Farmers load against the Council: "If tourism lost 30% of its turnover, they would come to work in the afternoons"

PalmaRepresentatives of Mallorca's primary sector have erupted against the island council this Monday. They have already held several meetings with representatives of the institution, but, as they lament, without results: hoteliers continue to fail to comply with the regulations that oblige them to purchase a percentage of local produce. A few minutes before meeting with the vice-president of the institution, Llorenç Galmés, the coordinator of Unió de Pagesos, Joan Gaià, and Toni Feliu, from Sa Casa Pagesa, have lashed out at the PP and Vox government. "The consumption of local produce, from January to here, has fallen by 30%", said Gaià: "If hoteliers lost 30% of their turnover, people would even come to work in the afternoons". Since it is the farmers who have lost it, he continued, "no one is doing anything".

Farmers have protested again because, they assure, hoteliers continue to not comply with the regulations in force for three years. "Ten days ago we saw the tourism minister [Guillem Ginard] and he informed us that in three years they have not imposed any sanctions for non-compliance with the consumption of local products," he said. "The vast majority of hotels do not comply, and the Consell de Mallorca has spent three years trying to avoid doing things properly," he expressed: "Hoteliers have not yet received any sanctions, the law is not being applied, and the Council takes care that it is not applied". According to his explanation, the fact that hoteliers only have to buy 3% of their total gastronomic offer from local producers "is a misery" and, despite this, "the Ministry of Tourism does everything possible to prevent it from happening". In this sense, he announced that the sector will be activated so that the relationship with hoteliers is direct and does not go through the Council or the FEHM: "Some hoteliers want to do it well, but the filtering by the Ministry and the FEHM distorts it".

Ginard refuses to provide sanction data

The island councilor for Tourism, Guillem Ginard, has come out to respond to this intervention, which he considered to be "not entirely correct," because it was made before the meeting. "If we already express ourselves as if we had carried it out, we could communicate solely through the media," he lamented. Ginard assured that the Council is "dedicated to complying with and enforcing the law." However, he refused to provide data on sanctions and, despite claiming that "never before have so many inspections been carried out as now," he did not say how many had been done in relation to local produce. "We regret that there are those who decide to instrumentalize the sector," he criticized.