Parking at all health service hospitals in the Balearics will be free from 1 January. There will, therefore, be no more charges at Son Espases and at Can Misses in Ibiza.
Where Son Espases is concerned, the government has come to an arrangement whereby it will pay the car park operator 1.1 million euros per annum. This agreement is for twenty years and is presumably subject to increases in line with cost indices.
President Armengol and the health minister, Patricia Gómez, visited Son Espases on Friday. The hospital currently has 2,335 parking spaces. In the middle of next month, these will increase by 525. Additional parking has been created in different areas. Notwithstanding the increased spaces, Armengol took the opportunity to encourage staff, patients and visitors to use the bus (which does now have increased frequencies) and the metro when the extension to the hospital is completed.
The Son Espases car park will have fourteen spaces for electric vehicles, and there is to be a specific zone for vehicles with three or more occupants. Armengol said that making parking free had been a commitment of her government and a "recovery of citizens' rights" that had been "drastically cut back by different Partido Popular governments".