Radical youth organisation Arran have staged another protest. This time it was against "elite tourism" and involved the displaying of banners at the Son Vida golf course and the El Toro Marine Reserve. Arran wished to "denounce the destruction caused by the tourism model".
In a statement yesterday, Arran said that their campaign "is not tourismphobia, it is class struggle". They attacked the current "predatory" tourism model which destroys land. "Tourism businesspeople want only to extract more profit at the expense of our poverty, and institutions are incapable of designing policies to improve the conditions of the working class."
There are, Arran continued, more than twenty golf courses in Majorca which "use an unacceptable amount of water, destroy natural landscapes and render useless soil for farming people". Elite tourism, one that is attracted to golf courses, is a wealthy tourism that has no regard for public space, which is privatised "with large houses in areas of great scenic interest", and that "anchors large yachts over the posidonia".
Arran concluded that they don't want "tourist massification" or elite tourism because both "deny sovereignty". Their solution is to "completely stop holiday apartments, end temporary employment contracts, carry out regular inspections of hotel companies, put a limit on tourist accommodation places, reduce the number of golf courses, limit the number of cruise ships and increase taxes on tourist businesses".