PALMA de Mallorca is the capital of the Balearic Islands off west the Spanish mainland splashed in the Mediterranean. Palma de Mallorca has a total land area of 213,550 square kilometers. It has a population of more than half a million people with a density of 1,756 persons per square kilometer. Its current mayor is Catalina Adrover. Most of its tourists come from England who are about to retire. Palma de Mallorca being a Mediterranean city, it’s no wonder that these tourists are frequenting here every year and some have even purchased real estate here largely due to relaxed real estate policy laws when it comes to foreign ownership. When they go back home to work after summer vacation, they allow their homes to be leased by other foreign vacationers.

Eventually, the expatriates and their spouses settle down here after retiring, leaving their children and grandchildren in England behind. In fact, for this summer of 2007 alone, English tourists have increased at 154.7 per cent or more than double as compared with 2006 figures. This unusual phenomenon was largely attributed to the harsh rainy weather in England last July, causing flooding in many urban and rural areas especially in the Birmingham region.

These tourists enter Palma de Mallorca through its only airport, the Sont San Joan which serves 22 million passengers every year. Opened ten years ago in 1997, Sont San Joan international airport has two passenger terminals and these are now crowded even at night due to the increasing number of flights both coming from mainland Spain such as Alicante, Bremen, Bilbao, Paris and Benidorm and European regional capitals such as Birmingham (as mentioned earlier), Dublin, Milan, Berlin, Bonn, Cologne, Paris, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Dusseldorf, Dortmund, Vienna, London, Brussels, Krakow, Leipzig, Hanover, Nice, Estonia, Manchester, Oslo, Amsterdam and many others. It can handle 12,000 passengers every hour serviced by more than a dozen airliners. Competition is so fierce that this has become good news to the foreign tourists.

Any major airline in Europe offers the best discounts for coming here especially if you’re purchasing several round trip tickets for you and for your kids. Even King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia used the Sont San Joan international airport in spending a full week last August here in Palma de Mallorca to enjoy basking in the sun in total bliss. Upon coming here, you can easily avail of inexpensive car rentals which offers a variety of models for your one-week or two-week stay here. If you want to bask in the Malaga countryside, you can choose the off-road types but if you want to stay close to the urban sites, a sedan will do.

Just remember that you cannot park an off-road vehicle by the beaches’ parking area because their tires are muddy and will taint the parking spaces. The Spanish are that strict in implementing ecological laws. Afraid of being beaten by their colleagues, these British tourists have even signified their intention to book next year’s vacation as early as possible. They said they are anticipating another horde of rain showers in England in the summer of 2008.