<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - criticism]]> 10 <![CDATA["Renting a house, that's dreaming, buying one, that's a German thing": the song against Airbnb in Mallorca]]>

The Mallorcan band The Deaf Buffalos has released a new song, a direct and frontal attack on Airbnb and its consequences for the island of Mallorca and its inhabitants. Titled God bless AirbnbThe group includes lines and verses like "don't go to the beach, let the foreigner go, he's the king of the island, he's the one who gives us our bread," making a reference to tourist rentals. In fact, this is also the central theme of the music video, where the band members are seen in front of ETV signs, the identifying mark for properties intended for tourist rentals.

]]> <![CDATA[The hypocrite]]> Hypocrisy is a common vice that may initially seem harmless; after all, hypocrisy doesn't hurt anyone but themselves. The Puritan glued to a pornographic video is punished in the very act of being exposed. However, it's true that sometimes hypocrisy scandalizes and, therefore, harms others. This is the case with people from whom exemplary behavior is expected. That's why the most reprehensible hypocrisy has always been religious hypocrisy, to which today we could add that of politicians.

]]> <![CDATA[In the great Mediterranean]]> There will be those who, with or without children, will take advantage of the opportunity to go to the movies these days, not only to cool off inside these true climate refuges, but above all to see films like the latest from a studio that has made us dream of many twists and turns. I'm talking about Pixar and its new adventure, entitled Elio and proposes a psycho-emotional defense of the beauty of otherness. It also conveys another equally important message: that, despite everything, we are not alone, and we always have the opportunity to be part of a larger community. In a time when the hate speech of the new, furious far right has returned, it is essential to rebuild bridges of belonging. With the happy publication of Mediterranean Breviary By Predrag Matvejević, in a masterful translation by Pau Sanchis Ferrer, LaBreu Edicions once again gives us a primordial work to understand the profound soul of this ancient and ever-living sea, although in recent years it has also reminded us that it is one of the greatest cemeteries on the planet. The book—with a moving prologue by the eternal Nobel laureate Claudio Magris and an epilogue by David Guzman, who has just been deservedly recognized with the Diffusion Prize—is much more than an essay: it is a lyrical, erudite, and sensorial ode to an aquatic symbolic, historical, and intimate space, a shared territory in which a single uniting substance reigns.

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