Special leaflets had to handed out at the airport to arriving passengers explaining what the tourist tax was all about.

Special leaflets had to handed out at the airport to arriving passengers explaining what the tourist tax was all about. | OSCAR PIPKIN

Humphrey Carter06/05/2014 00:00
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The Socialists yesterday opened up a new debate which is going to get heated by suggestion that the tourist tax be reintroduced.

Palma.—The party also attacked the Balearic Government for having too close a relationship with the hoteliers and failing to stand up to them in times of crisis.
Parliamentary spokesperson for the ruling Partido Popular, Mabel Cabrer reacted angrily, reminding  everyone that the tourist tax introduced by the former Socialist-led coalition government was a “total failure and a fiasco”.
And, Cabrer called on the Socialists to stop making dangerous statements which could damage the region’s tourist  industry just like the tourist tax did between May 2002 and October 2003, when it was eventually scrapped.
Nevertheless, today, Socialist MP, Antoni Dieguez, intends to table a motion in Parliament that the tourist tax, or eco tax as it was officially called, is reinstated.
As far as the Socialists are concerned, the tax would help to raise extra revenue which could be used to ease the effects of the recession here in the Balearics.
“No Balearic Government has spent as long a time in recession than the current one of Jose Ramon Bauza” he said yesterday.