The Santa Eulària Town Council has imposed a fine of €177,525 on the owner of a property in Canar for changing its use from residential to tourist without the required permit during the summer of 2025. The inspection revealed that the property was being marketed as tourist accommodation through a digital vacation rental platform. During the inspection, a reservation for four nights, from June 9th to 13th, 2025, was found, along with the provision of services typical of tourist activity. The inspected property is located in a multi-family building on urban land zoned for residential use. According to the municipal planning regulations, vacation rentals are expressly prohibited in multi-family buildings, making the change of use illegal. The proposed penalty is stipulated in the Balearic Islands' Urban Planning Law, which establishes a percentage of 75% of the building's value. In this case, the property's reference value amounts to €236,701.

Airbnb has removed the listing for the tourist apartment rented by the PSIB (Socialist Party of the Balearic Islands) from its website to highlight the existence of illegal rentals in Palma. The Tourism Department of the Consell de Mallorca (Island Council of Mallorca) reportedly requested the removal of the listing after a press conference held this Monday at the property by the Secretary General of the PSIB in Palma, Iago Negueruela.

The Consell de Mallorca's inspection campaign against illegal tourist accommodation has resulted in the removal of more than 4,400 tourist rental listings that lacked any registration number, eliminating over 20,000 beds from the market. The Island Councillor for Tourism, José Marcial Rodríguez, gave an update on Wednesday regarding the latest inspection campaign against illegal accommodation in Mallorca, which began on May 15th and continued until last week. In his remarks, Rodríguez emphasized the importance of the agreements reached with platforms like Airbnb and Holidu to combat illegal offerings, an activity that, as he stressed, is "unfair" and "very damaging" to the sector. "This is a decisive step, especially since the platforms remain committed to continuing to deactivate any unauthorized or illegal listings," the Island Councillor for Tourism affirmed. According to data released this Wednesday, the Inspection and Sanction Service concluded the summer campaign with a total of 3,043 actions, 19.1% more than last year, when the campaign lasted one month less than this year's. The actions carried out by the 27 inspectors of the service focused on illegal tourism offerings. Specifically, 1,659 targeted illegal offerings, and the remaining 1,384 targeted legal ones. The total number of actions is triple that of the 2023 campaign, when this plan was launched, while this latest campaign was similar to that of 2024, Rodríguez indicated, who also highlighted the improvements in managing the inspection process and reducing response times. Regarding the ongoing investigations into illegal tourist rentals, the Minister of Tourism also commented that the Holidu platform, with which the Consell (Island Council) reached a collaboration agreement, now only advertises legal properties on its website. "Collaboration, rather than confrontation, is the way to guarantee compliance with regulations and strengthen the quality of life for residents," he emphasized. During the campaign, the inspection service issued 144 violation reports against illegal listings and 138 reports against legal listings. He specified that 9.2% of inspector visits resulted in a report. The inspection team also focused its efforts on ensuring compliance with the law in establishments. Rodríguez commented that of the 102 establishments that have been asked to provide the necessary accreditation, 20% of the documentation has already been reviewed, and the compliance rate is 100%. Another line of action for this service, he said, concerns adjustable beds, with a campaign involving 100 establishments, 77 of which have already submitted the required documentation for review. In this regard, he reminded hotels that they have until 2028 to demonstrate compliance with the regulations. "The implemented plan is working."

"The implemented plan works. It is the right one despite the many voices that criticized it, and it allows us to fight against illegal offerings," argued the head of Tourism, who highlighted the 180 cases opened throughout the year and the 221 resolved. Regarding the total proposed amount for the open cases, this has been 10.05 million euros, more than double the amount proposed in 2024. "It complies with regulations and the law," he asserted.

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The Tourism Department of the Consell de Mallorca (Mallorca Council) has imposed and notified fines totaling more than €300,000 on a building in Palma where several properties were found to be engaged in illegal tourist rentals without a license.

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The Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda has detected 2,373 illegal tourist apartments in the Balearic Islands and has demanded that digital platforms remove the online advertisements for these accommodations. These are apartments that have applied for the mandatory registration number since last July, but have not obtained it because they do not meet the legal requirements, according to a press release from the Ministry headed by Isabel Rodríguez.

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The PSIB of the Consell de Mallorca (Mallorca Council) denounced this Tuesday the "chaos" that, in its opinion, exists in the Department of Tourism and the "incompetence" of the minister who heads it, José Marcial Rodríguez. "He is incompetent and we are very concerned about his management of his department. The Consell has not done, nor does it intend to do, absolutely anything to combat mass tourism," stressed the Socialist spokesperson, Catalina Cladera.

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The municipalities of the Serra de Tramuntana, including Búger—which is located within the area of influence—are those with the highest supply of illegal tourist accommodation relative to their population. The small town, located at the foot of the Serra and with only 1,200 inhabitants, has 81 homes operating without a license, according to detailed data from the study on illegal accommodation prepared on behalf of the Consell de Mallorca.

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The Balearic Islands Tourist Housing Association, Habtur, this Friday questioned the data released by the Consell de Mallorca regarding the illegal listing of tourist housing in Mallorca, which is estimated to reach 40% on the platforms.

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40% of the tourist listings advertised on platforms are unregistered, according to a study conducted by the Consell de Mallorca (Mallorca Council). The analysis determines that of a monthly average of 20,204 listings studied, 7,978 correspond to properties operating illegally, totaling 42,342 tourist accommodations, according to the Minister of Tourism, Marcial Rodríguez. Four out of every ten properties advertised in Mallorca are doing so illegally.

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The Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) has created an interactive map to locate and report illegal tourist apartments in the Catalan Countries. The organization presented this tool this Wednesday in Palma's Plaza de Santa Eulària, as part of the campaign "The country doesn't live off tourism, tourism lives off the country." In this way, they sought to highlight the process of gentrification that "is spreading throughout the neighborhoods, but began in the city's historic center."

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The Facebook groups where residents of Santanyí share their opinions on various issues in the municipality are full of complaints about the current manure collection systemA resident asks "where are the street cleaning machines?" and another believes that "Cala d'Or is now a shitty Cala." With street photos and videos filled with bags of waste, residents complain that they cannot have "overflowing dumpsters all over the town." A petition has even been launched to eliminate this new recycling system.

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The hoteliers' campaign targeting foreign tourists is the response of the islands' main employers' association to the criticism and anti-tourism actions that have intensified in the Balearic Islands for just over a year. Business owners admit that tourism is not harmless, but they call for a thorough analysis of the reasons that have led society to increasingly express discontent with the current economic model.

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Hoteliers point to illegal tourist rentals as one of the main culprits of overcrowding in the Balearic Islands. In fact, the Consell de Mallorca—which has jurisdiction over tourism regulations—has focused its efforts on combating this activity. The inspection plan prepared by the island's authority for 2025 directs 75% of its actions toward illegal tourist offerings. Twenty percent of the inspections are geared toward responding to citizen complaints and claims, while only the remaining 5% focus on potential irregularities in the legal offering, such as hotel overcrowding, circularity, excess tourism, and the verification of the 3% local product.

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The PSOE claims that the Tourism Minister of the Mallorcan Council, Marcial Rodríguez, inflates the figures for the fines his department imposed on illegal tourist rentals last year. They claim that the 8.3 million euros the PP attributed to the initial 2024 fine proposals include all the fines imposed by the island's institution, not just those from last year. "in evidence", stated the PSOE in a statement.

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