If you can’t stand the heat....
So why the change in sentiment?
How have we gone from A Tourist, A Friend, to Please don’t Come here anymore? We all know that is only a very small minority who are active on the anti-tourism front but what puzzles me is that a sizeable chunk of the local population remains silent. Do they agree or don’t they? Even the Balearic minister for tourism, Jaume Bauza, gave a rather wishy-washy response when he was asked for his thoughts on the “Tourists Stay Away” letter. “I don’t agree but I respect their opinion,” he said. How about “get stuffed, we live from tourism”; it would have been a more appropriate response.
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I suppose it is more a question of having to share their beloved island with millions of tourists, but this is nothing new; holidaymakers have been coming here for years. So why the change in sentiment? My view is that the island has lost part of its quaintness and some parts no longer feel so “Mallorcan”. Yes Jason, its lost most of its quaintness and you forgot to add - nowadays every little pueblo has two or three foreign real estate agents busily trying to buy up every piece of available real estate so that Mallorquins can no longer afford a house on their own island. Add that to tourism which has exploded to a point it bears no relation to those heady days you obliquely refer to as " holidaymakers have been coming here for years." I bet Muriel Cross would be horrified if she was able to see it now. The island is at a tipping point, we are in a perfect storm just like the UK is at the moment. In both cases it may be too late to change direction unless severe and radical changes are enacted. People tend not to like severe and radical change, they prefer to look the other way as change happens slowly drip by drip till finally the shock of what is happening finally hits them. Thats where we are now in both the above cases.