Your weekly news catch up in Mallorca

What? Were there elections in Mallorca last Sunday? Ah yes, there were. I’ll come to those. But just to prove that there was other news, let’s start with some luxury.

Pedro Homar, the manager of the Palma 365 Tourism Foundation, is a rare example of public sector official whose job doesn’t appear to be determined by which lot is in power. He was originally appointed when the Partido Popular last controlled Palma town hall, so before May 2015, and has survived two administrations of the left. He’s obviously doing things well, with one of these things being attracting luxury tourists with “high added value who generate high tourist spending”.
And high it most certainly is. Tourists coming to Palma on personalised packages organised by specialist tour operators can typically spend 15,000 euros a day per person. “They don’t skimp on anything,“ noted Homar following a recent meeting in Madrid with representatives of these specialist operators. Private jets, private dinners prepared by leading chefs - money’s no object, and Palma and Mallorca want more of these luxury visitors.

Balearics, the place for luxury properties

For purchasers of luxury homes in Mallorca and the Balearics, prices are likewise no deterrence. When it comes to properties valued at three million euros and more, thirty-three per cent of these in Spain are in the Balearics. Insurance company Hiscox had commissioned a report which discovered that only the Malaga province (34%) has more properties in this price range than the Balearics. The company noted that Spain is “a safe investment and an ideal destination to establish a second residence”, especially for foreigners from the likes of the UK and Germany. Indeed, and 33% of the investment (over three million) is in the Balearics.

At this sort of price, foreign buying has nothing whatsoever to do with issues with housing in Mallorca, albeit that it is admitted by the real-estate sector that foreign buying in general does drive up the price of homes. But we won’t be hearing any more about restricting foreign buying - not that there were ever likely to have been any restrictions - and that’s because of the elections. The agitating parties in chief are either no longer going to form a Balearic government or find themselves with zero representation in parliament (i.e. El Pi).

Careful with that luxury watch

Even with luxury, though, there can be a downside, especially if it involves a luxury watch and a couple of Bulgarian sex workers in Playa de Palma. A tourist in the resort had gone back to his hotel room with these ladies. He was given a massage, fell asleep and awoke to discover that the ladies were no longer there and nor was his watch. The National Police were able to locate the two and arrest them, while they also detained a Bulgarian man. He was attempting to catch a flight and just so happened to have the watch on his wrist. On balance, it might perhaps have been better for him to have had the watch stolen by members of an Italian ‘Rolex gang’.

Building homes, and don’t hang around

For the overwhelming majority who don’t have three million euros spare for a luxury villa, the elections either may or may not result in a turn of their fortunes (luck as opposed to wealth) when it comes to finding some affordable housing. The property sector was swift in reminding Marga Prohens and the Partido Popular of election promises. It expects them to be kept and, moreover, for there to be no hanging around in amending legislation and approving new measures conducive to the building of homes. Just one of the sector’s demands was a reclassification of developable land, the Council of Mallorca’s territorial plan having effectively removed a great deal of land for potential development.
The estate agents, developers and others were also arguing that there should be a “long-term political pact” in order to prevent potential chopping and changing each time there’s an election. In other words, the call for a twenty-year pact was one based on the PP’s policies as opposed to those of the left. Fat chance of that happening.

The star falls from road projects

The left were left licking their collective wounds, none more so than Podemos, whose vote tanked, but in a strange gesture of left collaboration with the right, eco-nationalists Més suggested that they might facilitate the investiture of Prohens as president so as to slam the door on Vox. As far as Prohens is concerned - thanks very much, Més, but the PP will in any event govern in minority without Vox.

The Podemos councillor for roads at the Council of Mallorca, Ivan Sevillano, would have been aghast to learn that two immediate priorities for the PP will be the scrapping of his two stellar projects. The new administration will eliminate the HOV high-occupancy vehicle lane from the airport (which will come as a bit of a relief) while it will also get rid of the 80 km/h speed limit on Palma’s Via Cintura and put it back up to 120 km/h. As there has been evidence that the lower limit has resulted in fewer accidents and in a lowering of pollution (acoustic as well as atmospheric), reinstating the higher limit makes far less sense than eliminating the HOV lane. Still, this was an election promise. And election promises are there for the keeping. Aren’t they?

Open beaches that never close

In Calvia, where the PP look set to return after eight years of internal squabbling, the mayor-in-waiting, Juan Antonio Amengual, was coming out with his promises. He’ll keep the beaches open all year. Really. Since when have they been closed? Well, he’ll keep them cleaned all year. Not of dead posidonia remains he won’t; they have to stay over the winter. But Juan Antonio is all for Calvia being open all year, something which - where certain resorts are concerned - Mayor Rodríguez has been attempting to bring about.

Open all year or not, Juan Antonio would have been poring over the “municipal atlas” produced by the Exceltur alliance of leading tourism and travel companies (president, Gabriel Escarrer of Meliá Hotels International) and which indicated that Calvia ranks seventh in Spain in terms of the number of tourist accommodation places, three places above Palma. An atlas of the “social contribution of tourism”, it also showed that the “tourism presence” in Calvia was 62.1%. In other words, two-thirds of the municipality’s economy is linked to tourism. While this can be taken to be a strength, it can also be looked upon as a weakness because of the dependence.

Tourist numbers and “saturation”

In Magalluf, prospective mayor Amengual can doubtless look forward to an abundance of British holidaymakers, who will no longer be put off by apparent anti-tourist (especially British) observations by representatives of the left coalition. Yet oddly, and despite these observations, despite the tourist tax (which the PP will conveniently keep), despite the prices of a coffee and a beer in a resort frontline bar, blah, blah, blah, the British (and other tourists) were already in the ascendant. Last weekend, there were record numbers of passengers at the airport for the final weekend in May, attributable in part to half-term in England and Wales.

Figures for April, which pointed to the month having been record-breaking, showed that overnight stays by British tourists were up by 3.5% compared with 2022; German tourists by 8.8.% Hotel average occupancy was six percentage points higher (75%) than it had been in pre-pandemic April 2019. Mallorca was filling up, and it owed nothing to a change in government.

While occupancy was being reported as good, a separate report gave some background as to why the number of tourist accommodation places has become such a political battleground. Since 2000, the number of places in Mallorca has increased by 65% to 411,000, the most significant increase having been in holiday rentals places (legal, registered ones) from 3,916 to 103,339. These are numbers which go to the heart of the “saturation” debate.

Illegal holiday lets are another matter. The PP, and Vox for that matter, have both vowed to tackle the illegal offer, which the left pact has itself been pursuing. How tough will the new administrations be? The Council of Mallorca has fined Airbnb 125,000 euros for having failed to remove 200 adverts for illegal tourist apartment lets in Palma. They were told to do so last November. Vrbo (Expedia) were also instructed to remove ads; they did. As Airbnb successfully challenged a previous fine imposed by the Balearic government, we wait to see what the outcome of this latest sanction is.