The President of the Government, Marga Prohens, ruled out this Tuesday the possibility of limiting the purchase of second homes if it affects Balearic citizens. This position means de facto closing the door to one of the main measures proposed by the European Commission to address the housing crisis.

The Parliament will demand that the Spanish government consider declaring the underwater mountains of the Mallorca Channel as a National Marine Park thanks to the approval of a Non-Legislative Proposal (PNL) by the PSIB in the Chamber's Economy Commission. All parties except Vox have voted in favor of this initiative to protect the underwater mountains located between Mallorca and the Pitiüses, "one of the most unique and valuable marine spaces in the western Mediterranean," according to the text of the PNL. It is a structure 275 kilometers long, with peaks reaching 94 meters in depth and habitats that extend to more than 1.2 kilometers. Les Olives, Ausiàs March, and Émile Baudot are the mountains that are part of these spaces, which host rhodolith beds (stone-shaped marine algae), corals, sponges, and deep-sea gorgonians.

President Marga Prohens has sought a direct confrontation with the PSIB in the first plenary session of the political year. During the control session for the Executive, she dodged criticism from the left regarding her tourism containment policies. Thus, she dug into the Spanish government's change of criteria regarding the Balearic law on airport co-management and the complaints from Aena, which has warned that it will try to stop it if it is approved in the Congress of Deputies. "They see our airports as a cash register," she retorted.

The PSIB-PSOE does not intend to overlook the report from the General Intervention of the Council of Mallorca, which makes a very unfavorable assessment of the Tirme concession and concludes that it has a serious impact on the interests of the Administration. The socialist spokesperson at the island institution, Catalina Cladera, demanded this Tuesday "the immediate halt" of the tariff modification file, the suspension of the application of the 2026 tariff, and the review of the 41 million euro credit modification approved by the Council plenary session in the month of July.

The PSIB spokesperson in Parliament, Iago Negueruela, reproached President Marga Prohens this Friday for her clash with the Spanish government. After the conservative leader said that President Pedro Sánchez hid a report on the risk of migrant arrivals to the Islands, Negueruela accused her of "lying". "She talks about massive arrivals of migrants" by boat, he denounced: "She wants to harden her discourse".

"Holy cow! What are we doing here?". This was the reaction of some of the members of the Palma Municipal Music Band of Palma when, a few minutes before the start of the event in defense of Ceuta, they saw the atmosphere and heard the shouts against the Spanish government and Pedro Sánchez. One of the musicians explains that the ensemble had been requested by the mayor, Jaime Martínez, and that they approached it like any other institutional act. "But one thing is to be with the people of Ceuta and another is to want to oust a government", he summarizes.

The President of the Government, Marga Prohens, joins the PP's state war against Pedro Sánchez. In a media briefing, she encouraged the citizens of the Balearic Islands to participate in the demonstration called for this Wednesday in support of Ceuta, and accused the Spanish government of "hiding information" about the massive entry of migrants into the autonomous city.

The PSIB has kicked off the political year by rescuing two old initiatives to see if, after this summer's wave of anti-massification protests, the PP will agree to negotiate them. These are a bill to increase the Sustainable Tourism Tax (ITS, known as the ecotax) by two euros and another to declare areas of the Islands as tense residential markets, to combat the rising cost of housing.

Celestí Alomar has died at 76 years old and leaves a very large void as an era. He did and was many other things, but he will be remembered as the counselor who implemented the ecotax in the Balearic Islands. He did this during his time as Minister of Tourism of the first government of the Pacte de Progrés, a government that had to withstand the fiercest criticism during its existence –from adversaries, but also from those closest to them– and which now, 25 years later, many value and miss, and with good reason. The first Pacte de Progrés of the Balearic Islands governed from 1999 to 2003. In a short time, the deaths of President Francesc Antich and Vice-President Pere Sampol, and now Minister Celestí Alomar, represent the premature disappearance of three key figures in the recent political history of the country. I write 'premature' because, although all three were around or past seventy years old, the death of those who truly work for the common good is always premature.The Pacte de Progrés was the first progressive government that the Balearic Islands had and it was a pioneer in many things, here and in the Spanish state. The ecotax that Celestí Alomar promoted was ahead of its time in uniting tourism policies with serious environmental policies. Alomar understood this tax as a tool for self-government and social cohesion. It earned him a fatwa, a war from hoteliers, an economic sector with pretensions more of a caste than a lobby. 

The death of former Minister of Tourism Celestí Alomar has shaken the political landscape of the Islands. The President of Congress, Francina Armengol, lamented the loss in statements to the media. "These are very sad moments because we have lost a great reference for the left," she said, and highlighted that Alomar "has contributed enormous baggage from an intellectual point of view, for the projection of a much more progressive society." She also bid him farewell personally, as she said she had lost "a great friend": "The honor we can do him is to continue with his way of thinking and feeling".

The PSIB-PSOE denounced this Monday in Algaida that Marga Prohens' government prioritizes subsidized nursery schools over municipal ones and has called for local administrations to receive the same support to be able to assume the expenses derived from education for 0 to 3 year olds. The socialist candidate for the presidency of the Consell de Mallorca, Amanda Fernàndez, made these statements in front of the Flor de Murta municipal nursery school, accompanied by the mayor of Algaida, Marga Fullana, and socialist mayors from Mallorca.

The socialist group on the Consell de Mallorca has accused the island institution this Friday of having outsourced the organization of Lluc a Peu de la Part Forana, tasks that were traditionally carried out by the Antics Blavets and volunteers who participated in the ascent.

