And here we have them. They are four immigrants working, in this case, installing wiring to facilitate connections on a street in Sant Joan, in the Pla de Mallorca. It's not exactly light work. It's also easy to see other immigrants like them working as stonemasons on construction sites, or working as laborers, or paving roads, or working as delivery drivers. These are, as they say—and it's true—the jobs that we, the well-off Mallorcans, or not so well-off, or not at all well-off, but in any case fully legalized and with Spanish nationality granted at birth, whether we want it or not.

Who says summer is over? In Mallorca, we're about to experience the miracle of a year-round summer. It's true that with autumn comes rain, which for some time now has become torrential and overwhelming: not so long ago this happened occasionally, but now it's the norm. Experts tell us time and again, with the patience of a saint, that climate change is precisely this: phenomena that years ago (just a few years ago) were occasional or sporadic and less powerful are becoming more frequent and more intense.

"So much culture will eventually become true," Gabriel Cañellas is said to have said during his time as president of the Balearic Islands, a day when he must have discovered there was an excess of culture. He couldn't have known that his words would be prophetic and that, indeed, we would become sick of culture, especially because, for some time now, it has been agreed that everything is culture. Especially what some people like: going to restaurants is culture, trashy television is culture, looking for trouble is culture, tent parties are culture, drugs are culture, and football, of course, is culture. Bullfighting was already culture before, and when culture was invented, that wouldn't be open to discussion. Or don't you know that Picasso liked going to bullfights? We're gone, we won't talk about it.

It's an overcast day, and a stuffed pig is watching out the window of an apartment in Palma. A pink pig, just like stuffed pigs should be; what we might call a proper stuffed pig. Sometimes, instead of looking at ourselves on the street, it's good to have someone else do it. They can do it on our behalf, or on their own behalf. Removing a pink stuffed pig from the windowsill can be a way of sending a humorous, even tender, message to the world; however, there may also be a certain desire to conceal it. Those who do this, who don't go out to look out the window of their house, but instead put up a pink stuffed pig, don't want to be seen. On the contrary, they are most likely interested in seeing what's outside.

Real estate agencies are dream factories: like Hollywood, but smaller. Or we can consider them, depending on how you look at it, a first step toward living the way Hollywood stars are supposed to. It's curious that, in the age of social media and algorithms, real estate agency windows still display photos of the type they sell: houses, apartments, and building plots (an adjective that has lost much of its meaning because now almost all of them are buildable). But these windows must be effective, because they achieve what they want, which is to attract attention. This is at least the effect they give when we see people stop in front of these windows and open their eyes for a while, sometimes for a long time, in front of the advertisements, which are generally A4 sheets hung on the glass with a suction cup. The sheets in question usually have a printed photo, as well as the main details of the property for sale: location, square footage, room layout (if there is more than one, per room), amenities (if there are any in the house or in the area), and, of course, what everyone wants to see, what everyone wants to know and understand: the price. And this is where a truly important change has occurred.

If certain football matches, the ultimate expression of the flat EEG, can be called "classics", with the same or greater reason this name can be used for souvenirs in kiosks and stores. souvenirs that have been in circulation for decades. Untouched by the passage of time, unfazed by changing fashions, impervious to oblivion, affected, if at all, and only by the wear and tear caused by the sun, postcards, towels, and T-shirts bearing the name of Mallorca have reigned supreme in their territory forever.

Palma's old prison (near the now-defunct Mustang Ranch, once the favorite brothel of some city mayors) was emptied of inmates in 1999 and acquired by the City Council in 2013 through a swap deal. The idea of ​​converting the former prison into a student residence for the UIB was raised, but this residence ultimately became part of the Arts District project, in the area of ​​the Conservatory. During the last Progress Pact, a temporary joint venture (UTE, as they call it) was commissioned to build a cultural creation center (perhaps following the example of Barcelona's Modelo). Last January, the current city government, made up of the PP and Vox (initially a covert team, but a team nonetheless), terminated the contract with the ever-hated Catalan culturalists, which meant having to pay compensation of seven thousand euros to the winning company.

