The Balearic PP says no to the Galician PP's formula to limit the price of rent

PalmaThe PP voted this Tuesday at the Parliament plenary session against a PSIB bill that established the mechanism for town councils to request the declaration of a stressed zone and limit rental prices. So far, this fits the measures defended by Marga Prohens' party, which bets on increasing housing supply as a mechanism to lower prices, even though the cost escalation does not stop (the Socialists speak of a 30% increase in rent and a 40% increase in purchase price since the beginning of the legislature). A clarification: the initiative did not imply that the Government would make any declaration of a stressed zone, but rather allowed town councils to declare their municipalities as such. This is precisely the path that the Xunta of the Popular Party's Alfonso Rueda found to apply the State Housing Law in Galicia, a measure that town councils like A Coruña and Santiago de Compostela had demanded. In fact, the text of the PSIB's proposal is based precisely on the Galician model, and this is the model that the Balearic PP has rejected at the Parliament plenary session, where it was not even taken into consideration (Vox also voted against it), so the processing that would have allowed for amendments and negotiations was not opened.

During the debate, PP deputy Margalida Pocoví reproached the Socialists for wanting to apply measures that have failed in Catalonia. But PSIB spokesperson Iago Negueruela made it clear that the model followed for this bill was that of the PP government in the Xunta, which in December 2023 modified the Galician Housing Law to create a procedure that would allow requesting the declaration of a stressed zone. Both the Galician model and the PSIB's proposal require justifying the request with data on the housing market and developing a plan with corrective measures and a calendar. The declaration lasts for three years and can be extended if the circumstances that justified it continue.

"We will not declare stressed zones. If a town council requests it, we will evaluate it," declared Alfonso Rueda in February 2024 regarding this procedure. A mechanism that was also defended by the Galician PP deputy María Ángeles Freire in December 2023: "From the first moment, the Xunta de Galicia indicated that it would not declare areas of stressed residential market on its own initiative, but it also pointed out that it will not be an obstacle for them to be declared in those town councils that so wish."

The differences

The most important difference with respect to the Galician model is that, although the PP's Xunta enabled town councils to request the declaration of a stressed zone, it did not give them an automatic right to obtain it: the Galician government reserved the final say, depending on how the request affects regional housing policy. In contrast, the PSIB's proposal states that, when the request is made by a town council, the Government "shall declare the requested area as a stressed residential zone" after verifying the legal requirements to do so.

In Galicia, municipalities must create a sectoral board to work on the proposal, with sectors such as property managers, real estate agents, and developers. This disappears from the text of the Balearic socialists, who simplify the municipal procedure. The PSIB also presented the possibility that the Ibavi could propose declarations of stressed zones in "homogeneous territorial areas" of the Balearic Islands. In contrast, the Galician PP's formula always starts from the request of a municipality. Furthermore, the bill rejected by the Balearic PP allowed for the financing of public housing construction with resources from the Sustainable Tourism Tax (ITS).

Which Galician municipalities have limited the price of rent?

At present, A Coruña and Santiago de Compostela have been declared stressed areas at the request of their city councils, and the rent price limitations provided for by state law are applied there. A Coruña requested it at the end of July 2025, and in the month of August, the average rent was 735 euros (the data on housing in Galicia are from the Housing Observatory of this community). In contrast, in January 2026, the average price was 663.9 euros. In the case of Santiago, the declaration was incorporated into the state list in July 2026 when the average price of new contracts was 672 euros per month, 2.5% more than in 2025. At this point, it should be noted that the new rental contracts signed in Palma in 2025 had an average price of 1,581 euros, according to the Rental Observatory of the Alquiler Seguro Foundation, which provides data to the Government.