Walking around the historic centre of Palma de Mallorca, the stylish, picture-postcard perfect streets often feel a bit too sanitised. It might feel different in the summer, but in winter the town seems to be the domain of more affluent visitors. There are probably more hotels in Palma with the ’boutique’ sobriquet than anywhere else on earth – with prices to match. It is a type of tourism that results in gentrification that is bland and inoffensive.
This was my first visit to Palma so I’m no expert but, after a fews days exploring, the vibe it started to give off was of a theme park. The sort of experience Disney might create. A facsimile of an authentic Spanish town. That’s not to say it isn’t an attractive and fun place to spend time, but is it normal to have this many Instagram influencer wannabes in one place?
Uncontrolled tourism has resulted in rising costs that make living here increasingly unaffordable for local people. Many of whom claim Palma is losing its sense of identity and its culture. Against this backdrop, it’s reassuring to discover street art thriving as a forum for public debate and countercultural response to gentrification. This was nicely summed up in one image depicting Christ holding a can of spray paint.
“You have turned the market into the temple”, read a slogan that could apply to far more than just the insane state of Palma’s unaffordable housing market. I’m always on the lookout for street art whenever I travel, in my mind it acts as a bellwether for the health of a society. In Palma you’ll only rarely find large, building-size pieces of street art (this is no Berlin), one near the Palma-Soller train line was a fun exception.
Instead, scattered subversively around the streets a ragged collection of smaller works are flourishing. Some, like the idealised and poignant vision of family life in Palma before the madness of 18 million tourists flooding the island every year, grab your attention. Others, like small sticker art, have to be sought out. While art that adorns the shutters of many shops can only be seen when the shop is closed.
We came across Una Mirada al Pasado (A Look at the Past), a deliberately black and white painting on the side of a cottage, while wandering through the Santa Catalina district. Depicting a vision of neighbourhood life that has long vanished, it brought to mind the descriptions of small Spanish towns in Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.
The street art of Palma is all the more fascinating given the juxtaposition between it and the homogenised, cliched ‘international’ art galleries found around the centre. These trade in art for expats, the market steadfastly for the non-locals that Palma has in abundance. In another place, the sheer number of ‘contemporary’ art galleries would mean there was something seriously wrong with the local economy. In Palma it seems almost natural.
Less natural are cases where internationally owned art galleries literally steal the work of Palma’s street artists to sell in their brightly lit showrooms. As one artist who had their work stolen lamented, “What kind of people speculate with the work of others, making and selling pirated copies of street art?“ Viewing the town’s street art in situ is a more rewarding use of one’s time in Palma, at least for me.
Excellent post. Enjoyed it very much. Thank you.
Thank you, that’s very generous.