The Gelats Valls ice-cream kiosk in Puerto Pollensa. | Efe

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The full council meeting in Pollensa will tomorrow consider a mayoral decree ordering the eviction of the Gelats Valls ice-cream kiosk in Puerto Pollensa. Mayor Miquel Angel March finally signed the order last Friday, it having taken some six months for the order to be made

In July, an Inca court was presented with a lawsuit naming March and the former mayor, Tomeu Cifre, and accusing them of malfeasance (abuse of public office). This drew attention to suspicions of the company operating the kiosk since the end of the 1960s having been shown favour, despite it now not having required authorisation. A document which had previously been registered with the town hall placed a figure of almost 725,000 euros sales by the ice-cream business (the Valls family) in 2014.

The current town hall administration did not call a public tender for the kiosk; this has in fact been delayed since January this year. Mayor March justified the delay because he wanted to tie the eviction in with the tender. (There presumably will now be a tender process.)

In all likelihood, Gelats Valls will continue to operate the kiosk until the end of the season, i.e. the end of October. Since the controversy over the kiosk blew up and became public in April, there has been a great deal of support for the family company, while the company that has brought the complaint of unfair competition (the whole of Puerto Pollensa knows which one) has been widely criticised. The Valls family maintains that it has had a concession ever since 1955. A problem has been a lack of documentary evidence to back this up.