The president of the Consell de Mallorca, Llorenç Galmés, has taken advantage of the island institution's general policy debate to make the umpteenth announcement about the island's tourist capacity ceiling. This time, Galmés has once again announced that he will reduce the number of places, just two months after the insular Minister of Tourism, Guillem Ginard, indicated that they would not be cut because it was not an urgent measure. However, after three years of contradictory announcements, the Consell has not made any decision on the capacity ceiling beyond saying that it will do one thing or another. Currently, the ceiling in Mallorca is 430,000 tourist places.

This summer, no concrete measures will be implemented to curb overcrowding and limit the arrival of tourists and cars to Menorca during peak season. Neither the updated Island Territorial Plan (PTI) nor the new tourism capacity ceiling, set at 107,917 beds in the preliminary carrying capacity study, have yet been approved. And this despite the fact that the influx of visitors continues to increase not only during the summer but also outside of peak season. In fact, 2025 was the first year in which the number of registered residents on the island never fell below 100,000, not even in December. Even so, the People's Party (PP) team, which governs the Menorca Island Council in minority with the external support of the councilor expelled from Vox, will still lack the necessary physical and legal mechanisms to restrict vehicle traffic. The PP's repeated announcements throughout its term have remained just that: words, not actions. It will likely be the last island to take measures to restrict access and limit congestion, although it is also the only one that, for the past three years, has had a legal tool to do so: the Biosphere Reserve Law, approved in 2023 by the Balearic Parliament. Nine months ago, last June, the Consell (Island Council) presented the study that was supposed to determine the number of excess vehicles on the road network. The conclusion surprised everyone, as it set the limit at 120,000 cars, while the maximum daily traffic recorded on Menorca's roads in 2024 was 122,170 vehicles, only 1.8% above this limit.

The Balearic Government and Palma City Council have reached a strategic agreement with the main cruise lines operating in Palma, whereby the maximum daily average of cruise passengers will be reduced from 8,500 to 7,500. This reduction, formalized through a new memorandum of understanding, will only affect the peak season months, from June to September, in 2027, 2028, and 2029. The agreement was signed this Friday morning by the President of the Balearic Government, Marga Prohens, the Mayor of Palma, and representatives from the cruise lines. The new agreement maintains the one signed by the government of Francina Armengol in 2022, which set a maximum of three cruise ships in the port of Palma, one of which may have a capacity exceeding 5,000 passengers.

"There's not room for everyone here" has been the political mantra of the week. The Prime Minister, Marga ProhensThis was proclaimed on Tuesday in the plenary session of the Balearic Parliament, with the approval of the right-wing and far-right parties. There is no room for migrants—especially if they are Muslim—nor for democratic memory, but there is plenty of space for the more than 19 million tourists—an Olympic record for 2025—hundreds of thousands of cars, and vacation rental properties. There is so much space that the Council of Mallorca declared on Thursday that it is no longer necessary to reduce the cap on tourist accommodation on the island, while the Balearic Government proclaims the miracle of containment and deseasonalization without having implemented a single measure. Are more tourists arriving than ever before? We should be happy, because the summer season isn't spiraling out of control and business is booming in the months that weren't previously full of visitors. It's well known that an empty month is not economically productive. Since there's room for so many visitors, we won't raise the ecotax either, because we mustn't upset the hotel owners. And yet Prohens has announced it a couple of times. In its defense, it can be said that the cart of announcements is full of initiatives, from this and other legislatures, whose trace can only be found in the newspaper archives.

Without access to the list of 540 proposals currently being considered by the Pact for Sustainability. This is the situation the PSIB (Socialist Party of the Balearic Islands) found itself in after requesting information from the Government through a written question to the Parliament. The Ministry of Labor, Public Administration, and Social Dialogue, headed by Catalina Cabrer (pictured accompanying this text), informed Socialist MP Llorenç Pou that he would not receive the initiatives submitted in this process, which the Executive has always emphasized as participatory. One of the arguments the Government uses to deny the information is that the PSIB "has been invited at all times" to participate in the Pact, of which it is not a member, and also justifies blocking the proposals based on data protection law. However, Pou only requested access to the proposals themselves, not authorship – which he did request in a previous question, for which he also received no response from the Government. The website for the Pact for Sustainability also provides no information on the initiatives – this page hasn't been updated for months – and, according to ARA Baleares, the entities that are part of the Pact for Sustainability also have no concrete proposals. The only explanation the Government has given is that, out of 540, 102 had already been addressed, without further details.

The Balearic PP has praised the tourism containment and deseasonalization strategy, which has achieved "a change in trend" regarding tourist arrivals to the Islands. PP deputy María Salomé Cabrera highlighted that tourist arrivals increased by 0.7% in peak season, while in the mid and low seasons they increased by 7.1%. However, Cabrera failed to mention that the Islands have once again shattered the visitor record in 2025, with almost 19 million tourists – the total for 2024 was reached in November. "The policies promoted by the PP government, with zero growth in hotel capacity and the positioning of the Islands as a cultural tourism destination, are succeeding in containing the influx during the summer months, redirecting peak periods towards the mid and low season months, and lengthening and deseasonalizing the season," Cabrera emphasized. "Faced with those who spoke of degrowth but authorized 115,000 new tourist accommodation places and allowed the illegal supply to grow unchecked, the Government has changed the course of tourism to our islands towards restraint, reducing seasonality, and a more sustainable tourism model that respects residents," he added.

