The Balearic Parliament has rejected a proposal by the opposition PSIB socialists to set a maximum number of tourists per year and not to increase the number of places in agrotourism establishments.
The initiative, which was debated in plenary session on Tuesday, was rejected with votes against from the PP and Vox. However, a motion urging the Government to allocate the portion of the Sustainable Tourist Tax (ITS) funds earmarked for 2026 that have not yet been allocated was approved.
The Socialists called for a cap of 17.8 million on the number of tourists that the islands could support. This figure represents the number of tourists who visited the Balearics in 2023 and is the figure that the president of the regional government, President Marga Prohens, already said in May 2024 was unacceptable, according to the Socialists.
In 16 points, the PSIB motion called for the island councils to approve timetables for their load capacity studies and for no increase in the number of places in agrotourism establishments. The Socialists also called for the Sustainable Tourism Tax (ITS) funds to be reallocated to public housing. PSIB MP Llorenç Pou, who defended the initiative, criticised the regional government’s management of tourism, pointing out that ‘they talk about restraint but it is really resignation’ and that they have not acted ‘with courage’.
According to Pou, the proposals in the initiative are not against tourism but seek to ‘do something to save tourism’. The PSIB did not accept any amendments from the PP. The other left-wing groups voted in favour of the initiative, agreeing on the need to set a ceiling on the number of tourists and to promote courageous measures in this area. For the MÉS per Mallorca MP, Lluís Apesteguia, 19 million tourists is ‘unsustainable’ in a territory such as the Balearics. ‘Since the government spoke of restraint, more than a million more tourists have arrived,’ he criticised.
Apesteguia stressed the importance of establishing a maximum number of tourists in order to then be able to work with a clear horizon. Similarly, the Unidas Podemos MP, José María García, has called for the elimination of all tourist accommodation, considering that homes are for people to live in and not to be used as hotels. For her part, PP MP Salomé Cabrera has reproached the Socialists for presenting this motion, considering that overcrowding ‘comes from the eight years of previous legislatures’. ‘They are making speeches as if they had not been in government,’ she criticised.
According to Cabrera, the way forward is to contain tourism, which involves zero growth in tourist accommodation, a ban on tourist rentals in multi-family buildings and improving the distribution of tourist flows. Vox voted against the initiative, which, according to MP María José Verdú, criminalises people. In her opinion, tourists arriving in the archipelago can be accommodated, and therefore imposing a quota is not the solution.
‘Reducing for the sake of reducing creates legal uncertainty; if a place is legal, it cannot be taken away,’ she argued, while defending a tourism policy based on legality, legal certainty, quality and profitability, real economic diversification and technical ‘rather than ideological’ planning. Among other points, the motion called for Airbnb to be forced to comply with current regulations, opening disciplinary proceedings if they continue to publish illegal offers, as well as reducing the number of legal tourist places.
MPs also rejected the declaration that deseasonalisation policies must necessarily involve a redirection of tourist flows from high season to low season within a framework of declining tourism and general economic diversification. Finally, points calling on the government to urgently activate ITS projects that have been on hold since July 2023 and to change tourism policy in order to change the dynamics of year-on-year growth were also rejected.