<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - Policy]]> 10 <![CDATA[The siren songs of the island PSOE]]>

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.”

]]> <![CDATA[It occupies us, it worries us, we do not look the other way... We are working]]>

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.

]]> <![CDATA["A star is born": The Government's strategy with Joan Simonet that slows down Vox but not the crisis in the countryside]]>

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.

]]> <![CDATA[The triumphant hotel industry]]>

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.

]]> <![CDATA[Ceuta as a propaganda tool]]> Political propaganda has existed for as long as there have been organizational and power structures. An elite tries to persuade the masses to control the polis and, if things go well, to derive some benefit from it: prestige, wealth, and the feeling of being above others. In fact, this is what the word 'prepotence' means: the Latin praepotentia was nothing more than the quality of being superior in power.

]]> <![CDATA[The attack of sincerity that has revolutionized MÉS per Mallorca]]>

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.

]]> <![CDATA[Football coach Jaume Mut will be the PP candidate for the mayoralty of Manacor]]>

"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.

]]> <![CDATA[In enough, enough]]> Neither police violence nor the parties' attempts to gain political mileage should make us forget: on July 26, the people of Mallorca staged the second largest demonstration in the history of the Balearic Islands. Only the mobilization against the TIL in 2013, with 100,000 people who flooded the streets of Palma, surpasses the 70,000 demonstrators who filled Ciutat with the slogan 'Mallorca, at its limit', a figure that is even more impressive considering that in 2024 a similar mobilization gathered around 20,000.

]]> <![CDATA[Disproportions]]> This is a summer of disproportion, and it is so not only because of an eclipse that, at the rate we are going, we will have to watch from our home TV, because only those who have paid to come to Mallorca will have the right to contemplate it... The unbearable heat is also disproportionate, the highest since records began in 1961, with a persistence that highlights one of our main vulnerabilities: no matter how much the tourism industry and Aena pretend that records of tourists and flights can be beaten year after year, natural resources, but also the system and infrastructures, have limits, even if no politician dares to define them clearly.

]]> <![CDATA[Why tourist degrowth is, for now, a chimera]]>

It is possible that some participant in the demonstration of July 26 in Palma truly believes that it is possible to change the economic model and achieve what the organizers claimed, degrowth. Let them lose all hope. At least for now there is not the slightest crack to make it possible. In the future, who knows, in twenty years, thirty...

]]> <![CDATA[Ibiza in the portrait of Dorian Gray]]> In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde –sublime beyond his capabilities– presents us with a man who keeps his beauty intact while his moral degradation, his corruption, remains hidden in a portrait that ages and decays in his place.

]]> <![CDATA[Triumphant]]> These days of patriotic celebration in honor of the Spanish footballers who have won the World Cup, we see how there is no form of nationalism that is not made against a good part of the 'nations' involved. Spain can beat Argentina or whoever, but what should be the symbol of sporting superiority of one human group over another becomes the emblem of the supremacism of a group or an idea of the Spanish nation above the other peoples of Spain. They are victories that are celebrated mostly internally, and not at all externally. They serve for the inside; those on the outside don't even look at them or pass by them completely, either enraged or indifferent. Those who say that football should be separated from politics should admit, at least, that it is impossible to separate sporting results from it, because they are immediately used politically as instruments of symbolic imposition, as emblems of an identity that erases or sidelines others. And needless to say, they are instrumentalized by the power of the moment, whether it be the monarchy or the progressivism of the Madrid government, which will make good use of it to interpret everything in view of its electoralist squabble. Spain could be a plural, multilingual, diverse, and inclusive project, needless to say it is theoretically and intellectually possible, but in practice it is a project of dissolution, assimilation, and erasure, or which even lives with discomfort, not the Catalan identity of some players, but their different skin color or their faith in Islam. There has been no World Cup celebration party that has not been erected into a party of mockery, where chants against the minorities of the Spanish state itself are common, without any mockery for the fallen rivals on the way to the final. States are made against nations, not against other states, which are also political machines of mass destruction of languages and differences, which, needless to say, are gladly renounced, all to be able to participate in the triumph without worries or bad conscience. We are seeing how it is especially children who are assimilated in this kind of collective euphoria explosions, because it is above all a form of infantilism, this nationalism based on ignorance or contempt or even self-hatred that leads you to forget your identity or language and to want to integrate into the 'victorious' mass. 

