Assemblea 23-S is the umbrella title for the thirty associations and organisations which are due to take part in the demonstration against so-called tourist "massification" on 23 September.
A "manifesto" has been produced ahead of the demonstration which alludes to recapturing the spirit of past protests, such as the protection of Es Trenc from hotel development, the famous occupation of the island of Dragonera in 1977 and the objection to the Palma-Inca motorway. The manifesto refers to how Majorca of the late nineteenth century was an island visited by European aristocrats and "romantic travellers". By the 1960s, however, there was a very different model: "The Francoist authorities and the local 'caciques' decided to impose the tourism industry on a predominantly agrarian island."
Since then, it continues, "tourism has been sold as the sacred manna that would take the islanders from being backward". No one, the manifesto suggests, has "dared to oppose this hegemonic account". "Until now."
The "enormous benefits" of the tourism sector are thanks to the "precarious work of thousands of workers for whom the supposed benefits had no effect". Workers are paid close to the minimum wage, they have temporary contracts if they are lucky to have a contract at all. These contracts are for twenty hours when sixty hours are spent on arduous days' work that are the result of exploitation.