I wondered why, if you were going to hold any kind of protest at a tourist-related beach, you would choose the beach at Sa Rapita Yacht Club at 10 a.m. on a Saturday. And now I understand why: you wanted to stand out. There was hardly anyone there, except for a few media people about your size. Twenty-something people against twenty-something people.
It was a performance. We huddled together as if we were on a towel. That’s what summer in Mallorca feels like. There’s not even five centimetres of space to spread out your towel. The fact that you probably don’t have five centimetres is probably due to the sun loungers taking up space on the beach.
Anyway, there was actually plenty of space. More than enough to bring coolers, loads of beach furniture (including two beach tents) and the odd inflatable dinosaur. These are the toys that are often brought to the beach on Sundays. Not tourists, but residents. The next action is scheduled for Sunday, June 16th. As a result, if anyone is going to be outraged, it will be residents, not tourists. Residents are perfectly capable of “collapsing” the beach without performances or tourist help.
It’s not that I don’t have sympathy. I do. Very sympathetic about the overcrowding, the strain on resources, all of that. But what was this all about? It seems to have been an inept comment by a Vox member of the Balearic Islands Parliament: “We Mallorcans can’t expect to go to the beach in July and August like we did years ago.” In that case, it was as much or more about Vox’s problem as the “massification” of tourism.
The foreign media must have been bitterly disappointed that the beach wasn’t fully occupied, but this is unlikely to hold them back.
