'Man in San' An by Martin Makepeace

'Man in San' An by Martin Makepeace is a Balearic news-and-views show built around lived-in conversation rather than studio polish. It follows Ibiza and Mallorca through the details that shape daily island life. Weather matters here. So do flight prices, passport queues, hotel openings, restaurant trade, club politics, housing pressure, local sport, and the annual shock of high season. Martin Makepeace speaks from Ibiza, while Richie Pryor brings a Mallorca counterpoint. Their exchanges are casual, teasing, and often digressive. That looseness is part of the value. A discussion can begin with cricket, a cold snap, or a cheap Ryanair fare, then slide into a serious assessment of luxury tourism, accommodation shortages, or the tension between visitor demand and local capacity. The show is especially interested in tourism's contradictions. Full resorts do not always mean full restaurants. New five-star hotels can signal investment while sharpening questions about who the islands are for. August can be lucrative, exhausting, crowded, and oddly uneven all at once. Recent episodes pick up APD price hikes, an Ibiza senator criticizing luxury tourism, Mandarin Oriental's Calvia arrival, Ibiza passport control, club openings, Lio Ibiza disputes, shark sightings, yachting stories, Soho Farmhouse, and a proposed Rafa Nadal airport renaming. The tone is blunt but sociable. Serious items are not sealed off from jokes, and jokes do not erase the seriousness of stories about balcony deaths or businesses under pressure. This makes the show feel close to the ground. It is less a formal bulletin than a running island briefing from people tracking the Balearics as working places, holiday destinations, and changing communities. Listeners come away with the texture of the week: what locals are talking about, what tourists may miss, and why the islands' sunshine never removes the politics underneath.