The controversy over a German billboard in Palma promoting excess tourism has led the Senate to request the appearance of Aena's president. Meanwhile, residents of the Balearic Islands have endured years of queues, saturation, and overwhelmed airports every summer. Political outrage arrives when an image offends, not when infrastructure fails.
Smart airports: data that doesn't translate into solutions 🤖
Aena boasts about flow management systems and IoT sensors to measure real-time saturation at airports like Palma or Ibiza. However, this data does not prevent terminals from becoming too small every July, nor security checks from generating hour-long queues. Technology allows monitoring, but there is no will to limit flights or licenses. Artificial intelligence does not solve the lack of structural investment or the tourist pressure that exceeds the islands' real capacity.
The perfect billboard: blaming the ad, not the model 🍻
So it turns out that the Balearic Islands' problem is an ugly German billboard. Because, of course, if tourists arrive in droves, drink excessively, and saturate the streets, the fault lies with the ad, not with the fact that no one has set limits on flights or tourist licenses. While residents pay for impossible housing and overcrowded beaches, politicians get outraged over a photo. Aena's president will explain how he manages the airports. Hopefully, they will also explain how four companies take the profits while we all pay the costs. But that, as we know, is not asked.