Absolute disagreement between Prohens and the environmentalists: "She will not take any real measure against the saturation"

PalmaFor three hours, the President of the Government, Margalida Prohens, and the representatives of GOB and Terraferida addressed the outcry that has been heard on the streets this summer calling for limits on the model of land consumption and tourist saturation in the Balearic Islands. Prohens received the two environmental organizations this Tuesday afternoon at the Consolat de Mar, after a few months marked bymassive social mobilizations.

The three hours, however, were not enough to bring the two parties closer together, ending in "absolute disagreement," in the words of the vice-president of GOB, Tonina Siquier. "We do not agree on the diagnosis or the measures," summarized Siquier.

Despite the result, the environmentalists highlighted Prohens' "dialoguing" nature. The meeting was also attended by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Natural Environment, Joan Simonet, and the Minister of Labour, Public Function and Social Dialogue, Catalina Cabrer. However, the environmentalists believe that the willingness to engage in dialogue has not translated into any rapprochement regarding the necessary policies to address saturation.

The main point of rupture is degrowth, and they accuse the Executive of trying to respond to tourist saturation with "small measures of window dressing and containment that will lead us to collapse." "Mallorcan society is already tired of studies, plans, and photographs, from both left-wing and right-wing governments," asserted Siquier. "The perception that we have exceeded our limits is so great that we must take action, and not pass laws surreptitiously in order to continue growing," she added. The vice-president of GOB also warned that "people are fed up with one side and the other passing the buck."

The representatives of GOB and Terraferida also delivered to the Consolat the 1,050 contributions collected during the human chain on August 29th, promoted by Madò Farta, and at the demonstration against the airport expansion last Sunday. Participants had to answer the question 'What kind of Mallorca do we want?' on a sheet of paper. Among these contributions is also a letter that Madò Farta has addressed directly to President Prohens.

Containment is not enough

Environmental organizations have issued a total rejection of the economic, territorial, and urban growth model of the Balearic Islands, which is in permanent expansion, and have delivered an extensive document to Prohens in which they demand a profound change based on concrete policies. "It is no longer enough to contain, we must begin to reduce," is the main message that has been conveyed to the Consolat de Mar. GOB and Terraferida demand that tourism, urban, and automotive pressure, the impacts on ecosystems, and the consumption of energy and natural resources be actively reduced "to ensure that future generations can continue to live with dignity on these islands."

They warn that the crises of housing, mobility, water, biodiversity, and quality of life are interrelated problems resulting from this economic model based on unlimited growth. For this reason, they demand that public policies adapt the economy and development to the physical and ecological limits of the Balearic Islands, instead of adapting the territory to endless growth, and they ask that the idea of "managing saturation better" and "containment" be replaced by explicit policies for reducing existing pressures. "Mallorca does not need to learn to better withstand saturation, it needs to stop being saturated," they insist.

The document delivered to the president of the Executive exposes eight main lines of action, which are based on recovering housing for living, stopping urban growth, putting a brake on new roads and betting on public transport, placing limits on airport growth, adapting growth to available water, recovering food autonomy, returning to the initial essence of the ecotax, and ensuring a habitable and climatically secure future.

Environmentalists have been particularly critical of the Pact for Sustainability: "The major decisions being made in parallel continue to facilitate more lack of protection for the territory, more urbanization, more tourist uses, and more roads." For this reason, and pointing out this contradiction without questioning the spaces for dialogue, they assert that "sustainability is not demonstrated by the number of dialogue tables that are convened, but by the decisions that are made." Dialogue, they ensure, "only makes sense if we are willing to also talk about limits and the reduction of pressures that are already unsustainable," and they set biophysical limits as the framework within which "any economic model must function" in an island territory.

Likewise, the document demands the recovery of the mechanisms of Law 10/2023 on well-being for present and future generations that were suppressed or weakened in 2024 by the Administrative Simplification Decree-Law promoted by the PP Government with the support of Vox, especially the intergenerational impact reports of regulations, plans, budgets, and major projects; the functions of the commission in charge of ensuring the application of the law; and the evaluation of all major decisions according to their future impact on water, the territory, the climate, biodiversity, and the quality of life.

