Pollensa - Best of intentions but the housing imbalance has merely intensified

So this was more than six years ago at a time when there was growing evidence of a housing emergency in Mallorca but also when this emergency hadn't reached the levels that have led to people taking to the streets in protest. March recognised the trend and was vocal in bringing it to attention. He was also pretty much unique in having sought to undertake a thorough analysis of the situation in a given municipality, which in the case of Pollensa was compounded by the gradual loss of all properties that had been subject to provisions regarding VPO protected homes.

These had been lost because of the possibility of their being sold on the open market after thirty years, a highly flawed allowance that politicians from both right and left have come to accept. Only now is there a move towards creating new affordable homes in Pollensa, and these - at least in theory - will never be offered on the open market. At the time of the report, the Balearic Government's Ibavi housing agency had only fifteen properties on its book. That figure subsequently fell to zero.

Two researchers from the University of the Balearic Islands' geography department undertook the study - doctors Margalida Mestre and Ivan Murray. There was perhaps a sense that personal standpoints might have influenced the work - Dr. Murray was and remains a critic of 'massification' and its various manifestations, e.g. overtourism, excessive infrastructure and the impact on housing. He has advocated 'de-growth' in the sense that anti-capitalist theory means de-growth rather than as a synonym for 'decrease'. Nevertheless, academics have to be seen to be scrupulous, and Mestre and Murray's report was highly significant, and not just for Pollensa, given its findings.

A press headline, exaggerated somewhat, was that Pollensa was among the places with the most tourists per inhabitant on the planet - a ratio of 24.76 tourists to one resident. This was certainly the highest ratio in Mallorca and well over twice the average for the whole of the Balearics. Of other findings, the report established that the number of accommodation places (beds) in legal, registered holiday rentals had risen from 1,716 to 7,177 between 2005 and 2017. Around three-quarters of holiday let beds advertised on Airbnb in 2018 were illegal.

Some 40% of all Pollensa's dwellings - 12,175 - were analysed. A quarter of these were 'secondary' homes - the actual figure was 1,255. Utilities bills' data indicated that 61% of these properties didn't consume anything for four or more months a year. A quarter of them used water for a maximum of just two months. There was, therefore, a high degree of sporadic occupation, while the study also indicated there were around 250 empty properties.

Mestre and Murray's recommendations included creating housing associations like those of the UK to take over empty properties and others that had fallen into a poor condition. Another was for a new model to reverse the existing one that favoured "investment by national and foreign elites and oligarchies" and to establish a system to "impede speculation and to promote development that acts against social inequality". Pollensa provided one of the starkest examples in Mallorca of an imbalance in a local housing market.

Come forward to April 2025, and new findings suggest that roughly one-third of properties in Pollensa are either empty or are used only sporadically. Extrapolation from the Mestre-Murray report would have led to a conclusion that there were 3,137 'secondary homes' plus the 250 or so empty homes - around 28% of all dwellings. On the face of it, therefore, this has risen by five per cent, though the somewhat remarkable finding, compared with 2018, is that 22% of properties are empty.

Always allowing for different methodologies, the picture painted is one of greater imbalance. As much as this, however, is an impression that, good intentions notwithstanding, you can conduct studies till you're blue in the face but precious little is done as a result of them.