The popular singing of La Balanguera on Friday in Mallorca was a massive success. Tens of thousands of Mallorcans took to the streets and squares (or to educational centers, as was the case for many students) to participate in an act of affirmation as a country, as a society, and as a cultural and linguistic community that recognizes itself in a series of references and in a common heritage.The most valuable element of this common heritage is the Catalan language: Majorcans have been speaking Catalan for eight hundred years and it is the native language of the Balearic Islands. Catalan from Mallorca, speaking it and sharing it, is the attribute that identifies us as Majorcans and it is the best we can offer to people arriving on the island, as immigrants or for whatever reason. Catalan is the tool that will allow them to live fully as Majorcans, the instrument that will allow them to share their own cultural and linguistic contributions. That is why it is so, so important.At the same time, Catalan finds itself in a delicate situation in Mallorca due to linguistic gentrification, which corresponds with territorial, housing, labor, and economic gentrification. Gentrification as a synonym for overexploitation and speculation. The protests of Majorcans in defense of the language and public school (two things that go together) are also against this reality, in which the exaggerated economic benefits of a few come at the cost of the common good and enormous inequalities among the citizens of this island.The mobilizations of Mallorcans for Catalan are successful. This first performance of La Balanguera has been, as was, a few weeks ago, the arrival of the Correllengua Agermanat flame in Palma, or the Yes to the language of 2024 and 2025: large protest demonstrations, with strong participation and presence of young people who do move and commit themselves to defending Catalan. The entity that has promoted the mobilizations (or has supported them, in the case of Correllengua Agermanat, organized by a conglomerate of entities) is the Obra Cultural Balear, which has addressed its demands to a deaf PP government with its back turned, which has made it its main priority to please the far-right and ultra-Spanishist allies of Vox. The novelty in the performance of La Balanguera was that the main institutional representatives of the PP of the Balearic Islands attended: the President of the Government, Marga Prohens; the President of the Consell de Mallorca, Llorenç Galmés; and the Mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez. It has been a show of skill by the president of the OCB, Antoni Llabrés, and his team to have left these rulers literally without excuses for not joining an act that could only annoy fanatics. At the same time, it forces them to review the calamitous linguistic and educational policy they have pursued so far. The opposition parties also have duties, and they are not minor: all this citizen energy hopes to find a channel, a political articulation, proposals that make them vote with enthusiasm.

If the PP leaders are bothered by being labeled the ideological heirs of Francoism, they'd better get used to it. They will be considered as such, and more than deservedly so, as long as they make such government decisions.anti-democratic, vengeful, and painfullike the one that prevailed, with the votes of Vox and the PP itself, in the plenary session of the Catalan Parliament on Tuesday, March 10.democratic memory lawThe law, finally repealed in this session after several back-and-forths of low-level political maneuvering, was not a law against anyone, but a reparations law that offered, after more than eighty years of pain and oblivion, recognition to the victims of Francoism and their families. Destroying this law and trying to justify it with subterfuge (for example, that it wasn't necessary because a state law already exists on the same matter, an absurd way of trying to evade the issue) fails to conceal the reality: the victims of Francoism are being attacked again out of pure vengeance. The People's Party (PP) may not be willing to say it this way, but the Vox deputies are making it perfectly clear with their interventions and actions in the Catalan Parliament. The erratic interventions of spokesperson Sergio Rodríguez, or the fits of rage from President Gabriel Le Senne, are unacceptable mockery in the seat of sovereignty of a people who believe in democracy and want to live in it. Fascism is never compatible with democracy: it parasitizes it and exploits its very nature (democracy cannot deny anyone freedom of expression or the right to vote) to destroy it from within and spread its message of hatred and revenge. The Spanish nationalist right already won the Civil War and is eager to win it again: the spirit guiding the dismantling of the Memory Law is nothing other than a poorly disguised, if not entirely disguised, civil war mentality.

The daily chaos means that some relevant news stories lack the impact they deserve. A few days ago, the High Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands (TSJIB) rejected the imposition of 25% Spanish in public education in the Balearic Islands, as demanded by a lawsuit filed by a pro-Spanish civic organization, PLIS Educación, which was based on rulings by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), which did rule in favor of the 25% requirement. The Balearic court, on the other hand, considers this decision to be "the authority of the administration," that is, of the Ministry of Education, which opposed the 25% requirement. An absurd claim, by the way, which demonstrates that whoever files it, as teachers often say, has no idea of the reality of the classroom: neither of the linguistic reality that exists (absolutely diverse, moreover, depending on the school, municipality, neighborhood, etc.) nor of the reality of the dynamics of relationships between them and among them. It is interesting to note that the TSJIB (High Court of Justice) ordered the entity PLIS Educación to pay up to three thousand euros for the costs of the proceedings.

Mass tourism has produced a noteworthy occupation: tourist counting. The tourists who come to our lands are counted and recounted obsessively, compulsively, and in every imaginable way: by chosen destination, by country of origin, by gender, by social class, by type of tourism (cultural, climbing, gastronomic, rally, luxury, drunkenness), and all the drunkenness and all. Their habits are also quantified: spending, overnight stays, favorite leisure options, etc. Tourist counting is the occupation of a not inconsiderable number of citizens, and it has also become a nostrat journalistic genre.

