The Balearic president, Marga Prohens, will ask the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, on Tuesday, to allow the regional administration to participate in the management of the region’s airports. Prohens will meet with Sánchez before the Prime Minister holds his usual summer working meeting in Marivent with the King, who on Monday received the regional president and other authorities from the islands in audience at the Almudaina Palace.
At that meeting, the Balearic leader will ask the president for joint management of the airports, in particular involvement in improving Palma airport, where construction work has generated complaints from passengers, workers and employers. ‘Airports are the main infrastructure for tourist arrivals,’ said Prohens, who also wants to participate in their management to contain visitor flows and tackle tourist saturation.
The Balearic president has indicated that in her meeting with Sánchez she will address other issues on the ‘Balearic agenda’, as she calls the list of the region’s main challenges, among which she also highlighted irregular immigration and the lack of sufficient state funding. On the latter issue, following the special financing agreement between the government and the Catalan regional government, Prohens stated: ‘I will not allow the citizens of the Balearics to pay for independence quotas.’
She said that it is shame that the autonomous communities do not have a draft of the financing reform proposed by the central government and said he would ask for the model to provide more resources to ‘the Spain that is filling up’.
The system demanded by the Balearic government provides for increased funding for public services in the communities with the highest population growth, respect for the ordinality of regional contributions in the distribution and taking into account the ‘floating population’ generated by tourism.
The other key issue that the president of the Balearics plans to raise with Pedro Sánchez is the need to curb irregular immigration by boat, which continues to grow in the region, and her refusal to take in unaccompanied migrant minors arriving in other regions.