<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - youths]]> 10 <![CDATA[Only one person from Formentera has requested the 10,000 euro aid to buy a home]]>

The Government has received a single request from Formentera to access the 10,000 euro grants intended to facilitate the purchase of a home for young people up to 40 years old. Even so, the General Directorate of Housing continues to process the requests and the deadline for submitting new ones remains open until December 31, 2027, or until the available credit is exhausted.

]]> <![CDATA[Youth who do not want to be fascists]]> He fell silent. Behind his black-rimmed glasses, Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro let tears fall with a restrained gesture. “It hurts me deeply to see that one, two, or three generations have completely failed this generation. That is to say, we are leaving the incoming generation a world in ruins, with its moral, social, and spiritual fabric disintegrated,” in a statement that rose as a generational apology, as a plea for forgiveness for not having known how, been able to, or wanted to act as a transmission belt, as a generation, for the values that have sustained Western civilizations for the last three-quarters of a century.

]]> <![CDATA[A family is looking for two young Algerians who tried to reach Formentera by swimming]]>

An Algerian family is searching for Nouasser Abou Bakr Esseddik and his friend Chraita Noufel, both 27 years old and delivery drivers by profession, after, according to the account of several survivors, they jumped into the sea with life jackets to try to swim to Formentera from an irregular migration vessel. Their disappearance has already been reported in Algeria, but their whereabouts have not yet been confirmed.

]]> <![CDATA[The straightener]]> Due to an inconveniently hedonistic conception of reading, what are known as ‘compulsory readings’ in schools and high schools began to have a bad reputation. Paraphrasing Borges, it was said that ‘compulsory reading’ was an oxymoron, because all reading implies pleasure, and there is nothing compulsory that truly gives enjoyment. But in educational centers everything is compulsory: the multiplication tables are, or the periodic table of elements, or grammar, even the schedules. Learning implies yielding and placing oneself at the service of certain knowledge, or of wisdom that must be imposed as truths are always imposed; these are supposed to obey no one, but rather it is we who must pursue them. The end of compulsory readings meant nothing more than that they were no longer compulsory by law and common throughout the country, but rather that the choice of works was left to the centers. In my time, the classics of Catalan and Spanish literature were combined with more current and accessible books, often even commercial ones, ultimately of more than questionable quality, which made the important or canonical works that, often against the grain, we had to swallow, shine by contrast.

]]> <![CDATA["My father is retiring and now he helps me start my company"]]>

Mateu Català is a 24-year-old young entrepreneur from Manacor, who a few months ago started MC Crono, a new vehicle rental and sales company with great aspirations for the future. We talk for a while about the rental market and the future of the Mallorcan car fleet.

]]> <![CDATA[Why do the young sing the ‘Cara al sol’?]]>

One in every four young people under 25 years old would vote for Vox right now in the general elections. This is according to the CIS, which in its latest survey translates into figures what is a growing trend that years ago had already manifested itself, even more strongly, in other European countries, such as France, Germany and Italy. The image of protesters nearing the age of majority singing the Cara al sol in front of those camped out in Madrid for the housing decrees has made this even more evident. Being punk now means being right-wing, confirm sociologists, who see in social media and in the precariousness of the labor and housing market the breeding ground for the radicalization and polarization of messages and the reactionary movement that is manifesting among the youth.

]]> <![CDATA[Youth, between the far right and anti-fascism]]> For a long time, young people had been the natural reserve of progressive causes: anti-fascism, feminism, environmentalism, and social rights. Today, that certainty has cracked. In the new generations, we see great polarization. Faced with far-right demonstrations—with a large presence of young people—there are anti-fascist protests led by other young people. In any case, one cannot underestimate the fact that a significant part of this generation is moving closer to the far right and is doing so, moreover, in a growing manner. This polarization—which has been perceived in Madrid during the days of the visit of the Argentine president, Javier Milei; in the Balearic Islands during the presence of the Vox leader, Santiago Abascal; in France and in Italy, among other European countries—demonstrates that youth do not think with a single voice. What they do share, however, is something deeper: malaise.

]]> <![CDATA[I want a normal life, not a flight to New York for 300 euros]]>

I would like to have a dog. And to feel that my life is not that important. Having an animal makes everything a little more relative and turns time into a more democratic unit of measurement. I would like to have a normal enough life to discover that everything I do, at the end of the day, has the same importance as weighing the 50 grams of food that my dog has to eat for dinner. I would like to be able to afford the luxury of insignificant things.

