Several more towns in Mallorca, such as Valldemossa, Alcudia, Binissalem, Manacor, Banyalbufar, where Sir Richard Branson owns a luxury hotel, and Son Servera, have joined the campaign on social media platforms such as Instagram, using images created with artificial intelligence (AI) to denounce tourist saturation. These profiles have been popping up since the end of April, when the account ‘Welcome to SollerLand’ was created, followed shortly afterwards by ‘Welcome to SantanyiLand’.
There are now at least eight municipalities in Mallorca that have joined this protest which uses AI-generated images to recreate their most iconic spots filled with tourists. On Monday, these profiles had a combined total of nearly 9,000 followers. These images are often accompanied by a picture of a resident holding a placard lamenting that tourist saturation has prevented them from going about their daily lives in peace.
‘I used to be able to shop at the market,’ reads one of the signs held by a man in one of the images recreated by the “Welcome to Alcúdia-Land” account. “When culture becomes a spectacle, it loses its tradition,” reads another image, in which a Mallorcan couple dances “ball de bot” while tourists photograph them, published by “Welcome to BiniLand”.
In ‘Welcome to BanyalbufarLand’, you can see different photographs created with AI that exaggerate some of the problems experienced in the village due to mass tourism. For example, in one of them, you can see a crowd of motorcyclists crossing the Ma-10, the road that crosses the municipality, or a queue of people waiting to access the Ses Ànimes viewpoint.
Similar recreations have been made by the ‘Welcome to Son Servera-Land’ account, which shows the Costa dels Pins viewpoint, the Talaiot de Ses Oliveres and the Mestre Ramon archaeological site full of tourists. In ‘Welcome to ValldemossaLand’, in addition to some images created with AI, videos have been posted that exemplify ‘the daily reality of saturation’ in the town’s car parks. From ‘Welcome to ManacorLand’, they ironically ask whether they live ‘in Manacor or in Munich’.