]]> <![CDATA[Does the robe also vote?]]> If an alien landed in our country today and only read the newspaper headlines, they would probably think that Spain is governed from the courts, and perhaps they wouldn't be too wrong. While Pedro Sánchez's PSOE accumulates investigations affecting the Government's circle and the PP continues to be pursued by corruption cases, in our country a simple graffiti at an environmental protest has even been classified as terrorism. The feeling is that a large part of the political confrontation has moved from parliaments to the courts, to the point that judges seem to have become another actor in the public dispute. In this context, the question is inevitable: does justice really work?Before attempting to answer the question, it is worth remembering a fact. A democracy is not limited to holding elections every four years; it also needs independent institutions that mutually control each other. The Constitution proclaims this separation of powers and guarantees judicial independence. However, there is often a considerable distance between principle and practice. After all, courts do not exist outside of society, but are part of it and inevitably reflect its tensions and contradictions.Judges have a certain way of understanding the world, like anyone else. And the data show a reality that is difficult to deny: only one in ten judges considers themselves progressive. This does not automatically make judges biased. One can be conservative and apply the law with absolute professionalism. But it is also legitimate to wonder if a judiciary so ideologically homogeneous does not end up generating certain biases, even if they are unconscious. Because, I ask myself, is it healthy that those who judge such a plural society come almost always from the same social environment?Citizens, in any case, have already passed judgment. According to a survey by Ateneo del Dato, almost half of Spaniards consider that justice is not impartial. The CIS is even more forceful: almost nine out of ten citizens believe that a powerful person does not receive the same treatment as an ordinary citizen, and confidence in the courts barely reaches 4.76 out of 10. A justice that does not inspire confidence is an institutionally weaker justice.The responsibility for this situation is shared: political polarization has turned the courts into an extension of Parliament. Parties applaud rulings that benefit them and denounce those that harm them as if they were an attack on democracy. Leaks of case files fuel parallel trials and some particularly controversial instructions end up damaging the credibility of the entire system. And that's how we are.I believe that justice functions reasonably well in the vast majority of everyday conflicts – a divorce, a traffic accident, and a robbery, for example. It does so with an often despairing slowness, but, in general terms, it fulfills its corresponding function and is comparable to that of countries in our environment, such as France, Italy, and Portugal. However, we must not forget that it is a justice of a liberal democracy, with the virtues and limitations that this entails.His big problem, then, is another. The reason is that whoever has money buys time. He can hire the best lawyers, file appeals almost indefinitely, and withstand processes that last for years. Whoever doesn't have it, resigns themselves. Equality before the law is a legal principle; equality before the possibilities of defending oneself is another story.Nor can it be ignored that the Spanish justice system is an institution heir to the Transition and, therefore, to the transformation of the structures of the Francoist state into a democratic system. And, as in so many other areas, some inertia still persists, such as the elitism of the judiciary itself. Let us remember that accessing the judicial career requires years of preparation for competitive examinations without income, a luxury that many families cannot afford. Then, some are still surprised that judges often share the same social background, the same legal culture, and a certain way of understanding the world.Finally, a reflection addressed to Majorcanists: it is important not to forget an evidence that too often goes unnoticed. The magistracy is a power of the State and, like any other state institution, has the function of guaranteeing and preserving the current constitutional order. Therefore, expecting the courts to resolve linguistic and self-government conflicts that call into question this very constitutional framework is an unrealistic expectation. After all, it is difficult for any judicial power in the world to adopt decisions that contradict the legal and constitutional foundations on which its own authority is based.Perhaps the lesson is this: justice can resolve disputes, prosecute crimes, and protect rights, but it will never replace politics. Those who aspire to transform society would do well not to confuse courts with ballot boxes, nor judgments with solutions to major collective conflicts.

