Palma's mayor, Jaime Martínez, said last Friday that the rehabilitation of the shopping area beneath Plaça Major was a priority for the first quarter of this year.
It is now five years since the then mayor, Antoni Noguera, explained that proposals would be made regarding the future of the units, some of which were (and still are) privately owned. Other units were rented from the town hall. In late 2019, the keys were handed back by tenants. Since then, proposals have come and gone, the shopping area has deteriorated and even the privately owned premises have closed.
Twenty-five of the units are in the hands of 19 owners, the vast majority of whom are willing to sell to the town hall and thus try and provide a solution to a situation that has been paralysed for four years. Some owners are said to want to enter into a rental agreement. But whatever the arrangement, there is unanimous acceptance that the situation cannot go on as it is at present.
Even so, work on rehabilitating the area would be unlikely to start before the end of 2024. The town hall, meantime, faces compensation demands said to run into the several millions for loss of earnings.