Miquel Rosselló is a Pollensa-based researcher who specialises in urban planning policies. He has carried out a study of holiday rental properties on 'rustic' land in Mallorca using information regarding official licences for rentals as well as from Airbnb; this is information for both legal and illegal properties. He has counted 7,831 rural houses used for holiday rentals, representing some fourteen per cent of all rural dwellings. In some municipalities, this figure exceeds 30%.
The research calculates that 22,587 rural houses in Mallorca have swimming pools - 40% of the total. A prime example of this is in the Soller Valley, an area historically linked to citrus cultivation, now characterised by a growing proliferation of rural dwellings, many of which are geared towards tourism. The pools are an indication as to how primary residences and holiday rentals have replaced agricultural use.
Rosselló says these activities pose a challenge of increased population pressure during the summer months. Houses lack public water and sewage systems, rubbish collection and other services, because they are not areas designed to be urban. "This entails an incredible problem of water consumption and soil contamination that must be addressed."
He highlights the conversion of historic estates and convents. These types of buildings populated the countryside in the past, were what gave life and work to the villages and so explain the number of buildings such as mills, workers' houses, etc. Change occurred with industrialisation and the rise of tourism.
Although some of the old large estates maintain limited agricultural activity today or have been abandoned, there are numerous examples of their transformation into hotels and agrotourism establishments.
The Mallorcan countryside, Rosselló notes, became increasingly fragmented into smaller plots, which encouraged the construction of small houses for farming families. However, it was between the 1980s and 2000s that the great boom in rural houses unrelated to farming occurred - villas with gardens and swimming pools.
The research dedicates a specific chapter to Pollensa. It is the municipality with the most houses on the outskirts relative to its population - 2,634. Of these, 1,045 are potentially in violation of regulations. Pollensa has the highest percentage of holiday homes in rural areas (1,667, representing more than 60% of the municipality's total) and 1,847 swimming pools (eight per cent of the total in Mallorca). Around 500 houses in Pollensa are located on protected land; a similar number are in flood zones.