]]> <![CDATA[Why Armengol has decided not to contest the presidency to Prohens]]>

10 months left until the election campaign and less than 11 until the elections. And nothing has changed compared to two years ago, when a depressed and unmotivated left-wing opposition was beginning to be seen, that the Government was toying with Vox and that the PP and the far-right would add up again next time.The most significant fact that confirms everything is as it was is Francina Armengol's renunciation of disputing the presidency with Prohens again. If one only reads the bold print of the deed, or as the island PSOE has sold it, one cannot appreciate in any way the political burden it truly carries. To value it in its just measure, it must be placed in the pertinent context.Armengol received the 2023 defeat as a blow, if not personal, at least against her political pride. And a very deep one. This is explained by what her circle asserted throughout the year before the elections. That what they called 'the Francina effect' existed, the attraction directly attributable to the leader's public personality and her management in the Government, which would produce a sufficient number of votes that would dispel assumptions about a potential right-wing victory, a possibility they disdained, especially because they did not believe Prohens had the capacity to regain enough support for the PP.It was a conception of electoral politics that deliberately abstained from the main characteristic that the behavior of suffrage in the Balearic Islands has had in recent decades: the growing importance of the national key. Despite this phenomenon, easily perceptible in the evolution of the results at the polls since at least 2007, they faced the 2023 elections with that conviction.It is worth saying that it was not only the Armengolian environment that said so. It was a more widespread perception. Even among certain nationalists, it was believed that the president had a personal and political advantage that would help her — and incidentally, the entire left — to be re-elected for the third consecutive time. And this was not only happening in the world of political aristocracy: trade unionists and members of independent civil associations, anti-PP and pro-left, thought much the same.Everything, however, changed when a few weeks before the elections the socialist leadership began to understand – surely because of the internal polls that would reach them from the central office – that the fantasy of the aforementioned effect was fading, if it had ever existed.The electoral night did nothing more than confirm the catastrophe: the left lost the Government and Armengol, the presidency. Suddenly, however, the socialists warned – it was a correct reading, there was no doubt: they were right – that they were not responsible for the disaster, but for the collapse of the far-left. Undeniable: Podemos went from 6 deputies to 1. Neocommunism was sinking and dragging the entire left towards the opposition abyss.The slogan that the local PSOE leadership then imposed was that the defeat was a mere parenthesis and that Prohens, in her incompetence, would not manage and Armengol would return to be president in 2027, even if she had fled to Madrid, taking advantage of the general elections of July 2023.It is believable that he thought so. Or, at least, that he was eager to return and "finish the job".At the end of 2024, at the PSOE federal congress in Seville, Armengol hinted at least to two Majorcan journalists – who later recounted it – that she would indeed be a candidate against Prohens. It is even more forceful than when the regional congress was held in March 2025, the website of the Balearic Socialist Party welcomed the re-election of the undisputed leader with: “Armengol announces the first measure for when she returns to being president in 2027…”.The following months, in fact, throughout that year, things – possibly based on fierce polls for the socialists – changed. When in February 2026 the newspaper Última Hora reported that Armengol would resign due to the evidence that the chances of winning again were nil, it was certainly already decided for several weeks.The same newspaper recently published the poll – conducted by the always reliable Balearic Institute of Social Studies – of voting intention which made clear the reason for the resignation: the PSOE is already losing 3.7 percentage points compared to the 2023 result and, worse, loses 4 seats, while the far-left disappears. The nationalists only add one more deputy, in Menorca, and the regionalists get none; the PP is close to an absolute majority and if it doesn't have it – which is more likely – it will be able to make a deal again with Vox, which will at least increase by one seat.This is the reason that explains why Armengol wants to stay in Madrid and confirms what was beginning to be seen two years ago and that the PSOE has now implicitly confessed: that the left has nothing to do.

