Editorial

But trying to get an accurate figure will be a nightmare. What we do know is that there are 8'000 British residents registered, of whom about 2'500 work. There are about 10'000 Germans and according to official figures from the police there are about 30'000 EU expatriates living in Majorca. Now this is all perfectly correct and totally accurate. But then you read reports that by the year 2002 there will be one million German owned properties in Majorca... That in some municipalities 40 per cent of the population is non-Spanish... That councils have to employ foreign language-speaking staff because of the high number of non-Spanish EU nationals. The list goes on. But who are these people? It appears that we have a “missing population” of British and Germans who appear on a semi-official census when needed but disappear when not. One of the reasons why the foreign vote was such a flop in the last local elections was because there are only a very few legally registered residents. I think about 3'000 non Spanish European Union residents voted, which is not bad when you consider that only 30'000 were eligible and many of those may be under 18 or had not been registered at their council. A puzzling state of affairs. Not so puzzling are the airport figures, long considered a barometer of the state of the industry. But did you know that every passenger is counted twice..? Jason Moore