The Balearic government is working on modifying the controversial law of excesses and eliminate the current zoning system while studying tougher penalties for antisocial behaviour.
The Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sports, Jaume Bauzà hopes that the modification - which will also change the name of this regulation but not the legal formula of the decree - can be ready for next season.
The next step in the drafting of these new tourism regulations is for the sub-committee to meet, in which companies, trade unions and neighbourhood organisations will be represented.
The minister criticised the fact that this commission “has not met” since the decree was implemented during the last legislature.
The Director General of Tourism, Josep Aloy, said that singling out “blackspot” resorts like Magalluf, Playa de Palma and Sant Antoni in Ibiza has damaged their image and they have been closely monitoring the media coverage in the British and German media - due to the importance of these markets - and the repercussions of the law on excesses in the countries of origin.
He said that incidents which have attracted the most attention have been “that of sexual assaults”.
“We must not stigmatise reports”, he said, as these “excesses are also committed by residents and in other areas outside the resorts”.
The director general also criticised the “lack of specificity of the areas”, given that in the current decree “there are pavements in the same street that are affected and others that are not” or that “alcohol can be sold in one place in the same street and not in another”.
In addition to changing the name of the decree and the zoning, Bauzà stressed that “we will come down hard on antisocial behaviour and culprits”, a modification of the decree that will be the “most far-reaching” but “legally the most difficult”, due to the conflict between state and European regulations.
“It has to be toughened up because we don’t see the same forcefulness against the offender as there is, for example, against companies,” he said.
Another of the measures advanced by Aloy is “education and campaigns at source.”
He explained that a campaign through social networks is going to be launched by the ministry in coordination with the British Embassy, aimed at tourists aged between 16 and 25 to inform them of how the behave in the destination and the consequences of incivility.
Bauzà claimed that the current tourist season has been “positive”, despite the incidents of sexual aggression that have taken place, and pointed out that police actions in terms of excessive tourism “have decrease due to more controls, more police or for publicising the sanctions to which companies that commit these excesses face”.