It's been quite a few years since the State Lottery and Betting Company, a public company, began selling Christmas lottery tickets in the middle of July. This year has been different: sales began on June 30th. Anxiety is growing, and the need to move faster to place bets for what is still the ultimate dream of many subjects of the Kingdom of Spain: winning the Christmas Gordo. In this sense, a comparison can be made with the Spanish Football League, which each year takes its holidays shorter and starts again earlier. Both the Christmas Gordo and the Spanish Football League are two great dreams for many people; for many, perhaps the greatest dreams, who knows, perhaps the only ones. This makes it important to keep them going for a long time, to give people their chance to dream. To ask themselves what they would do if they won a massive prize, or perhaps just a sliver, but worth several tens of thousands of euros. Wondering if your favorite player will score many goals this year, if injuries will respect your team (they say that, if injuries will respect the team), and above all, and most importantly, if things will go badly for the opponent, and if possible, terribly badly. These are the dreams of good people, and it's really necessary to keep them burning as long as possible throughout the year. The emotional and psychological stability of many people depends on them, and also, let's face it, huge businesses that generate impressive amounts of money.

A few days ago, at the annual audience that the King of Spain dedicates to political leaders from the Balearic Islands, President Marga Prohens spoke with Felipe VI about the problem of overpopulation in the Balearic Islands. The message, as Maria Llull subtly captured in her column in the ARA Baleares newspaper, was contradictory to that of the Speaker of the Parliament (and now also of Vox Baleares, something much more important to him), Gabriel Le Senne, who shared with the monarch his concern about the reproductive rate of the population: he finds it so low that, in his opinion, they are headed for extinction. Damn. (Note: Le Senne speaks of "Mallorcans" only enough because he is unaware of the existence of the people of Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera. He also doesn't know that the Parliament he presides over represents all those people; he thinks it's a provincial theater that should be dedicated to the unity of Spain.)

Things often depend on how you look at them. Defenders of our life as a tourist avatar, who are out there in the Balquena, often say that those who criticize tourism are people disconnected from reality, blinded by ideologies (they, the defenders of mass tourism, have no ideology), determined to pass off as dogmatic truth what are nothing more than subjective perceptions. Overcrowding? I don't know where this is; in my property, renovated by a Swedish architectural firm, we dance quite freely. Lack of water? I have a full pool, and when I turn on the taps, hot and cold water comes out at will. Degradation of the landscape? If so many millions of tourists come, it must be that it's not that degraded. Job insecurity? Gosh, and if they don't work as waiters and waitresses, what do they want to do? Incivility, filth, problems with social distancing? Well, people also have the right to have a little fun, right?

It must be acknowledged that the Church is improving its facilities, and that today's confessionals are, at first glance, considerably more comfortable than those of the past. In the past, confessionals were usually rather precarious wooden booths, sometimes thickened, within which the priest had to squeeze himself as best he could. For their part, the parishioners almost always had to kneel to one side of the booth, often in full view of everyone, and therefore with their privacy and confidentiality compromised. They chatted quietly through the barred shutter, yes, but the result could hardly be said to be a triumph of discretion: everyone knew whether So-and-so had gone to confession, and then it was all conjecture and rumor. Even spectacular cases could occur, such as that of the confessional at the end of The Regent, which almost literally blew up in the air due to the pressure of the illicit desire that the masterful Fermín de Paso felt for Ana, the protagonist of the novel (The Regent It was a novel that was usually read in high school in the subject of Spanish Language and Literature, I don't know if it is still used).

Contrary to popular belief, most urban artists are completely harmless. Some, however, are exceptions, such as the person or people who have dedicated themselves to stamping facades and walls in Palma with this graffiti seen in the photo: "Tourism makes free", say the three words that make it up. It is a play on words –macabre, it must be admitted– with another inscription, sadly famous, which is displayed on a wrought iron sign at the entrance to the Auschwitz Nazi camp:"Work makes free", say the words that can be read there. That is, "Work will make you free." Placed on the gate of a camp that was officially a forced labor camp, and in practice an extermination camp (especially its associated camp of Birkenau, also called Auschwitz II), this phrase is a cross of atrocious sarcasm towards the thousands of people who entered there as prisoners and who no longer had to leave alive. by groups of schoolchildren and tourists, with the aim that the preservation and transmission of the memory of horror helps us all to not allow it to be repeated. or of democratic memory, have not been as effective as we would like. Human stupidity, and pure and simple evil, exist and are more powerful than we are often willing to believe.

Here is a suitable guard of private property. Two, rather, but one is only in effigy, while the other is present defending the door (or window, more accurately) of the house. A furry cat with a serious face looks directly into the camera, which is to say it looks us in the eyes, as if confirming what the sign it has attached to the windowpane says. This sign features the image of a dog, the animal we most associate with the task of surveillance, along with a dissuasive warning: "I'm on guard, you're entering a place of risk and danger." A short text that, due to its syntax and sound, gives the impression of being a direct or exact translation from English.