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jeder-redetxx · 20 days

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#nike cortez #z #formentera #happines #thank u #thank you!#black neko #father time #goth punk

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pangeen · 5 months

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" Jellyfish Dancing " //© David Antoja

#Formentera #Baleares Islands #Spain #nature #Underwater Photography #Wildlife #Marine Life #Jellyfish #photography #aesthetics #wanderlust #explore #follow #discover

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jeanambrojo · 10 months

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#mallorca #ibiza #eivissa #formentera #35mm #film

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useless-catalanfacts · 11 months

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An important reminder of the disastrous consequences of touristic massification.

I translated another article about the housing emergency in the Balearic and Pityusic Islands.

The Balearic Islands are Mallorca (sometimes known in English as Majorca), Menorca (sometimes known in English as Minorca) and includes the Pityusic Islands, which are Eivissa (usually called Ibiza in English) and Formentera. All of them are found in the Southern Europe, in the Mediterranean sea, and are extremely popular holiday spots, particularly for German and British tourists, but also tourists from the rest of the world. Their local language is Catalan, in which this article is originally written.

Sad is he who without love has to search for a home (in the Balearic Islands)

Opinion piece by Sebastià Alzamora

The housing emergency in the Balearic and Pityusic Islands has existed for some time and it's taking more dramatic tones every day. From teachers who have been destined to Eivissa as a substitute and spend their weeks in the island sleeping in their car (because with a salary of 1,000€ it doesn't make sense to rent even just one room for 700€ or 800€ per month) to the situation showed by a recent Caritas report on poverty in the Balearic Islands: many low-income families, or with uncertain incomes (often hotel workers) who cut the money they should spend on food to be able to pay rent (with all the consequences of cutting short your food, specially for children). Also, the explanation of the "no vacancies" mysterious phenomenon that the Balearic Islands, and particularly Mallorca, achieved last summer: since everyone knows that the housing prices in these lucky islands are unfeasible, hotel owners this season take advantage of local workers (paying them a salary so low that doesn't allow them to move out of their parents' home or, even worse, their ex-spouse, as it also happens often).

It was precisely at the beginning of last summer that the Valencian and Balearic governments met to work together on the housing emergency. [...] they agreed to ask Sareb to give them some flats to be used as public housing. In fact, the Company for the Management of Assets Proceeding from the Restructuring of the Banking System (also known as Sareb, also known as the bad bank) has over 8,500 houses in the Valencian Country and over 1,000 in the Balearic Islands. Since Sareb took these apartments when their inhabitants were evicted as a result of the trash mortgages given by banks during prosperous years, it makes sense that now they will be destined (at least some of them) to housing.

I don't know how these good intentions have evolved, but the search and/or building of protected housing, even though it might be necessary as an emergency measure, is nothing more than a palliative or a patch to a situation with well-known causes. This is what's behind the problem: the overexploitation of the land, the urban speculation, a market with out-of-control prices, and a touristic saturation that makes guiris [tourists] literally invade the towns, neighbourhoods and areas that not so long ago were still the indigenous population's.

The famous quality tourism has turned out to be European multimillionaires, often with fortunes of a suspicious origin, who buy or order to build their mansions with heliport for exorbitant prices, bursting the local price for square meter. This is the strict market logic, but if the market logic isn't somehow corrected, we can find ourselves in a triple massive migration: for climate reasons (the Mediterranean is one of the places in the world where global warming is most noticeable, and the Balearic Islands are one of the most heated places in the Mediterranean), for the lack of job opportunities (also for the young people whose university degrees aren't about tourism, and who can't find work here), and for lack of access to housing.