism growth during the Pact and that the left "should have lost the 2019 elections", but Pedro Sánchez's early general election prevented it. This exercise in self-criticism was not a strategy by the deputy, but rather a slip-up. The relaxed format of the program L’hora de la sesta, the fact that he was among friends –political scientists Julián Claramunt and Pau Torres– and that he did not expect it to have many listeners made him lower his guard. But his words have had wide dissemination and have reopened old wounds in the party.

"It cannot be said yet, but it will be presented soon". This has been one of the most repeated phrases in recent hours by different members of the PP of Manacor when asked about Jaume Mut. Without officially confirming it, the Populars have corroborated with smiles and knowing gestures that the football coach will be their candidate for the mayoralty of Manacor in the municipal elections of May 2027.