10 things I love and hate about being from Palma, apart from San Sebastián

PalmBeing from Palma doesn't It's not easy at all. The worst part is that I spent half my life I used to think that being from Palma was the easiest thing in the world behind closed doors and the most complicated outside (if your world is Mallorca, of course). Until, luckily, a moment came when I grew up and, above all, started surrounding myself with people who weren't from Palma. Then they showed me that 1) I was living in a parallel reality, and 2) Being from Palma is only easy if you never leave Palma.

San Sebastián isn't exactly a day that makes me particularly love Palma. San Sebastián is like Palma: a duality. It's resistance, the struggle for identity, tradition, and enjoyment; but it's also appearances, overcrowding, neglect. The day of the San Sebastián festival was the only one of the year I arrived home after midnight: it showed me what Palma looked like after everything had closed, and gave me a taste of the world's decline—people urinating, people vomiting, people zigzagging down the street. And me, holding my mother's hand, was the same, trying to get me to stop staring and walk faster.

San Sebastián has been the only excuse to learn how to toast bread and to eat sausage and steak (sometimes so cold you wonder if it's really worth going home with that smoky smell clinging to your clothes and hair). It's also been the only way to see Nathy Peluso at the Auditorium and to sing Maria Hein's songs in Plaça de Cort with all my friends.

San Sebastián is the day I spend the most time looking for people, saying "Where are you?" and "I have no signal," or trying to get from one square to another (even more than in peak season). And at the same time, it's the day I know I'll find everyone, the day I can chat with those people I never seem to meet, the day I'll hug and laugh. It's the day the local Mallorcans (call them what you will, we get the picture) take over the streets. And the day will also come when we must fight with tourists for space. It's the politicians' desire to win votes. turning the city into a festival against the vocation of the brotherhoods It's about building community and the collectives' reinterpretation of the saint's figure. It's the desire to be part of something and the uncertainty of not knowing exactly what that something is.

San Sebastián is a list of things I hate and things I love, just like being from Palma.

Things I hate about being from Palma

1. Palma de Mallorca. They confuse Palma with Mallorca. They think Palma is in the Canary Islands.

2. Don't speak to me in Catalan in the streetIn shops and bars. In fact, there are more signs in English than in Catalan.

3. Tell me that I make the chard elita.

4. Going out partying in Palma: they still play music from 2013, they don't let my friends into the club because they're wearing sandals (they let me in though), and I can't get a taxi to go home when it's summer.

5. Not being able to have a house.

6. EMT (but not Bici Palma: thank you, Bici Palma, for saving me from arriving a little less late than I would have without you).

7. Cruise ships. The airport. Tourists.Not being able to get anywhere because we don't live in a city, we live in a theme park. Everything being absurdly expensive.

8. Make it easier to have Thai or Mexican lunch than burballes, tumbito or dirty rice.

9. Our inferiority complex and, at the same time, our centralism. Our lack of traditions and consumption, of self-knowledge and, therefore, of defense of our own culture.

10. Not having anywhere to go and knowing that You'll always find a friend.Not knowing the neighbors.

Things I love about being from Palma

1. Our resilience, that fight against passivity and the constant attempt to know who we are.

2. The Hundred Houses of Pere Garau. The Grand Hotel. The city wall. The Jewish quarter.

3. The people who create culture: Drac Màgic and Rata Corner; CineCiudad and the Atlántida Film Fest; Casa Planas, Fundación Pilar, and Joan Miró. That one of the Fairies is from Palma (in Ferran Pi), and being able to say that Rels B is from Son Gotleu. Rossy de Palma.

4. Aurora Picornell. And, above all, knowing that I studied at the same high school as her daughter, Octubrina Roja Quiñones Picornell.

5. The lobsters at Es Barco and El Isleño, and the lobsters at Bar Bosch.

6. The Flexas Bar party.

7. Sausage pride. These people give us back hope and self-esteem.

8. Having 11 kilometers to walk or cycle near the sea: from Portopí to Can Pastilla.

9. Having a feminist and anti-fascist network to stand against barbarism thanks to popular cultural centers like La Fonera and La eléctrica.

10. Being able to choose where to go to make an Espresso Martini.