Sauntering through the tourist-thronged streets of Palma in his shorts this week, he looked like any other Majorcan teenager who had just finished his end of year exams and was looking forward to the summer break.
Yet, as I discovered when we sat down for coffee, Jaume Pujol has more on his mind than beach barbecues and bathing in the Med with his classmates.
At just 16, this callow but charismatic activist, who is inspired by climate change ingenue Greta Thunberg (describing her as his ‘reference point’) is among the prime instigators of the anti-tourism revolution sweeping through our favourite European holiday destinations.
With his unvarnished sincerity, easy eloquence and Latino pop-star looks, he is fast becoming the nascent movement’s poster-boy.
Jaume’s high-profile role became evident last Sunday, when ‘de-touristification’ demonstrations were staged in towns and cities stretching from the Balearic and Canary Islands to northern Spain, Portugal and Italy.
They were co-ordinated and planned by an umbrella organisation called the Southern European Network Against Tourism, whose radical leader, Daniel Pardo, 49, is based in Barcelona, where the ugliest scenes erupted.
Angry protesters there clashed with riot police protecting buildings from vandalism and alfresco restaurant diners from being squirted with giant water-pistols (their symbolic new weapon).
Yesterday a new video emerged showing a Barcelona hotel worker, incensed by the disruption, bravely grabbing a pistol and firing back. Public outrage also reached boiling point in Palma, where Jaume, an organiser of the Majorcan group Menys Turisme, Mes Vida, was in the thick of things.
Last Saturday, in a spectacular prequel to the rally, he provided a live YouTube commentary as comrades held up a sightseeing bus, plastered it with slogans and detonated yellow smoke-bombs beside it, terrifying the besieged passengers.
Then on Sunday he took to the platform to read out the group’s three-page ‘manifesto’, parts of which sounded more like a revolutionary Socialist charter than a blueprint for a gentler and less frenetic way of life.
‘The tourism model, whether luxury or mass, chokes us year after year, grabs economic and residential resources, destroys the territory, exploits the working class, contributes to climate crisis, and shatters our communities,’ declared Jaume, cheered by either 30,000 or 8,000 supporters, depending on whether his estimate, or that of the Majorcan authorities, is accurate.
Spain’s holiday industry was designed to make the controlling magnates richer and their workers poorer, he argued. It had reached the stage where young Majorcans could no longer afford to live on their own island because foreign buyers had sent property prices skyrocketing.
Public services are overstretched, roads jammed, the Majorcan culture and language in danger of extinction. Emulating his Nordic mentor, ‘The Boy Greta’ also denounced ‘Western and Zionist imperialism’, and urged solidarity with Palestine. What that had to do with the evils of tourism is anyone’s guess.
When I asked Jaume how he would achieve his dream of diversifying Majorca’s economy away from its reliance on tourism, he offered few plausible solutions.
Though he wasn’t so naive as to advocate the total eradication of a multi-billion industry that directly or indirectly provides a livelihood for 90 per cent of the island’s one million residents, he seemed to envisage a return to the time Majorca was a sleepy, self-sufficient outcrop of farmers and leather makers.
This is not to be too unkind. We were all young and idealistic once.
Jaume, who formed his strong social conscience when his trade unionist grandfather took him on marches, is in many ways an admirable champion of his cause, sincere in his desire to preserve his island’s natural beauty, much of which remains intact, and improve the lives of its people.
And he evidently possesses a matador’s courage. Filing out of his high school in Palma, a few months ago, he was confronted by a chilling threat daubed in big red letters beside the entrance door.
‘Te vamos a matar!’ it read – Spanish for ‘We are going to kill you!’ Beside it, a sinister-looking peep-hole had been drawn, warning the intended victim that they were being watched.
Having received similarly sobering messages via social media, Jaume knew it was aimed at him and now takes precautions when moving around, such as asking his parents (who live in a middle-class Palma neighbourhood) to meet him off the bus.
He has informed the police, but doesn’t wish to make a formal complaint because, he says, he distrusts ‘institutions’.
Many of Jaume’s concerns are undeniably justified – to accept that, one only needed to see the scrum of tourists clamouring for entry into Palma’s cathedral this week, and the day-long jams on its approach roads.
Yet critics claim there is a disquieting political undercurrent to this volatile campaign. While the Southern European Network, the organisation behind the protests, denies any political leanings, its leader Daniel Pardo is staunchly Left-wing, as are many of the group’s goals, and some believe the struggle is being driven by Socialist ideologues.
This week, when we contacted Pardo at the ‘object borrowing library’ (a community enterprise where people can borrow anything from tools to furniture to bicycles for a small fee) which he runs in Barcelona, he vehemently denied the protests were Left-wing, saying they were supported by people of all political stripes and from many walks of life.
Whatever the truth, as the ‘tourism de-growth’ movement’s appealing new face, Jaume, who has just finished sitting the Spanish equivalent of GCSEs, appears to be in dangerous waters, claiming that those threatening to murder him are far-Right fanatics.
By way of proof, he shows me screen grabs from his stalkers’ social media profiles: a Nazi salute and the eagle insignia from the flag of General Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator who ruled Spain from the late 1930s to his death in 1975.
(It was Franco who sparked Spain’s tourism boom in the 1950s, building dozens of new resorts along its virgin coastline and opening the country to foreign visitors, a policy that restored its international reputation and saved it from bankruptcy).
