Xim Valdivielso: "The future of Mallorca is Ibiza: more inequality, a luxury society, and poverty."

PalmProfessor of Philosophy at the UIB and founding member of Terraferida, Xim Valdivielso spoke with ARA Baleares about the hoteliers' campaign to convey a welcoming message to tourists. He believes the root of public discontent is the inability to access housing and attributes much of the problem to tourist rentals.

What do you think about the fact that the Mallorca Hotel Federation (FEHM) has to launch a campaign to convey to tourists that they are welcome? Isn't this a sign of citizen fatigue?

— There have been thousands of these campaigns. After the pandemic, the SOS Tourism campaign was launched, and there have been others, such asWe Love TourismThe most famous was the one launched by Biel Company in 2018. If we go back, we'll find other similar campaigns from different parties, not just right-wing ones. Generally, they are responses to situations—I don't know if crisis would be the word—that at the very least question tourism policies. Company's campaigns were carried out in the context of criticism of overcrowding and air-bidding. SOS Turisme's campaigns are framed within a crisis situation in the tourism sector as a result of the pandemic. Campaigns have generally been carried out when there was some crisis of legitimacy in the tourism sector. Why are they carried out? I don't think it's because of pressure from public opinion in that case. At least for two reasons. First, because the ruling elites don't give much weight to the protesting public opinion; they don't consider it representative. It's been said that those protesting were a noisy minority, a noisy minority that didn't represent Balearic society. And all these past few years, we've heard the term "tourismophobe" used against those who point out any kind of criticism. There's a second reason, and it's to address the discomfort of a tourist-infused society.

How do you assess the protests against mass protests?

— The response to the unrest surrounding touristification is less well-directed and organized than the environmental campaigns of 20 years ago, with which we usually compare them. Campaigns today have lost their ability to communicate and mobilize. The number of participants in the recent demonstrations against mass tourism over the past two or three years is much lower than in the campaigns of 20 years ago, even though the population has increased significantly and organizing is much easier today through social media. There is a loss of capacity for protest. For all these reasons, I don't see any reason for the tourism elites to be overly concerned. In any case, these movements have caused some tension within the tourism elites themselves, because they are in a situation, let's say, of trying to find some balance and accept that at least containment measures must be taken. Above all, they carry out these campaigns to try to reassure the sector and, especially, the source markets. I would be very surprised if the business leaders promoting these campaigns were so naive as to believe that the public's perception will change as a result. The population, including tourists, gets information through other channels. They aren't so naive as to believe that there aren't any problems resulting from overcrowding. If you're visiting Sant Antoni de Portmany as a tourist, or you're a resident of the area, where a balcony attack recently occurred, a campaign like this will hardly change your perception of the negative effects on Sant Antoni, which is a Far West tourism, where anything goes. Since no one is that innocent, it's clear that these campaigns are a reaffirmation both internally and to society. They aim to represent that tourism is about the interests and vision that must prevail.

The entry of the so-called collaborative economy – with the support of flights low cost– About 15 years ago, does it mark a before and after for the model?

— What the social sciences have come to call the 'airbification process' has added new problems linked to tourism, to the touristification of societies, and has increased pressures that already existed. Problems such as the destruction of the territory, mass tourism and saturation, the overexploitation of resources such as water, the trivialization of heritage... All of this comes from a long time ago and has only become more pronounced. But other problems have been added, especially access to housing. Following the theory of booms started by Nofre Rullán, airbification is the latest boom tourist. boom beginning in 2012. Terraferida then identified a spectacular increase in applications for tourist rental licenses. Furthermore, there was a key moment when the Delgado Law was passed in 2012, which already regulated tourist rentals to some extent. Due to the aftermath of the financial crisis, the phenomenon spread very slowly and exploded in 2016, with exponential growth. In this context, the Biel Barceló law was passed, authorizing and recognizing tourist rentals in apartments—prohibited by the Delgado Law. Both regulations legitimize an activity that was carried out semi-clandestinely. Both the right and the left have participated in supporting, legalizing, and legitimizing this new boom tourist.

And what is its greatest impact?

