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news
Mallorca cycling“We used to have a life”: Chants of “no more cyclists” at anti-tourism protest in Mallorca as residents complain of tourists driving up cost of living
Banners of “give back our homes” in hands, waving the Mallorcan flag, booing tourists having meals in restaurants, and some cheeky shots at England and Germany for their losses at the Euros — these were the scenes as thousands took to the streets of Palma to protest against the record number of tourists visiting the Spanish island of Mallorca, including cyclists.
Located between Ibiza and Menorca in the Mediterranean Sea and part of the Balearic Islands, Mallorca has long been one of the most sought after locations for international tourists in search of sun. The island’s splendid beaches and sweeping mountains play a role too, of course.
Spain’s National Institute of statistics says last year 14.4 million foreign tourists visited the Balearic Islands, of which Mallorca is by far the biggest, with number of visitors increasing by 9 per cent since 2022, while their spending went up even more - 16.4 per cent.
But most importantly, it has been at, or at least very near, the top of the list of cycling destinations in Europe, as going by conservative estimates, almost 350,000 cyclists visit the island every year for rides along the gorgeous vistas and the brutal climbs, one of them being the Sa Calobra, the 10.1km long Category 1 climb, bridging 654 vertical meters with an average gradient of 6.5%.
> Just how good is Mallorca for cycling?
Sa Calobra, a brutal climb in north-eastern part of Mallorca
According to a report, cyclists usually have an average spend of €95 a day, bringing around €200 million into the island economy, typically in the low season. But with all the commerce, tourists have also allegedly driven up house and renting prices along with cost of living.
And to protest against that, hundreds of organisations held a joint demonstration in the Mallorca’s capital city of Palma, bringing together almost 10,000 people who felt they were being betrayed by their own government by receiving a lower priority than tourists.
#directo La manifestación contra la saturación turística en Mallorca en el Born #CanviemElRumb #PosemLímitsAlTurisme https://t.co/H0dYFp7dzF pic.twitter.com/9Td6yuryrz
— Diario de Mallorca (@diariomallorca) July 21, 2024
People sang Catalan chants in unison, lyrics ringing out: “There will be no more regattas, tomorrow is the last cruise.
“Goodbye rental cars, goodbye rat businesses. Houses will be cheap and we won’t see more cyclists.
“We will plough the highways, the hotels will be empty and so the world will understand that there are too many tourists.”
Ha passat el que necessitam que passi: tornar cap a ca nostra més contents del que hi hem arribat.
Hi hem estat i les mirades i somriures còmplices han fet la resta. La Mallorca que m’agrada.#MenysTurismeMésVida pic.twitter.com/Tix8vwSr4V
— namerimeri (@namerimeri) July 21, 2024
The BBC reports stories of tenants struggling to pay rent or find cheaper places to live as landlords find it more lucrative to rent out their places as Airbnbs, or sell to a private developer interested in constructing hotels, or even sell them to foreigners to come and live there, or as holiday homes.
25-year-old Pere Joan Femenia, part of the movement called "Menys Turisme, Més Vida", or "Less Tourism, More Life”, said: “It’s impossible to sustain this sort of model…Businesses are changing from ones selling traditional products to multi-nationals selling ice cream and we are losing our identity. We want to preserve our culture.”
He added the unprecedented numbers of visitors are not only pricing locals out of the housing market, they are also using up public spaces, public services and natural resources.
> Stephen Roche pledges to pay creditors of his Mallorca-based cycling holiday business €600,000
At the demo yesterday, some people held up placards saying: “Take back your drunks, give back our homes” and “We used to have a life… SOS Residents”.
Some even saw it as an opportunity to take a dig at Germany and England’s losses at the hands of the Spanish football team at Euro ’24 semi-final and final. One poster said: “Raus aus dem finale, raus hier”, or “Out of the final, out of here” to German tourists, while another targeted at English tourists said: “The only thing coming home is you.”
Protesters holding up placards in Mallorca during anti-tourist protest (credit: @marcmasmiquel on Twitter)
The anti-tourist sentiment however, isn’t just local to Mallorca, but has grown in a number of parts of Spain, most notably in Barcelona, Valencia and San Sebastián.
> Mallorca tourists to get access to Bicipalma “Boris bikes”
Meanwhile Toni Perez, mayor of Benidorm, Valencia, has blasted anti-tourist protesters for not understanding fewer visitors would be economic suicide. He told local media: “Has anyone considered that in a European country in which its great strength is the car industry, the population demonstrates against it?”
The Sun reports regional government spokesman Antoni Costa said: “There’s no fear because here it hasn’t happened and people have always been respectful.
