What do they charge for a spindle compared to Marivent?
As if they were characters in a discarded scene from Lorenzo Villalonga's novel Muerte de dama, Felipe VI smiled
PalmA few days ago, at the annual audience that the King of Spain dedicates to political leaders from the Balearic Islands, President Marga Prohens spoke with Felipe VI about the problem of overpopulation in the Balearic Islands. The message, as Maria Llull subtly captured in her column in the ARA Baleares newspaper, was contradictory to that of the Speaker of the Parliament (and now also of Vox Baleares, something much more important to him), Gabriel Le Senne, who shared with the monarch his concern about the reproductive rate of the population: he finds it so low that, in his opinion, they are headed for extinction. Damn. (Note: Le Senne speaks of "Mallorcans" only enough because he is unaware of the existence of the people of Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera. He also doesn't know that the Parliament he presides over represents all those people; he thinks it's a provincial theater that should be dedicated to the unity of Spain.)
In short, Prohens complained to the king about having too many people, and Le Senne, about having too few. Like characters in a discarded scene from the novel Death of a lady, Felipe VI smiled equally at both of them, because he didn't know what they were talking about either, and above all, because he didn't give a damn. The population problem is also the housing problem, and this is an issue that the royal family, the always distinguished Bourbons, has had resolved for some time now. So resolved that, for example, if the daughters of King Felipe and Queen Letizia (who always enjoys stays in Mallorca more than anyone else), that is, Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía, have to earn their A-levels, then they'll settle into one of the extremely luxurious apartments where the British private school, a benchmark for the international elite, is located. Leaving aside the fact that the daughters of the head of state (one of them, destined to also become head of state, not precisely as a result of an election) should study at public universities in their country, the funniest thing is that the media flattering the royal family (almost all of them) highlight the fact that the princess and the little girl's tuition costs overtime and would have saved on the dolls' tuition. Obviously, all the expenses of the Spanish royal family come from taxpayers' money, and therefore from our pockets. The same goes for the godfather, the King Emeritus, who has been staying in Abu Dhabi for years in a luxury mansion, at a cost (estimated, there is no transparency) of around three million euros a year.
The summer residence
The Bourbons have not had to suffer for their summer residence either: the Spanish Crown made Marivent its own for this purpose, overriding the wishes expressed by the artist Juan de Saridakis and later by his widow, Annunziata Marconi, to bequeath the building to the Mallorcan authorities to make it a cultural center. We can say that the Spanish royal family are you worry Marivent, to use a horrible word that President Prohens and her executive are very fond of. There have been no tourist rentals in Marivent, but many illustrious guests have passed through, forging well-known commercial transactions ranging from the historic Los Almendros residential development to the Nóos Institute.
The sensitivity of the King of Spain and President Prohens regarding the population problems of the Balearic Islands is symmetrical with the irony of the photo by Isaac Buj that prompted this article. A husillo (the lid of a spindle) is offered at a rental price of 870 euros per month, and it's a bargain: the label specifies that it is subsidized rental for residents, thanks to the Balearic Government and its Land Acquisition Law, or Total Speculation Law. There's just one thing that needs to be clarified, and that's exactly where the spindle is located: the rent for a spindle in Jaime III can't cost the same as one in Soledad, for example. And let's not even talk about what was in the Marivent area. Could the immigrant who comes here trying to work in the tourism sector without qualifications and with a ruined salary afford this cesspool? It's not an overpopulation: it's an overexploitation of the island and the people who live on it, which causes saturation. The sewer rats know it.