Tourists seen at Palma’s Parc de la Mar by the Cathedral

There are some two million more tourists per annum than there were in 2017. | Ruiz Collado

Andrew EdePalma 14/02/2025 13:50
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In this column last week, you may have detected a certain weariness on my behalf with the government’s sustainability pact. So many months in the uniting and the falling apart, February 27 will come as a massive relief. That is S-Day, Sustainability Day, when the pact is meant to reveal all and President Prohens is due to present her proposals for addressing tourist overcrowding. Or at least I think this is the plan, easy as it has been to lose track because of the incessant statements as a long-drawn-out prelude to the wisdoms of the pact’s experts being issued as though they were the Ten Commandments; twelve in fact, as there are twelve pact working parties.

This pact ennui stretches to the parrot-fashion political messages regarding saturation. I alluded to a major one last week, and it has been duly repeated in parliament by the vice-president Antoni Costa. “You (you being the opposition PSOE); you have contributed to the fact that we are close to breaking the figure of 20 million visitors. You authorised 115,000 new tourist places in the Balearics.” By now, I would have thought we were all aware of this charge, so often has it been stated by, for example, Costa, President Prohens, and the tourism minister Jaume Bauzá.

The vice-president was stretching a point in observing that we are “close” to breaking 20 million. Based on 2024’s record total, we are around 1.25 million tourists short of that threshold. Mind you, if growth in the region of five per cent per annum (the 2024 increase) is maintained, this will be broken in 2026. Costa was also a touch off in channelling his criticism. It was basically Més who brought about the increase in tourist places, courtesy of Biel Barceló’s legislation for holiday rentals - the legalisation, subject to exceptions, of apartments in particular. It was this more than anything else that pushed the number of places up, albeit that prior regulation had provided the means to do this.

Barceló appeared to believe - more than this, as he said so - that there would be a sort of natural wastage. Holiday rental registrations wouldn’t be renewed and would be eliminated totally. As they were for five years, he may have been correct. But whatever may have happened, eight years on from his legislation we have a tourism scenario whereby there are some two million more tourists per annum than there were in 2017 and when Barceló was consistently bemoaning saturation.

The current Més leadership accept that the legislation was a colossal mistake. It may have been with good intention - a democratisation of tourist accommodation - but it cannot be denied that it has been of key significance in driving up tourist numbers. So, the Partido Popular aren’t wrong, it’s just that they keep making the same point over and over again, thus reinforcing an impression that they had been in any shape or form been opposed to the principle of accommodation liberalisation. A crazy thing is that Iago Negueruela of PSOE put the brakes on in 2022 by introducing the moratorium on new places (beds) for all accommodation, hotels included. Yet the PP continue to seem to wish to lift this. It makes no sense.

Another constant political line of argument concerns low-season tourism. In the same parliamentary exchanges as those that produced the Costa 115,000, President Prohens stated that in 2024 the Balearics had grown “more in value than in volume, with the increase in visitors focused mainly on the off-season months”. In strict percentage terms, it is true that monthly growth in the low to medium season outstripped that of high summer. In July there was one per cent growth in numbers, in August 1.2%. By contrast, and as examples, there was 6.2% growth in December and 18.2% in November.

But this can’t the disguise the fact that there was almost five per cent more volume for the whole year and that there was growth in the summer. Not much in July and August admittedly, but June was up 6.1% - 152,609 in real terms. It could be that July and August are pretty much max-ed out anyway, that a peak has been reached or is being reached. June and September have a way to go, with June being one of the three months to which a summer increase in the tourist tax would apply. The good money remains on this increase, whatever it might be, being delayed until 2026, but if the government really believes an increase will be dissuasive, that volume will be checked rather than value, then why wait?

Prohens insists she will not take measures against saturation based on “personal perceptions, inclinations or phobias”. “Tourism accounts for 80% of the GDP of the Balearics. I will not play with the bread of the citizens.” Fine, but there are citizens demanding measures of a kind the government (not just this one) loves to describe as “brave”. They have to be adopted, and for once can they be done without stating the same old thing over and over.