According to 2024 figures from Spain's interior ministry, the Balearics had the second highest rate of squatting in the country. Based on reports of squatting to the Guardia Civil and the National Police, there were 44 squatters per every 100,000 inhabitants, nine more than Valencia, the third ranked region. Well above the Balearics was Catalonia with 90. The rate in certain regions, e.g. Galicia, is just nine or ten per 100,000.
In total, there were 514 reports of squatting in the Balearics in 2024. This was the highest figure over the fourteen years that these statistics have been gathered and was the second time that the reports had exceeded 500. In 2021, however, the reports included one hundred from the Balearic Government's Ibavi housing agency, which made these reports all in one go and referred to many cases that had been ongoing for several years.
Over the past ten years, the number of reports per annum has more than doubled - there were 239 in 2014. In 2019, the year before the pandemic, there were under 300.
Information from the state security forces indicate that there has been an increase in bringing cases of squatting to a conclusion. In 2024, 345 cases were resolved and 203 people were investigated. In 2023, the figure was 232 out of a total of 407 reported incidents. The number of perpetrators investigated almost doubled.
The ministry's statistics do not give a complete picture, as reporting incidents to the security forces is not the only way to try to regain possession of a property, and nor do all owners choose this route.
The General Council of the Judiciary records the number of cases filed under the special civil procedure for illegal occupation of a home. There were 107 such cases in 2024 compared with 118 in 2023. The Balearics have the highest number of this type of case in the country, the procedure being restricted to major property owners such as banks. Then there are cases that never enter a legal process because owners negotiate with squatters either directly or with the assistance of specialist squatter eviction companies.
Lawyer Javier Morente, vice president of an anti-squatter association in the Balearics, says the criminal remedy is perceived as being more effective. "In addition to being more agile, it is more forceful, to the extent that eviction measures can be adopted." The ordering of immediate eviction has become increasingly common in clear-cut cases brought before the courts in Palma.
A new law that came into effect on April 3 offers the possibility of taking squatting cases to court very much more rapidly. "It's still too early to see what effects this may have, but it should speed up the process."
The association points out that there are different types of squatting - cases where people occupy a home out of the need to get somewhere to live and those where organised groups take over properties with the intention of renting them out or in order to extort payments from owners to make them leave.