From paid holidays to tourismphobia: the UIB analyzes the change in perception of tourism

PalmThe University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) and the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC) are launching a new series of debates this week to reflect on some of the major social and cultural changes taking place in the Balearic Islands. The series will begin this Thursday, May 14, with a first session focused on one of the most debated issues in the Islands today: the transformation of the social perception of tourism.

Under the title From Paid Holidays to Tourismphobia, the event explores how tourism has gone, in a few decades, from being perceived as a driver of progress and democratization of well-being to also becoming an object of criticism, social tension, and public debate. Tourist saturation, overcrowding, the housing crisis, infrastructure collapse, and pressure on the territory have profoundly modified the relationship of a large part of Balearic society with the main economic engine of the Islands.

, with the participation of physicist David Jou and philosopher Francesc Casadesús, and will resume in September with The debate also aims to analyze to what extent concepts such as 'tourismphobia' reflect real social discontent associated with the limits of the current model or respond to a political simplification of a much more complex phenomenon. In this regard, the event seeks to provide academic context and critical insight into a discussion that in recent years has occupied a significant part of public debate in the Islands.

The first session of the series will take place on Tuesday, May 14, at 5:30 PM, in the Sa Riera building of the University of the Balearic Islands, in Palma, and will be moderated by the director of ARA Balears, Jaume Perelló. The inaugural session of the series will feature the participation of Teresa Cabré, president of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans, and the rector of the UIB, Jaume Carot.

ARA Balears is collaborating on this series of conferences, which will continue on June 11 with the session Is there life after death?, with the participation of physicist David Jou and philosopher Francesc Casadesús, and will resume in September with Catalan as a language of welcome, with writer Sebastià Alzamora and philologist Elga Cremades.