The Inca City Council has reinforced actions to require owners of plots in the municipality to keep the land clean and in compliance with regulations. In case of non-compliance, the Council will impose fines ranging from 300 to 9,000 euros and, if the owner continues to fail to act despite the penalty, it will subsidiarily carry out the cleaning work and subsequently reclaim the cost.

The Balearic Islands face a complicated summer in terms of water supply and, more worryingly, a race against time to guarantee this resource in the coming years. The problem is no longer just whether it will rain more or less in the coming months, but whether the current system, at its limit during the summer months, will be able to withstand while the infrastructure to reduce dependence on aquifers arrives. The Islands are preparing an offensive of investments in desalination, reuse, supply networks, and sanitation, but a good part of these actions are still in the project, tender, or execution phase.

The Omnibus Law was intended to be an instrument for regulating strategic business projects and will go down in history as one of the most deregulatory norms regarding territorial and environmental matters. Among its provisions, there is one that eliminates the restrictions that the Government (former PP councilor Gabriel Company) had promoted to limit the establishment of catering establishments in the maritime-terrestrial public domain.

The GOB has asked the Balearic town councils this Thursday to report on how many constructions on rural land have been legalized through the positive administrative silence mechanism, after the Government eliminated this route with the new Law on urgent measures for strategic projects.

9,000 homes in eight Strategic Residential Projects (PRE). These are the files that are already moving through Palma City Council and are going through the long process of obtaining a permit. This is the great commitment of the mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez, which is still far from being a reality. Especially if the initial processing has to go through different controls, such as that of the General Directorate of Water Resources. Martínez and his team wanted at least "some cranes" building hundreds of homes within a year, as has been said in some PP meetings, convinced that it is necessary to show that action is being taken against the housing shortage.

The Association for the Revitalization of Old Centers (ARCA) has submitted a set of allegations to the General Plan of Estellencs, currently in the public information phase, with the aim of strengthening the protection of the municipality's heritage, landscape, and territorial model. The entity registered its observations on May 25 and argues that the future of the town must be based on the conservation of its cultural and environmental values and avoid transformations that could irreversibly alter its identity.

The Government introduced a last-minute legal modification to water regulations to exempt some urban development operations from the need to obtain authorization from the Directorate General of Water Resources. An additional provision of the Omnibus Law approved by the PP and Vox allows for the avoidance of new water sufficiency reports (water availability) in certain cases, provided that a specific plan or project is not considered to increase demand or that the circumstances justifying previous reports have not changed.

Palma wants to continue growing in population and Jaime Martínez's team does not intend to give up on this despite the lack of water that the Water Resources technicians already detected and confirmed in the year 2023. This is one of the conclusions of the Sustainable Water Management Plan promoted by Emaya, which has just completed the public exhibition period. The document advocates for increasing desalination and extracting more water from underground: up to 10 million more liters per day than are currently obtained, despite the delicate situation of the aquifers.

At a time when the inland towns of Mallorca face the challenge of climate emergency and the loss of urban identity, young voices like that of Miquel Fiol Munar (Costitx, 2000) offer a fresh, necessary, and well-studied perspective. An architect trained at the ETSAV (UPC) in Sant Cugat, Fiol combines his professional work at the Marès studio in Inca with his own personal project, amf.studio, from which he explores an architecture committed to the territory and heritage.

Year 1994. In Son Espanyolet, a residential neighborhood of Palma characterized by its ground floors and corrals, life revolves around a couple of nerve centers. There is a parish center, owned by the Theatines, which hosts everything from the Espanyol basketball club to the now-defunct Nostra Terra theater company. On a corner, on Contestí street, a haberdashery is much more than a shop: it is a meeting point, where many people who learn to sew and crochet spend their afternoons.

A new development of homes on Joan Bauzà street, in the Palman neighborhood of Pere Garau, has ignited debate among residents over sale prices. Most apartments exceed 330,000 euros before VAT, with amounts that can reach over 530,000 euros (including VAT), figures that many residents consider beyond the reach of the area's usual population (and which expel them from the neighborhood where they have grown up and want to live).

