One of the organisers behind the massive march that engulfed the streets of Majorca‘s capital Palma on Sunday said demonstrations against overtourism aren’t turning holidaymakers away.

Rather, Margalida Ramis of the environmentalist platform GOB believes, it is overtourism itself the reason why people may become less and less attracted to Majorca.

Ms Ramis, whose organisation was a key component of the Menys Turisme, Més Vida (Less Tourism, More Life) group, told the Majorca Daily Bulletin: “Many people are already stopping coming when they see how saturated the island is.”

Pointing her finger at the big players in the tourism sector such as hoteliers, she added: “It is not we who are destroying tourism, it is they themselves.”

Every year, millions of tourists visit Majorca, which has around 950,000 residents.

Data from 2022 from Spanish agencies show more than 3.9 million holidaymakers reaching the island that year were Germans, followed by 2.1 million Britons.

Internal tourism also played a big role that year, with some 1.8 million people travelling from other Spanish regions for a holiday to the Balearic island.

The march held on Sunday was carried out to ask the Balearic Islands government to change direction when it comes to the current tourism model, which many locals believe it is harming the community from both an economic and social point of view.

While the tourism sector employs a large number of Majorca residents, overtourism is seen as guilty of pushing locals outside of their city centres and raising the cost of rent and mortgages to unaffordable levels.

The group, Ms Ramis added, is already preparing further actions as they don’t expect political leaders to make the changes deemed necessary by Menys Turisme, Més Vida.

She said: “The truth is that we no longer need to campaign to raise people’s awareness, but rather to take immediate and long-term measures.”