Majorcans furious over mass tourism have gotten exactly what they asked for as new snaps reveal that Magaluf – one of the island’s top holiday hotspots – is half empty, just days after thousands of locals raised hell in a mass protest.
While Magaluf normally starts to get busy around this time of year in the lead up to the holiday season, photos today show Magaluf is a ghost town.
Swathes of white sand, normally covered by towels, bags and beach bodies, can be seen reflecting the bright Spanish sun.
Rows of deckchairs, which vendors can rent out for up to £60 a day, sit empty, with only the odd Majorcan resident using the facilities. Many of them lay on their side, in a state of disuse rarely seen in the run-up to the summer.
Meanwhile, locals appear to be happy lying on the public beach for free, refusing to pay businesses often-extortionate prices to use their leisure facilities.
Rows and rows of deckchairs, which vendors can rent out for up to £60 a day, sit empty
One image showed a young woman sitting in the shaded sand underneath one, having seemingly not paid to rent it
Swathes of white sand, normally covered by towels, bags and beach bodies, can be seen reflecting the harsh Spanish sun
Magaluf normally starts to get busy around this time of year, in the lead up to the holiday season
One photo showed at most a dozen people meandering down a long stretch of the beach
In fact, some appeared to be happy using the beach umbrellas attached to them for free, with one image showing a young woman sitting in the shaded sand underneath one, having seemingly not paid to rent it.
Pictures of cafes, bars and restaurants surrounding Magaluf Beach tell a similar tale, with few patrons and even fewer waiters and waitresses serving a handful of items, mostly drinks.
Even the paths that run alongside the beaches in Magaluf, best known for its vibrant nightlife that almost exclusively serves tourists, are all but empty.
One photo showed at most a dozen people meandering down a long stretch of the beach.
Businesses told the Majorcan Daily Bulletin that they are deeply concerned that tourists have been driven away by the protests, just days before peak season is set to begin.
One bar owner told the outlet: ‘Their wishes have been granted.’
Businesses told the Majorcan Daily Bulletin that they are deeply concerned that tourists have been driven away by the protests
Even the paths that run alongside the beaches in Magaluf, best known for its vibrant nightlife that almost exclusively serves tourists, are all but empty
The photos showing Magaluf as a ghost town come as protestors began to make preparations to Majorca’s beaches in a new stand over mass tourism
The photos showing Magaluf as a ghost town come as protestors began to make preparations to Majorca’s beaches in a new stand over mass tourism to ‘squeeze’ out foreign tourists.
Organisers of Saturday’s march in Palma involving around 15,000 people, in which some foreign holidaymakers were heckled, promised afterwards: ‘This is just the start of things.’
And today a group calling itself Mallorca Platja Tour – Majorca Beach Tour in Catalan – started an online campaign urging locals to ‘occupy’ the island’s beaches.
A first meeting is being organised for this Saturday to promote a ‘big event’ on June 16 with the slogan: ‘We fill the beach with Majorcans.’
The latest campaign appears to have been triggered by the comments of Manuela Canadas, spokesman for far-right wing party Vox in the Balearic Islands’ regional parliament.
She responded to Saturday’s protest by saying: ‘I understand the discontent but us Mallorcans, who live directly or indirectly from tourism, cannot expect to go to the beach in July and August like we did years ago.’
Many of them lay on their side, in a state of disuse rarely seen in the run-up to the summer
Restaurants, bars and cafes are seeing few patrons, and even fewer waiters and waitresses serving a handful of items, mostly drinks
Magaluf is half empty days after thousands of locals raised hell on the island of Majorca in a mass protest against tourism
Claiming protests like Saturday’s demo sent out tourism-phobic messages, she added: ‘There are other more attractive destinations and we can end up going hungry because here’s there a lack of jobs.’
Mallorca Platja Tour already has 722 followers on X, formerly Twitter, despite only opening an account yesterday with a link to a local newspaper article about the Vox politician’s comments.
One, commenting on the idea of a beach protest, said: ‘I think it’s a great idea, a local resident getting to his beach or cove earlier than a foreigner after a night of revelry.’
Another added, using the mildly offensive expression ‘guiris’ which is often employed to describe the Brits out partying till the early hours in places like Magaluf and suggesting the beach area of S’Arenal near Palma as an option, said : ‘Excellent idea.
‘Majorcans, come to S’Arenal and don’t leave a single centimetre for the guiris.
‘Come on bus 25 because parking is really difficult.’
Businesses said they were worried about the effect the anti-tourism protests would have on the economy
Magaluf is known for its vibrant nightlife that almost exclusively serves tourists
Mallorca Platja Tour, which uses the hashtag ‘OcupemLesNostresPlatges’ and is Catalan for ‘Let’s Occupy Our Beaches’, added in a subsequent post: ‘We invite all the residents near the beaches to go for a swim, recover our beaches and enjoy them as before.
‘Prepare the trampoline, healthy pineapple and apricots to spend the day there.
The group went on to celebrate the fact its initiative was being talked about, in a post echoing local reports saying: ‘They’re calling on residents to fill Majorca’s beaches as a protest against tourist overcrowding.’
