New clash between the Government and Aena. After denouncing a "covert expansion" of Palma airport and taking a stand against an expansion in the Islands, the Executive has rejected the public company's plans to build a photovoltaic park in Son Bonet.

The Son Bonet Pulmó Verd platform, with the support of GOB, Xaloc, and Mares del Pla, has collected more than 2,200 allegations against the photovoltaic park that Aena wants to build at the Son Bonet airfield, in Marratxí. The mobilization comes when there is still one week left before the deadline for submitting them ends and confirms that the significant neighborhood opposition to the project remains very much alive. The company that manages state airports has once again promoted a reduced version of the facility, even though it has accumulated five years of protests and contrary pronouncements from institutions.

The Labor Inspectorate has sanctioned Aena for a serious infraction related to the hiring of a worker at Menorca Airport, as reported by CCOO, the union that had denounced the facts.

Not building a new control tower has serious consequences for the operability of Menorca airport. On July 21, for example, the radar that makes it function failed, and flight delays occurred that were solely attributable to the deficiencies of the facility, the oldest in Spain.

Aena is today the villain of the movie. Even worse: it is that secondary character in a gangster film, with a scar on his face and a defiant look, that no one wants to have nearby. Right now, no Ibizan politician in their right mind would want to take a photo with an Aena representative by their side. The truth is that the airport operator has earned it: a terminal sold to nightclubs, repeated polluting spills in Ses Salines, and boundless greed. That is how Aena has become the catalyst for popular indignation over a whole variety of problems, from housing prices to tourist saturation; at the 20-S demonstration in Ibiza –five thousand people according to the Government Delegation–, the most abundant protest sign was the cardboard silhouette of an airplane. Yes: a simple silhouette of an aircraft has become the symbol of the protest. That is enough, no slogan is needed: how do tourists arrive, if not by plane?

The Pedro Sánchez government has become an obstacle to the PSIB's strategy in recent weeks. The Balearic socialists have focused on criticizing tourist overcrowding, but the pronouncements from the Ministry of the Presidency and Aena against the co-management of the islands' airports, added to the forecasts that 50 million passengers will be reached by 2031, contradict their discourse. “It makes us very uncomfortable,” admits a source from the party apparatus. Although its leaders have chosen to distance themselves from Madrid and claim their own position, the situation creates tension within the party, especially because their candidate for the elections, Rosario Sánchez, is the current Secretary of State for Tourism.

Twenty years are enough to understand to what extent the size of the Balearic Islands' airports has changed. Between January and August 2006, 20.9 million passengers passed through the airfields of Palma, Ibiza, and Menorca. In the same period this year, 34.3 million have already passed through. That is 13.4 million more travelers in just two decades, an increase that in the island airports as a whole stands at 64.3%.

The Civil Guard is already investigating the two complaints that GEN-GOB filed regarding water management at Ibiza airport, as confirmed by the entity to ARA Balears. The Nature Protection Service (Seprona) has opened proceedings on the two fronts that the environmentalists have brought to their attention: on one hand, the water supply of the airport premises and the management of the saline waste generated by its treatment and, on the other, the wastewater and spills detected in the surroundings of Es Codolar. The Environmental Prosecutor's Office has also confirmed to this newspaper that it is investigating the case.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets of Ibiza this Sunday to protest against the airport remodeling project promoted by Aena and to demand that an end be put to mass tourism. The demonstration began shortly after 6:00 PM at the Vara de Rei promenade and traveled through several streets of Vila. The National Police estimated about 4,500 people, while the organization placed the attendance between 5,000 and 10,000 protesters.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Palma and Ibiza this Sunday (where the Police speak of 4,500 people and the organization, of 10,000) to protest against the increase in airport capacity and demand that air traffic growth be curbed. The demonstration in the capital of the Balearic Islands began at 6:00 p.m. in front of the Government Delegation and ended at the Consolat de la Mar, with the slogan 'No more expansion, no more promotion'. The protest was called by the Platform against the Airport Expansion and was attended by neighborhood, environmental and social organizations.

The justification memorandum for DORA III, the Airport Regulation Document that sets the investments, capacity, and rates for Aena airports between 2027 and 2031, states that the Balearic Islands requested more investments to be able to expand airport capacity. The Balearic Government has categorically denied this, insisted that this point "is false," and asserted that it only requested "safety improvements and modernizations." Thus, it has shared a letter sent by the executive to the Balearic Airport Coordination Committee in which it specified that the improvements it was requesting were "not linked to an increase in passengers".

The expansion of Ibiza airport projected by Aena would affect two peripheral protection zones of the ses Salines natural park, as reported this Thursday by the environmental organization GEN-GOB. One is located to the east of the terminal, where the airport operator plans to build a new building, and the other to the west, in the area of the stream that the project proposes to bury.

The Minister of Tourism of the Council of Mallorca, Guillem Ginard, believes it is time to form a "common front, setting aside party acronyms" to decide on "the main gateway for passengers and tourists to Mallorca," the Son Sant Joan airport. He requests this, he said, to "reach an agreement for the good of an island that has limits and limited natural resources."

While a part of the island's society demands the co-management of airports as a measure to reduce the massive influx of tourists, the data confirm an inertia that seems impossible to change: the airports of Palma and Ibiza have once again broken historical records in the month of highest traffic. Son Sant Joan saw 4,808,295 passengers pass through, the highest monthly record in the island airport's history and 2.3% more than the same month in 2025. El Codolar moved 1,519,201 passengers, 2.5% more than in August 2025, and with the January-August cumulative total reaching 6,778,163 passengers, 3% more year-on-year.

The Council of Ministers approved this Tuesday the new Airport Regulation Document (DORA III), which will mark the investments, capacity, and tariffs of the airports of Aena between 2027 and 2031. For the Balearic Islands, the approval consolidates a new increase in air traffic and places the three major airports of the Islands at the threshold of 50 million annual passengers by the end of the period.

At the beginning of the sixties, the Son Sant Joan airport was inaugurated in Palma, replacing the one in Son Bonet, and the Majorcans welcomed tourists at the foot of the runway with bouquets of flowers. The gateway to the island was just that, a door. Today that door has become a piece of machinery that has a lot, or everything, of a shredder. It is not a very exaggerated metaphor. Because Aena is no longer satisfied with managing an airport: it expands it, fills it, sells it, rents it, exploits it, and extracts as much juice from it as it can. Let us never forget that Aena is a majority public company. That is to say, this big business is very public, but very little of it is ours.

Neither the frontal rejection by the Marratxí City Council, nor the neighborhood mobilization, nor even a unanimous agreement of the Parliament of the Balearic Islands have stopped, for the moment, the processing of the large photovoltaic park that Aena wants to implement on the grounds of the Son Bonet airfield.

Aena considers the Balearic Islands airport co-management bill to be unconstitutional and has warned that it will take "the necessary decisions" to defend its interests if the text is finally approved in the Congress of Deputies.

The island Minister of Tourism, Guillem Ginard, accuses the PSOE of defending containment in Mallorca and growth in Madrid. After ARA Balears reported this Tuesday the lifting of the veto by the Bureau of the Congress of Deputies on the processing of the Bill for airport co-management approved by the Parliament of the Balearic Islands, Ginard has called for “seriousness” and an in-depth debate on the future of the airport and the tourism model of Mallorca. "We are talking about the island's main economic engine. They cannot ask us to contain tourist activity and listen to the people while the State works in the opposite direction," he warned.