]]> <![CDATA[Dropping out of studies or ending up overqualified: the labor paradox of young people in the Balearic Islands]]>

The Balearic Islands are experiencing a paradoxical situation regarding the education and employment of young people. On one hand, 15% drop out of their studies prematurely; on the other, almost half of those who work (48.9%) are overqualified for the job they do, according to the Emancipation Observatory for the second semester of 2025. The data points to two difficulties: there are young people who stop their education early and others who, despite continuing to study, do not find a job suitable for their qualifications, a fact that generates frustration. These are different realities that, together, show the difficulties youth face in completing their education and finding a job that matches the studies they have undertaken.

]]> <![CDATA[Only 8% of young people in the Balearic Islands are emancipated, half as many as a year ago]]>

Only 8% of young people between 16 and 29 years old in the Balearic Islands had been able to emancipate themselves during the second semester of 2025. The figure represents less than half that of the same period the previous year and places the youth emancipation rate of the Islands below the state average of 14.5%. This is according to the Emancipation Observatory corresponding to the second half of 2025, presented this Wednesday by Lucía Siles, representative of the Youth Council of Spain (CJE), and Pau Emili Muñoz, president of the Youth Council of the Balearic Islands (CJIB).

]]> <![CDATA[The housing crisis collapses the UIB residence: "We have more than 300 students on the waiting list"]]>

The UIB student residence is increasingly overwhelmed. “There are more than 300 people on the waiting list. The pressure is getting worse every time. Housing is very complicated,” admits the Vice-Rector for Innovation and Digital Transformation at the UIB, Loren Carrasco. The residence has 101 places and practically all of them are occupied each academic year by students who already live there. This year, 85 students have renewed their place. The pressure on the facility has intensified in recent years: in the 2022-23 academic year there were 185 students on the waiting list, a figure that increased to 215 at the beginning of the 2024-25 academic year and now exceeds 300 people.

]]> <![CDATA[A mobile phone has come out in our hand]]>

If you are capable of walking down the street with your head held high, you will see a dystopian scene that you would not have imagined a few decades ago. People and more people moving about while looking at their mobile phones, who have developed the ability to dodge obstacles without seeing them, incapable of contemplating the world around them, unless that world is inside the small screen they hold in their hand.

]]> <![CDATA["We know that everything is politics, but we do not want to be governed by any person or party"]]>

They call themselves Joves d’Eivissa and they presented themselves to society last January; in their short history they have already managed to raise certain expectations; it had been a long time since, in Ibiza, a collective of young people with the intention of organizing themselves and influencing political and social life had been seen. They want to do so from an identity-based project and critical of the economic model that prevails in the Balearic Islands. We have spoken with two of the members of the association, Sílvia Ramón Torres (21 years old, social educator) and Marc Serra Ramis (22 years old, video game development student). It has been said that members of Generation Z demonstrate a deeper social commitment than previous generations, at least on issues such as diversity, inclusion, and equality. May this interview serve as proof.

]]> <![CDATA[The Government will prohibit the sale of energy drinks to minors and the recreational use of laughing gas]]>

The Government will prohibit the sale and supply of energy drinks to minors and will ban the marketing of nitrous oxide, popularly known as laughing gas, when intended for inhalation for recreational purposes. The Governing Council approved this Friday a decree-law of urgent measures regarding public health protection that will now have to be validated by Parliament. The Minister of Health, Manuela García, defended both measures as a response to two "public health problems" that particularly affect the young population. "Both prohibitions are backed by data and have the support of the scientific community," she assured during the press conference following the Governing Council.

]]> <![CDATA[Portrait (of five artists) of a generation saved by cynicism]]>

“I think I can be the voice of my generation… Or at least a voice of a generation” is the most iconic phrase of the character Hannah Horvath in Girls, the series written by and starring Lena Dunham, which is already one of the best generational narratives of the early 21st century. In the case of Mallorca, in the midst of the 2020s, a whole host of young artists are giving voice to their generation. Anna Picornell, Miquel Mas, Lluïsa Febrer, Josep Alorda, and Mariona Jaume are five of them. With music, theater, drawing, cinema, and dance, respectively, they capture their Zeitgeist (the spirit of an era, in German). The moment they have to live through – like Hannah – grants them this fair dose of enthusiasm, marked by a realism that doesn't quite become pessimistic, and a need to define themselves shaped by social media.

]]> <![CDATA[Convicted the six youths who tattooed a penis on the face of a young man with a disability in Manacor]]>

The Provincial Court of the Balearic Islands has convicted this Wednesday the six young people accused of humiliating and assaulting a young man with an intellectual disability in Manacor in 2021, after all of them have admitted the facts in the trial held by conformity.

