The Mallorca Tenants' Union is born to confront speculation and touristification

PalmMallorca now officially has a Tenants' Union. The new collective, which was presented this Saturday at Cine Ciutat de Palma, is born with the will to articulate a collective response to a housing crisis that has been drowning thousands of island residents for years. The event brought together dozens of people linked to social movements and the world of housing, in a call marked by criticism of real estate speculation, the constant increase in rents, and the effects of touristification.

The union's promoters assure that the current situation has turned access to housing into "a social emergency" and defend the need to create a stable tool for pressure, advice, and organization. The project has been gestating over the past few months as a result of different meetings and fueled by presentations of the book Poder Llogater in venues such as Es 4 Cantons de Felanitx, l’Ateneu l’Elèctrica, or La Fonera, among others.

The new union is inspired by similar experiences in Barcelona and other cities in the State, and in fact, the presentation included the participation of representatives from the Sindicat de Llogateres de Catalunya and the Confederation of Tenants' Unions. Jaime Palomera, a researcher specializing in housing policies and one of the best-known voices in denouncing real estate speculation, also spoke.

During the event, the promoters insisted that Mallorca is experiencing a "critical" situation, with families expelled from their towns, workers who cannot afford rent, and young people forced to share flats or leave the island. In this regard, the union's main objectives are to combat rentism, denounce the practices of large landlords, and put a stop to a tourism model that, they assure, "has turned housing into an investment product".

The new organization also aims to act as a mutual support network for tenants, offering advice and promoting mobilizations in the coming months. As they explain, the idea is to create an open and assembly-based structure capable of connecting with other social movements and platforms already existing in Mallorca.

The birth of the Tenants Union arrives at a moment of maximum tension in the Balearic real estate market. In recent years, rental prices have skyrocketed in practically all municipalities on the island, while more and more residents report difficulties in finding stable housing year-round. The phenomenon has been particularly accentuated in Palma and in areas with the most tourist pressure, but it also affects inland towns that until a few years ago were outside this problem.

The project's promoters assure that the intention is to "move from individual complaint to collective organization" and they claim that housing "cannot continue to depend exclusively on market rules".