The chaos at Palma Airport last Friday might just have overshadowed the protest planned for Sunday. At one point it wasn't clear how long the disruption would last, it first having become really apparent quite early on Friday morning. We were to all be made familiar with CrowdStrike, not just in Mallorca but around the world, as delays and cancellations threatened problems across the whole of one of the busiest weekends of the summer.
As things were to turn out, and despite the likes of TUI having been making preparations beyond Friday, normality was restored fairly quickly. There were some very long queues for check-in and there were delays and cancellations, but hotels and airlines didn't need to have to put travellers up. They eventually got away, while others were able to arrive, and on Saturday there were no issues other than usual ones for the height of summer.
The airport was obviously not alone in having been affected. At ITV centres, for instance, drivers arrived to find they couldn't keep their MOT appointments as the whole system was down. New appointments were being issued on the spot. As these were for a few days' time, it may take rather longer to get through just at the moment than it normally does.
Russian cyberattacks
In other news of an IT nature, the Council of Mallorca blocked access to all the town hall websites it manages - 37 in total. The reason was a cyberattack on one particular website; "unusual movements" on Tuesday morning had been detected. The attack was of a kind designed to overload websites with so many requests that they become unusable. The Council said that personal data were not at risk. It's believed that a pro-Russian group was responsible.
There was no doubting the Russian connection of a hacktivist arrested in Manacor by the Guardia Civil. This individual was a member of NoName057(16), a pro-Russian group that was set up following the invasion of Ukraine and which responds to "the hostile and openly anti-Russian actions of western Russophobes". The Guardia arrested two other people, both of them in Andalusia, the operation having been coordinated with the Prosecutor's Office at the Audiencia Nacional high court in Madrid.
On the beaches
Rather more jolly news in Manacor, and this was a report which explained that the numbers of sunlounger sets on the municipality's beaches have been cut by between 18% and 50%, depending on the beach, of which there are a number that have beach services of this type, e.g. Cala Domingos and Porto Cristo. Three years ago, the town hall followed the lead of Alcudia and decided to 'municipalise' beach services, i.e. take direct control rather than contract them out. This has made it easier to adopt a policy not solely driven by financial benefit.
Still on Manacor's beaches, or as they are at present, there are some that won't last. Cala Varques, symptomatic of overcrowding, is among 185 of 870 beaches in the Balearics destined to disappear by the end of the century. The Balearic Oceanographic Centre has undertaken a far more detailed study of the effects of climate change and rising sea levels than is the case with other more global approaches. The specific characteristics of each beach has been taken into account.
To Calvia and its beaches, and the town hall will be using cameras and analytical algorithms in Magalluf, Paguera, Palmanova and Santa Ponsa. These are for effective control of beach capacities, with the data feeding into the Smart Calvia platform and the town hall's tourism website. Users will be able to consult capacities - how full beaches are - through a chatbot, this approach being in line with Calvia's status as a Smart Tourism Destination. Above all, this is to do with the management of tourist flows.
Too hot for the Americans and the British
Returning to climate change, a stark fact about hotter summers in Mallorca is that there was only one heatwave during the whole of the 1990s. Three per summer is becoming the norm. There was perhaps a heatwave last week - it was questionable whether the spread of temperatures and duration met the heatwave qualification - while a met agency model points to one being likely next week.
It has been said in the past that summer tourism will be affected negatively by extreme temperatures, and CaixaBank has now indicated which nationalities are most likely to be put off returning to a destination if they have experienced intense heatwaves - temperatures eight degrees above the historical average. The Americans, the bank's research arm has calculated, reduce their willingness to return by 42%. And second on the list are the British - 34%.
Taps turned off again
On climate change or even without it, we should need no reminder that water is a very precious resource, one that some of Mallorca's municipalities are struggling to supply satisfactorily. The island isn't subject to drought conditions - there is a pre-alert for drought - but the characteristics of certain areas of the island pose greater difficulties than others.
In the Tramuntana Mountains, five municipalities have had to adopt special measures, for the most part restrictions on water use, e.g. for pools and watering gardens. In Banyalbufar, however, the supply has had to be cut. This first happened in May, and last Monday, following a weekend of what the town hall described as excessive consumption, the taps were turned off again for several hours. Banyalbufar has a municipal reservoir that is replenished, but this takes time, while they also rely on water tankers. A problem is getting companies to deliver at weekends.
Desperately sad
Last week there was the tragedy in Formentera when rocks at a beach fell on a two-month-old baby girl. It was a freak incident, but how on earth are her parents coping? On Monday, eleven-year-old Clodagh Phelan fell from a seventh floor balcony at the Jupiter hotel in Puerto Alcudia's Club Mac complex. A complete accident but an unbearable tragedy for her parents and two brothers.
Palma protests
Thousands of people marched through Palma on Sunday evening calling for an end to mass tourism and more affordable housing in Mallorca. Many city centre streets were sealed off to traffic and scores of additional police officers are on duty. Placards reading Fewer Tourists and We Want To Live where the order of the day. There was even one which said Brexit Out!
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