The mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez, has won the first of his battles against the Ministry of the Sea and the Water Cycle, meaning the Palma City Council (Cort) will be able to grant building permits for urban development projects without the involvement of the Water Resources Department when dealing with flood-prone areas. This was announced on Tuesday by Minister Juan Manuel Lafuente, who confirmed an exceptional procedure "agreed upon with the Palma City Council so that it can directly inform the Water Resources Department's reports," he explained in response to a question from Vox deputy Patricia de las Heras. Lafuente admitted that this decision was made to expedite building permits. ARA Baleares had previously reported that the Palma City Council had long been demanding not to have to go through the Directorate General of Water Resources to authorize the large apartment developments that have been made possible by regulations promoting new housing. For now, the Balearic Government, and subsequently confirmed by the Palma City Council, have agreed that the City Council can proceed without going through the department specifically responsible for flood zones. Until now, regulations stipulated that these actions had to ensure water sufficiency, and that it was also necessary to determine the degree of impact on the flood zone map. However, Lafuente has hinted that, thanks to administrative simplification laws, Palma has now been authorized. The official objective is to reduce timelines and streamline bureaucratic procedures that, according to the Government, are blocking investment and housing projects. But there are technicians at the Palma City Council who do not share the argument of obstruction, and some have confessed to ARA Baleares that there is "pressure to build apartments at any cost." "They want images of developments underway to meet housing needs, and water sufficiency bothered them," said a specialist who requested anonymity. In this regard, the pressure exerted by Mayor Jaime Martínez on the Government was well known: the mayor asserted that the strategy of building more apartments clashed with the reluctance of the Water Resources Department. As this newspaper previously reported, this pressure from the Palma City Council (Cort) has been exerted within a context of strong urban development in Palma, and the mayor has defended the need to accelerate the construction of apartments and residential developments in response to the housing emergency. The municipal government team has taken advantage of regulations such as the Land Acquisition Decree Law and other measures approved with the support of the PP and Vox parties in the Balearic Parliament to allow for greater residential density and faster development of buildable land. This legal framework anticipates accelerating the construction of "thousands of apartments," and the City Council maintains that, thanks to these measures, results in the form of new housing could be seen during this legislative term. There are figures of up to 20,000 new homes in various official announcements, but the reality is that most of these homes were already planned under the existing urban development plan, and the maximum possible under the new scheme would be a smaller but still significant number. In any case, some developments already underway occupy, at least partially, flood-prone areas, and this fact has strained relations between the Palma City Council (Cort) and the Balearic Government (Govern).