It's easier to get to Palma from Germany than from the Part Forana (the rest of Spain).

PalmThe bus makes a sweeping turn of almost 180 degrees, and, as if showing it to me, offers a panoramic view of a vast open area filled with piles of earth, scrap metal, and machinery. This entire scene unexpectedly bursts into my gaze, lost in thought as I stare out the window. Is this the airport construction?I ask myself, elusive. I wish I hadn't asked myself this question. I don't want to know the answer. A pang of anguish shoots into the pit of my stomach. I try to look away, but the vehicle keeps circling, between merges and roundabouts, and there's no horizon to take refuge in. Everywhere I look, I see only powerlessness, unease, a legacy: a terminal that—if you'll excuse me—never ends; commercial planes, private planes, planes every minute; an army of neatly lined taxis; trolleysNorth Face suitcases, very tall people.

Finally, we arrived at our destination, airport - departures. The scene continues to be described with a single semantic field: construction. There are inoperative doors, temporarily closed spaces, wrapped pallets, indistinct materials, lots of dust. Everything indicates change, renovation. Everything seems immersed in a moment before the transformation, that fraction of time that lasts so little and is so sudden that you never see it coming. Like when, suddenly, one day they tell you that "we need to talk" and "this is over," and you'd like to know at what precise moment things started to change, and you curse yourself for not having seen it coming. And this is what I feel I have before me. The moment before destructionNow I understand why most of the time we're unable to see it. It hurts too much, and—truly—if we had the chance, I think we'd love ourselves more by sparing ourselves the pain. Because the damage is already done, and the worst torture is witnessing the end, front row, from beginning to end, without being able to do anything to stop it.

I stepped through those glass doors that lead to hell, and all I could think to do was pray and cross my fingers as they walked across that endless, shimmering floor: "Please, let this not take any more of us." I clung to denial, as if by thinking about it so much I could make it real, trying to salvage what little peace of mind I had left. How many times have I wished, for convenience, that something was just an urban legend? fake newsBecause they didn't want to face reality. But now it doesn't work. This trick only works when you don't have the empirical evidence in front of you. "Aena forecasts 36 million passengers for 2031, two million more than last year," I read in a news article. "But it turns out that 30 million were projected for 2026, and in 2025 we've already reached 34 million," it continues.

174 daily connections with Germany and I have to take two buses to get to Palma

I'm furious about this whole construction mess because I can't find the elevator to get where I actually want to go—arrivals—because the A51 bus line, which connects Llucmajor to the airport, only stops once. The truth is, we're not there to leave; I don't have a flight to catch. I have to take another bus, the EMT, to get to Palma, which is my final destination. I had to go through all this trouble because the 501 bus line, which connects Llucmajor to Palma, reduces its frequency to one bus per hour on Sundays—instead of one every half hour—during the off-season (we all know that the calendar that really governs us is the tourist calendar, not the Gregorian calendar). And when I finally had to catch the 4:45 pm bus, it was so packed that more than ten of us ended up on the floor. As if this weren't to be expected, given that the vehicle hauls people from Manacor, Felanitx, and Campos, towns with a combined population of around 82,000. But what do I know, #PutaTib, right?

To avoid waiting a whole hour for the next bus (risking not being able to catch it either), I decide on this: taking the airport line to make an impromptu transfer and connect with the A1. As always, in my head everything sounded much better. Or so I tell myself when I see on the EMT bus shelter that the next bus is due in 30 minutes. I can't believe this journey has become so complicated. I watch the tourists arriving, relaxed and patient, from the walkway that connects to arrivals and which now seems like a red carpet to me. Colonizers and colonized. Where are we headed, in a territory where we have better infrastructure to connect with the outside world than with each other?

According to available data, Palma currently has 23 direct connections to German airportsThat is, you can reach Mallorca from 23 different points in Germany without making any stops. Bremen, Karlsruhe, Leipzig: you name itThis equates to an average of about 1,200 flights per week (round trip), or about 174 per day. In short, it's easier to get to Palma from Germany than from practically anywhere in the rest of Spain.