Prohens shields herself with tax cuts in the face of the lack of major reforms

PalmaThe President of the Government, Marga Prohens, began the legislative term with two serious structural problems: the housing emergency and tourism saturation. And she ends it with these two fronts on the table: there is no initiative that has served even to slow down the escalation of housing prices, and the oil stain of saturation covers months that had not traditionally been high season, while the Balearic Islands continue to endure pressure in the summer that Prohens herself claimed was not sustainable.

In this situation, the president has had to face the last general policy debate of the legislative term, with a triumphalist speech that already takes it for granted that the PP will govern again in the next term. Prohens has no arsenal of structural measures to defend, not even the beginning of a transformation in the Islands, and her shield in these circumstances is tax cuts. "We will not have completed the great structural challenges of these Islands, because, although we have laid the foundations to change frameworks, dynamics, and trends, one legislative term is not enough to turn around all the major inherited issues that today indeed occupy the political agenda," she said.

The head of the Executive recalled that the first measure she applied, ten days after beginning her mandate, was the tax relief on successions and donations between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, and spouses, and she has announced new tax cuts. It is in the fiscal field where the PP feels most comfortable, and this was evident in this Tuesday's parliamentary session.

In this way, the Government will raise the tax relief on successions between siblings and from uncles to nephews when there is no direct descent from 60% to 75%; it will eliminate property transfer taxes and documented legal acts for the purchase of a first home for those under 36 years old (it will reduce it by half for those under 40); and it will create a deduction to incentivize savings intended for the purchase of a first home for young people, among other measures. It remains to be seen what the impact of these cuts will be, because right now, a good part of the citizenry cannot consider buying a home and has many difficulties in meeting rent payments. However, Prohens has proclaimed that "lowering taxes for families is defending the Balearic Islands".

New measures for housing... the coming legislature

Regarding housing specifically, Prohens recalled the measures that the Government has put into action. Here, the problem is not quantitative, because there are many, but qualitative, because many of these initiatives have not served to lower the status of the emergency. The president also spoke, once again, of more than 10,000 projected homes, including 2,000 public ones and 4,700 at a capped price. However, the emergency is now, and there is no room to wait to verify that these projects become a reality. The Residential Emergency Decree (allowing for increased densities and heights, splitting homes, converting premises, and making use of unfinished buildings), the figure of homes at a capped price, the strategic residential projects, the residential priority requirements agreed upon with the far-right, the incentives for owners with the Safe Rental program... None of these measures has demonstrated the capacity to produce structural changes in the Islands. "There are no magic solutions and the situation is not changed from one day to the next, neither with one decree, nor two," said Prohens.

In fact, the announcements made by the president highlight the shortcomings of the policies that the PP has implemented this term. On one hand, the Government will recover the financing for the construction of public housing with funds from the Sustainable Tourism Tax, an initiative of the Pact that Prohens completely rejected and repealed. On the other hand, Prohens explained that the Executive will develop a strategic plan, the HABITA_IB 4+4 Plan, with 50 new proposals. This plan would be applied between 2027 and 2031, the next term, an announcement that the opposition has interpreted as confirmation of the failure of the last three and a half years. Furthermore, the Popular Party leader did not announce a single measure today for people living in rental housing and focused her speech on deductions for the purchase of a home.

No announcements to alleviate tourist saturation

Beyond claiming the Pact for sustainability, the 1x1 of places, the limitation on the entry of vehicles to Mallorca, and the fight against illegal offers, Prohens has not made any announcement regarding tourism. In fact, when speaking about limits in the Balearic Islands, she linked her speech to immigration. "We will not fall into any contradiction: we cannot continue growing in the number of tourists on the Islands, nor can we continue growing in population. No, there is not room for everyone here. And there is especially no room for irregular immigration. There is no room for those who do not come to contribute, who do not come to integrate, who do not come to respect our laws and our values", she stated, without entering into the link between the economic model and the need to incorporate labor from outside the Balearic Islands.

Prohens did announce a plan to boost the reindustrialization of the Islands, but without any schedule, deadline, or concrete measure.

A "not very ambitious" speech

The opposition parties have not been the only ones to criticize Prohens' speech. The federation of small and medium-sized enterprises and freelancers of Mallorca, Pimem, has described the president's speech as "lacking ambition" and lamented the lack of "solid enough foundations to face the necessary changes that our economic model cries out for." "The employers' association has already said on more than one occasion that the Sustainability Board has not yielded the expected results nor the necessary debates to move forward on changes that help correct the problems of mass tourism," Pimem pointed out in a statement, in which it did value positively the Government's measures to support the self-employed.

In the cultural sphere, the OCB has criticized the balance of the legislature, negative for the language and culture of our own. "The omen of a black four-year period that we had warned about when this legislature began is confirmed, in a disastrous combination of regressive measures in the first part and generalized and sustained inaction in all areas, especially in that of the linguistic integration of the newly arrived population," said the president of the OCB, Antoni Llabrés.