Thanks to satellite technology boffins have been able to quantify the amount of building work that has been going on in the Balearics over the last decade.
Pin point accuracy in photos taken from a satellite circling earth shows that during the last decade of the 20th Century the amount of building work in Ibiza increased the urban area of the island by over 1500 hectares. Helpfully, a hectare is about the same size as a football pitch, which gives some idea of the scale of development on our tiny island.
Even though the vast majority of the land here is virgin forest and completely undeveloped, the surprise revealed by the figures is that, per head of population, the Balearics are more developed than some other European countries such as Holland, Italy and Ireland.