It is possible that some participant in the demonstration of July 26 in Palma truly believes that it is possible to change the economic model and achieve what the organizers claimed, degrowth. Let them lose all hope. At least for now there is not the slightest crack to make it possible. In the future, who knows, in twenty years, thirty...

The massive demonstration against mass tourism held last Sunday in Palma passed without incident throughout its route. Tens of thousands of people marched through the city center to demand a change in the tourism model and denounce the housing crisis, in a mobilization that took place without confrontations with the hundreds of tourists strolling through the same streets, nor with damage, graffiti, or incidents in front of hotels, shops, terraces, or real estate agencies.

These days mark 15 years since the outbreak of 15-M, that movement which now seems like prehistory to us, like almost everything that happened before the pandemic, and which many of my students don't even remember, either because they didn't live through it or because history books take too long to incorporate truly relevant events. And even when they are incorporated, we look for subterfuges to tiptoe around uncomfortable episodes, as has happened with the systematic burial of democratic memory. That 15-M was, relevantly, so for various reasons.