Curious posters appeared at beaches in Manacor on Friday. Different messages in English indicated that bathing was not permitted or recommended. One warned of "dangerous jellyfish". There were also messages in Catalan. These made clear that there was no danger.
Manacor Caterva is a group comprising organisations and individuals who campaign against tourist overcrowding. In a press release, it stressed that the danger was one of "mass tourism". The posters, the group added, were tinged with "humour".
Critical of "the tourist overcrowding that Mallorca suffers", the messages were very clear - "the coves of the Balearic Islands have been expropriated by tourism".
"The usurpation of the coves is just one more expression of how capitalism uses an economic activity such as tourism, takes it to the extreme and freely dries up the land and extracts the maximum surplus value from the workers. There are guilty parties and it is necessary to name them, such as the hoteliers or the 'rafels nadals' with the total complicity of some municipalities and the government, the current and the previous one."