- Hundreds marched in the Balearic Islands on September 20, 2026, against airport expansion and mass tourism
- Protests took place in Palma and Ibiza with between 5,000 and 10,000 demonstrators in Ibiza Town
- Aena’s DORA III plan included €621m for Son Sant Joan Airport upgrades
- Activists demanded caps on visitors, bans on private jets and night flights, and airport co-management
- Tourism accounted for roughly 45pc of Majorca’s GDP
Several hundred people have marched in the Balearic Islands against plans for airport expansion and mass tourism. Protesters in Palma and Ibiza have opposed measures they said would push passenger numbers higher and worsen overcrowding and housing pressure. The demonstrations followed approval of Aena’s investment programme for 2027 to 2031.
On Sunday, September 20, 2026, thousands of campaigners across the Balearic Islands marched in coordinated protests against a €13bn Spanish airport expansion plan and the escalating strains of mass tourism. The primary catalyst for the protests was Spain’s newly approved national airport infrastructure programme.
Operated by the majority state-owned company Aena, the master plan included €621m in upgrades for Son Sant Joan Airport (Palma) to modernise its terminal. Activists pointed to Aena’s strategic planning document (DORA III), which projected passenger volumes across Balearic airports to swell to 50m annually by 2031. A planned 20-hectare solar installation located five miles from Palma, intended to power airport operations, drew environmental pushback from locals. While Aena maintained that the projects would only modernise existing infrastructure to meet European security requirements without increasing actual runway capacity, campaigners disagree. Activists argued that expanding terminals created a de facto vehicle for growth that would inevitably attractms more tourists.
Demonstrators turned out in large numbers across multiple islands, coordinating with parallel climate and anti-tourism rallies in Barcelona. In Ibiza, the march in Ibiza Town was organised by the youth association Joves d’Eivissa. Marchers carried signs reading For a livable Ibiza and chanted Aena a la trena (Aena behind bars), warning that the island was being treated like a theme park rather than a community.
In Majorca, hundreds of protesters marched through the capital of Palma from the Spanish Government Delegation to the Balearic Government’s headquarters. Chanting No more expansion, no more promotion, they accused regional authorities of hypocrisy for expanding long-haul routes to far-flung destinations like Canada and Abu Dhabi while publicly claiming to support tourism limits.
Campaigners from local coalitions, such as Menys Turisme, Més Vida (Less Tourism, More Life), called for a complete structural shift in the islands’ economic model. Their immediate demands included imposing hard limits on seasonal tourist numbers and slashing existing flight frequencies, outlawing private aircraft and banning late-night flights after midnight to prevent noise pollution over residential zones, passing a local law to grant the Balearic Government direct co-management over airport limits, and restricting non-campaigners from purchasing homes intended purely for real estate speculation or short-term holiday flats, which had priced locals out of their own communities.
Tourism accounted for roughly 45pc of Majorca’s GDP, yet campaigners emphasised that local infrastructure, ranging from overcrowded trains and constant gridlock to scarce natural water resources, had pushed the islands past their ecological and social breaking points.
