Your weekly news catch up in Mallorca

Beachgoers and beach bar staff in Cala d'Or last Friday morning would not have been expecting a semi-rigid boat to suddenly land on Cala Gran beach and three blokes to start racing across the sand. Nor would they have been expecting a Guardia Civil helicopter to be hovering overhead or a Guardia Civil boat to have pulled up short of the beach because of the shallows. Where was the film crew? There wasn't one, only the odd phone and the helicopter's camera.

The boat had been detected some hours earlier. It was heading for Mallorca at high speed and eventually landed at Cala Sa Nau in Felanitx, which was where two vehicles were waiting. They were to be loaded with the cargo - bundles of hashish. However, the Guardia appeared and the three occupants of the boat made a hurried escape, unable to pick up petrol containers that might have fuelled their return to north Africa. A high-speed pursuit ensued when the boat was spotted. It ended in Cala d'Or. One of the three was arrested almost immediately, the other two the next morning. A further two people were subsequently detained for having rented the vehicles and provided the petrol.

When the three appeared in court in Manacor on Monday, they denied having had anything to do with unloading of drugs and appeared to imply that they were illegal immigrants, as they had relatives in Mallorca. The judge wasn't having any of this and they were remanded in custody. Apart from anything else, there was the fact that they had been throwing bundles of the drug into the sea while they were being pursued.

Summer in April

Given the weather as it has been, the last thing that would-be drugs runners need is to be haring around Cala d'Or with the police in hot pursuit. And hot, or hotter, it was becoming. The met agency Aemet started tempting us (or should it be threatening us) with temperatures in the mid-30s as early as Thursday last week. Daily updates then followed. We will now be discovering if 34C or 35C materialises.

There were meanwhile the weather wise consulting their apps and dismissing all this mid-30s talk. Which may be correct, but it depends on the area of Mallorca. Strange to say, but the weather isn't necessarily the same for the whole island. Over recent weeks, there have been occasions when it has been much warmer in northern areas than southern, even right by the coast. The current hot spell is symptomatic of high summer and when the highest temperatures are in parts of the interior.

Farming and forest fire concerns

For visitors, the weather has been an absolute boon; for some residents as well, but many others will be aware of the downsides. One is the impact on farmers. Mallorca doesn't have the drought problems that are plaguing areas of the mainland, but very dry and very warm conditions for several weeks have caused real concern for harvests - cereals and legumes as well rainfed tree crops, such as almonds and olives. The rains in February and early March, which included the Storm Juliette episode, had created a positive situation. This is no longer the case.

The high temperatures and dry conditions also heighten the risk of forest fires. On the first of May each year the special fire prevention and control service for the summer is established. But fires do occur out of season, as was the case in Deya a week ago when eight hectares of pine forest were affected. Spain's directorate for civil protection and emergencies has meanwhile been warning of the high risk of forest fires on the mainland and on the islands because of the exceptionally high temperatures. This risk in Mallorca, especially in much of the Tramuntana, has been increased because of Storm Juliette, which brought down trees and branches that haven't all been cleared by any means. The Deya fire, even if it was comparatively limited, was a reminder of the devastation that can occur.

Health and climate change

The warm to hot weather having been dominating the news, there has been the inevitable discussion of climate change. At a conference in Palma, the co-director of the unit for climate change, health and the urban environment at the Carlos III Health Institute in Madrid stated that "the problem is the speed that climate change is acquiring". Cristina Linares observed that the Balearic Islands are one of the most affected areas. "Climate change is going 20% faster than the rest of the world." A biologist, Linares argued that the climate crisis "is mainly a health crisis", pointing to an increased mortality rate attributed to heat and to the spread of tropical diseases such as dengue.

A study at the ISGlobal Institute of Global Health in Barcelona has looked at how "green infrastructure" can cool cities down. Researcher Tamara Iungman has concluded that if Palma's current eight per cent of urban land covered by trees were to increase to 30%, there would be a reduction in the number of deaths attributable to the city's heat island effect of 22 per 100,000 inhabitants. This would be the greatest reduction out of 93 European cities studied.

A genuine ecotax, and tourist tax for scooters

Still on a climate theme, environmentalists GOB have proposed that an 'ecotax' is applied to high-polluting activities and ones that consume large amounts of water. In the latter category fall the likes of hotels and golf courses, while cruise ships are examples of contamination. It is already the case that cruise ship passengers pay the tourist tax in the Balearics, but GOB want to go a step further.

The use of the revenue raised by the tourist tax appears is now even more flexible than it had already become. The Balearic government has announced that one million euros of the revenue will go on subsidies for buying electric bikes and electric scooters. Respectively, these subsidies could be 600 and 200 euros; more in the case of bikes and scooters adapted for people with reduced mobility. Justifying these subsidies, the government said that they will make an important contribution to making transport more efficient and sustainable. Perhaps, but where - in truth - is this use covered by the purposes for tourist tax revenue as set out in the 2016 law? Opposition parties reckoned it was an election stunt, while groups calling for greater control of scooters were horrified.

Plane seats and hotel occupancy - a record season?

Opponents of expansion at Palma Son Sant Joan Airport staged a protest in Palma last Saturday and they would have been equally horrified to discover that expansion already appears to be occurring. Spain's ALA Airlines Association announced a 7.4% increase in the programmed number of seats for Balearic airports this summer compared with 2019. There will be 43,122,033 in all.

The reports of this increase were a touch vague, as in it wasn't entirely clear what was meant by summer. Even so, increase there will be. But how will this increase translate in terms of actual passenger numbers and actual visitors? The seats are for inbound and outbound flights, while the average occupancy of planes in summer is around 85%. For the whole of 2019, a record year, there were 29.7 million passengers in Palma (arriving and departing). The opponents to expansion reckon there will be 30.7 million this year. Maybe they will be proved correct.

For May alone, hotels in Mallorca are said to be anticipating average occupancy of 80% with pretty much all establishments open by the middle of the month. If this 80% is confirmed, it would in fact be something of a record for May and by some distance. In 2018, when Mallorca attracted more tourists for the whole year than any other, May occupancy was 70%; in 2019 it was 67%. Both years were based on 95% opening. The 80% does sound on the high side, but if May turns out to be above previous years, this will be another indication of a likely record tourism year.

The sects of Mallorca

The island's tourism, as we were well aware, fell off a cliff because of Covid. Something else that went into dramatic decline was the number of sects on the island. With restrictions on mobility they couldn't gather, as was explained in a report about the curious but also dangerous presence of sects.

The danger, as described by a specialist in the study of sects for the Association for the Investigation of Psychological Abuse, comes in different forms. It can lie in the financial ruin of people who fall prey to "charismatic gurus" and in particular in the desire for total control of, for power over people.

Miguel Perlado, who has been asked by families in Mallorca to help relatives who have become victims, estimates that there around thirty sects on the island. These gurus are like shamans. "They are so-called soul healers and professional tricksters" who offer weekends in nature and a combination of "good vibes, yoga and personal growth".