The pearls of the Strategic Projects Acceleration Law

PalmaThe culmination of the legislature with the Popular Party at the head of the Government has arrived one year before the elections with the approval of the Law for the acceleration of strategic projects by the Parliament this Tuesday. It is the last omnibus law that Marga Prohens will be able to push forward before the May 2027 elections. Precisely for this reason, the popular party, hand in hand with Vox, has taken the opportunity to modify about fifty laws, amid the opposition's complaints, even though the PSIB has also taken the opportunity to introduce amendments that have nothing to do with the reason for the initial decree-law.

In fact, some of the amendments that have been approved do not respond to any urgent need of the citizens of the Balearic Islands, who continue with the same problems that the popular party inherited from past legislatures and have not solved: housing, tourist saturation, and structural mobility problems. The spokesperson for MÉS per Mallorca, Lluís Apesteguia, has been one of the most critical of the need to introduce measures such as "the legalization of pigeon shooting in popular festivals". "What does this have to do with an accelerator unit for strategic projects, which is supposed to attract foreign investment?", he asked, in addition to criticizing that the popular party and Vox are pushing forward an initiative that he has described as "a show of sadism" towards animals. "It allows for organized and festive pigeon shooting competitions, it has nothing to do with any plague," he said.

Apesteguia has listed other measures that occupy a peculiar place in a regulation on attracting investment and economic transformation, such as the regulation of kayaking nautical practices, blue crab fishing, the reservation of places in the Local Police for military personnel, and that municipal agents can carry taser guns. "They have taken the opportunity to include things they had agreed upon with Vox or things that crossed some minister's mind," criticized Apesteguia, recalling article 125 of the Parliament's Regulations, which establishes that amendments must be related to the title of the law. Modifying laws through this channel "limits the right of representation of deputies", because amendments cannot be amended. That is to say, if they disagree, they can only express it with their vote, but they cannot make contributions as they would if the modifications had not been processed through this channel.

In fact, Apesteguia has spoken of a "festival of amendments" in which the volume of changes that the PP and Vox, and to a much lesser extent the PSIB, have taken advantage of to introduce was such that there were moments when "the deputies didn't even know what they were voting on". "They arrived at committee and butchered more than 100 amendments in minutes. We had to interrupt the committee more than five times. They didn't even defend the amendments they approved," he reproached the PP, and questioned some examples, such as the creation of the anti-squatting office to please Vox: "In the first six months, only eight cases were attended to at the City Council," he argued to emphasize that it is an unnecessary body.

Beyond the anecdote

Setting aside anecdotal measures, the Law on the acceleration of strategic projects affects important areas of citizens' lives. Below we present a summary.

Language

• Students exempt from Catalan will be so for four years, and not for a maximum of three years as before.
• Teachers will be able to apply for positions of very difficult coverage without accrediting any level of Catalan. This alters article 23.2 and 23.4 of the Law of Linguistic Normalization, which leaves no room for professionals without this requirement.
• Scarcity positions for civil servants will also not require Catalan from applicants (they will be considered scarce with five or fewer candidates).
• The grade required for high school students to obtain the C1 level of Catalan is lowered.

Housing and Urbanism

• Companies and investment funds will be able to buy housing at a set price, which is the one with the lowest price and which until now could only be acquired by individuals. The opposition has accused the Government of importing Ayuso's model to the Balearic Islands.
• The deadline to launch housing projects considered strategic is extended: from 12 to 24 months.
• The urban planning amnesty is changing: administrative silence will no longer be interpreted as positive, but as negative. This change has been made in anticipation of a sentence from the Constitutional Court that could overturn the positive silence. What is not known is what will happen to owners who have regularized rustic housing with a positive silence from the Administration if it is declared unconstitutional.

Tourism

• Reduction of fines for offenders: if a property illegally rented to tourists enters the Safe Rental program, the owner will save 80% of the fine.

Administration

• The use of the responsible declaration is universalized.
• The institutional advertising law is modified to reduce control over spending.

Environment

• The Law on the Conservation of Areas of Environmental Relevance (LECO) is changed to relax controls.

Social services

• The conditions to access the Guaranteed Social Income (Resoga) are modified and three years of residence will be required.
• Unaccompanied minors will also have to prove three years of residence to receive the emancipation allowance, a condition that was not previously required.

The amendments that were left by the wayside

There are also amendments that have not prospered, largely due to the public reactions they provoked when leaked to the media. Among these are the one that allowed hunting in protected areas of Menorca and the one that deprived children of irregular immigrants with physical and cognitive disabilities of medical attention: it was enough for one of the parents not to have the papers for it to be withdrawn. The amendment that removed environmental processing for large commercial areas was dropped along the way, largely due to pressure from small business associations. An amendment from the left to create a news council at IB3 has also not prospered.

As for the PSIB amendments that have gone ahead despite having nothing to do with the law, there is the one that regulates transport with driverless vehicles (VTC) to combat unfair competition against the taxi sector and a reform of the structure of the Tax Agency of the Balearic Islands (ATIB).