One Hundred Years Of Multitude

The population of Mallorca has grown by 240% over the last 100 years. Such growth is not in the least bit surprising but what requires some explanation is why certain towns have grown while others have shrunk and so why towns that were more populous in 1910 are now less so.

The town that has experienced the greatest percentage increase is not Palma, as you might think, but Calvià. In 1910 its population was under 3,000; it is now over 50,000, making it the largest town in Mallorca after Palma. Calvia's growth is easy to explain - tourism and a related increase in the residential population. But this growth has been far from smooth; Calvià's boom has occurred over the past 30 years, 41,000 people added to a 1979 population of just over 11,000.

This growth can also be explained by the fact that Calvià is a satellite of Palma, as also are Marratxí and Llucmajor. While the rise in population in the latter is also due to tourism, Marratxí's 700% rise over 100 years is almost solely the result of the spread of the island's southern conurbation. The two other main towns on the island - Inca and Manacor - have experienced rises in population of similar degree, 260% and 230% respectively. Of the two, Inca's is more dramatic. Manacor has coastal tourism that Inca doesn't. Industry, and especially the leather industry, has made Inca the fifth largest town after Palma.

Industrial concentration and therefore migration and better infrastructure probably explain why some towns in Mallorca's interior have suffered from de-population since 1910; Sineu and Petra have declined, along with Selva and Llubí which are close to Inca.

Behind Calvià and Marratxí in terms of percentage growth comes Alcúdia. A population of slightly less than 3,000 in 1910 is now just under 20,000, and Alcúdia offers an interesting case example of how growth was engineered, both tourist and residential.

Alcúdia is the largest of the small towns in Mallorca, by which is meant that its population is less than 20,000, the threshold for towns to be reclassified in terms of municipal responsibilities and size of town hall administrations. Its growth has different explanations. Before mass tourism, it was Alcúdia, with its port potential, that was selected as the site for north-coast industrialisation; the original power station and the gas factory being located close to the port.

The power station was to prove important to what then occurred in the engineering of the purpose-built tourism and residential centre that created the sprawl away from the port area and along the coast. Ash from the power station was used in the reclamation of a huge part of Albufera and from which rose the Bellevue and Magic areas in the early 1970s.

Contrast this with neighbouring Pollensa. It was over twice the size of Alcúdia in 1910 but now has 3,000 fewer inhabitants. There was no similar tourism engineering, or none that was on the same scale as Alcúdia's. Contrast Alcúdia also with another neighbour, Muro. It was larger than Alcúdia in 1910 but its population today is only 2,350 greater than 100 years ago (just under 7,000). Unlike Alcúdia, there was no base from which to grow tourism and residential real estate. Playa de Muro didn't properly exist until the 1960s and when it came into existence there was crucially comparatively little reclamation of Albufera across the municipal boundary with Alcúdia.

Another town with an intriguing population history is Sóller. In 1910 it was the sixth largest town overall. It is still the eleventh largest but its population growth of 64% is way down on the total growth. Sóller is in a way a case of a place that peaked early. It grew in the nineteenth century on the back of its port and the export of oranges and olives and then again in the early twentieth century, partly thanks to the train tackling its isolation. But that isolation has never truly been overcome.

Then there are the interior towns that have experienced de-population. Industrial concentration elsewhere is one reason, but there are others: Sineu's population was slashed when the original rail line that had served the town was closed in the 1970s; Petra suffered from a failure to develop a wine industry; Llubí lost people due to emigration to the US.

Except for industrial towns such as Inca and towns with heavy tourism dependence, Mallorca's population has been surprisingly stable over the past one hundred years, decline in some towns compensated by modest growth in others. But the single most important reason for the overall population growth can be attributed to one place - Palma. Of an increase a touch over 600,000 people since 1910 to a Mallorca total today of 873,000, Palma is responsible for over half of it.


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