“But we have seen a certain type of behaviour in Barcelona which, as you can imagine, we didn’t like. We ask for the upmost respect for those who have decided not to demonstrate and urge those who do protest to do so peacefully and not interrupt other citizens and visitors.”
However, Pere Joan Femenia described the notion that Mallorca needs tourism to survive as a myth, the reality instead being that many locals are contemplating leaving the island altogether because they can no longer afford living there.
Pere argued that putting limits on flights arriving and cruises docking will immediately ease the pressure on the island — a demand that formed part of the slogans and banners during the weekend’s protest.
As anti-tourism sentiment runs high in Mallorca, are you planning to visit the island for cycling?
Adwitiya joined road.cc in 2023 as a news writer after graduating with a masters in journalism from Cardiff University. His dissertation focused on active travel, which soon threw him into the deep end of covering everything related to the two-wheeled tool, and now cycling is as big a part of his life as guitars and football. He has previously covered local and national politics for Voice Wales, and also likes to writes about science, tech and the environment, if he can find the time. Living right next to the Taff trail in the Welsh capital, you can find him trying to tackle the brutal climbs in the valleys.
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23 comments
When booking holidays it would be good to know what proportion of the cost actually goes to local communities. Often I suspect it is very little.
They have my sympathy, I grew up in suburban east London and almost everyone I went to school with has been priced out. Its not a great conversation to have as it flirts with nativism (should you be entitled to live here because your family feature on the local war memorial?) and some people will have chosen to move anyway.
The core issue is the growth of a global middle class that can afford to travel. The way to make it work for locals is to spread it out and take pressure off of the hotspots.
I've lived in Brixton for three decades. I moved to Brixton when I first came to London because it was cheap and I didn't have a lot of money. It's not cheap any more.
I used to visit remote parts of mainland Spain for 2 weeks between January to March for several years 20 years ago for rock climbing. I also dreamed of doing a road bike tour of Spain for a year on retirement - not going to happen now - not welcome.
I am absolutely sure you would be very welcome, especially if you revisited the remote areas. Even in Valencia, where there are protests about overtourism, I very much doubt you'd be hassled on a personal level. So your dream is still attainable.
I think you've been taken in by the media here. If the 10,000 figure is accurate for the rally (it's surely a rough guesstimate), that is about 2% of Palma's population. Tourism accounts for roughly 45% of Mallorca's GDP. A counter campaign has been launched to let tourists know they are welcome (I've been there cycling 6 times in the last 18 months and have never had a problem). People on the island say it's much more complex than being an Airbnbs issue - some point to long-term rental laws heavily favouring tenants playing a part. Whatever, the problem of locals being priced out of the housing market is not an issue unique to Mallorca - many areas suffer.
So they want fewer jobs and monies, I guess they already forgot what happened with COVID.
Another thing that pisses off locals is when suddenly, in your block of flats, three flats take short term tourist lets of a few days and every week or two it's quite certain that a group of high spirited revellers will be having parties until the small hours, or even until dawn, while the rest of the block has is desperately trying to sleep. Despite our famous affinity for fiestas, most of us nowadays follow a fairly normal timetable. I have never been to the Balearics, but I visit the Costa Blanca regularly. Nice place, nice people, nice weather, nice routes, good food, but too much traffic on narrowish roads often without hard shoulder for slow traffic. I often wonder why tourists don't visit the emptier parts of Spain which I greatly prefer for riding, where you have the road pretty much to yourself. In general, all you have to do is get about 30 to 40 miles away from the coast, and, obviously, large inland cities and it's a different world exploring minor roads. But 32mm tyres as a minimum.
Well, their protests have worked on me, I won't be taking my family there this year. A shame for me, but I'm sure these upstanding people will be delighted.
I personally see this as another example of vocal minorities using social media to radicalise normally reasonable people through selling dreams / nightmares with little substance.
Clearly the answer is not to alienate tourists, its to hold the government to account, but hey ho, any chance to demonise a cyclist I guess.
This really isn't about cyclists. Its a general complaint about tourists. And it isn't a vocal minority, its a huge number of people. Sometimes asking your politicians who are no doubt benefitting very nicely from tourism to calm it down doesn't work and you have to try a different tact.
Although this actually is a form of asking (or demanding of) the politicians. Protest is a part of the democratic landscape.
The expensive housing situation is quite complex. One problem is the tourists indeed, but there are bigger in my opinion. First of all there are loads of empty houses https://www.majorcadailybulletin.com/news/local/2023/09/21/117209/the-nu... . People are reluctant to rent them, because in the 2008+ recession, many wild things happened, many are owned by the banks or people are just too old to bother, as Spain has one of the oldest populations in Europe.
Another problem is that the houses are bought from another countries citizens. A low wage in Switzerland, Luxemburg or Norway is a wealthy one in Spain so they can buy houses there with the easiness locals can only afford a car.