]]> <![CDATA[Papists]]> I highly doubt there is anyone left on the face of the earth who is not yet aware: in recent days, the visit of Pope Leo XIV to Madrid, Catalonia, and the Canary Islands has monopolized a large part of the media's news diet, both state and national. Any topic has been good to stir the pot: the proportion of Catalan he would use during homilies, the language of the blessing of the Jesus tower, who sang and performed at the shows, who would meet him, who wouldn't...Of all this, however, there has been one aspect that has particularly caught my attention, and I believe few people, perhaps out of shame, their own or others', or rather out of interest (in this case, entirely their own) have commented much on: Prevost's visit and speech to the Congress of Deputies.First of all, it is problematic that politicians of all stripes, and especially progressives, who should defend the non-confessionality (if not the secularism) of the State, have tried to pass off the visit of a religious leader as that of a head of state. That the highest representative of a religion on Earth visits a country is no small matter, and it certainly has its interest, especially for believers of that confession. But giving this gentleman spaces, focus, and microphones that should belong exclusively to the people and their representatives, such as Congress, should make us question whether everything has been done very well.Would anyone think of inviting Donald Trump to defend the legalization of weapons under the watchful eye of President Armengol? Who would find it normal for leaders like Putin and Netanyahu to go and harangue Spaniards to participate in their wars under Tejero's bullet holes? Would the deputies of practically all political parties applaud after hearing a fierce apology for the death penalty against realities such as homosexuality, transsexuality, or "adultery"?This, more or less, is what the Government of Pedro Sánchez and the upper house of the State have allowed: to give a voice in a place that should be primarily for the representatives of the citizens to a person who has gone to defend theses that attack not only current laws in our State, such as equal marriage, voluntary interruption of pregnancy, or euthanasia, but also some basic principles also enshrined in the Constitution (alas!).I ask myself if this would have happened fifteen years ago, during Zapatero's government. I ask myself if José María Aznar, or Felipe González, would have dared. Surely we will never know and we will have to settle for this image: a religious leader lecturing the people's representatives on topics that we have already resolved, that we are clear about, on which we should not have asked for the opinion of a man who will neither marry nor ever get pregnant, to mention only the topics that concern us. We can rest assured, however: in the end, all the politicians knew how to find a way to emphasize that the speech had favored them. They have become papists.

]]> <![CDATA[Between 'lawfare' and post-truth]]> Since the Zapatero affair broke out, almost every day we are faced with a new surprise. Some, quite surreal. The feeling of disbelief is great even among those who for a long time put our heart and soul into the fight against corruption. But there are too many elements here that point to what has come to be called lawfare, the use of 'justice' to criminalize and bring down politicians, particularly progressives, through a lot of disinformation and little evidence. It happened with Lula in Brazil, and we have seen it in the Kingdom of Spain with the leaders of the Procés, the comrades of Podem, and a couple of years ago, with the case of our friend Mònica Oltra, who already warned us that we could all be, like her, victims of infamous maneuvers to civilly kill those who stand up to defend progressive values.

]]> <![CDATA[Jordi Pujol and us, the islanders]]>

He was widely admired, also in the Balearic Islands, until the judicial affair that affected his family broke out and from which he has been excluded due to his delicate health. Before that, Jordi Pujol was, for decades, the benchmark of Catalonia par excellence, with certain ties to the Islands. We remember them as half a century has passed since the controversy generated, in May 1976, by his supposed 'disembarkment' as a shareholder in the Majorcan magazine Cort, in the midst of the political Transition.

