Gentrification is commonly blamed in Mallorca for driving up house prices and for expelling longstanding residents from their local communities. Jesús González, professor of geography at the University of the Balearic Islands is inclined to agree. "Gentrification is driving the lower middle class out of Mallorca. Raising the rent by 200 or 400 euros a month is a disguised eviction because the tenant can't afford it and is forced to leave."
He describes gentrification as a process of urban transformation whereby a humble or run-down neighbourhood with cheap housing attracts investors who revitalise it, leading to upward social mobility whereby a lower social class is replaced by a higher one. "The cheaper the housing, the more it attracts speculators."
Foreign buyers are often accused of bringing about gentrification, but González insists it is not a nationality issue per se. "It is primarily a process of upward social mobility and/or social displacement of lower classes by higher ones; combined with real estate appreciation, mainly of a speculative nature.”
The Nou Llevant district of Palma is given as an example of gentrification, but González disputes this. "The process that best describes it is urban fragmentation. There are at least two different social classes in the same neighbourhood, separated by a clear urban boundary - economic, social, landscape-related, and perceptual."
Gentrification leads to changes of all kinds, not just housing, to the point of completely transforming the social composition and the urban landscape itself. González says "it is spreading like an oil slick". In Palma this means to areas that were typically dominated by the middle and lower classes, e.g. El Terreno and Pere Garau. But it is also happening across Mallorca. Although González points out that gentrification is a process of upward mobility not specific to nationalities, he acknowledges that the influences are most commonly German, Swedish and British. And gradually there are more Americans as well.
"Gentrification is negative in many ways; it increases urban inequality. The elitism of the city expands at the expense of displacing the lower and lower-middle classes, who can no longer afford to live in the areas where they have lived until now and have to move elsewhere."