living mallorca

Mallorca is part of the Spanish archipelago called Balearic Islands, composed of a set of four big islands (Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera) and other minor ones (Cabrera, Dragonera or s’Espalmador). Some 1,1 million people live in these islands and Mallorca’s population accounts for around 80% of them. The Balearic Islands are one of the most diverse parts of Spain, as more than 20% of its population were born outside Spain. Within the Spanish population of the islands, a large percentage has foreign roots (especially due to the large amount of immigration that Mallorca suffered in the 60s from other parts of Spain, especially Andalusia). I am one of the latter, as my parents are both from Andalusia (Granada and Jaén) but I was born in the Mediterranean island.

Mallorca attracted so much immigration due to its eminent role in the tourism industry. Many people started to get to know the island, and therefore many hotels and infrastructure were being built to support the tourism boom that started in the 1960s. Mallorca plays today an important role in the industry as it is home to many of the most important hotel chains in the world (Meliá Hotels, RIU Hotels, Barceló Hotels or Iberostar, just to name a few), one of the most important universities to study Tourism (the Universitat de les Illes Balears) or the Tourism Innovation Centre for Microsoft (at the ParcBit).

The Balearics are the third most visited region in Spain. Out of the 64,996,275 tourists received by Spain in 2014, 17.5% of them visited Illes Balears. And the number increases year on year, with 2015 expected to be the best on record. In fact, Mallorca is home to the third busiest Spanish airport, only third to Madrid and Barcelona. This is surprising, as it is not the third largest concentration of people in Spain, still it moved 23,115,499 passengers in 2014.

Not only is a great place to visit and spend your holidays, it has proven to be a perfect spot for filming and advertising, with more and more ads being recorded in our islands. The perfect light and weather, together with beautiful scenery and great infrastructure makes it the ideal background for TV ads. We will discover why in this photoblog!