Growing visitor numbers have been accompanied by a spike in local hostility as footfall puts strain on regional services and infrastructure, however.
Bartolomé Servera, president of the food and beverage distributors association, warned: “If the politicians don’t get it right and Majorca doesn’t stop growing, it will collapse. I don’t know how they’re going to solve it, but something has to be done, and absolutely nothing is being done.”
He told the Majorca Daily Bulletin: “The housing shortage is very worrying … for me, holiday rentals are the root of all evil. I worked as a tour guide in the 1960s, when tourists came in an orderly fashion, and these problems didn’t exist.”
His comments come after the annual bulletin of the Spain’s Housing and Land Observatory found that only 1.35% of housing stock in the Balearic Islands as a whole is currently available.
The report said the driving factor behind the lack of available stock is a shortage of new development projects, with those being pushed through generally high-end and not attainable for locals.
Fresh action is expected next month, as the Menys Turisme Mes Vida group, which translates to “Less Tourism More Life”, plots a “historic turnout” on the streets of Majorca’s capital city Palma on July 26.
The demonstrations have attracted thousands of supporters, with an estimated 15,000 gathering in Palma in May 2024, where tourists were booed and jeered as they ate dinner, forcing organisers to issue a formal apology.
