A Spanish news item the other day about new ministers in the Spanish government was headlined ‘José Manuel Miñones y Héctor Gómez, nuevos ministros de sanidad e industria’. The headline was perfectly correct but what it didn’t say was that Gómez was the new tourism minister. This is a ministry for industry, trade and tourism - in that order in terms of title - so picking industry for the headline, because it comes first, made some sense. However, of the three, tourism would have been the one to most grab people’s attention - in the Balearics at any rate. Perhaps the headline writer didn’t deem tourism to be more important. In which case this would have been a reflection of a repeated criticism of Spanish governments, regardless of political party, over many years; decades in fact. Tourism is lumped in with something else; it should stand alone.
Strangely enough, though, Pedro Sánchez has chosen a minister who actually has a tourism background. This has been pretty much unheard of until now. As well as having graduated in tourism, Gómez is a former director of Turespaña, Spain’s tourism agency, a body that is active at a global level as well as at national. He joined the ministry under Reyes Maroto in 2019.
There is something else that is fairly remarkable about this appointment. Gómez is from Tenerife, which means that the two archipelago regions - Canaries and Balearics - now have both the minister and the secretary-of-state for tourism (Rosana Morillo). This has happened before. It did so for a time when Mariano Rajoy of the Partido Popular was prime minister. José Manuel Soria from Gran Canaria was minister and Isabel Borrego from Mallorca was secretary. But neither Soria nor Borrego had a tourism background; both Gómez and Morillo do.
Having a minister and a secretary from the Canaries and the Balearics reflects the importance of the two regions to Spain’s tourism. But more significant is the fact that here are two people with the knowledge and from regions that have much in common apart from just insularity. They both, for example, are experiencing great pressures on housing, partly brought about by holiday rentals (legal and illegal).
The appointment of Gómez was greeted very positively, the Exceltur alliance for tourism excellence (president Gabriel Escarrer of Meliá) referring to the “excellent” tandem at the ministry and the president of the Mallorca Hoteliers Federation, Maria Frontera, saying that Gómez well understands what happens in the archipelagos and what the islands’ challenges are. Positive though this is, it may prove to be rather late. This will depend on the outcome of the general election at the end of the year.
13,000 accommodation places aren’t that big a deal
A colossal amount of jargon surrounded the decision taken at the end of last week by the Council of Mallorca to eliminate some 13,000 new (additional) tourist accommodation places on the island. The jargon referred to various Council plans, but cutting to the chase this was a decision that should have come as absolutely no surprise. These places are currently frozen by the Balearic government’s moratorium on new places. Under the legislation for this freeze, island councils have the power to decide what to do with the places once the moratorium ends. This includes scrapping them, which is precisely what one would expect, as to grant them would fly in the face of the desire to prevent more growth of tourism.
This decision didn’t have to be taken now. That it has been can surely be no coincidence. The relevant mechanisms are due to be approved by May - in time for the elections, therefore. Is it an electoral move? Perhaps it is, one to appeal to a PSOE and left support base or to serve as a means of impeding a right-wing administration from granting these places if there were to be a change of government.
These are places which are both for hotels and holiday rentals. In respect of the latter in particular, I’m not so convinced that a Partido Popular administration would automatically seek to re-amend regulations so that the places could be granted. To support this, I look at the situation in Ibiza, where the PP are currently in control and have acted to prevent new licences on rustic land. This may be a specific issue, but it nevertheless speaks to a pressure on land in general and to human pressure from tourism.
13,000 or so places in Mallorca aren’t that big a deal when one considers that there are presently around 430,000 all told (315,000 hotels, 115,000 holiday rentals). Blocking their use seems fair enough. The bigger issue is whether one believes that there are too many. And plenty of people do believe this, not only politicians from the left but also businesses, including some leading hoteliers.
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