You were never here

PalmWho says summer is over? In Mallorca, we're about to experience the miracle of a year-round summer. It's true that with autumn comes rain, which for some time now has become torrential and overwhelming: not so long ago this happened occasionally, but now it's the norm. Experts tell us time and again, with the patience of a saint, that climate change is precisely this: phenomena that years ago (just a few years ago) were occasional or sporadic and less powerful are becoming more frequent and more intense.

For many, summer begins and ends with the tourist season, which officially comes to an end on the 31st. We'll feel or read the sector's financial statements, as downward as ever, with whining as always. However, if anyone walks along the coast or through the center of Palma during the month of October, they'll hardly notice an end-of-season atmosphere. There are crowds everywhere, mostly tourists in shorts and short sleeves who take pictures of everything with their mobile phones and take selfies or record videos of themselves to upload them to the networks and leave an audiovisual record of their visit. Maiogca. They are euphoric: it is because the weather is good. In October we have blue skies and radiant sunshine, accompanied by a temperature that during the day does not drop below twenty-five degrees, and at night often reaches sixteen or seventeen: in the countries where many of these people come from foreigners –Germany, the United Kingdom, etc.– this is already more summer than they have at the peak of their continental summers. When the debate on climate change became widespread and took center stage, some of our most prominent hoteliers suddenly saw, at last, an opportunity to deseasonalize tourism activity. It's true, as IB3 explains, that our hoteliers, when they die, become stars that shine brighter than the rest in the firmament: this is a consequence of their privileged intelligence. Some engineers already defend the thesis that climate change cannot be combated, but rather we must learn to live with it: in short, adapt. This is precisely the maxim of Mallorcan hoteliers. In the event of a nuclear disaster, they would know how to defend the charms of radioactive beaches. As things stand now, from time to time the biggest problem is the occasional dana, or a Levante wind, that causes destruction or even deaths. But nobody cares about this.

What truly matters is being able to ride a buggy along the island's roads. The buggy, the sound of the buggy's engine, is the measure of happiness: if it's time for a buggy, it's summer. In this photograph by Ismael Velázquez, we can see a buggy and a kart speeding down the coast of the Delta Hotel, a beach in Llucmajor near Arenal, or Cala Mosques, perhaps better known as Cala Blava. But the names of the places don't matter either. What matters is the buggy and the kart speeding down the road, exhilarated in front of a spectacular sea, with an abysmal blue surrounded by the green and ochre of the scrubland. The photo was taken in mid-October, but it's identical to any that could be taken in the middle of July or August.

Fantasy Vehicles

Mallorca is paradise for many people and many things. It's also paradise for buggies, karts, quads, and mountain bikes and motorcycles. These are fantasy vehicles used only in a fantasy land, for which you don't feel any particular affection because it doesn't really exist. A land where it's summer all year round, or at least every time you go. Like Brigadoon in the movie, but in a turbo-capitalist version. The natural landscape becomes strictly a backdrop for the fantasy adventures of the drivers of these buggies, quads, karts, and other similar inventions. Pure infantilism for adults, escapism in a time and space that cease to be real and become something immaterial: a photo, a sensation, the dream of a summer night or day. In reality, you were never here; you just raced a kart, or a quad, or a buggy. You, therefore, are innocent; you have done nothing to cause the island to deteriorate, become disfigured, or be destroyed, so that it will cease to be a pretty backdrop in the not-too-distant future. Then we can always say it's climate change's fault: with that heat in the summer, and those destructive winds in the fall, there's no way to race freely.