Calls for mass participation in Mallorca tourism demonstration

First protest of the season to take place on Sunday in Palma

Last July's mass protest in Palma.

Last July's mass protest in Palma | Photo: Majorca Daily Bulletin reporter

| Palma |

Balearic environmental group GOB has called on the general public to take part in the demonstration organised for Sunday by the “Menys turisme més vida” (Less tourism, more life) platform against tourist overcrowding and in defence of the territory.

The demonstration, which has already been endorsed by more than 90 organisations and groups, will start at 6pm from Plaza de España in Palma and aims to be a collective response to the housing crisis, environmental collapse and loss of quality of life suffered by the islands.

The environmental organisation has warned that tourist pressure contributes directly to the destruction of fragile ecosystems, especially in coastal, humid and forest areas. Tourism-oriented urban development projects, they added, endanger biodiversity and protected natural areas, many of which are already in a critical state.

At the same time, environmentalists have warned that the governing Partido Popular and Vox are pushing through a legislative offensive that represents ‘the biggest speculative operation ever seen’, through deregulatory decrees that ‘facilitate the massive reclassification of land and the intensification of construction, regardless of urban and environmental planning, under the excuse of creating housing’.

This strategy, they continued, includes legalising rural land and urban reclassifications without technical or sustainable criteria, putting the territory and resources such as water at serious risk. And according to GOB, the uncontrolled increase in tourist rentals has turned access to housing ‘into a daily drama for thousands of families’. Entire neighbourhoods are being transformed into exclusive areas for visitors, driving out the local population and encouraging property speculation, they warned.

For GOB, absolute dependence on tourism makes Mallorca’s economy highly vulnerable, and they also point to the social and cultural consequences. ‘The transformation of public space to adapt it to the demands of tourism contributes to the loss of identity, cultural trivialisation and the breakdown of the community and social fabric,’ they concluded.

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