]]> <![CDATA[The grammar of security]]> Donald Winnicott (1896-1971), a British pediatrician and psychoanalyst, intuited and studied that the need for security accompanies human beings from the first moment of life. He explained the need to feel "held" by the environment in order to grow and live with confidence.Literally ‘to hold’ in English means: ‘to sustain’, ‘to contain’, ‘to protect with the hands’. But Winnicott gave it a much deeper psychological meaning. When a small child is physically and emotionally held by the mother, is fed, protected, comforted and understood, they develop a basic sense of trust in the world. This is what Winnicott called ‘holding’. They have the intimate feeling that the world will not collapse under your feet. Thanks to this ‘held environment’, the child can play, explore, grow and build themselves. Without this ‘holding’, anguish, insecurity and emotional fragility appear. On a social and global level, societies also need a kind of ‘holding collective’. I mean that we like to feel that there is order, to have reliable institutions, accepted and shared norms, a certain stability and an invisible network that sustains this coexistence. If this support fails –or we perceive that it fails– then the obsessive demand for security arises. It may sound daring, but security is not just about having police or not having crime. It is also trust, cohesion, a certain credibility, a sense of identity belonging... It is having the perception that someone upholds the collective framework. Perhaps modern societies are not only seeking more security, but to recover the feeling of ‘holding’: feeling that the world is still capable of holding them.Why have I chosen The grammar of security as the title of this article? Well, because security is also a language. There are symbols, emotions, perceptions, narratives, and even scenographies of power. We must be able to talk about security without falling into alarmist discourse, nor into the naivety of denial. How can we reconcile the need for protection and the boundaries between freedom and control? I also chose the word 'grammar' because it was very recently that I discovered the figure and legacy of Gianni Rodari, and I have been fascinated by him. In confidence, The grammar of security transmits resonances of The Grammar of Fantasy. Winnicott fits in perfectly, and applying it to a social and contemporary topic seemed audacious to me.Let's refine a bit more; in sa Pobla –in any town– when we see a dirty square, a broken streetlight, a dark street, we observe how it is transmitting an emotional message to the population. And in the face of these real events that trouble us so much on social networks, the theory of James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling fits in very well, which more or less stated that small signs of disorder can generate the perception of abandonment and insecurity even if the real level of delinquency or criminality is low. Obviously, the use of current information channels can be manipulated and redirected towards the interests of corporations, political parties, etc. It is one of the important challenges facing current societies: the abuse of manipulation and easy populism. This abuse in order to achieve "power". It seems we have reached one of the most poignant paradoxes we have today: "The more protected a society is, the less tolerant it is of uncertainty"". But, deep down, in a very internalized space, over the years of my police activity I have observed that people do not just ask for physical protection. They ask to feel that the world is still understandable, orderly, and governable. We return to my town; last April, in sa Pobla, four low-intensity criminal acts, or minor delinquency, occurred. The perpetrator was quickly identified and brought before the judicial authorities; he was a repeat offender and quite well-known. Some of the affected parties and others used social media and amplified their fear. Some political parties saw an opportunity to gain visibility, increase their presence, and use it for political purposes. This happens every so often, almost cyclically. It is certainly legitimate, but in reality – dealing with a sensitive issue – they are 'playing' with the emotions and fears of the citizens. The result was that in the following weeks there was an increase in the perception of insecurity and fear among the townspeople. Evidently, political consensus among all forces on security matters has not yet matured enough and – at the municipal level – it is practically non-existent. The defense and joint work for the citizens will still have to wait.However, let's stop and get to the facts. The municipality of sa Pobla, its town hall, has allocated an average of between 10% and 11% of its initial budget to citizen security in the last five years. This is a relatively high ratio if we compare it to the rest of the municipalities in Spain. This means that – for the governing team – it has been an important priority when designing its municipal policies. Each inhabitant of Huialfàs spends approximately one hundred and five euros annually on local security. State-level security expenses are outside these figures. This would be an objective fact, but it is very far from the perception that many people from sa Pobla have.There is a lot of work to do and –above all– a lot of work to explain, to make understood. Personally, I would like to delve into the next article on the role played by the Local Police and our privacy that we are losing, in this complex and interesting mosaic. To summarize, we can conclude that the great drama of modern societies is not only real insecurity, but the constant need to feel protected. And the inevitable question that remains is: Why does an objectively secure society continue to be so afraid?Note: This week I have ended my labor and social contract with the Local Police of sa Pobla. It has been more than forty-four years of dedication. In the beginning, I was a young man with more curiosity than training, these were different times. I have tried to give back to my town all that it has given me. The feeling of gratitude is enormous. The finite landscape and the faces of the people who have already departed have also accompanied me. I have made mistakes many times and I apologize to those I may have hurt or harmed. Life goes on and we need to savor it and share it. Until the next article, thank you.

]]> <![CDATA[The Feixina and political reading]]> When the Arca association asks to stop politically manipulating the Feixina monument, as it has done in recent days, it is difficult to know if it speaks from naivety or from a very specific – and very typical – form of political intervention. Because there is only one possible reading of the Feixina, and that is political. The monument was conceived politically, erected politically, and inaugurated politically. By a dictatorship.

]]> <![CDATA[The right to ask for 1,200 euros in rent for an apartment is below the citizen's right to dignified housing]]>

After eleven years as a councilor and seven as mayor of Maó, Héctor Pons Riudavets (Maó, 1990) reviews the most difficult term he has faced so far in the City Council. In minority and with the conditional support of his former partners from Ara Maó, the only socialist mayor in Menorca faces the remaining year of the legislature with the urgency to solve the problems that drag down the water supply and the determined objective of taking steps to facilitate access to housing for families in a context of such difficulty. But in these months, the future of the port is also being cooked.

]]>