The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, has contradicted the statements made by the president of the Balearic Islands, Marga Prohens, and wanted to make it clear that "in no way is the situation in the Balearic Islands comparable to that of the Canary Islands", as you can read in the Chronicle by Anna Mascaró in itNow the Balearic IslandsIn Clavijo's tone—a member of the Canary Islands Coalition—one senses a certain binge of Prohensian demagoguery, constantly comparing the arrival of small boats on the Balearic coast with the massive influxes in the Canary Islands, or even with those on the Italian island of Lampedusa. Prohens doesn't care: everything is ammunition to fire at the Spanish government and the hated Pedro Sánchez (hatred on demand: at the headquarters on Génova Street they indicate who to hate, and with what intensity, and the PP delegations in each community begin to radiate hatred according to instructions). While playing the victim and making inconsistent comparisons, the Balearic president continues to govern with the far-right Vox, a significant part of the problem. She has had—and surely still has—the option of agreeing on policies with the opposition groups, the Socialists, and Més per Mallorca. But until now, Vox has always been chosen as a partner, and recently, in the mid-term review, it has strengthened its position. This is due to the fact that decisions on agreements and alliances are not made in the Consulate of the Sea, but in Madrid.

Migratory routes to Europe are being reconfigured, and the arrival of small boats has intensified in the Balearic Islands. This phenomenon is not new: it is known as the "balloon effect," meaning that when pressure is placed on a migratory route, the flow of people is not reduced but redirected. The latest report from the Ministry of the Interior confirms that irregular arrivals to Spain have fallen by almost 30% compared to last year, with 22,000 migrants this year, approximately 9,100 fewer. However, while the Canary Islands, historically the epicenter of the migration crisis, have experienced a 46.7% drop, the Balearic Islands have registered a 77% increase.

The mayor of Manacor, Miquel Oliver, arrives at the Catalan Summer University (UCE) in Prada de Conflent wearing sandals and a short-sleeved shirt that reveals the tattoo he has on his forearm: "144." These are the days he governed when he first became mayor with Més per Mallorca in 2015, before the opposition snatched it from him. with a motion of censureRe-elected in 2019 in a municipality traditionally dominated by the right-wing PP, Oliver defines himself as a left-wing pro-independence party. In fact, he's in the UCE for this very reason: to reclaim the shared cultural identity of the Països Catalans and defend the idea that Manacor is "something more" than the Levante region of Mallorca. This has been one of his obsessions since his awakening as a pro-independence party, when he came into contact with the student movements. despite being part of a family that had voted for the PP.

That Toni Nadal, a sportsman close to Feijóo's PP, defended the unity of the language at the start of the party's national congress is something that may be sympathetic to some or unsympathetic to others, but it obviously has no value. It corroborates, if anything, the vocation that Toni Nadal has always shown to be a figure with his own voice, both in the circle of his nephew and former pupil, the tennis player Rafael. Rafa Christmas, as in the PP's entourage. Back in 2013, he stood in favor of the Catalan language against a PP government in the Balearic Islands led by José Ramón Bauzá. Nadal supported the green shirt movement, in defense of Catalan-language public schools.

Six more victims of Franco's war crimes have been identified in the Balearic Islands as a result of the exhumations carried out in the Son Coletes cemetery in Manacor and the San Francisco Javier cemetery in Formentera, during the campaigns carried out between 2020 and 2023 under the previous progressive Balearic Government. These are Bartomeu Fornés Bordoy, Serafín Vives Servera, and Gabriel Picornell Femenias, found in Manacor. In Formentera, the identities of the remains correspond to Francisco Delgado Machío, Antonio Sánchez Capilla, and Manuel Gordillo Vega, both from Extremadura. With these, there are now sixty-seven victims of fascism identified in the Balearic Islands, although it is certain that there are many more. You can find information about who each of them were. in the news of the Ara Balears. It should be noted that the interventions were carried out by teams from the Aranzadi Atics company, and that the identifications were made possible through the analysis and comparison of genetic profiles carried out by the Biomics laboratory at the University of the Basque Country, the ancient and modern DNA laboratory at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and the Genomics Service at Pompeu Fabra University.

Six more victims of Franco's war crimes have been identified in the Balearic Islands as a result of the exhumations carried out in the Son Coletes cemetery in Manacor and the San Francisco Javier cemetery in Formentera, during the campaigns carried out between 2020 and 2023 under the previous progressive Balearic Government. These are Bartomeu Fornés Bordoy, Serafín Vives Servera, and Gabriel Picornell Femenias, found in Manacor. In Formentera, the identities of the remains correspond to Francisco Delgado Machío, Antonio Sánchez Capilla, and Manuel Gordillo Vega, both from Extremadura. With these, there are now sixty-seven victims of fascism identified in the Balearic Islands, although it is certain that there are many more. You can find information about who each of them were. in the news of the Ara Balears. It should be noted that the interventions were carried out by teams from the Aranzadi Atics company, and that the identifications were made possible through the analysis and comparison of genetic profiles carried out by the Biomics laboratory at the University of the Basque Country, the ancient and modern DNA laboratory at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and the Genomics Service at Pompeu Fabra University.

In the Tintin comic The Crab with the Golden Claws one of the intrepid Belgian reporter's troubles ended with the crash-landing of a seaplane. The ship, shiny yellow and equipped with floats to soften the crash against the waves of the sea, this time exchanged the water for the burning sand of the Sahara desert. In the collective imagination, seaplanes are more a part of war and adventure films than of the usual passenger transport. But among the unforeseeable consequences of the pandemic there has also been a sudden return of these ships to the Països Catalans. Isla Air is a rare avis. An airline based in Palma that was born in a context that has changed the rules of the game in its sector, and flying the flag of an airplane model that only holds 19 passengers. "We had been working on the project for three years, but in the meantime we got caught up in the pandemic", explains Antoni Massana, who is responsible for the Balearic Islands.