Twenty-five years ago, the first ever tourist tax in Spain gained parliamentary approval in the Balearics. April the first, 2001 was the day. The tax, referred to as the 'ecotax', came into effect from January 1, 2002.
Celestí Alomar was the PSOE minister responsible for the tax. He says the current debate about a possible increase in the tax that came along in 2016, the sustainable tourism tax, is "a false one". "It has been demonstrated that it doesn't affect the flow of visitors." Alomar adds that this was clear from studies which were carried out from 1999.
The government at the time was the first PSOE-led coalition. Not totally of the left, one of its components was the centrist Unió Mallorquina, but the impulse for the tax had come from Els Verds, the Greens, who some years later were to become part of what is now Més. PSOE hadn't included a tourist tax in its 1999 election manifesto.
The right-wing opposition, the Partido Popular, was dead against the tax. The hoteliers were initially minded to at least consider the possibility, but their attitude was to harden. One hotelier was to famously say: "Either the president (Francesc Antich) is removed or the minister killed." Other than opposing the tax in principle, a beef the hoteliers had was that the tax only applied to hotels.
In 2002, tourism in the Balearics suffered its largest fall in numbers (in percentage terms) since the oil crisis in the 1970s. There were some 700,000 fewer tourists; the total was just shy of 7.8 million. Was the tax to blame? There were other factors. 9/11 had occurred, the German economy was not in good shape, and considerable media attention in Germany was given to comments about the "quality" of German tourists by certain politicians in Mallorca.
The tax and 9/11 had only minimal impacts. The German economy and the negative publicity were the main reasons for the 2002 decrease. German tourist numbers fell by around 500,000. British numbers, which took a very slight knock, were greater than the German for the first time since the 80s. In 2003, tourist numbers all but recovered.
By October 2003, the tax was no more, the PP having made its scrapping a pledge at the election in May 2003 which they won.
As to the current debate, Alomar is of the view that the PP president, Marga Prohens, has sought to take the banner of opposition to tourism growth away from the left but that her decisions are inconsistent. He says the tax debate is a sham and that what needs to be done is to ban holiday rentals.