The PSIB has requested this Wednesday that the Government open a columbarium in the Palma cemetery to house nearly 200 unidentified victims of Francoist repression, as well as other figures such as the siblings Aurora and Gabriel Picornell. The socialist spokesperson in Cort, Xisco Dalmau, has asked that the inauguration be accompanied by a recognition ceremony with the participation of memorialist entities. He also argued that this space should become a living center for study and research, open to both students and the general public.

Palma City Council has initially approved the new municipal ordinance on urbanization, trees, and open spaces, replacing the one in effect since 1985. It unifies criteria for the design and transformation of public spaces with the aim of "improving accessibility, sustainability, legal certainty, and urban quality," as explained by the Councilor for Urbanism, Housing, and Strategic Projects, Óscar Fidalgo, at a press conference. "With this step, Cort has an updated instrument that will allow for the planning of future urban developments under common criteria of quality, sustainability, accessibility, and legal certainty," he highlighted.

The Secretary of State for Tourism, Rosario Sánchez (Palma, 1976), will replace Francina Armengol as the PSIB's lead candidate in the 2027 regional elections. She doesn't look at polls: "The only one that counts is the one on election day." She speaks to ARABalears at the party headquarters in Palma.

Pedro Bestard defended himself this Thursday against criticism from the PSIB for the transfer of waste from Ibiza to Mallorca, assuring on repeated occasions that "it is waste, not excrement" and insisting that the pilot test will have no impact on Mallorca. The second vice-president and Minister of Environment of the Consell de Mallorca had a tense confrontation with the socialist deputy Juana María Adrover during the plenary session of the insular institution.

The socialist group in the Consell de Mallorca has filed a complaint with the Prosecutor's Office of the Balearic Islands against the second vice-president of the Consell de Mallorca, Pedro Bestard, for the use of the island institution's official cars.the second vice-president of the Consell de Mallorca, Pedro Bestard, for the use of the official cars of the island institution.

10 months left until the election campaign and less than 11 until the elections. And nothing has changed compared to two years ago, when a depressed and unmotivated left-wing opposition was beginning to be seen, that the Government was toying with Vox and that the PP and the far-right would add up again next time.The most significant fact that confirms everything is as it was is Francina Armengol's renunciation of disputing the presidency with Prohens again. If one only reads the bold print of the deed, or as the island PSOE has sold it, one cannot appreciate in any way the political burden it truly carries. To value it in its just measure, it must be placed in the pertinent context.Armengol received the 2023 defeat as a blow, if not personal, at least against her political pride. And a very deep one. This is explained by what her circle asserted throughout the year before the elections. That what they called 'the Francina effect' existed, the attraction directly attributable to the leader's public personality and her management in the Government, which would produce a sufficient number of votes that would dispel assumptions about a potential right-wing victory, a possibility they disdained, especially because they did not believe Prohens had the capacity to regain enough support for the PP.It was a conception of electoral politics that deliberately abstained from the main characteristic that the behavior of suffrage in the Balearic Islands has had in recent decades: the growing importance of the national key. Despite this phenomenon, easily perceptible in the evolution of the results at the polls since at least 2007, they faced the 2023 elections with that conviction.It is worth saying that it was not only the Armengolian environment that said so. It was a more widespread perception. Even among certain nationalists, it was believed that the president had a personal and political advantage that would help her — and incidentally, the entire left — to be re-elected for the third consecutive time. And this was not only happening in the world of political aristocracy: trade unionists and members of independent civil associations, anti-PP and pro-left, thought much the same.Everything, however, changed when a few weeks before the elections the socialist leadership began to understand – surely because of the internal polls that would reach them from the central office – that the fantasy of the aforementioned effect was fading, if it had ever existed.The electoral night did nothing more than confirm the catastrophe: the left lost the Government and Armengol, the presidency. Suddenly, however, the socialists warned – it was a correct reading, there was no doubt: they were right – that they were not responsible for the disaster, but for the collapse of the far-left. Undeniable: Podemos went from 6 deputies to 1. Neocommunism was sinking and dragging the entire left towards the opposition abyss.The slogan that the local PSOE leadership then imposed was that the defeat was a mere parenthesis and that Prohens, in her incompetence, would not manage and Armengol would return to be president in 2027, even if she had fled to Madrid, taking advantage of the general elections of July 2023.It is believable that he thought so. Or, at least, that he was eager to return and "finish the job".At the end of 2024, at the PSOE federal congress in Seville, Armengol hinted at least to two Majorcan journalists – who later recounted it – that she would indeed be a candidate against Prohens. It is even more forceful than when the regional congress was held in March 2025, the website of the Balearic Socialist Party welcomed the re-election of the undisputed leader with: “Armengol announces the first measure for when she returns to being president in 2027…”.The following months, in fact, throughout that year, things – possibly based on fierce polls for the socialists – changed. When in February 2026 the newspaper Última Hora reported that Armengol would resign due to the evidence that the chances of winning again were nil, it was certainly already decided for several weeks.The same newspaper recently published the poll – conducted by the always reliable Balearic Institute of Social Studies – of voting intention which made clear the reason for the resignation: the PSOE is already losing 3.7 percentage points compared to the 2023 result and, worse, loses 4 seats, while the far-left disappears. The nationalists only add one more deputy, in Menorca, and the regionalists get none; the PP is close to an absolute majority and if it doesn't have it – which is more likely – it will be able to make a deal again with Vox, which will at least increase by one seat.This is the reason that explains why Armengol wants to stay in Madrid and confirms what was beginning to be seen two years ago and that the PSOE has now implicitly confessed: that the left has nothing to do.

The general secretary of the Socialist Federation of Mallorca, Amanda Fernández, announced this Tuesday her candidacy to lead the PSIB list for the Consell de Mallorca in the 2027 elections.