Whoever is behind the threats to Jaume, the latest one was more veiled. Hours after he took centre stage last weekend, he received a message saying: ‘You are everywhere, and we see you. We won’t do anything. But be careful.’
He admits to being ruffled, but says such tactics will never make him withdraw from the fight. In fact, his disturbing message to Britons bound for Majorca this summer is that he and his cohorts – who operate in small cells with different duties – are now plotting further ‘actions’.
He refuses to say what these might entail or where they plan to strike, but insists holidaymakers have nothing to fear because they will be directed towards the Balearic Islands’ government, whom they accuse of failing to tackle the spiralling nightmare of excessive tourism.
This may be true, but his revelation will inevitably make some consider cancelling their holidays and going elsewhere. For as we saw last weekend, when feelings are running this high, matters can quickly get out of hand.
Nonetheless, one doesn’t have to agree with the protesters’ methods to empathise with them, and revisiting Majorca – a long-time holiday haunt for my family – after a gap of several years, I could well understand their sentiments.
Ever the adventurer, my mother began taking me and my sister on Spanish holidays in the early 1960s, a decade before cheap package tours introduced millions of lower and middle-class Britons such as us to the Costas.
Among the first places we stayed was Peguera, then a quaint little village in a cove framed by pine-clad mountains, a short drive along the coast from Palma. Our hotel, the Bella Colina, was the first to open there, in 1953.
Majorca back then was considered rather exclusive and everything about the holiday was very formal.
Our favourite waiter, Bartolome, wore a crisp white livery and addressed the six-year-old me as Senor David.
Anyone found misbehaving, or even taking their shirt off, in the surrounding streets risked being arrested by Franco’s green-uniformed Civil Guards.
Returning this week, it was sweet to find the dear old Bella Colina – now marketed as a ‘vintage hotel’ and displaying original artefacts such as a black-and-white TV and clunky phone – still thriving. Yet the rest of Peguera was utterly unrecognisable.
Colonised largely by Germans, with a few Brits, French and Scandinavians, it now has its own Oktoberfest, and the main strip is full of tourist tat shops, gaudy bars, kebab houses and a sunglasses store called Bling Bling.
Sixty years ago, we watched fishermen mending nets on the shore and black-shawled women knitting on their doorsteps. Today every vestige of local tradition seems to have disappeared.
In his office near the Bella Colina, property agent Alex Hervas explained what had happened to Peguera. It was a story that could have applied to almost every Majorcan coastal town or village.
During the 1970s, the first foreign settlers had snapped up new flats and villas along the seafront, he said, and when there was no room left there, complexes began sprouting up in the foothills of the nearby mountain, Pico Na Bruta.
The most recent development there, with 36 luxury flats in six blocks, went on sale recently, with prices starting in the high hundreds of thousands. Belatedly waking up to the need to protect the mountain scenery, planners blocked further expansion.
With property in Peguera now at a premium, prices had gone ‘crazy’, Mr Hervas said. ‘We have Germans who come in and say they don’t care about the cost. One guy was recently willing to pay €700,000 for a tiny, 50 square metre apartment near the sea.
‘So, where’s the limit? The limit is only the amount people will offer, and it now comes down to first come, first served.
‘But then, many of these properties remain empty for most of the year because the owners live mostly in Germany. I know of a development in (nearby) Cala Fornells where there are only about 10 people living year-round in 100 apartments.’ Many flats and houses are let to holidaymakers – often illegally as unlicensed Airbnbs, he says, voicing one of the activists’ main complaints.
True locals haven’t a hope of buying a home and find it equally hard to rent, because rates are exorbitant and landlords prefer foreign tenants to Majorcans, who have a reputation for squatting when they default on payments.
For many young people, the only option is to move away to the mainland or emigrate, he says, adding ‘we are among the few Peguera survivors.’
Does he, then, support the protest movement? ‘No, this is nobody’s fault but our own: we’ve put a price on our island that only foreign buyers can afford’, he says, implying Majorcans must bear the consequences uncomplainingly.
For all the fury we saw in last Sunday’s demo, most other people I spoke to – taxi drivers, shopkeepers, even restaurant and hotel staff who typically earn just €18,000 a year – agreed with him.
Much as they struggle to pay their bills, much as they would love to empty the buses, roads and beaches, and much as they resent their Fat Cat bosses’ exorbitant wealth, they weren’t ready to bite the hand that feeds them.
Like it or not, I was told, tourism is Majorca’s lifeblood and, after the barren years of the Covid pandemic, islanders are alive to the disaster that would befall them should the revolutionaries drive holidaymakers away: into the welcoming resorts of North Africa or Turkey, perhaps.
Eduardo Gamero, president of the Majorcan tourism board, is determined that won’t happen.
While he recognises that the protesters have justifiable grievances, and that tourism must have ‘limits’, he advocates more measured steps to control it, such as capping the number of tourism beds, and allowing only three cruise liners to dock in Palma each day (on Thursday, the harbour was cluttered with these floating cities).
Each year, 2.3 million Britons descend on Majorca. Yet they would be wise to prepare for the uncomfortable surprises Jaume Pujol and his fellow holiday-poopers have in store for them as they bronze themselves.