Housing

To address the severe housing crisis experienced in the Balearic Islands, environmentalists are calling for the Balearic Islands to be declared a stressed residential market area, to regulate rental prices, to mobilize empty homes and expand the public housing stock through purchase and renovation, to ensure that protected housing permanently maintains its social function, to approve a moratorium on new tourist rental licenses, to pursue illegal tourist offers, and to progressively reduce existing places, without returning those that are cancelled to the pool.

Stop urban growth

An immediate moratorium on new buildings on rustic land is one of the main measures that GOB and Terraferida have put on the table to put a brake on massive urbanization, in addition to moving towards the prohibition of new scattered housing. They also bet on preventing the development of buildable land not yet transformed, preventing new private swimming pools, and avoiding that the reform of the Agrarian Law turns the countryside into a new urban, real estate, or energy frontier.

The document highlights that between the years 2021 and 2024, 546 hectares of agricultural land were artificialized and 846 villas were built or expanded, while between 2015 and 2024, 10,680 new swimming pools were built in Mallorca, almost a third of which are located on rustic land.

Fewer roads and more public transport

At a time when traffic collapse has become widespread on the roads of Mallorca, the organizations have requested to halt the expansions planned in the Road Plan, as they generate induced traffic, greater territorial dispersion, and a greater dependence on the car. They also want to limit the number of vehicles that can drive on the island and replace the Road Agreement with the State with a Sustainable Mobility Agreement.

In this regard, they are calling for the promotion of the Llevant train and the rail connection with Alcúdia, as well as increasing rail frequencies, reinforcing buses, and recovering bus-HOV lanes where they are effective.

Limits on airport and tourism growth

Another of the main lines of the requests to Prohens is the reduction of tourist places, eliminating public spending on tourist promotion and incentives for new commercial air routes. Regarding airport growth, they ask to oppose the expansions of the operational capacity of the airports and to incorporate ecological and social limits based on each island into airport governance.

Likewise, they have taken the opportunity to criticize that the DORA III promoted by Aena foresees investments of 622 million euros in Palma, 230 million in Ibiza and 170 million in Menorca, within a planning based on the growth of air traffic.

No to new growth without available water

The most forceful criticism regarding water concerns Law 4/2026, which allows the processing of certain urban developments without a Water Resources report. For this reason, they request that any new urban or tourist development be conditioned on the proven existence of sufficient water and that reports on water sufficiency be recovered and strengthened. They also point to the need to protect aquifers and reduce excessive residential, tourist, and recreational consumption. They flatly reject that the structural response should be to produce more water through more desalination or new catchment facilities.

Primary sector and capacity to produce food

Among the package of measures, GOB and Terraferida bet on increasing food autonomy and reducing external dependence, which would imply the protection of agricultural land and marine ecosystems and ensuring generational renewal for farmers, in addition to strengthening agriculture, extensive livestock farming, and low-impact artisanal fishing. They also request that local, organic, and seasonal products be incorporated into schools, nursing homes, and hospitals.

Ecotax earmarked for protecting the territory

Environmentalists are very critical of the distortion of the Sustainable Tourism Tax and advocate for "recovering the meaning of the ecotax". This would imply increasing its amount so that it adapts to the current tourist pressure, giving it a definitive character and allocating it primarily to restoring ecosystems, protecting the territory, and adapting the Islands to climate change.

A habitable future

For all these reasons, and with the aim of ensuring a habitable and climate-secure future, the two entities have asked Prohens to accelerate the implementation of the Climate Change Law approved in 2019, to turn "climate security" into a transversal criterion that affects all major public decisions, to avoid energy transition involving the occupation of agricultural land or areas of ecological value, and to execute the pending proposals made by the Citizens' Assembly for the Climate.

"On July 26th, more than 70,000 people took to the streets of Palma to say that Mallorca is at its limit". That mobilization did not simply ask to manage saturation better, they assert, but rather "expressed the need to face its causes", for which reason the institutions "now have the responsibility to turn this outcry into decisions", they concluded.