Thanks for an excellent newspaper for the foreign community in Majorca.
Palma has introduced regulations and bans in an amazing number of areas. And seems quite efficient at following up.
With one striking exception: Graffiti. It is surprising to see how grafiti is allowed to degrade, pollute and destroy even the historic and cultural Old town buildings and architecture.
Street cleaning seems very good in Palma, but this just makes it more astonishing why graffiti is not addressed. Palma will not succeed aiming for upmarket tourism and visitors when the Old town and buildings are allowed to look slum like. It is difficult to understand why the left oriented local government who seems concerned with pollution, culture and preserving the historic city, is not addressing this. And why are not road signs destroyed by graffiti cleaned or replaced.
In Norway’s capital a similar challenge with graffiti was easily solved: The town hall established graffiti teams who photographed (as evidence) and removed graffiti within 24 hours. The local business community contributed to financing this (rather than paying for individual cleaning). The judicial system prioritised catching the vandals and used the photos as proof. The perpetrators had to cover the cost of their destructions and were sentenced to community service, removing (guess what): graffiti.
With practically nobody seeing the graffiti because it was removed within 24 hours, and experiencing the hard work of removing graffiti through community service, the attraction of graffiti vanished amongst the vandals. After an initial phase with a lot of graffiti cleaning, it is now a relatively small job removing the little new graffiti appearing. It is time for media to put this on the agenda, confront the local politicians and for Palma to act, starting with the historic Old town.
Ottar Ertzeid