Tourists arriving to Palma airport in this file photo of 2017

Tourists arriving to Palma airport in this file photo of 2017. | JAUME MOREY

Andrew EdePalma26/07/2024 09:44
TW
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It's a cliché as it isn’t new. Yes, there are people now asking if Mallorca could die of success, but others were asking the same thing years ago. It goes back further but here’s a flavour almost to the day in 2017. The Economy Circle think tank: “There are objective reasons for believing that the island is on the way to dying of success due to the massive influx of visitors and unsustainable growth that leads to socioeconomic decline with low-skilled occupations and low wages.” The wise people of the Circle spoke of limits to quantitative growth and of the need for “public authorities, economic agents and citizens to stop thinking exclusively about particular interests and focus on the common benefit, a sustainable future”.

Mallorca received 11.64 million tourists in 2017. Last year there were 12.46 million. This year? Who knows. Massive influx whatever the number, while in July 2017 the Economy Circle hadn’t perhaps appreciated the full scale of the unsustainable growth, the housing problem in particular.

Volume, it’s always been about volume, which served Mallorca well when contributing hugely to Spain’s economic miracle in the sixties but which came to be questioned (dying of success?) by the eighties. Instead, they kept adding volume, which in turn brought greater population but ultimately a decline in comparative per capita income and the burdens posed by overpopulation. Meanwhile, no one gave serious thought to alternative economic models not so reliant on tourism.

How do you break the cycle? Do you break it? “Particular interests” are keywords. And in pursuit of “the common benefit”, these are certainly not interests confined to hoteliers.