The protest is having dinner in the square. With a sandwich.
In Mallorca, a sopar a la fresca is the old summer habit of taking tables and chairs out to the street on hot nights and eating with the neighbours in the cool air. A Palma collective, Brunzit (spelled Brunzzit in some articles), turned it into a protest against mass tourism: the sopars a la llesca. The pun swaps fresca (cool) for llesca (a slice of bread), because everyone brings their own.
- Popular dinners, organised by the neighbours themselves, on summer Wednesdays (July and August), rotating around the squares of central Palma that tourism and café terraces have taken over: the Born, Plaça Major, Plaça de l’Olivar, around the cathedral. Running since at least summer 2025.
- Up to around 500 people on the big nights, chairs gone in twenty minutes. Games, a choir, music.
- The point isn’t to bother tourists but to win back square metres: public space is for living in, not only for consuming.
Behind it: holiday rentals pricing people out of their homes, crowds, traffic. It sits next to the big “Menys turisme, més vida” marches, and the idea has jumped to Sóller and been copied elsewhere.
Reclaiming your street by eating in it. Very Mediterranean, as a concept.
What I’d like to know: does it change anything, or is it mostly a nice summer ritual? If you’ve been to one, tell me.