]]> <![CDATA[Catalan grows (where we didn't think so)]]> Fortunately, not all news is bad regarding the language: a few days ago, a report prepared by Accent Obert (formerly Fundació puntCAT) and La Fera based on data from the portal Llista.cat, which collects the names, fields, and activity of the main content creators in Catalan, revealed that the consumption of content in our language in 2025 increased by 71.7% compared to the previous year, with 2,759 views.This is the first time that data can be compared with an older reference, as it is the second edition of the study based on the activity of influencers on Instagram, YouTube and Tiktok, and it has also been known that the volume of publications has grown by around 31%. In one year! This can mean several things: on the one hand, that content creation is growing and advancing steadily, and on the other, that it has an even greater public response than this increase. Surely, initiatives such as the scholarships from the Department of Linguistic Policy of the Generalitat de Catalunya have a lot to do with this increase, or L’Aferrada, the meeting space for content creators from the Catalan Countries that the Obra Cultural Balear has been organizing for two years. Finally, it seems that the digital ecosystem in Catalan is starting to gain momentum, and the best of all: people are responding, they are there.Regarding platforms, while TikTok is the one growing the most (with a 57% increase in posts) and YouTube shows signs of fatigue, Instagram is the one leading the ranking for both posts (55%) and views (with 69%). Without leaving this network, the names of island influencers and content creators that come to mind no longer fit in one hand: there is @parlars_mallorquins, where Joan Moñino speaks about language, traditions, and identity; there is @co.torrita, a regular collaborator of Moñino and recently received a special mention, along with him, at the Isabel Coll awards from JSIB; there is @suau_morro and their profile for the dissemination of history and traditions with a marked self-centered tone; @herboloco, a space dedicated to botany, ethnobotany, and rural culture; @entrefonesineurones, with content on history, art, and science from the Balearic Islands; the always interesting and lively @juliameridac and her day-to-day life, between books, music, flowers, and outfits; the conversational podcast @anamfent.podcast, with Neus Gil and Aina Segura… And I could mention many more.Finally, we can say, as has been happening for some time in fields such as literature and surely music, that Catalan is growing and conquering new spaces. And it is, in this case, in a strategic area for generational transmission and for social use among young people, such as platforms and social networks. The content is there, it's improving, it's growing. The creators and influencers are there. Now, all that's left is for people to pay them the attention they deserve and give them our support. It's simple: follow them, comment on them, recommend them, find out more about them…

]]> <![CDATA[New sap]]> Next weekend, ‘Ferreries floreix’ returns, and it’s already the fifteenth edition. As every year, the streets of the old town will once again be covered with floral arrangements, and residents will adorn their facades with bouquets, handicrafts, and imaginative manual work. As every year, more than one will admire the great effort that has been made to prepare this ephemeral work of collective creation. For Bep, the best part of ‘Ferreries floreix’is precisely the preparations: “What I like most are the days before the inauguration, when we neighbors almost live on the street. They are the days of the year when we see and talk to each other the most. That makes a village!”. And he adds, still: “If necessary, I would tell you the same about Sant Bartomeu: more joy from the days we prepare the festival than from the festival itself. Perhaps it is age.”.It is possible that age makes you see and live the party in a different way, but Bep's comments have revived me following the experience of other people who are not old, and who were the protagonists of another civic festival just two weeks ago: the group of young people from Ferreries who organized the passage of the Correllengua Agermanat through the town. They got involved months ago, responding to the invitation from Joves de Mallorca per la Llengua. As preparations advanced and the goal came closer, their enthusiasm, confidence, commitment, energy, courage, and desire to do it well so that everything would turn out well grew. And they have achieved it. My goodness, have they achieved it.The first of May's event began early, with children's games prepared by the Agrupament Escolta Sant Bartomeu. Afterwards, there was a popular dance with the folk group Aires des Barranc d’Algendar. At twelve, the glosat, until the flame of the language arrived from Ciutadella, celebrated by the songs of the students from the School of Adults and the veterans of the Club of Retirees. At half past one, a good paella, cooked by the people of Cas Vesins, which was very tight indeed: the success was so great that if they had prepared fifty more, they would have sold out. After lunch, musical bingo and a truc championship, and at five, the concert by the group Res a dir, while the flame of the language continued its journey to Maó. Bravo for weaving multiple collaborations with other groups and entities. To rally together, to add for the language, to make a community. The success of the event, well-deserved, was the crowning of the work done long before. A lot of work, and very well done. To love the language is a craft, says Antoni Bassas in the manifesto he has written for this year's Correllengua Agermanat, dedicated to Josep Maria Espinàs. Like any craft, it requires learning, it takes hours in the workshop, it asks to learn how to pick up the tools and how to use them. In Ferreries, the youth have picked up the tools with a naturalness and drive that has left us admiring. In Ferreries, as throughout the fifteen hundred kilometers covered, the Correllengua Agermanat has been a festive and resounding demonstration of the vitality of the defense of the Catalan language, and of the generational change of those who champion the fight: like the torch with the flame of the language, which passed from hand to hand, the commitment to the language also passes from generation to generation and silences the siren songs of the prophets of doom. The most important thing is that this celebration has not been a flash in the pan. Correllengua has been the trigger for Ferreries to flourish all year round. I insist: the months of prior work have created a community, they have initiated a complicity among the involved youth that, now that Correllengua Agermanat is already history —and what a history—, the desire to continue is irrevocable. We can't leave it here, they say. One girl says she knew that other one from high school, but they had never exchanged more than two words, and that now it will be different. Another one says he works in Girona, but asks to be taken into account if they organize another party: they reply that they are already talking about doing something this summer. And another, who is now a trainee teacher at the town's high school, has become, probably unintentionally, an example and a benchmark for others to emulate. Let's say it loud and celebrate it: from Salses to Guardamar and from Fraga to Maó there is a new spirit that does not understand administrative borders, nor generational breaks, nor nostalgic discouragement. Young people who look each other in the eye and recognize themselves as part of a common project, for whom language, more than grammar, is a brotherhood.

