The Balearic Parliament will debate in its next plenary session the consideration of a bill proposed by MÉS per Mallorca, whose main objective is to prohibit the purchase of homes by people who are not residents of the Balearics.
Next Tuesday’s plenary session will decide whether to consider this bill, thereby allowing it to continue through the parliamentary process, after which it would go to the Congress of Deputies. The ban on the purchase of homes by non-residents, the MP Lluís Apesteguia assured, would only affect the Balearics, complies with all the requirements of the European Union (EU) and is in line with previous case law that has allowed this type of extraordinary restriction.
The proposal, he added, does not discriminate on the basis of race or origin, but rather on the type of use that each person intends to make of the property they purchase. ‘We have to prioritise that houses are for living in, for those who want to develop their life project in Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza or Formentera, and not for those who want to speculate and continue with this game of Monopoly that they have set up with our homes,’ he stressed.
According to the Eocosberanist, there are currently around 100,000 empty homes and 120,000 second homes in the Balearic Islands as a whole, representing approximately 50% of the total. Apesteguia highlighted what he described as ‘the first law of its kind in Spain,’ which paves the way for other regions such as the Canary Islands and Catalonia to follow suit.
‘We want to know what the other groups think, whether they believe that the homes should be allocated to investment funds or whether they are brave enough to say that homes in the Balearics should be given priority to those who live in the Balearics,’ he stressed.
The centre-right PP spokesperson, Sebastià Sagreras, has already announced that his parliamentary group will vote against a proposal that even the eco-sovereignists themselves know ‘cannot be fulfilled’ due to EU regulations, which only contemplate this possibility for the outermost territories. Socialist Marc Pons, for his part, has differentiated between his party’s ‘willingness’ to implement measures of this type, which in his opinion would curb price increases, and the ‘real possibilities’ of doing so.
‘There are limitations imposed on us by Europe and there are difficulties that we have to take into account. We cannot rely solely on this solution to the problems,’ he said. Despite this, he considered that the distance between an island region and the mainland should not be the only yardstick for measuring which territories are eligible for these exceptions, but that it would also be necessary to take into account tourism and property pressure.
“We are aware that the Spanish Government is taking steps to assess the difficulties we are encountering in Europe. This is not something exclusive to the Balearics, but to all European island territories,‘ he said. Vox spokesperson Manuela Cañadas considered the legislative proposal to be “demagogic” and aimed at solving the problems that the left ’caused” during its eight years in power.