Why Spaniards Are Resisting

If you can squeeze into one of Majorca’s sunspots this summer, you’ll witness two unstoppable forces.

The first, as old as time, was the tide of the Balearic Sea, which wiped out the elaborate sandcastles of the day.

Second, a more modern phenomenon, the tourist tsunami threatens to engulf everything in its path.

Every inch of beachfront property is taken. Finding a parking space is like finding gold.

If you leave your tanning bed for too long, your belongings will be cleared away to make way for a long line of would-be occupiers.

All of this is a sign of a prosperity seen and heard across the island, in no small part due to the constant beeping of contactless payment machines emanating from crowded hotels, restaurants and bars.

Business activity is booming thanks to record numbers of visitors.

But if this is a story about a huge fortune being handed out to the business-savvy Spanish community, then Sonia Ruiz certainly isn’t sharing any information about it.

We met the 31-year-old mother of one in a park a few hundred metres from the beach in the capital Palma.

Her four-year-old son, Luca, played on various slides at the playground without showing any signs of anxiety.

But Sonia was really struggling. The landlord had asked them to leave and she said finding a new place was impossible.

“Every day I look and the rent goes up,” she said.

“I even stopped people on the street and asked them if they had anything because the day I had to leave the apartment was approaching, and I just saw myself and my son becoming homeless because we had absolutely nothing.”

Sonia and her partner are separated but forced to live together because they cannot afford to pay the rent, despite both earning €2,400 a month.

“They ask you to put down a deposit for months. Some people even tell me they don’t want kids, they don’t want animals. And a lot of people are looking.”

Like thousands of Majorcans, Sonia will protest this weekend against the rise in tourism which is blamed for the decline in living standards of locals.

Activists say the high cost of housing is due to the large number of houses and apartments being bought or at least rented out by foreigners during much of the summer.

“This model cannot be maintained any longer,” Pere Joan Femenia, 25, explained from outside the cathedral in Majorca’s capital Palma.

He is a member of a movement called “Menys Turisme, Més Vida” or “Less tourism, more life”.

He said the unprecedented influx of tourists was not only costing locals money on their homes, but was also using up public spaces, public services and natural resources.

Pere started his activism five years ago in Greta Thunberg’s climate movement, but now he focuses on the cost of living for other islanders.

“Businesses are moving from selling traditional products to multinational companies selling ice cream and we are losing our identity. We want to preserve our culture,” he said.

Pere pointed toward the harbor, much farther away from the rows of street vendors and crowds filling the square, explaining that several cruise ships bring some 12,000 tourists to the island every day.

He said it was a myth that Majorca needed a growing tourism industry to survive, and the reality was that many locals were preparing to leave because they could no longer afford to stay here.

Pere argued that limiting incoming flights and cruise ship docking would immediately relieve pressure on the island.

This is a demand that will become part of the slogans and banners carried around Palma during this weekend’s protests.

Spain’s National Statistics Institute said 14.4 million foreign tourists visited the Balearic Islands last year, with Majorca being the largest island – followed by Menorca and Ibiza.

The institute said the number of international visitors to the archipelago increased by 9.1% compared to 2022 while their spending increased even more – by 16.4%.

Including Spanish tourists, activists claim the Balearic Islands could welcome up to 20 million visitors this year.

As Spain’s tourist hotspots have grown over the decades, the debate over whether millions of visitors bring more problems than benefits has become more heated.

This year, it seems, something has changed. The anger of many locals is reaching new levels – especially in Barcelona recently when tourists were doused with water guns.

There have been protests elsewhere on the mainland, in Malaga and the Canary Islands, with Spain’s tourist hotspots now scrambling to contain what appears to be an inevitable flood.

Several British newspapers have compiled a list of “unfriendly holiday destinations” to avoid in the summer of 2024.

On a crowded beach in Magaluf, a destination long chosen by millions of British tourists, the Green family from Rotherham are paddling happily.

This was dad Adam’s first overseas trip, although calling it a “holiday” might be a stretch given the seven children he and his wife have to look after.

“It’s been busy, but we’re making progress. Other than the heat, everything’s been great,” he said.

I asked if they had heard about the protests going on and if that had made them think twice about coming to Majorca.

“I saw a bit of it on the news,” Charlotte said, “but I tried not to look at it because I didn’t want it to stress me out and put me off coming because we had already booked and paid.”

So what about the main argument of the local protesters – that growing tourism is having extremely negative impacts?

“Do tourists promote and make money for this place?” Adam asked.

“People travel all over the world and that’s it. Without tourists there would be no jobs, no wages, no nothing. They rely on it, right?”