He asks for the focus to be put on tourism with high purchasing power, those who “squander and hoard”. Catedrático – since this summer – of Geography at the UIB, Macià Blázquez argues in favour of a decrease in tourism – which is not just about numbers – and suggests that the alternative to the current model is “tourism that socialises”. He is an ecologist and former president of the GOB.
Blázquez criticizes that the Balearic Islands are suffering a process of “eliticization” of tourism. M. MIELNIEZUK
This summer we have seen beaches collapse, flight numbers in Son Sant Joan that have come very close to those of 2019 and a ‘boom’ in yachts. Shouldn’t there be a turning point after the pandemic?
We are an economy based on a tourist monoculture. And a mass one at that. In Mallorca we have half a million hotel rooms to which we must add another hundred thousand tourist rental homes. And another hundred thousand illegal ones. Hoteliers and property owners want to return to the figures before the pandemic. Hence all the campaigns of SOS Turisme and the promotion of the islands as a destination are along these lines. Unfortunately it was foreseeable, but we must continue to propose alternatives to break this monoculture.
Wasn’t it necessary to save tourism?
Tourism is not a negligible activity, to say the least. It is an activity that enriches and relieves us. We’ve just come from a holiday period in which you recover energy. But we have to put it in the context of heavy rains, droughts and all the consequences of climate change that will increase. We have to moderate through public intervention measures that prevent tax wastefulness or hoarding. For example, people who accumulate houses to speculate.
Can tourism be sustainable? Are there any examples in the world?
In our research group on sustainability and territory we have carried out studies. We have recently published one in the international journal Tourism Geographies in which we propose alternatives for a tourism that we call post-capitalist. A tourism that works from an environmental point of view, for example by creating local tourism; and that works in terms of the types of organizations and distribution of profits, which are not monopolized. For example, workers who take over a bankrupt hotel; unions such as the Kellys’ union that recommend a tourist offering that provides good working conditions; or non-governmental organisations that manage spaces, such as the GOB in La Trapa, and that open them to tourists and residents without seeking a profit.
What is tourism degrowth?
It is a political project that consists of reducing the numbers, and doing so with social justice. That’s a bit complicated because if you tell someone in the street that we are going to decrease tourism, they will say that’s great because that way we will maintain the richest people. But that generates segregation, it is a detriment to those who have fewer economic resources. For example, charging to go to the beach. We despise the working class tourist because he spends little, but that generates an injustice. We have to find a solution so that tourism maintains the social objective, of having a broad base, and that is a political question. If we take on the decrease in tourism in a biased way, with the sole purpose of reducing the number of tourists, we become elitist. We have seen it in the Bahamas, the Maldives and Hawaii. They are very attractive archipelagos for capital investments that get high profitability with the exchange value of real estate. This is also a serious threat in the Balearic Islands.
Does growth also mean job losses?
Decreasing, as a political project, means more dignified working conditions. The focus is often placed on the working and resident population. And it is said that it is the people who have less purchasing power who generate the problem. I think the focus should be on the people who splurge money, on the richest, because quality tourism does not mean more sustainability. Would the number of working people in the Balearic Islands, which exceeds one million one hundred thousand inhabitants, have to decrease in order to be more sustainable? Certainly. But first we have to consider that 1% of the people who come to the Balearic Islands consume a hundred times more water than the rest and pollute more because they come by private plane. They are really the problem and not the mass of poorer people.
“The decrease in tourism is a political project that consists of reducing the numbers with social justice”
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