New Tourist Rental Regulations

The Tourism Intervention Plan, or PIAT, will have the support of left-wing parties in Thursday's vote, but will be rejected by the opposition who have asked for its withdrawal.

PP Spokesperson, Llorenç Galmés, warned that the plan "will do a lot of damage to the middle economies of Majorca" and paralyse economic development in interior towns.

"A lot of self-employed people will lose their jobs and many small and medium-sized companies will not be able to continue developing their activity,” he said. He also criticized the fact that the text was approved without consensus and objected to the fact that the opposition had barely twelve hours to study the document.

PI spokesperson, Antoni Amengual, also called for the text to be withdrawn, stating that it does not fit the new economic reality caused by the coronavirus pandemic saying his party will vote against it because the text is "out of date".

"The Administration cannot work with its back to the economic reality that we are suffering," he said.

He argues that the project needs to be reformulated because there must be a rebalancing between the Productive Sectors and the proposal does not contain any measures for that. Amengual claims that the rule will generate legal insecurity in Municipalities that have to regulate the tourist rentals.

The regulation reduces the number of tourist spaces from 43,000 to 32,000; 22,000 of those will be vacation rentals and 10,000 will be hotel beds.

Rustic Land

One of the biggest changes is the new regulation for rustic land which bans rural hotels and holiday rentals in newly built houses in the countryside as well as prohibiting tourist rentals in saturated areas.

Those who want to provide a tourist rental service in homes already built must also guarantee that there is some kind of agricultural activity.

Environmentalists

Environmentalists, GOB and Terraferida have criticised the Council for not reducing the 430,000 tourist places that currently exist in Majorca.

The Council says the rule does imply a de facto reduction of places because in the long run the 120,000 that have been granted with extraordinary regulations will disappear.