The Association of Architects warns that Prohens' coastal law will perpetuate urban planning illegalities

PalmaThe Official Association of Architects of the Balearic Islands (COAIB) warns that the coastal law promoted by the Marga Prohens Government could open the door to perpetuating urban illegalities on the coast. The professional entity warns that the conservation of existing uses, responsible declarations, and the new coastal heritage registry could protect illegally established constructions and activities.

In the allegations presented to the bill for the planning, protection and comprehensive management of the coastline, the architects demand that only legally established uses be protected and that the new planning does not automatically prevail over territorial and urban plans. GOB and Marilles share a good part of these warnings, while the business association ADOPUMA asks to shield existing concessions and guarantee the continuity of beach businesses. In short, the amendments presented highlight the struggle over the coastal model that the Balearic Islands should have. The regulation proclaims environmental protection and adaptation to climate change, but leaves loopholes for architects and environmental organizations to detect opposite risks.

The COAIB adopts an eminently technical position, but agrees in large part with the approaches of the protectionist entities. The architects demand planning integrated into the current territorial, urban, and heritage legislation, which does not fragment planning or open the door to deregulation favorable to private interests.

As can be seen from the registered allegations, the COAIB fears that the project will generate regulatory dispersion and weaken the protection of the coastal landscape. It recalls that the 1988 State Coastal Law represented an essential advance, because it reinforced the public nature of the maritime-terrestrial domain, easements, free public access to the sea, and the duty of restoration. Therefore, it maintains that the difficulties accumulated in its application do not justify lowering these objectives, but rather deploying them in a more effective and coordinated manner.

Regarding discipline, the COAIB considers that the project should not be limited to recognizing inspection and sanctioning powers, but should also include "the exercise of the power to restore the disturbed legal order." This faculty, it warns, is "essential to guarantee the effective protection of legality" on the coast. Regarding existing uses and activities, it insists that preserving them "should not protect the consolidation" of those that have been implemented illegally.

The architects also question whether the Coastal Management Plans (POL) and the Distribution and Exploitation Plans for Seasonal Activities and Services (PAST) should automatically prevail over island territorial plans and municipal planning. This primacy could alter the territorial model without having to formally modify the instruments that regulate it, they warn. Therefore, they demand that island territorial plans maintain the backbone role of each island and that coastal instruments be integrated into them without displacing their structural determinations.

The COAIB also warns that allowing individuals and entities representing economic interests to promote planning instruments for specific sections could multiply the number of plans and make it difficult to identify the regulations applicable to each zone. To bring order to this possible dispersion, it proposes creating a public, georeferenced, and updated viewer that includes current and pending instruments, territorial delimitation, and the rules applicable to each section.

In the same vein, it demands that plans with a scope smaller than the island level should not be used to organize singular actions or respond to specific interests. These instruments should cover broad and coherent sections of the coast, delimited based on environmental, territorial, geomorphological, functional, and landscape criteria, they point out.

The architects also ask to expand the minimum content of the plans so that they incorporate the landscape integration of the facilities, the prevention of light and noise pollution, the dismantling of seasonal services, and the restoration of the spaces once the authorizations have ended. The objective is that they are not limited to organizing existing or planned occupations, but that they incorporate a comprehensive vision of the coast and its evolution, with special attention to the recovery of degraded spaces, renaturalization, de-impermeabilization, and adaptation to the effects of climate change.

The heritage register, under suspicionEnvironmental organizations and the Association of Architects point out in particular the loopholes in the future law that would allow for the consolidation of irregular constructions and activities on public land. The GOB demands that registration in the new coastal heritage registry should not entail any legalization nor generate by itself the right to obtain, renew, or extend a concession.

The COAIB goes further and questions the need to create this new figure, because heritage and urban planning legislation already has instruments to protect assets with historical, cultural, and ethnological value. If the registry is maintained, it proposes that it should only have an inventory and identification function and that the final legal protection be processed through ordinary catalogs and instruments.

The architects also demand that constructions intended exclusively for private and economic interests be excluded, as well as those that have been transformed, expanded, or consolidated without the corresponding enabling title. Marilles rejects that a simple responsible declaration is enough to maintain buildings contrary to the plans and advocates that they be adapted to the regulations or, if that is not possible, that they be removed.

Two opposing visionsADOPUMA focuses its allegations on the legal certainty of economic activities. The employers' association demands more protection for existing concessions, longer authorizations, possible compensation, administrative simplification, and stability for businesses linked to beach services. It also requests that a declaration of non-conformity does not automatically terminate a concession and that any modification imposed by new plans can be compensated if it causes harm to the titleholders.

The GOB defends the opposite approach: it wants to structurally reinforce the environmental protection of the coastline. Among other measures, it proposes that the carrying capacity be ecological and binding, limiting occupations, adapting planning to climate change, intensifying inspection, protecting dune systems, and reducing pressure in those spaces that are already saturated.

Marilles focuses on the protection of the marine environment and the reduction of both occupations and motorized navigation. In this sense, the Foundation defends the principle of non-occupation of the public domain, more restrictions on jet skis, reinforced protection of posidonia, more environmental assessment, and stricter control of concessions.

GOB, Marilles, and the COAIB agree on the need to avoid excessive occupation of the public domain, reinforce control over responsible declarations, prevent the fragmentation of plans, and convert environmental principles into effective obligations. The three entities also demand maintaining the specific guarantees for Menorca derived from its status as a Biosphere Reserve.

The essential discrepancy affects theconcessions and existing activities. ADOPUMA asks that the new plans respect them and that any alteration be compensated. The other entities demand, instead, that they be able to be adapted, withdrawn, or relocated when they prove incompatible with the protection of the coastline, public use, and the foreseeable effects of climate change.

Faced with all this, the allegations show that the project still does not resolve the central question: whether the new law will serve primarily to manage and provide stability to existing uses or to establish effective limits and progressively reduce pressure on the coast.

The coastal bill has just closed its amendment period and is now entering the parliamentary phase itself, in which the groups will have to decide which contributions from the entities they will assume and incorporate into the debate. The Governing Council approved the bill on June 25, 2026, and submitted it to Parliament, which admitted it for processing on July 8. The text was officially published on July 16 to open citizen participation, and the deadline for submitting amendments was extraordinarily extended until last September 4.