What about the covered pavilion that has been due to be built for years around the Torre dels Enagistes sports area? What are the problems that mean a project so necessary for Manacor's sport still hasn't even had the land bought?

Bunyola takes a step forward in public housing. The Balearic Housing Institute has put out to tender the drafting of the project for the construction of ten public protection homes in the municipality, an action that aims to expand the public stock and facilitate access to decent housing, especially for young people and families.

Last March, the Ministry of the Water Cycle and the Sea signed the authorization to carry out the demolition of Pedro J. Ramírez's pool in Costa de los Pinos, after a long legal battle since 2004. The case was well known by its owner (now Agatha Ruiz de la Prada), but in the Balearic Islands there are dozens of other pools in public maritime-terrestrial domain. And not only that: hotels, restaurants, and –of course– villas have also been built, some directly on the beach. All these uses are prohibited because the public domain is a strip that occupies the first meters of the coast and extends as far as a beach, dune system, or wetland reaches. Some of these constructions obtained temporary concessions in the past, but most have already expired. In total, it is estimated that there are more than 2,000 irregular constructions, many of which with demolition orders. The lack of resources from the State Coastal Demarcation has allowed cement to illegally occupy the front line for decades. One of the most striking cases is that of Bungalow, in Palma, a restaurant that has never even had a concession and continues to operate despite demolition orders.

Contrary to what the courts had stated in the first instance, the Consell de Mallorca will have to compensate the developer who had a license to build a housing development in El Guix (Escorca). The Superior Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands (TSJIB) has partially upheld the appeal of the developer Urnova regarding the long urban planning dispute of El Guix, which triggered the controversy over the impact of a set of chalets adjacent to the Lluc monastery. The court recognizes the company's right to be compensated for five plots of land affected by the urban planning declassification that was carried out to prevent construction in such an emblematic location. The court, however, rejects the bulk of the compensation requested, corresponding to the main housing construction project that was never executed.

Cales de Mallorca, the main hotel and therefore tourist area of the municipality of Manacor, has been demanding urban planning reception for decades. Born in the 60s as a private promotion of apartments and hotels to meet the demand of the first sun and beach boom, it has since incorporated a stable population that, despite paying taxes and fees for municipal services, receives almost no maintenance in return.

The Palma City Council has definitively approved the statutes and bases of the compensation board for the Son Ximelis Strategic Residential Project, a situation that opens the way to the urbanization of 143,649 square meters, where 1,080 homes can be built, according to municipal data. Of the total, 530 homes will have some type of public protection. The project had initial approval, but final approval was necessary to step on the accelerator.

The news, first reported by ARA Balears, about the Govern's authorization to demolish Pedro J. Ramírez's illegal pool took the case's complainant, Jaume Sastre, by surprise. "My lawyer is traveling and I don't know if they've notified us. Obviously, when I read it, I was happy because it's been many years of struggle, and it's one more step," he admits.

More than a hundred residents of Palma have joined this Saturday in a human chain to show their rejection of the construction of a car park and other municipal facilities on the plots adjacent to the old Gesa building. The protest, called by the association Parc Sí, took place in the same place where, according to residents' complaints, the City Council intends to build a "macrocar park" and new infrastructure.

A few days ago I was talking with a good friend who had just returned from a trip to Argentina and Chile. We were talking about the 'countries' Argentinians, these gated, guarded, and secure communities that the upper-middle classes have had to build to feel safe in a country where the fracture caused by inequality translates not only into a considerable crime rate, although it has been decreasing, but also into a perception of insecurity that persists despite these measures. The explanation is simple, as my friend pointed out to me: the rich are afraid. They don't live in their ivory towers, exclusive apartment complexes, and luxury penthouses for aesthetic reasons—or at least not only for that—but because they are terrified.