The Formentera Council has presented to the Council of Entities a multi-year proposal for the continuity and evolution of Formentera.eco, the initiative of the smaller Pitiusa island to regulate vehicle access during the summer. The proposal aims to gradually reduce the entry of the most polluting vehicles, distribute visitor quotas according to environmental criteria, and maintain the quota of rental vehicles, which have already decreased by 16% from 2019 to 2023This proposal is based on the technical reports submitted to evaluate the operation of the island's ecological initiative, which reveals that more than 74% of the vehicles circulating in Formentera this summer belonged to tourists. The reports confirm the effectiveness of the measures implemented through the Formentera.eco program and should serve as the basis for defining the multi-year proposal to regulate the entry and circulation of vehicles on the island for the period 2026-2029, Castelló explained. The Minister of Mobility and the Environment, Verónica Castelló, explained that they are also considering creating a specific quota for non-resident workers and consolidating a more efficient, organized, and sustainable mobility model, moving towards a seasonal Low Emission Zone (LEZ) and promoting the use of public transport and bicycles.

The City Council has announced the same measure twice in a year and a half: the mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez, appeared before the media on Tuesday to announce that Cort will prohibit new tourist rental homes, exactly the same initiative that he said would be implemented in the short term. May 29, 2024. Thus, the only effective measure Martínez has implemented regarding tourist rentals in a year and a half has been to call another press conference to repeat the same announcement.

The effective population of the Balearic Islands averaged 1.96 million people in July, 56% above the number of residents. This figure means there was one tourist for every two inhabitants registered on the islands. This is evident from data from the Human Pressure Indicator of the Balearic Institute of Statistics (Ibestat), which establishes that the maximum actual population (residents and tourists) was reached on July 30th, with more than two million people, 0.6% less than in 2024. On the other hand, the minimum recorded was 1.2% in 2024, reported the EFE news agency.

Residents of Sóller have launched the 'Salvem Sóller' initiative through Change.org to denounce the proliferation of new parking lots in the municipality. In the campaign, they warn that five parking lots have already been built—with another three in the pipeline—without a clear mobility strategy and with a strong environmental and landscape impact.

The Civil Society Forum has demanded that the Government implement "a real change" in the tourism model in the Balearic Islands and abandon "cosmetic" and ineffective measures. The platform appeared at a press conference this Tuesday, after the figures from the 2024 Residents' Perception Survey on Tourism by the Government's Tourism Strategy Agency (AETIB) were released. This study shows that 78% of Balearic citizens believe there are too many tourists at certain times of the year and that 62.3% denounce that tourism has a significant impact on the degradation of the islands' natural resources. Furthermore, it criticized the Government for exploiting citizens' discontent to promote tourism, real estate speculation, and construction. "It's perverse. They're using time and discontent for political gain. The initiatives they're implementing are to buy time to reorganize the business," criticized GOB spokesperson Margalida Ramis.

75% of residents of the Balearic Islands believe there are too many tourists arriving, and 77% warn that this pressure is driving up housing prices. The survey conducted by the Tourism Strategy Agency (AETIB) among 2,008 residents of the four islands in October 2024 also shows a clear rejection of tourist rentals: almost 62% are against it, a percentage that rises to 70% among the middle- and low-income population.

If we were to divide the number of tourists among the residents of the large Mediterranean islands, we would find that while each Balearic island receives 15 visitors, the inhabitants of Sardinia only "support" two to one. With five times the land area, the Italian island welcomed 3.7 million tourists in 2024, compared to the 18.7 million who arrived in the Balearic Islands. This disproportion is repeated in most of the large Mediterranean island territories, with the exception of islands like Malta. Not surprisingly, Mallorca and Malta top the ranking of "Urbanized, Densely Populated, and Tourist-Intensive Islands" compiled by the UIB Chair of Insularity and the Catalan Government, which places the Balearic Islands in first place in most indicators of land use, population growth, and hotel overnight stays.

No tickets for the match. UE Ibiza could be without an opponent in two weekends due to tourist overcrowding. Coach Paco Jémez denounced in a press conference that Hércules de Alicante has been unable to secure plane tickets or accommodation to travel to the Balearic Islands, where the match was to be played.

The overcrowding experienced by Sóller in the summer—and increasingly so throughout the rest of the year—is increasingly affecting the municipality's mobility, and social media is flooded with complaints from residents. The municipality cannot cope with the number of vehicles passing through the tunnel every day, and overcrowding has even reached the health center's reserved parking spaces. These are spaces designated for patients and vehicles used by healthcare personnel to attend to home emergencies. However, unauthorized cars often park there. "There are seven reserved spaces, but tourists often occupy them, and the police are overwhelmed and can't come," explains Noelia Martín, a nurse at the center for years. ARA Baleares has attempted to speak with the First Deputy Mayor, Carlos Darder, to find out the municipal position, but has received no response.

The youth organization Arran has accused the government of criminalizing the grassroots movement, especially in cases where protests go "against its ideals." "Both the current government of Marga Prohens and previous ones, especially those of Pacte, have led us to the current situation, in which we have lost in all areas of our lives to the profits of the tourism sector," Arran said in a statement on Tuesday. The organization ironically emphasized that "on an island full of graffiti of all kinds, the government has strongly condemned the only ones that have directly pointed it out." According to Arran, the government has taken "one more step in its attempt to criminalize the grassroots movement." The organization forcefully stated that the government "persecutes" certain displays of discontent from civil society.

The president and CEO of Melià Hotels, Gabriel Escarrer, called for a reluctance to attack tourism, an industry that "creates wealth" and generates "quality employment." In social media posts reported by Europa Press, Escarrer referred to what he called "irresponsible anti-tourism campaigns by some" that, in his opinion, instead of contributing to improving the management of the sector, prefer to "demonize and harm it."