]]> <![CDATA[They will be the young]]> Fifteen, perhaps? Twenty, at most? I haven't had a minimally documented and well-founded political consciousness for that many years, but I can't recall any time when the country's spirits have been so low. I lived through the eruption of social movements on Twitter, including the indignados; I participated as much as I could and more in the spectacular response of island society to the linguistic extermination attempts by the Government of José Ramón Bauzá; I witnessed, as a distant observer, the orange joy of the Valencian spring, and not many years ago I beat with the Catalan autumn and the self-determination referendum, the anti-repressive movement afterwards... And now? Where are we now, that the citizens of the Catalan Countries seem to be so discouraged?Everything indicates that the country is experiencing a moment of hangover from what we could have been or achieved and that could not be. And I'm not just referring to the independence of the Principality, which would have been a magnificent first step towards the constitution of a federal republic among the different Catalan Countries, but also to the progressive ideas proposed by the governments of the Valencian Country and the Balearic Islands which, whether due to a lack of consensus among the forces that composed them, or due to a lack of courage and decisiveness in moving forward, were not consolidated. The social use of the language seems to be at an all-time low, political debate is eaten away from top to bottom by hatred and resentment, and suddenly, in Mallorca and the Principality, two new supposedly self-centered forces (in Valencia, Vox is already in charge...) have begun to defend right and wrong the same exclusionary discourses of the global far-right.Something, however, tells me that there is hope, and that this time hope will come from one of the groups most judged and doubted throughout all time: those who will save the language (that is to say, the country) will be the young people. After the generation of heroes who in the seventies and eighties fought to establish our own laws and institutions that we still preserve today, and the subsequent wave of the 'baby boomers', who with all due love I say, thought they had paid for everything and now see that they haven't, a new batch of young people with drive has erupted throughout the territory. Initiatives like Acampallengua, not many days ago in Manacor, or the Correllengua Agermanat, which youth organizations from all over the linguistic domain have launched thanks to the spur and meeting point that has been the New Congress of Catalan Culture, make me think so. Or Sant Jordi per la Llengua, with demonstrations in different cities of the Principality, organized in large part, also, by organizations and unions led by youth.Yes: perhaps they, them, and him will be. They will do it from self-esteem and love for diversity, online or in assembly or in rounds of folk dance, and the others will not always understand them. The important thing, however, is that there is a generation that does not intend to give up, and with that, often, it is enough to start again.

]]> <![CDATA["I have lived in many houses, but only one is my little corner"]]>

These are times of emergency, when finding housing that we can afford is more difficult than ever, almost impossible. It's not just about having a roof over our heads to sleep under: housing has a dimension that goes much further, that is part of people's emotional experiences. There are houses that are homes, places of happiness, welcome, and refuge. Others are simply passing places, with a limited imprint on the personal stories of those who have spent time within those four walls. This is precisely what the project Homes explores, by the collective La forma dels somnis (formed by people from the Degree in Catalan Language and Literature at the UIB, the Mental Health area of the Hospital Comarcal d’Inca, and the association La Nostra Veu).

]]>