The island Minister of Tourism, Guillem Ginard, accuses the PSOE of defending containment in Mallorca and growth in Madrid. After ARA Balears reported this Tuesday the lifting of the veto by the Bureau of the Congress of Deputies on the processing of the Bill for airport co-management approved by the Parliament of the Balearic Islands, Ginard has called for “seriousness” and an in-depth debate on the future of the airport and the tourism model of Mallorca. "We are talking about the island's main economic engine. They cannot ask us to contain tourist activity and listen to the people while the State works in the opposite direction," he warned.

Our economic architecture, as everyone knows, has a main beam: tourism. It's as if we said that the size of this main beam determines the total size of the building. And, in a capitalist economy, what determines the total size of the building is the investment in search of the profits generated by that investment. Everyone also knows that, as long as tourism generates profits —and it generates many profits— any expansion of the main beam will end with a bigger building. This is how it is, and it will always be this way as long as the governments in power are dedicated to not stopping this dynamic, because employers are fine with it, and as long as citizens swallow the idea that thanks to tourism we live better and better. Economists have known for a long time, and have denounced it, that since 1985 this is no longer the case: since that year our per capita income compared to the Spanish average has fallen by more than 50 percentage points. What is new, now, is that a sufficiently important social majority, which will continue to grow, has said "Enough is enough".Second point: if they have done nothing and will do nothing, then the question is what do we have to do to be able to grow better

First of all, to know who we can trust and who we cannot. As Fuentes Quintana said, “first you need a good diagnosis to be able to act”. In other words, first consult where excellent scientific, technical and holistic thinking is concentrated, and then agree on these proposals with the citizens; once a “roadmap” has been agreed upon, we must have the political courage to move forward with a strategic plan that allows us to “decrease tourism in order to grow better”.Where do we have in the Balearic Islands the best scientific, technical, and holistic thinking to make the best diagnosis? Undoubtedly at the UIB, at CSIC-UIB centers such as Imedea, IEO, and at technological infrastructures like SOCIB; in the case of Menorca, at OBSAM. Nowhere else. This exercise has already been done and specified over three years in Opinion 5/2020 of the CES on the economic, social, and environmental foresight of the societies of the Balearic Islands by the horizon 2030 (H2030), an exercise in political governance praised by the European Economic and Social Council. The key question is, therefore, why have politicians not heeded the most possible quality and independent diagnosis they had available, in which more than 40 UIB professors from more than ten areas of knowledge have intervened, and there has been a desire to tangle things up and a new diagnosis has been requested again from a foundation partly dominated by the employers' association to miserably waste time for six years.In view of this lack of political will, there has been a reaction from civil society with the creation of the Forum of Civil Society, which has gathered the contributions of the CES opinion and has focused its efforts on two crucial issues that have been worked on in two very important congresses. The first, focused on tourism and how tourism can decrease, obviously without forgetting that for many years it will continue to be our main beam, but smaller. The second, focused on the housing problem. The third is now being prepared on how to grow better and that it cannot grow without the democratic participation of civil society in the Balearic Islands. It is scheduled for early December and is open to everyone's participation, with the intention of agreeing on a roadmap that will oblige political parties to commit and not neglect the citizens of the Balearic Islands once again. Enough is enough of being fooled!  

]]> In my latest article, 'Beyond Growth', It argued that we live trapped in the capital-life conflict: a structural tension that transforms the economy into a machine of perpetual extraction while eroding the material and social foundations that sustain existence. This is the daily reality of an accelerated, precarious, and ecologically overwhelmed world, in which emergencies become chronic and politics often manages the symptoms while protecting the causes.

]]> If you look at the press in this country, especially the main newspaper, you'll see how a certain type of news has intensified in recent weeks: news announcing that this year will be a bad tourist season. I'd say it's subtle, but it's anything but. It consists of a constant stream of "bad" news that, taken together, creates the feeling that we are in real danger of losing our main source of income and becoming even poorer. The theme is a recurring one, but it never ceases to surprise how the fear of losing the (little? Not much?) we have challenges any attempt to have a serious conversation about the importance we want tourism to have, what kind of tourism we want, etc. In short, it's business as usual.

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The self-proclaimed pro-independence organization Arran posted a video on social media that has sparked controversy and mixed reactions. The video includes images of graffiti on the facade of the Ministry of Tourism, with the slogan "guilty of our misery," and the burning of photographs of the regional president and several business leaders.

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