We promote a regional vision to help shape the future of the Balearic Islands

The Balearic Islands are a Mediterranean archipelago with their own territorial identity and the capacity to strategically guide their development as an autonomous community of Spain. This condition is especially relevant because it allows them to define their own priorities, activate responses tailored to their economic, social and environmental challenges, and provide territorial coherence to transformation policies.

At the same time, the Balearic Islands combine the extraordinary centrality of the tourism system with a high-value natural and ecosystem base. After more than six decades of tourism development, the Balearic tourism system operates as a network of interdependencies that broadly and deeply mobilises the regional productive fabric. In this regard, final consumption demand from non-residents directly activates 44 branches of activity and, when indirect and induced effects are also taken into account, reaches 68 of the 69 branches that make up the archipelago’s economic structure, accounting for 43.6% of the value of its annual output. This capillarity reinforces the idea that tourism is not merely a sector of activity, but rather a structuring framework for the social and territorial life.

This territorial distinctiveness is reinforced by an institutional trajectory that, in recent years, has promoted initiatives, regulatory frameworks and spaces for collaboration that consolidate the political and regulatory foundations of the circular transition and align the Balearic Islands with the Spanish and European agendas in this field, with progress in areas such as waste and the energy transition.

It is precisely the combination of insularity, tourism leadership, natural and ecosystem richness, systemic depth and institutional capacity that places the Balearic Islands in a unique position to move towards a circular tourism system through an integrated, territorial and long-term approach. The circular transition thus emerges not only as a response to the limits of the linear model, but also as a lever for innovation, resilience and regional prosperity.