Thousands of individuals take to the streets in Mallorca to protest the shortage of housing and overcrowding | Spain | EUROtoday

Under the slogan Mallorca is just not on the market, hundreds of individuals marched this Saturday afternoon in Palma to protest the urgent lack of inexpensive housing for the island's residents and denounce the vacationer overcrowding of the archipelago, which leads to issues in accessing the general public providers and to hold out regular actions of every day life. More than 10,000 individuals, in line with the National Police, have taken to the streets in Palma, arriving from all components of Mallorca on a day during which the residents of Menorca have been additionally referred to as to protest in a rally within the municipality of Alaior. In Ibiza, a thousand individuals took to the streets this Friday afternoon below the slogan Ya basta in an illustration during which the organizers demanded unity among the many inhabitants of the island to confront vacationer overcrowding and with the final word purpose of “being able to live in Ibiza.”

The Balearic Islands are the neighborhood that has skilled the best enhance in costs lately. According to a research by the actual property portal Fotocasa, the worth of rental housing on the islands has skyrocketed by 158% within the final ten years, the most important enhance in your entire nation. That enhance has been 12% within the final 12 months. In addition, it’s the neighborhood that suffers the best rental stress, with greater than 142 candidates for every housing commercial, in line with a latest report by the Renta Seguro firm. A scenario that’s worsening with out treatment and that has induced rising social unrest, inflicting many voters to finish up leaving the autonomous neighborhood. An exodus to different locations that leads, in flip, to an absence of staff in lots of labor sectors, reminiscent of healthcare or the State safety forces, which discover it troublesome to fulfill citizen calls for. A scenario, that of housing scarcity, that many hyperlink to the rising vacationer massification. In latest weeks, in several corners of the archipelago there have been episodes of kilometer-long visitors jams to entry sure municipalities, reminiscent of Sóller, lengthy traces to park within the cities or on the seashores, and roads saturated with automobiles as if it have been the center of August, which add to the rising social unrest as a consequence of this scarcity of inexpensive housing.

Slogans reminiscent of “we want to live with dignity” have been heard all through your entire route of the demonstration, which began from Plaza de las Estaciones to finish at Paseo del Borne, with a major presence of households with young children and younger individuals. “Having a home is not a luxury, it is a right” or “We had a life. SOS Residents” illustrated some banners. Others have been ironic, reminiscent of a younger lady disguised as a luxurious actual property agent carrying a chained younger man wearing conventional Mallorcan costume. “I think that a long time ago we reached limits that we should not have exceeded. Now I am a teacher, but I have worked for many years in tourism, I have seen the evolution and we have gotten worse. It is not only tourism, but the purchase of apartments by investors that makes everything very expensive and expels people from their homes, leaving the neighborhoods lifeless and this is ultimately paid for by the working class,” explains Gustavo Martín, who has attended the demonstration this afternoon. In the square, with a banner that read “we want to live in our house” was Sònia, who pressured that tourism is welcome “if it is sustainable.” For this younger lady, the impossibility of having the ability to hire or purchase an condominium is without doubt one of the important causes for taking to the streets to protest: “it is unthinkable to live here, we are in a very difficult point.”

The Time Bank civic platform of the municipality of Sencelles has been the organizer of the demonstration. This small association published a video a few weeks ago, now viral, in which the residents of the town reported that they were being expelled from the municipality because the high housing prices did not allow them to live there. “I rented the house seven years ago at a reasonable price, now you can't find a house for less than 1,200 euros,” explained a neighbor in the footage, in which with 'for rent' signs he denounced that with two salaries and working forty hours a week “people don't make ends meet.” Many of the citizens who appear in the video tell their personal story and some say that they are considering leaving the islands. The good reception of the video, which spread on social networks, led them to call this demonstration, which has been joined by numerous civic associations, neighborhood entities and social and environmental movements.

Javier Barbero, one of the members of the Sencelles Time Bank, believes that the Balearic Islands are in an “emergency” situation with respect to housing. “The rising prices of the real estate market and of life in general prevent us from believing that we can have a life project on the island,” he maintains. His partner, Carme Reynés, affirms that the profile of those leaving the island are hardworking people, with full-time contracts and salaries of around 1,500 euros and who cannot pay the rent increases. They hope that this demonstration will provoke the application of urgent measures, such as the declaration of the housing emergency situation on the islands or the application of the Housing Law to declare stressed areas, which they consider could be a start. “It is inexplicable that the islands are not declared a tension zone, it is almost insulting that the reality of what we experience here is not recognized,” they say.