How are the Balearic government and the Palma city council going to curb cruise ships? Are they going to send a gunboat out into the Bay of Palma and order the mega-cruise ships away when they get close to port?
Jokes aside, to be honest there is little the local government can do really, because it is a port authority issue and this body answers to Madrid not Palma. If the port authority says no, there is little or nothing the local authorities can do. Also, I suspect that cruise ship visits are planned months or even years in advance so any changes which are made would probably take months or even years to implement. The Balearic government wants to curb visits by the mega-cruise ships, but it is probably a bit late in the day.
You can´t have the port authority welcoming ships to Palma and then the local authorities giving them the cold shoulder. What is needed is clear dialogue between the port authority and the local authorities. But what they must remember is that a sizeable part of the population of Palma wants and likes cruise ships, however big.
At the end of the day 70 percent of shop sales are to tourists. So the local authorities are going to have to forget the knee-jerk reactions. If they want fewer cruise ships then they need to act now and hopefully their wishes may come true by next summer. But they should also remember that thousands of people work in shops and bars in the city and their livelihoods are at stake.