14.4 million tourists, and the problem is cyclists?
Try reading past the headline.
The slogans might sound harsh but the reality for many is grim while the landlords and corporations suck the money out to their offshore accounts. It's the opposite of sustainable.
The situation is the same in so many popular tourist destinations. In the UK I immediately think of Cornwall, North West Wales (especially Llŷn), the Lake District and even places as remote as the Isle of Skye, which was very quiet when my parents took us there in the 70s and early 80s. All are very scenic rural areas that have benefitted but also suffered as a result of the growth in tourism in recent decades. Try buying a house in Ambleside or Abersoch on local wages; and seasonal jobs won't pay the bills between October and March.
Fair comment. The point is not to have no tourism, though, just to make it sustainable as it presumably has been since the 60s when Mallorca started to become a package destination. The advent of Airb&B and booking.com has supercharged the market to the great detriment of locals and I'm not at all surprised they're p***ed off - the ones not renting out their apartments and houses, that is 🙂. Restoration of some balance is needed which needs government regulation.
As for cyclists, I was there in the last week of April which is peak cyclist, and, yes, there are a lot of bikes out, but we don't take up much road and we certainly aren't causing the 2 mile queue at the Cap Formentor light house. But I suppose locals may have another perspective. I stayed in hotels and they seemed happy to have me.
As I understand it, one of the big complaints is that it's mostly not locals renting them - rather it's people from outside buying them and then sucking all that income out of the island, leaving the locals with mostly just the downsides.
The advent of airbnb has allowed property owners who used to rent houses out to people to live in to rent them out to tourists at much higher weekly rates, they can generate more income in 20 weeks of the sumemr season than they ever could have renting out full time.
This is not a problem exclusive to Spain. Previously the tourist market was normally hotels or more exclusive villas generally ina resort village, but not every landlord can easily rent out any house or apartment for more money on short term lets.
Less risk, they won't be having to evict a tourist for non payment of rent, as a) they are going home in a week or two and b) they have paid up front.
Perhaps the solution is regulation that properties are listed as either for residential or tourist purposes and action taken against landloreds breaching these rules. Of course there will be losers because the increased rental yields will have driven up property prices and some will have bought them based on expectation of higher yields.
Of course you can leave the market to do what it does, the entire island will become short term lets other than owner occupiers, and anyone working in the tourist industry will need to be paid enough to allow payign those rents.
And (as others have pointed out) they rent in areas where hotels wouldn't be allowed under planning rules because they cause a lot of nighttime disrution for local residents and generally require different facilities (e.g. restaurants vs local shops - tourists eat out; different travel patterns (going to tourist destinations vs commuting), drunk holiday makers coming home in the early hours).
See Edinburgh - the festival + fringe is long enough that landlords seriously consider just renting out on airbnb for that period and all but ignore the rest of the year. £1000/week isn't unusual; 4 week period, plus people performing etc often needing a week either side; your half way to a yearly contract at £1000/month (which you might not even get)... Only need a couple of other visitors to make it viable. (Of course the opposite side is, people taking 12 month fixed term AST's then only paying rent for 1-2 months to cover the fringe/festival and telling the LL to sue them for the other 9-11 months rent...)
I suspect for mallorca cyclists are an easy target because in some places most will be tourists, especially during the week. Much like despite being the right distance with a decent cafe, very few of the cycle clubs near me seem to go to box hill - local knowledge means they know of plenty of other places regarded as at least as nice to ride, with cafes with shorter queues etc.
I think the cyclists they protest about, rather like the Shetlanders, are those who hire a dozen bikes for the whole family for a day to go sight seeing and then proceed to block up traffic in the centre of town. Now, I would, of course, be completely in favour of prohibiting cars in the centre of town, but until that happens the average car driver, already stressed (because he's driving a car), has a right to be there and suddenly sees a dozen bikes going the wrong way down a one way street and acting like they are entitled to do so and gets angry. Riding bikes while taking selfies while in the middle of a milling crowd, all taking selfies themselves, in a pedestrianised area is another cause of conflict, especially when there are lots of older people, with slow reflexes, and children, with limited sense in the mix. That, at least seems the idea in Valencia.
I think it's more likely that cycling has extended the holiday season in Mallorca so it's now March-October, this shifts the balnce between short term lets during tourist season and renting out to locals for 12 months.
Good point. Though I was referring more to Valencia, as I said at the end, which isn't quite as extreme as Mallorca with regard to house/rental prices.
I'm going to start a march through London protesting about too many financial markets workers in the City and then move on to rich non-doms in Mayfair.
also complain about airbnb houses and flats in london, causing all the same issues, a shortage of supply for people who live and work in the city, and especially properties bought by overseas investers which then sit empty.