When the islanders started to act as tourists

PalmElvira Vera Ripoll is a sineuera born in Palma. She is 74 years old. Nostalgia overcomes her when she recalls her honeymoon in 1972. "I was 21 and we went to Murcia. Newly married, we had no money. It was my father who paid for our plane ticket. It was the first time I left Mallorca alone." They were seven very intense days. "We visited the Mar Menor and Cartagena, where my husband had served his military service. We also made a trip to Alicante to visit the imposing Santa Bárbara Castle. In the end, though, I was already homesick. We missed the return flight and had to extend our stay for another day. I cried when I saw my father." That experience would take a long time to repeat. "A few years later, I had two children, and the expenses piled up, so we had to cut out any indulgences."

In 1972, the year of Vera's honeymoon, Viajes Martel was created in Palma, one of the first agencies on the island that also focused on attracting Mallorcan clients. It took its name from the French speleologist who in 1896 explored the Dragon caves of Manacor and who would later be used to explore the famous lake, the main attraction of the boom Tourist. Javier Esteban, 67, was very young when he started working for the company as a guide. "It allowed me to combine my business studies in Barcelona. People were dying to see the world, to do the same things the tourists who visited us did. For many, it was their first time leaving Mallorca. At that time, connectivity in the archipelago was very poor."

Dosed photos

In the early 1970s, Mallorca had nearly 460,000 inhabitants and received approximately two million tourists a year. At that time, workers were legally entitled to 14 days of paid vacation per year (from 1976 this was extended to 21, and from 1983 to 30). The first trips offered by Martel to residents were within the Peninsula, by boat, and generally during Christmas and Easter. "Back then, air travel was very expensive; there was no resident discount yet [a 33% discount was approved for the Canary Islands in 1987; in 2001, it was already 50%; and in 2018, 75%]. From Palma to Barcelona, a flight could cost around 3.5 hours by sea. The preferred destinations, because they were close, were Barcelona and Andorra, where you could see the snow and buy cheaper products. Likewise, for the most devout, I used to go to the sanctuary of Lourdes, on the border with France," Esteban recalls.

After the postwar hardships, this was the generation of islanders who had begun to embrace the new consumer society brought about by television. "They traveled with the savings they had stashed away in a piggy bank. There wasn't the credit culture we have today. They tended to be families, groups of hikers, or housewives. There were also peninsulars who came with the tourist boom who would bring their cars on board the boat to visit their relatives," says the guide. Emotions were running high. "There was a lot of excitement and curiosity to discover new realities. People took photos very sparingly. They chose carefully when they took them because analog camera rolls held 12, 24, or 36 snapshots and were expensive. Now, however, everyone clicks compulsively on their cell phones. Photos have become a thing of the past," he adds.

"There's nowhere like Mallorca."

As a tour guide, Esteban had to be well-informed. "Back then, there was no internet, and I would go to the library to look for books with information about the destination," he confesses. In the 1980s, work piled up for Viajes Martel, coinciding with Spain's entry into the European Union (1986). "We started offering trips abroad. We took advantage of the charter planes that arrived loaded with tourists from Italy or Slovenia to refill them with locals. That way, the flights were very affordable. Back then, people had to have valid passports, and it was only in the 1990s that they started taking flights like the crossing to Indonesia." Since the mid-1980s, Porrer-born businessman Gabriel Escarrer had already begun building hotels in these far-flung destinations. From those years, there's a curious anecdote that would become a common joke. "There were people who traveled to find out that there's no place like Mallorca."

From Menorca, the travel fever of those years would have a problem. Alaior journalist Miquel Àngel Limón, 65, explains: "We didn't have the connectivity of Mallorca. We only had a few charter flights to Berlin and London. Regular flights to these capitals could reach two peak flights a week." But the lucky ones were few. "Those who could afford to go abroad were businesspeople, with high purchasing power. While the island welcomed tourists, the majority of Menorcans practiced domestic tourism. A Mahón resident, for example, would leave to spend a few days on the coast of Sant Lluís." The journalist highlights something curious about those first European tourists: "We didn't say we were from Spain, but from Menorca. It was a way of asserting our own identity after so many years of being isolated."

Those early getaways also served to hold up a mirror to ourselves. "In 1976," Limón explains, "I took advantage of my time studying in Barcelona to drive around the south of France. Franco had died a year earlier. Having left behind four decades of dictatorship, I noticed the difference of being in a democratic country that oozed freedom." The discovery of modernity also caught our attention. "Going to Paris or London meant being able to buy records, clothes, and other products that couldn't be found here. Although they were very expensive, acquiring them was a great satisfaction. Back then, the world wasn't as homogenized as it had been due to globalization."

Ibiza, the early traveler

Of the four Balearic islands, Ibiza was the earliest to travel. Historian Fanny Tur explains the reasons: "Between the 1950s and 1960s, it was very common to go by boat to Mallorca for one's honeymoon. Also, through the Falangist organization Coros y danzas, there were many Ibizan dance groups that traveled abroad for the first time at the same time in 1952, to an international festival in Llangollen, a town in North Wales.

In Ibiza, the fervor for travel was also unleashed thanks to the island's status as one of the most important centers of artistic creation in the Mediterranean between the 1950s and 1970s. Grupo Ibiza 59 was its visible face. "This encouraged Ibizan artists to visit different places in Europe where Ibiza was already well-known due to its hippie legacy." Tur highlights an important aspect of family trips that became popular from the 1980s onward. "It could happen that for the first time, an Ibizan would meet a Menorcan or Mallorcan in London or Paris, and that awakened a feeling of brotherhood and belonging to the same island community."

The trivialization of travel

Since 1985, retirees in the Balearic Islands have been able to travel throughout Spain at very affordable prices thanks to the Imserso (Institute for the Elderly and Social Services) program run by the Ministry of Labor. The initiative, a pioneer in Europe, was the brainchild of the then mayor of Calvià, the Socialist Francesc Obrador. At a time of severe economic crisis, he conceived it to combat the high unemployment rates in the municipality during the winter. The first destinations offered were Mallorca and Benidorm, and later more regions were included. From being a measure to combat unemployment, it would shift to a social function to promote the well-being of the elderly.

From Viajes Martel, Javier Esteban laments that today, in the midst of globalization, the act of traveling has become trivialized and is no longer a transformative experience. "Now, getting around is much easier, and most people are more concerned with taking photos to post on social media. Figures reign, and there's no desire to fully understand the destination. The other day, I was horrified to see some images of Mont Saint-Michel, the famous town in northern France that I see among tourists. I was in Islam, I was completely myself. 80." And, meanwhile, the demand to "see the world" is out of control. "Since the 2020 pandemic, people haven't stopped traveling, at least three peaks a year. It's as if they've realized that life is short and that they should make the most of it. It's frowned upon to have a vacation and not travel."