The utopia of the 13.5 million tourists that the Government rejects

PalmaThe Climate Change and Energy Transition Law of the Balearic Islands establishes that the Government must develop an Energy Transition and Climate Change Plan to plan policies, objectives, and measures. The Pact Executive drafted one in April 2023, behind schedule (according to the rule, it had to be approved before May 2021) and one month before the elections. That document provided a figure that was left in a drawer: to achieve the energy transition goals, the Balearic Islands had to reduce the number of visitors to 13.5 million people per year. This limitation on the number of tourists was proposed at 16.5 million visitors per year, far from the 20 million that it could end up with by 2026.

According to the plan, mass tourism exerts pressure on energy and water resources that makes it impossible to materialize “an energy transition for the Islands without taking this sector into account, which will have to reduce consumption”. The document highlights the need for “restrictive measures”, such as “the limitation of tourists”. A reduction in the number of visitors would allow “decreasing the pressure on resources, such as water and energy, which would improve the Islands' capacity to adapt to certain impacts associated with climate change”. Pollution would also be reduced and, consequently, the risks to the health of residents. And it would improve “the state of local ecosystems and biodiversity”.

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The PP Government continues to fail to comply with the Energy Transition Law and has not approved the plan either. The Department of Enterprise, Self-Employed and Energy (the minister is Alejandro Sáenz de San Pedro) did draft another version at the beginning of 2025, from which any concrete limitation on the number of tourists disappeared. Interestingly, both drafts of the plan were commissioned to the same consulting firms, Azigrene and Global Factor.

How was the issue of mass tourism addressed in the 2025 plan? The proposal in this case is to promote “more sustainable tourism” and carry out “carrying capacity studies regarding the current availability and sustainability of water resources, infrastructure, energy, waste management, environment, climate footprint, food sovereignty, health, labor and economic development, etc.”. In any case, the new plan has not been approved and is already more than five years late.

The text from Prohens' Government claims that these studies would allow for reducing pressure on resources, reducing pollution and environmental pressure on the Islands, precisely the same benefits as reducing tourists to 13.5 million annually, just by the act of preparing reports. It should be noted that the wording of the benefits of the 2025 plan is exactly the same as that of 2023, and even repeats errors such as saying ‘sequeres’ instead of ‘sequeres’ (droughts) and ‘illes’ instead of ‘illes’ (islands), lack of agreement (‘determinat impactes’) and erroneous expressions (‘com a inundacions’ instead of ‘com a inundacions’). “Regarding the reduction of the number of tourists to 13.5 million, we consider it to be a proposal that conflicts with the European principle of free movement of people,” point out sources from the Department of Enterprise, Self-Employed and Energy. “Furthermore, it is a measure that does not propose concrete mechanisms to apply it or to measure its real impact,” they add.

The 2023 plan did establish mechanisms to limit the number of tourists. It proposed coordinating the reduction through the PIAT (Intervention Plan in Tourist Areas) and the island territorial plans. And it proposed transferring objectives for stabilizing flight arrivals to the Ministry of Development. Furthermore, the Department's response does not argue why setting a tourism reduction target necessarily violates European law.

“Reducing the number of tourists in the Balearic Islands is not just the desire of the vast majority of people. It is also a necessity if we want to combat climate change. This is how the reports prepared by the Government state it,” points out MÉS per Mallorca deputy Ferran Rosa. It was precisely this party that recalled that the figure of 13.5 million tourists is not random, but comes from a study by the Executive itself. “We cannot continue living this way, with records year after year. We need horizons where people can live with dignity,” he adds.

The Government does not explain why the plan has not been approved yet, nor in which effective measures the load studies provided for in the 2025 plan would be reflected. The Ministry defends the application of the Energy Transition Law thanks to “the promotion of renewable energies, the encouragement of self-consumption, the expansion of the public electric vehicle charging network, and energy efficiency measures.” However, Article 10 mandates the approval of the Energy Transition Plan, and the second additional provision sets a maximum period of two years from the entry into force of the law.

The 2025 plan proposes more ambitious objectives, but reduces the effective actions: in the 2023 one there were 106, and in the current one, 88. How can more demanding objectives be reached by reducing measures and without an operational energy transition plan? Is it a matter of increasing emission reduction percentages only on paper? What will need to be done after two lost legislatures?