The Council of Mallorca has yet to give an indication as to measures it will adopt for limiting the number of vehicles. Limits are due to be applied from 2026. A working party from different Council departments is currently assessing the measures, a clue coming from Ibiza, where regulations are coming in this year.
The Council has said that it could well replicate some of Ibiza's measures, one of them being for vehicles that aren't registered in the Balearics. People with homes in Ibiza whose vehicle is registered outside the Balearics are only allowed to have only one vehicle per property. This is intended to reduce the number of foreign-registered cars and indeed cars that are registered elsewhere in Spain.
If a resident's relatives visit the island and bring their own car, they will have to request authorisation and pay the corresponding fee through an online system that the Council of Ibiza will be introducing shortly.
The future regulations in Mallorca will include mandatory annual studies to update the vehicle limit set for each year. The Council presented findings of a carrying capacity study some months ago and forwarded it to the government's tourism sustainability pact working parties. This indicated, for example, that 324,623 vehicles with drivers entered Mallorca's ports in 2023, 108% more than in 2017. On top of these, another 55,000 entered as freight. These vehicles represented 40% of the island's cars.
On a peak day in August, the roads handled 1.3 million trips, and there were days when there were more than 75,000 hire cars on the roads. The study concluded that, on peak dates, there were between 90,000 and 120,000 excess vehicles because the roads could not handle this volume of traffic.
The Council has been criticised for not implementing measures this year, given that it had gathered the relevant data. This said, regulations it intends to apply need approval from the Balearic Parliament. Legislation is therefore being drafted. The Partido Popular at the Council of Mallorca (and the Balearic Government) hope to gain the support of opposition parties, as Vox, who form part of the Council's governing administration, have rejected proposals and are likely to also reject them in parliament.