— We are facing a new vector, which is clearly the use of housing for tourism and economic exploitation. What differentiates it is that homes are being converted into hotels, and this is causing the neighborhoods in the center of Palma and many municipalities to become hotels in some way. This multiplies the social costs of tourism. Air-benefitation has a profound effect on the social structure, a clearly important fact that is rarely discussed. It multiplies the rentier population, which is a population that enriches itself by extracting rent from the rest of society. It's a form of social parasitism. We are faced with a growing segment of the population that lives off extracting rent, off extracting wealth from others. Think of a landlord who owns one or several homes, or who is a large landowner. Until now, they charged an average of €800 per resident. Now, residents are renting them out for double that, €1,600. What has this rentier done? Zero, absolutely nothing. And what does the tenant have to do to be able to pay the rent? Well, they must double their wealth, they must double their income, with the consequences this has at all levels, especially as a domino effect, to pay the homeowner. The social structure is changing radically. After the pandemic, it was said that the 'new normal' would come. They already knew that all this was a social illusion. The 'new normal' in the Islands was more touristification. In 2020, the Balearic Islands lost almost 24% of their GDP, and the Canary Islands, 23%. These communities were economically bankrupt. The systemic pressure, from the perspective of the administrations themselves, the tourism industry, the sector, and the situation of the labor market, was to regain ground, and it made it inevitable that the 'new normal' would be more of what was there before, not something different.

There is much debate about what measures could be taken to mitigate the impacts of touristification.

There is a kind of dialectic about aggregate wealth that has been achieved in recent years. Through this new boom In the tourism sector, some people are getting richer, and it's no longer just the supercapitalists. It's the middle class, which feeds back into tourism and its negative effects. If you implement measures to reduce mass tourism, or at least contain it, some people stop earning much money. These people are no longer just the super-rich, the big hoteliers. They're not the typical actors that the criticism of tourism put forward 30 years ago. This model has cut the middle class in half. Some have become impoverished, even though they were middle class 10 years ago, due to not having real estate assets. And there are those who, thanks to having them, have become richer and have become a parasitic class. It's a typical case of what is called a property-owning society or property-owning democracy, which functions as a vector of parasitic enrichment through touristification. These are the ones who become the primary agents of political parties. The party system takes them very seriously, in addition to the traditional elites. These sectors are also incorporated as target, as the favorite target of the parties, because they are the new social power. Therefore, no party has addressed the real problem of rentism, whether legal or not. The root of the problem is not only among the big capitalists, the large leftist funds who, in theory, are more sensitive to these issues. They move to Sa Pobla and Campanet because they can't find housing. They see that their neighbors are responsible.

Why was the left unable to see this process more clearly and take action?

— Owners are considered to have a sacred, let's say natural, right to commercialize their property, including their homes. However they want, including through tourism. The most surprising thing for many people is that the left has also come to think very similarly. The left has largely neoliberalized since the 1990s. It can be distinguished from the right in many ways, but it has incorporated a neoliberal vision of property, of the functioning of the relationship between economy and society, which it didn't have after the postwar period, which it didn't have in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. How has it been imbued with these values? An example is the Balearic Islands. The left justified the Barceló Law with the discourse of shared prosperity. And the right, as we know, doesn't even consider intervening in the market. I don't see any possible solutions that go to the root of the problem, because they involve massive intervention in the housing sector and halting the use of housing. We're rather pessimistic about whether measures will be taken to address the root of the problem. I'm more of a believer that they will be driven by the tourism sector itself, which will make moves to maintain business as it sees the negative effects eroding its profitability.

Does this mean that nothing can be done?

— No. Mitigation measures must be taken, at the very least, to try to prevent things from getting worse. We need to do something similar to what we did with climate change: push for mitigation measures. But we must be realistic and stop living in the delusion that we're looking at the cause of the problem. No one is doing that.

What outlook awaits us?

— The future of the islands is Ibiza, becoming more and more like the Pitiusas. And the future of the Pitiusas, of Ibiza and Formentera, is to accentuate their own trajectory. The Balearic Islands are increasingly becoming luxury islands. Paradoxically, they are poor destinations from the perspective of workers—especially those linked to the tourism sector. There is also a fairly diverse tourism structure, with sectors of the industry that are not luxury. But these two sides, that of luxury and that of systemic poverty, are becoming structural and are increasingly separating. The social structure is increasingly unequal and disjointed. In this sense, Mallorca is becoming more and more like Ibiza. In Ibiza, there is increasingly more luxury and a more unequal social structure, with a phenomenon like rururbanization. Menorca is spared for the moment, but Mallorca is already on that path. The future of Mallorca is Ibiza: greater inequalities, a luxury society, and poverty. In Ibiza, we see entire villages of working-class people being evicted from camp because they can't afford to pay for housing. These are people who have jobs, very often in hotels. We're about to see this happen in Mallorca, like the Palma City Council's attempt to evict people living in caravans. Who would have imagined ten years ago that this would happen in Mallorca? No one would have believed it. This is the present, and it will increasingly become the future. If there are no substantial changes in the political and social sectors, it will be difficult to avoid this scenario.