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The Via Menorca campaign made history this past weekend by moving to a real beach: from Cala en Turqueta, we envisioned and organized a change of course for Menorca.

Early on Saturday morning, July 27th, a group of 250 people coordinated to meet at the parking lot of this beach, filling it with residents’ cars for about six hours. The gathering continued on the beach, where participants crafted various messages on the sand using towels and their own bodies. These images were used to convey to the world the concern of a significant portion of the Menorcan population about the island’s increasing overcrowding.

Cala en Turqueta has once again become a space for advocacy. The beach had already inspired repeated mobilizations to prevent the urban development planned in the 1970s. Those civic movements ensured that the area has remained a pristine and iconic beach to this day, reminding us that citizen action once offered a different path for Menorca and can do so again now.

Recently, this beach has seen double or triple the human pressure it theoretically should endure. According to reports from the Consell Insular de Menorca, Cala en Turqueta has exceeded its carrying capacity every year since 2000.

The reality of this beach, and many others in Menorca, is symptomatic. The island receives 30% more cars in the summer than it can accommodate. Thousands of illegal tourist rentals make it extremely difficult for residents and workers to find housing, and the high pressure on our natural resources is ever-increasing.

This action is not against tourism, but against the overcrowding and growing tourism model that degrades the living conditions of the people and also degenerates the very tourist product that many have worked hard to promote.

From Cala en Turqueta, we have advocated for a different path for Menorca: to curb the increasing tourist pressure, to demand the right to housing, to safeguard our water resources, and to diversify the economy so that young people who have left Menorca to study can return to the island and find a dignified way to live here.

Today, we remember the mobilizations that saved this beach because without memory, we cannot anticipate the future and plan the necessary solutions. In response, we imagine and organize a change of course for Menorca.

This action is part of the broader context of mobilizations taking place this summer throughout the Balearic and Canary Islands, Malaga, and Barcelona.

VIA MENORCA