The winds of war that are sweeping the world do not seem to have lost people's desire to take summer holidays. A few days ago, the ITB, the International Tourism Fair, was held in Berlin, where our forces were once again exultant. Spain, as a tourist destination, hopes to beat the record figure of one hundred million tourists in the season that awaits us. Twenty million are expected in the Balearic Islands alone, which would be two million more than last year, when there were quite serious protests from a large part of the population, denouncing that the overcrowding, saturation and collapse of the Balearic Islands and the Pitiusas were unbearable, unlivable and, of course, unsustainable. It is difficult to live on islands that are literally exhausted every year (in terms of their services, their natural resources, the quality of life of the people who live there) and that are increasingly unable to recover during the few months of relative winter calm. Something similar, obviously keeping in mind the proportions, is happening in the city of Barcelona, which for some time (particularly during the mandates of mayors Clos, Hereu and Trias) became strongly Balearicized in terms of its tourism industry. It is a way of understanding tourism "that tends to prioritize the experience of visitors over the well-being of local residents."
I have reproduced these last words in quotation marks because they are not mine, but from the American tourist guide Fodor's, one of the few that still manage to maintain itself as an international reference in its field. Fodor's publishes a No List of places that it advises against visiting, and just a month and a half ago it included the Balearic Islands and Barcelona. Also the Canary Islands and Venice. Fodor's experts consider that all these places should be avoided precisely for three reasons: overcrowding, saturation and collapse. Three terms that, at least as far as tourism is concerned, we can read as synonyms, and that in any case can be summed up in a single idea: exhaustion. Exhaustion of a tourism model that has already given everything it could give, and that now turns against the same people who have embraced it without ever thinking of putting, if not alternatives, at least some kind of counterweight. But also exhaustion of the places, of the people, of the landscapes themselves.
However, our leaders intend to persist. In Catalonia, the government is determined to push ahead with an airport expansion that, at the moment, only seems to serve the purpose of increasing low-cost tourism. In the Balearic Islands, President Prohens admitted last year that these islands were overcrowded and that (her exact words) "a limit had been reached," but this year she denies this, under pressure from hoteliers, and states that "if we receive more tourists, but more evenly distributed, we will be on the right track." It seems that the world is preparing to strike a thunderbolt, but if we hurry, we can do it sooner.
