Twenty years ago, it was difficult for many to reach Es Caló des Moro, a small cove with crystal-clear waters between cliffs with abrupt access in the Majorcan municipality of Santanyí. Its location was not indicated on the road signs and many arrived thanks to the instructions of friends who had been there once. Last summer, the queue to access the cove reached three hours and few on the island know of any residents who have ventured there for pleasure in recent years. Leaving the towel and the basket was an impossible mission, the shore was mined with people taking photos, the access road had been completely eroded and drivers trying to avoid the twenty-minute walk from the nearest parking lot were jamming their cars into the small housing nucleus preventing neighbors from leaving their homes. This Sunday, around 300 residents took to the beach with the aim of making visible the consequences that tourist overcrowding has for the residents of Mallorca.
The growing feeling of tourist pressure is supported by the latest data from AENA, which reveals that Palma airport registered 3.8 million travelers last May, 12.3% more than the same month of the previous year. More than 27,000 aircraft movements that mainly boosted German and British tourism. A situation that has begun to take its toll on a citizenry that in many cases has stopped making certain plans, such as going to the beach or taking a walk to certain places, that once seemed habitual. The statements of Vox’s parliamentary spokesperson on the islands, Manuela Cañadas, who stated a few weeks ago that Mallorcans cannot pretend to “want to go to the beaches in July and August calmly as they did years ago” sparked the anger of many residents.
At eight in the morning this Sunday, groups of friends began to go down the narrow streets of the center of houses in Cala S’Almunia loaded with umbrellas, refrigerators, banners and floats with the aim of going down to Es Caló des Moro. Jordi Ribas, a resident of Cala Pi, said that he had decided to participate to support that Mallorca “is not a theme park” and that the environment and surroundings must be preserved. “The best way is to see graphically how a place like this that has been a paradise all its life becomes. I had been there as a child and this has completely changed, there were no these congregations, this is worse than the beach of the Cathedrals of Lugo. For Jaume Valentí, a resident of Marratxí who arrived walking with his mountain poles, it is necessary to express that tourism in Mallorca goes beyond what should be normal and he believes that the Mallorcan resident is at the service of the tourist “when it is tourism that is “It would have to improve the living conditions of Mallorcans.”
Through an account at the social network X under the user Mallorca Platja Tour A citizen movement began to form a few weeks ago that, around the slogan ‘Let’s occupy our beaches’, aims to make visible the situation that residents face during the summer months. “Es Caló des Moro has become an emblematic place, very popularized by instagramers and influencers international to the point that it has lost almost all the arena. This situation has caused many Mallorcans, who have not been able to access it for years, to feel expelled from their own territory,” they explain in their manifesto to justify the choice of this cove to carry out the action. The first, which was improvised four days after the statements of the extreme right spokesperson, brought together about 60 people on the beach of Sa Ràpita.
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4,000 people daily
Es Caló des Moro supports in its barely 15 meters the pressure of 4,000 people every day, who take 50 kilos of sand from the cove impregnated with their feet, towels, umbrellas and backpacks, according to data from a study managed by the City Council of Santanyi. “It’s absurd. Is it normal that we have to give up something we can enjoy because there is this foreign fever? I think not, we live off tourism, but it has to be controlled,” says María Pons, mayor of the town, who this week launched a “plea” to let the beach, which has lost a good part of its sand, be allowed to rest. The first mayor affirms that the City Council spends a lot of money from the budget to clean the portable toilets installed in the area, maintain the detachment of two local police officers permanently and collect “brutal amounts of garbage” that remain accumulated in the area due to to uncivil tourists. She believes that a good part of the blame for the situation lies with social networks and publications that constantly include photographs of the cove to promote the destination, something that she, she says, the City Council stopped doing many years ago.
Shouting “it’s time to stop”, around 300 people have occupied the entire surface of the beach with towels, umbrellas and coolers, carrying signs and t-shirts that read SOS Residents. A group of volunteers has remained on the access road to inform early-rising tourists with brochures in English and German about the action. One of them was Pedro, a traveler from Brazil who came to the area after nine in the morning with the intention of taking a photo with his partner to immortalize his vacation. Despite the disappointment of not finding a place, both understood the protest because they believe that people who live on the island “have to have the right to come to the beach.” For this traveler, the action makes sense if residents cannot enjoy the place they live in, although he believes it is necessary to find a balance so that visitors can also enjoy it. Half an hour later, Aleix and Ainara arrived, two young people from Barcelona, who found the cove “because it is the most famous on Tik Tok.” “I think that in almost all the towns you can go to there are a lot of tourists, in Barcelona too. But it is tourism, just like we go out to enjoy other countries,” says Aleix, supported by Ainara, who believes that the neighbors have to understand “that they live in a tourist place.”
For the mayor, however, the situation has become “an aberration.” “There are people taking photos who change their swimsuits three or four times to show that they have been in Es Caló on different days. It borders on the absurd,” she says while she insists that the residents of Santanyí do not go to the cove and the neighbors, at most, come down at six in the morning to take a bath. Precisely the residents of this small town, in which there are a handful of houses, are the main victims. A parking lot located a 20-minute walk from the beach partially mitigates the traffic of cars, but there are many drivers who prefer to wait in the area in case a space becomes available and they end up blocking the accesses. “Those who have not been able to park do so where they see a space and then end up preventing the neighbors from leaving,” says Pons. Despite the calls to let the cove rest, the town council has decided to expand the parking that gives access to the area, in a decision that seems contradictory to the messages launched this week and that the mayor justifies in the need “to decongest the area.” This Sunday there were many tourists who turned around when they found the beach full.
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