It later added: ‘We want to make it clear we’re not organising this to protest but to take a dip in the sea in response to Vox’s words. The beaches belong to everyone
‘This Saturday June 1 we will meet up to organise the big event for Sunday June 16.’
The campaign got underway as Palma’s mayor Jaime Martínez said he would propose measures to tackle the number of tourists entering the island capital.
He said at a press conference he was considering measures limiting or banning party boats and modifying local legislation so that when bars and nightclubs closed in tourist areas they couldn’t be reopened with the same type of licences.
‘Tourist Go Home’ graffiti has reappeared in Majorca following a weekend protest in Palma
A demonstrator holds a sign that reads ‘rebels with out a house’
‘Tourist Go Home’ graffiti reappeared in Majorca this week following Saturday’s protest in Palma which led to organisers apologising for the abuse foreign holidaymakers received.
The words ‘Go Home Tourist’ were scrawled in English last month over a wall underneath a real estate promotion billboard in Nou Llevant near the island capital Palma.
Island newspaper Diario de Mallorca described it at the time as the first example of tourism-phobia in the neighbourhood and said it was targeted at its ‘new foreign residents’ following the purchase of recently-built properties by Germans.
Today it emerged more graffiti with the words ‘Tourist Go Home’ has been scrawled on access signs to the beautiful Tramontana mountains.
Local press said the same anti-tourist messages had been left on entrance signs to villages like Valldemossa or Deia which are swamped by visitors from late spring onwards.
Foreign visitors were booed and jeered by some locals among the estimated 15,000 people who joined in Saturday’s demo as they ate evening meals on terraces in the island capital Palma’s Weyler Square.
Marchers were also heard chanting ‘Tourists go home’ as they passed through the central square on the 20-minute route from the park where the protest began to iconic street Paseo del Borne.
A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest against mass tourism and gentrification
Protesters hold a banner reading ‘Mallorca is not for sale’
The banners campaigners carried included one with the offensive message: ‘Salvem Mallorca, guiris arruix’ which in Catalan Spanish means ‘Let’s save Majorca, foreigners out’.
Another placard said in Catalan: ‘Where you look they’re all guiris.’
The Palma protest was organised by Banc del Temps, a group which hails from the inland Majorcan town of Sencelles and has claimed 25,000 people joined in the demo although government officials have put the figure at around 10,000.
Spokesman Javier Barbero said of the targeting of some holidaymakers: ‘We didn’t want to have a go at tourists and it shouldn’t have happened.’
But he added, promising a repeat of Saturday’s action: ‘This is just the start of things.
‘If measures aren’t taken we will continue taking to the streets until we see action.’
The manifesto Banc del Temps made public when protestors had finished marching through Palma included the demand only people who had been living in the Balearic Islands for five years could buy property as well as a moratorium on holiday rentals.
A young demonstrator holds a sign that reads ‘without a roof there is no paradise’, during a protest
Locals come out in Palma for an anti tourists protest
One of its speakers said: ‘This island should be a place where our children can grow up with safety and dignity, with controlled tourism that doesn’t condition our lives.’
The protest, the largest of its kind since last month’s Canary Islands’ demos against mass tourism, was the second in 24 hours in the Balearic Islands.
Last Friday night around 1,000 protestors took part in a demo in Ibiza to vent their anger over the effects of mass tourism.
Campaigners held up banners saying ‘We don’t want an island of cement’ and ‘Tourism, yes but not like this’ as they massed outside Ibiza Council’s HQ.
The organisers of the Ibiza demo, a group called Prou Eivissa, met with Ibiza’s president Vicent Mari before taking to the streets.
Their demands include a limit on the number of vehicles that can enter the island in summer and a ban on using taxpayers’ cash to promote Ibiza as a tourist destination.
A letter was read out at the end of the protest from an Ibiza-born woman who linked her decision to leave the island with her family and move to the Spanish mainland to a ‘destructive’ tourist model that had led to ‘more cars, more tourists and more incivility.’
Protesters hold signs reading ‘We live off tourism but tourism doesn’t let us live’ during a demonstration
Demonstrators take part in a performance depicting a tourist and a Mallorcan in traditional costume during a demonstration to protest against the massification of tourism
Another Majorcan-based association, called Menys Turisme, which translates into English as ‘Less Tourism, More Life’ is currently taking proposals for another more radical protest which could involve mass gathering outside hotels or on an iconic island beach.
The idea of an airport protest in the peak tourist season which involves collapsing Palma Airport with cars has also been discussed.
Graffiti in English left on walls and benches in and around Palm Mar in southern Tenerife at the start of April included ‘My misery your paradise’ and ‘Average salary in Canary Islands is 1,200 euros.’
In an apparent UK backlash, a response left in English on a wall next to a ‘Tourists go home’ message said: ‘F*** off, we pay your wages.’
After local politicians paved the way for tourists to be charged to visit the island’s natural spaces from the start of next year, the words ‘Canarias tiene un limite’ – English for ‘The Canary Islands have a limit – subsequently appeared painted on the tarmac of one of the access roads to the iconic Teide mountain.
Another message painted on the road said: ‘Moratoria turistica’ – ‘Tourist moratorium’ in English.’
Some foreign holidaymakers have shown their support for the issues raised by campaigners but others have accused them of biting the hand that feeds them.