It's mid-May and Mallorca is already showing clear signs of overcrowding and saturation. Last April, the residents of the beautiful town of Sóller, in the Tramuntana Mountains, launched a campaign, Welcome to Sollerland, which has been joined by a dozen other municipalities, all with the same problem: the massive influx of tourists (not immigrants, but tourists) prevents residents from leading normal lives, to the point that moving around is impossible. These are Valldemossa, Santanyí, Artà, Inca, Alcudia, Caimari, Campanet, Pollença, and Banyalbufar, as reported by RTVE in the Balearic Islands. The campaigns add the suffix land behind the name of the municipality and spread images created with artificial intelligence in which we see places saturated with tourists whose aboriginal holds a cardboard sign like those of beggars in front of his chest: "I used to come here to have a coffee", "I used to be able to come and buy at that market", "I used to be able to do it at that market".
Perhaps it's worth saying something first: if many of us in Mallorca now can't do the things we used to, it's because other Mallorcans have made it impossible. Blinded by avarice, greed, speculation, and easy money, many Mallorcans have opted for the model of mass tourism and the sale of the island in more or less large chunks. Property has long been in the hands of foreigners, and when we talk about foreigners, we're not referring specifically to the immigrants who arrive in small boats and who cause so much concern to some. Just this week, the richest woman in the world, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, heiress to the L'Oréal empire, sold her house in Formentor, known as Can Roig, for thirteen million euros; the buyer was a Boston real estate fund. This is just one example. Fantasy businesses involving obscenely wealthy protagonists (and many others who aren't but aspire to be) are an everyday occurrence on Mallorca, an island with nearly one million inhabitants, approximately 21% of whom are at risk of poverty and exclusion. A much higher percentage cannot even consider owning or renting a home, much less if they are young. Local authorities, despite having recognized this situation, are not working to solve or alleviate it, but rather to exacerbate it, with measures that deregulate construction and deprive land of protection. Their far-right partners pressure them to continue their self-destruction.
Little is said about the fact that the internationally renowned American travel guide Fodor's advises against travel to the Balearic Islands, and also to Barcelona, for the first time this year, due to the overcrowding and collapse of these destinations. Don't come to Mallorca, not only to avoid harming the Mallorcans, but also to avoid wasting your vacation. But don't stay in Barcelona either. In reality, we're mired in the same quagmire: we've been sucked into this by the least intelligent and most greedy, and perhaps we still have time to react.
