10 A stroll along Palma's seafront no longer means seeing the sea – yes, the sea that was once its main attraction. From Porto Pi to the Muelle Vell (Old Wharf), what you see now are boats moored, tightly secured. "A port with more than 2,000 moorings!" boasts one website. And yes, what you see are thousands of boats, small, medium, and many outrageously large, with names like "Libertà," "Eterna Primavera" (Eternal Spring), "Sweet Dreams," or "Goldene Meerjungfrau" (Golden Meerjungfrau), which obscure the horizon. This isn't just happening in Palma. Next come El Molinar, Can Pastilla, El Arenal… You can travel around Mallorca or the Balearic Islands, and one after another, there are ports, harbors, and coves serving as marinas. And thousands of boats that spend a good part of the year waiting for their owners to arrive for a week or a couple of days. There are no figures on the total number of moored boats, but the ports are overflowing and the sea is suffocating. In islands where there is no available housing, how many 'floating homes' are there exactly? Official statistics are confusing – as always, due to a lack of data – but they invariably point to the Balearic Islands' leading position in recreational boat registrations compared to the rest of Spain, with hundreds of new registrations every year. This is to say nothing of the waiting lists, stretching for years and decades, for a mooring berth. Paradise, if it dies, always dies of success.

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