The PSOE accuses Galmés of hiding the agreements with Airbnb

PalmThe socialist group of the Consell de Mallorca has accused the president of the Consell de Mallorca, Llorenç Galmés, of hiding the island institution's agreements with large vacation rental platforms, such as Airbnb. In a statement, the party assures that it has registered "multiple information requests" in this regard from both the Presidency and Tourism departments, without being able to access the documentation. Faced with this, the group will report the facts to the Council of Transparency of Spain, as it already did last week following the Consell's refusal to provide the agreement that enables the transfer of waste from Ibiza to be incinerated in Mallorca.

Galmés announced on April 10 that Airbnb has removed nearly 8,000 illegal tourist rental listings in Mallorca as a consequence of the agreement reached by the platform with the Consell de Mallorca a year ago. But he did not explain what this agreement consisted of. Socialist councilor Juana Maria Adrover has considered that this "opacity is especially serious at a time when illegal vacation rentals continue to run wild in Mallorca and directly affect citizens' access to housing." Therefore, she will ask the Transparency Council to urge the Council to provide the information to which "the opposition groups are entitled." Even so, she has insisted that it is “imprescindible to know what agreements President Llorenç Galmés is reaching with these platforms, especially when these supposed collaborations are not having any effect on the reduction of illegal vacation rentals on the island.

 "It is the last attempt to be able to access information that the Council has been hiding for almost a year," assures the PSOE in the statement. "The PSOE has asked if any internal or external audit had been planned to evaluate the effectiveness of the agreements with vacation home marketing companies; as well as if the agreements related to tourist inspection, collaboration with municipalities or ATIB would be published on the Consell's website," the party points out: "The Consell avoided offering information by arguing that no agreement has been signed with the home marketing companies, but rather collaboration protocols with the marketing platforms, without providing any document or specifying anything." Given this fact, the Socialist Party asked "how many protocols had been signed and with which platforms," but also did not receive a clear answer in this regard.