Promoted by Celestí Alomar, Minister of Tourism of the first Pacte de Progrés (1999-2003), a tax on tourist stays, immediately known as the ‘ecotax’, was approved on April 10, 2001, twenty-five years ago. It levied, approximately one euro per night, the stay of tourists. With the revenue, some negative externalities of mass tourism in the Balearic Islands were to be corrected. It did not come into effect until May 2002 due to an appeal to the Constitutional Court, filed by the Aznar government. When the People's Party won the following elections in 2003, it repealed the tax, considering it a brake on tourist competitiveness. Those who defended the repeal of the tax said that it could not be classified as ecological or environmental, and that it was not even a tax, arguing: “It was nothing more than a symbol of a policy of negative messages towards what tourism represented”. And they related the application of the ecotax to the decrease in tourist arrivals and the problems the hotel sector had experienced. The Government of Jaume Matas wanted to replace it with so-called green cards or ‘sustainable’ foundations that only collected a pittance.

I read that the far-right party Vox says it will condition its support for the approval of the 88 amendments to the strategic projects law –a true shake-up of the current system that will modify almost thirty laws– on a change in the toponymy of the Balearic Islands: “That they return to bilingual toponymy, Palma-Palma de Mallorca, Maó-Mahón and others like Santanyí-Santañí”. The Government has already replied that it does not agree with this, as it contravenes the Law of Linguistic Normalization.