The illegal tourist rental, Llorenç Galmés's stumbling block
The president of the Consell de Mallorca faces the last year of his mandate without resolving one of his main challenges
PalmaIn three years of legislature, the PP has only removed one institutional position for the results of its management: the island councilor for Tourism in Mallorca, Marcial Rodríguez. The reason? His inability to curb illegal tourist rentals and the political wear and tear this caused him. The President of the Government, Marga Prohens, entrusted the island councils with the fight against this activity, but in Mallorca the conflict has become chronic. The president of the Consell de Mallorca, Llorenç Galmés, has replaced the person responsible –now Guillem Ginard is in charge of the Ministry– and has pressured Airbnb to remove advertisements for unlicensed properties. But Galmés is heading towards the next elections with this stone still in his shoe.
In recent days, Galmés has highlighted the progress made in this matter. According to the latest official data, published in August 2025, 39.5% of the tourist apartments offered on platforms are not registered or do not have a license number in the official registers. Of the average of 20,204 properties analyzed each month for a year by the Council, 7,978 were illegal, representing 42,342 tourist places. In a press conference this Friday, the president of the Council announced that this year Airbnb has removed nearly 8,000 advertisements for illegal tourist rentals in Mallorca. According to the popular leader, these advertisements correspond to a theoretical capacity of nearly 40,000 places, although sources from the Tourism department admit to not knowing how many of these have permanently disappeared from the market.
What has been done this legislature? The PP has followed the path set by the Consell d’Eivissa, where the party has governed since the previous legislature and had already implemented measures against illegal tourist rentals. From 2025, the councils will have a new tool: the Law against illegal supply, which prioritizes inspection, toughens sanctions, and allows for the closure of properties.
Without data on sanctions
But in practice, the Council has encountered difficulties. According to the island councilor for Tourism, the inspectorate has been expanded in the last year, from 20 to 26 workers. Meanwhile, the administrators – the technicians who manage the complaints – have gone from three to fifteen. In 2023, 1,128 inspections were carried out and 400 reports were filed. In 2024, 3,569 were carried out, and 504 reports were filed. Meanwhile, in 2025 the number of inspections decreased to 2,638, because two technicians began visiting each apartment. The objective is, assure sources from the department, that the reports are processed with more guarantees and are not later filed for technical reasons. They do not yet have the figure for reports filed last year. The Ministry has also not responded to the question of how many sanctions have been imposed so far, nor how many fines have been collected.
However, the department has provided more data in response to specific questions formulated over the past year by the PSIB. In November 2025, the Tourism area had ordered the cessation of activity for 165 properties offering illegal tourist rentals. As of October 2025, the department also specified that it had not sent any case file to the Prosecutor's Office for non-compliance with a cessation order.
Councilor Ginard made a "positive" assessment of the work carried out so far by his predecessor. While admitting that the island government is still far from its goal of ending illegal tourist rentals, the situation has "improved each year," he said. Thus, he attributed the current situation to the previous left-wing government. "With the powers recently received and transferred so disastrously, we are talking about a brutal deficit of economic and human resources, and a very large imbalance between the inspection and sanctioning parts," he explained. "This legislature, despite the difficulties and the rigidity of the institution's operation, the staff and the reports filed have increased," he said.
However, the opposition is critical of the PP's management, which governs with Vox on the Council. "They refer to the Law against illegal supply, but they have not used any of the tools they have," considers Juana Maria Adrover (PSIB). After lifting the moratorium on tourist places from the Pact, Adrover considers that the Council "continues to grow the pool of regulated places," but "they are doing nothing against illegal tourist rentals." Regarding the removal of Airbnb ads, she opines that "the same ones that are removed, the next day they are posted again." From MÉS per Mallorca, Catalina Inés Perelló considers that "few strong actions" have been taken in the last three years.
"The new councilor has a continuity line with the previous one, he no longer even talks about containment," he laments. The representative of El Pi (now Coalició per Mallorca), Antoni Salas, defends the "progress" in the fight against illegal tourist rentals, "but halfway." "The fortunate step is to eliminate ads from platforms, but more work could have been done with the town councils to detect offenders," he argues. And he adds: "The illegal supply should be stopped at the source, by working with other countries." Illegal tourist rentals are, by their nature, difficult to detect and quantify. With the elections around the corner, Galmés has a year to step on the accelerator.
