Neighborhoods change, they transform. That has always happened. What is less common is that the change is accompanied by new accents, especially Scandinavian accents, which is what has been gaining strength in decades. Saint CatherinePalma de Mallorca. What was once a fishing neighborhood has mutated into something totally different: an area in which there are many businesses oriented to the hospitality and the real estate market and in which it is surprisingly easy to find expats arriving from cities like Stockholm.
There are those who already refer to the neighborhood as “little Sweden”.
‘Little Sweden’. The transformation of Santa Catalina is not exactly new. In 2017 Mallorca Diary realized and how the Scandinavians had acquired so many stores and apartments that the neighborhood had earned the nickname “Little Sweden.” It was not a phenomenon exclusive to that specific coastal area (at expats They are attracted to Mallorca in general), but it is true that it was clearly visible in its streets. What is surprising is to see how the scandinavization of Santa Catalina has advanced in the last decade, something that makes it quite clear a chronicle published by elDiario.es.
“There are few Mallorcans left”. Probably the best way to understand the change is to listen to its residents, like Antoni, a 79-year-old neighbor who, after a lifetime in Santa Catalina recognize that he hardly knows anyone anymore when he walks through its streets. “There are few Mallorcans left,” he resigns.
His environment agrees with him. The man talk with the press in an area where it is not difficult to find recently renovated buildings and shop windows silk-screened in foreign languages, including English, German and Swedish. If you look a little, not far from there you can even find real estate agencies focused on the Scandinavian market and the sign of an old Swedish bakery.
A neighborhood in full change. Antoni is not (far from it) the only local who notices the changes in the neighborhood. Tomeu confirm that “there are only some old businesses left” and Raúl, also raised in Santa Catalina, confirms that none of the friends he played with when he was a child no longer live there.
That neighborhoods change over the decades (and that extends to both neighborhoods and businesses) is nothing extraordinary, nor exclusive to Santa Catalina, Palma or the Balearic Islands. What is curious is that this change has as one of its driving forces the landing of expats and capital of northern Europe.
More than testimonials. The transformation of the neighborhood (Mallorca in general) can be followed through more than just testimonies and memories. The studies do not always allow us to go into detail about each district, but they confirm the profound changes that the archipelago has experienced in recent years.
To begin with, the Balearic Islands are the region of Spain with highest percentage of foreign population. According to a report of the Funcas Foundation, 29.3% of its population was born outside of Spain. As a reference, in Madrid they represent 25.7%. In 2004, foreigners represented ‘barely’ 15.3% of the Balearic census.
Expensive, but not ‘Stockholm level’. The Swedes they are very far away of being a majority group in the Balearic Islands, but for some time they have shown a special interest for the region. Almost a decade ago the local press explained that many discovered its islands as a vacation destination and, over time, chose to settle in the archipelago, attracted by its climate, quality of life and prices.
“There are the small things, like having a coffee for example. In Stockholm it costs five or six euros,” recognized in 2017 Patric, at the head of a practice located precisely in Santa Catalina. “In Stockholm the square meter is around 10,000 euros and that is why Santa Catalina is still cheap. For the rest of the world the neighborhood is terrible, but for the Swedes it is quite cheap.”
Agency pending. Another front that makes the transformation of the neighborhood clear is real estate. for your article elDiario has spoken with several agencies established in the area and more or less focused on the Scandinavian market, such as Mallorcabyrån Real Estatewhich presents itself as a “Swedish-speaking real estate agency in Mallorca”, or Svensk Fastighetsförmedlingwhose managers they boast of having “brought the reliable Swedish real estate model to Spain”.
Escalating prices. Beyond the agencies, the Idealista portal also offers an interesting clue. The real estate portal specifies that right now the m2 in Santa Catalina-Son Armadans-Maritim is paid at 6,200 eurosfar from the 2,385 a decade ago. In fact, Idealista has registered a year-on-year increase of 14.3%. Things don’t get much better if we talk about the residential rental market. The m2 is paid at 19.7 euros5.6% more than a year ago.
Rental options right now more economical In the area there is a 50 square meter apartment for which they ask for 1,100 euros per month and a 38 m2 studio for which they pay 1,150 euros. In this last case (a room without an elevator), yes, the advertisement clarifies that it is a “seasonal rental.”
Why do prices increase? The transformation of the neighborhood is clear and can be followed both through testimony of its oldest neighbors as well as of the newspaper archive, which takes years strengthening the “little Sweden” label. However, not everyone is so clear that the rise in housing prices can be explained by the arrival of Scandinavian capital.
“In general, the main factor behind the lack of housing at affordable prices in Palma is the shortage of supply, especially new construction,” claims Vivian Grunblatt, head of a real estate agency aimed, among others, at Swedish buyers. “In the last ten years the creation of new homes has been limited, which generates constant pressure on prices.”
“And what are you doing?” There are also who raises it from another perspective, like Raúl, the horse who recognizes that there are no longer any of his childhood friends left in the neighborhood. In his opinion “the problem is not with the buyer” but with “the seller.” “A Swede comes to you and pays four times what it’s worth… What do you do?”
The changes in the neighborhood may have affected the cost of living, but Raúl also remembers that just 25 or 30 years ago the area “was a suburb” and its attractiveness was considerably less. Of course, the transformation has not freed him from the problems that affect many other areas marked by tourism, such as the (sometimes) difficult coexistence between restaurants and residential use.
Images | Camilo Padilla (Unsplash), Belinda Fewings (Unsplash) and Hans Ott (Unsplash)
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings