Cala Varques in Manacor, Mallorca

Cala Varques in Manacor, where there have been complaints about overcrowding. | Archive

Andrew EdePalma08/10/2023 13:50
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Do 'open letters' to politicians ever get read? I'm not a fan of open letters because there is a certain presumption that characterises them. You can make just the same points in the form of a regular article. But open letters there are, as there was to the Balearic tourism minister the other day. The author was Jaume Garau, the president of the Fundació Iniciatives del Mediterrani, whose website states that it is "a movement of civil society in the Balearic Islands to defend the interests of citizens and their territory". The individual initiatives are Palma XXI, Pla de Mallorca XXI, Tramuntana XXI.

Some of you may recognise the name Jaume Garau and these initiatives. They pop up from time to time in expressing concerns about the impact of tourism. And sometimes in dramatic fashion. Two years ago, Garau wrote an article (rather than an open letter) which started by explaining the source and meaning of the word 'apocalypse' - the meaning the word came to take on, catastrophic destruction.

The article combined the theme of climate change and mass tourism in the Balearics and it quoted an energy transition specialist with Spain's National Research Council, Antonio Turiel: "In the long run, the Balearic Islands will not be able to make a living from tourism." The basis for this was that air transport will become increasingly more expensive because of the price of oil and so planes will fly less frequently because prices will be very high - so high that few will be able to afford them. Mass tourism will therefore disappear in those places which can only be reached en masse by plane.

Garau balanced this by referring to an observation by Carles Manera, a one-time Balearic finance minister, a renowned economist and a member of the board of the Bank of Spain. Manera had stated: "To dream that mass tourism will disappear on the islands is a utopia."

Manera was minister with the Francesc Antich PSOE-led government from 2007 to 2011. He is of the left, therefore. But he has had harsh words for what he has described as "left-wing intellectuals and writers" with a craving for a pre-tourism Mallorca. These sources fuel "a certain utopian vision of that Mallorca". Manera is one of many voices who has expressed the necessity of economic diversification and a move away from a reliance on tourism, but he stresses - as if it needed stressing - that this cannot happen overnight.

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Another matter is whether it can happen or happen soon enough to avert Garau's apocalypse, for his article certainly favoured a Turiel take on the impact of climate change. How ironic, we might think. It was the jet plane that created mass tourism in Mallorca and the Balearics, and it is the jet plane that will end it.

The Garau open letter drew attention to governments' short-termism but also highlighted a Spanish government document - España 2050 - which suggests that, in a little over 25 years, 27 million Spaniards (more than half the population) will be living in water-scarce areas and that 20,000 will die each year because of rising temperatures.

So, the Spanish government has an awareness of what might lie in wait. And where tourism is concerned, if not a dramatic decline because of greatly reduced air travel (unless genuine alternative technologies can be made practicable), there is always the impact of higher summer temperatures. The European Commission's Joint Research Council recently identified the Balearics as the Spanish region where tourism will be most harmed. The worst case was a four degree average rise in temperature leading to the loss of over half a million tourists.

You can of course choose to believe these forecasts or not, while in the case of a loss of summer tourists, this might not be all bad if they come at other times of the year when it will also be warmer. Maybe, but to return to the Garau letter, he insists that tourist overcrowding has risen significantly in months like May over the past twenty years. Referring to the human pressure index of all people on the islands at a given time, he points out that a May rise has been in the order of some 500,000. Yes, but the resident population has risen by 335,000 over the same period, so this is not all due to tourism.

The open letter to the minister, Jaume Bauzá, was essentially to do with overcrowding, a theme which links into climate change. Garau was taking the minister to task in having suggested that tourist saturation only occurs in high summer and in seeking greater clarification as to how he intends to pursue an apparent aim of zero growth in tourist numbers.

Bauzá has been vague, contradictory even. And he is minister at a time when the Balearics look set to shatter the annual tourist number record by some half a million to 17 million and more. A loss because of higher temperatures in summer could take us back to where we were last year. But this year, last year, it's all about the short term, when the challenge isn't just about the here and now. There's a far greater one coming.