It appears Palma is having an identity crisis, while the debate over a new name for the airport drags on, now there is confusion over what the capital should be called. The far-right Vox municipal group in Palma will table a motion at the October plenary session to insist on debating the addition of ‘de Mallorca’ to the city’s official name, after considering the explanations given by Mayor Jaime Martínez Llabrés to be unsatisfactory.
In a statement on Thursday, the leader of Vox on Palma council, Fulgencio Coll, defended the need to reiterate this issue, because they are demanding a debate on the official name of the municipality.
And all this comes just a few months after the debate about renaming the airport was put back on the table.
The Balearic Cultural Organisation (OCB) has asked the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility to change the official name of ‘Palma de Mallorca Airport’ to ‘Palma Airport’, which has been the official and legal name of the city since 1988.
The president of the organisation, Antoni Llabrés, has asked Minister Óscar Puente to bring the name of the airport into line with the law and explained that ‘Palma’ is the official name according to Regional Decree 36/1988 of 14 April, currently in force. According to Llabrés, the city of Palma is internationally known and does not need any addition to be correctly identified without causing confusion.
Llabrés stressed that, except for Palma, there is no other case of an airport in Spain that bears the name of the city where it is located with the addition of the island, region or autonomous community in which it is located for identification purposes. Examples of this would be the imaginary “Barcelona Airport of Catalonia”, “Malaga Airport of Andalusia” or “Bilbao Airport of the Basque Country”, or “Zaragoza of Aragon”. In February, 2022, an online poll started calling for Palma airport to be renamed in honor of local tennis legend Rafa Nadal.