“It is not a cry of despair, we have time, but we cannot find an apartment to rent in Porreres and we do not want to have to move to another town”. The housing crisis in Mallorca is reaching Pla little by little and it has a face and eyes, and in Porreres there is an example. A single-parent family from Porreres, made up of a mother and daughter, has turned what should have been a conventional advertisement looking for a rental apartment into an original protest publication through which they have wanted to make visible the reality of many families and also young people who find themselves with an increasingly inaccessible real estate market throughout Mallorca, and Pla is no exception.

The declaration of a "stressed zone," a measure provided for in the state Housing Law that allows for limitations on rental prices, has begun to bear fruit in municipalities like Barcelona, ​​where, according to official data, the average price of new contracts fell by 6.4%. According to data from the Catalan Land Institute (Incasol), average rental prices in Catalan municipalities have decreased by nearly 5%. Given that the housing situation in the Balearic Islands is worse than in most of Spain, is there any objective reason not to apply this measure, in such an extremely serious situation?

At least six municipalities in the Balearic Islands – Maó, Ciutadella, Esporles, Santa Maria, Pollença, and Algaida – have asked the regional government to apply the national regulations that allow them to be declared a "stressed area" and automatically limit rental prices when contracts are renewed. The regional government confirmed to ARABalears that "these requests will be resolved shortly, and in principle, all will be denied." "We believe that doing so would not improve their situation," explained the Director General of Housing, José Francisco Reynés. "All levels of government must do everything within their power to improve the lives of citizens, and we will, but there is no guarantee that limiting prices will be beneficial," reiterated the top housing official in the regional government. The PSIB even brought to the Balearic Parliament the possibility that municipalities could request this designation directly from the central government if they could demonstrate that they met the emergency conditions required by law, but the conservative majority of the PP and Vox voted against the proposal. Therefore, only the central government can authorize the measure right now. According to the director general, once the declaration of a "stressed zone" was applied, "in Barcelona, there are 444 people applying for an apartment within the first 10 days of it becoming available on the rental market." "In the Balearic Islands, we have an average of 129 people, which shows that the figures support our opinion and do not recommend opting for this approach at the moment," he explained to ARABalears. The municipalities declared "stressed zones" are mainly located in Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Navarre. There is only one exception: autonomous communities governed by the People's Party (PP). This is the case in A Coruña, where its mayor, Inés Rey, asked for "institutional loyalty" from the Xunta (Galician regional government) when implementing the measures, since despite giving it the green light, the local government had expressed its reservations.

Citizens of the Balearic Islands need 60.8 years to buy a home, spending 30% of their salary, double the national average, according to Antoni Alcover, Secretary General of the Economic and Social Council (CES), during the presentation of the 2024 report. Last year, 26% of the average home purchase was made by foreigners. Rent prices in the Balearic Islands are the highest in Spain, with an increase of 3.9% compared to the previous year and 23.9% compared to 2015. Currently, 30% of the population lives in rented accommodation, the highest figure of all the autonomous communities.

The STOP Evictions association reported this Thursday that the National Police are cutting off power to families living in substandard housing rented by a local police officer in Palma. According to Europa Press, the group told the media that police officers, accompanied by an electrician, went to the homes located at 24 Joan Miró Street to cut off power to the people who are "being besieged" by the owner of the storage units where they live. This Monday the evictions were stopped of two people living in these storage rooms owned by a local police officer from Palma who was sanctioned by the Government for renting out these substandard homes.