Balearic businessmen say that "one cannot grow indefinitely"

PalmaThe president of the Confederation of Business Associations of the Balearic Islands (CAEB), Carmen Planas, assured this Wednesday that in the Islands "it is not possible to grow indefinitely", and appealed to the Government's management to control tourist flows. The president of CAEB made these statements accompanied by the vice-presidents and representatives of the main associations integrated into the employers' organization to read a manifesto on the tourist and economic model.

As EFE reports, Planas has pointed out that "the most important thing" is to guarantee a "good management" of the arrival of visitors to the Islands. Furthermore, he has defended the need for the tourism model to evolve to generate more value and quality, instead of increasing the volume of visitors. Regarding the demonstration called for this Sunday in Palma by the platform Menys Turisme, Més Vida (Less Tourism, More Life), he has shown "respect" for the mobilization. However, he has considered "proportionate" the action of the Civil Guard in the detention of two activists accused of making graffiti on various real estate agencies in Santa Maria del Camí, in protest against real estate speculation.

Planas has argued that tourism is an essential activity for the economy of the Islands and has called for a "rigorous, honest and useful" debate that avoids "extremisms" and allows for addressing the structural causes of the Archipelago's main problems. She assured that business people are "fully aware" of the difficulties the Islands are going through, such as access to housing, pressure on infrastructure, mobility problems, protection of natural resources, and the growing difficulty of developing a life project on the Islands. "They are not isolated problems, they are interrelated, which makes them more complex, and complex problems require complex diagnoses," she pointed out.

The business leader maintained that the housing access crisis cannot be attributed solely to tourism, and recalled that cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, and Valencia are registering similar price increases. Thus, she pointed to the lack of public housing development in recent decades, the increase in resident population, the purchase of second homes, international real estate investment, the existence of empty homes, administrative slowness, scarcity of available land, and urbanistic and fiscal decisions accumulated over years. In terms of mobility, she highlighted that traffic problems do not disappear outside the tourist season. Thus, she warned that reducing the number of visitors would not solve these problems on its own, and advocated for tourism management based on planning, investment, transparency, and decisions sustained over time.