Prima Mallorca Information Directory
Palma
Palma is the major city and port on the island of Mallorca and capital city of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands in Spain. It is situated on the south coast of the island on the Bay of Palma. As of the 2007 census, the population of the city of Palma proper was 383,107, and the population of the entire urban area was estimated to be 517,285, ranking as the 12th-largest urban area of Spain. Almost half of the total population of Mallorca live in Palma. The archipelago of Cabrera, though widely separated from Palma proper, is administratively considered part of the municipality. Its airport, Son Sant Joan, serves over 22 million passengers each year. The Marivent Palace was offered by the city to the then Prince Juan Carlos I of Spain. The royals have since spent their summer holidays in Palma.
Since the 1950s, the advent of mass tourism radically changed the physiognomy of both the city and island, transforming it into a centre of attraction for visitors and attracting workers from mainland Spain. This contributed to a huge change in the traditions, the sociolinguistic map, urbanisation and acquisitive power.
The boom in tourism caused Palma to grow significantly, with repercussions on immigration. In 1960 Mallorca received 500,000 visitors, in 1997 it received more than 6,739,700. In 2001 more than 19,200,000 people passed through Son Sant Joan airport near Palma, with an additional 1.5 million coming by sea.
In the 21st century, urban redevelopment, by the so-called Pla Mirall (English "Mirror Plan"), attracted important groups of immigrant workers from outside the European Union, especially from Africa and South America.
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