Agrarian law: 14,000 square meters will no longer be enough to build a villa in the countryside

PalmaHaving 14,000 square meters of common rustic land will no longer be enough, on its own, to be able to build a house of more than 100 square meters. If the agrarian bill approved by the Governing Council ends up passing parliamentary processing, building a new large-scale dwelling in the countryside (the majority of those that are built are) will be linked to an agrarian obligation that must be maintained for 15 years.

It is a relevant change in a territory that for decades has been losing part of its strictly agrarian character. Chalets, swimming pools, roads, energy installations, and tourist uses have been occupying a countryside that increasingly assumes more residential and economic functions outside of food production. This will not change, by any means, with the new regulation, but the experts consulted by ARA Balears admit that, if this restriction finally prospers, in the case of Mallorca it will be a step towards the conservation of the countryside. Still very far from the situation in Menorca, where the Territorial Plan has prohibited for more than 20 years building anything on rustic land that is not agrarian.

Between 1990 and 2018, the artificialized surface of the Balearic Islands increased by 65%, according to the analysis of the European Corine Land Cover system published by ARA Balears. During the same period, the abandonment of crops also grew. The Professor of Geography at the UIB Macià Blázquez has described this process as a slow but constant transformation of the countryside into an increasingly residential territory.

Now, paradoxically, a regulation conceived above all to provide more economic tools to the agricultural sector also incorporates one of the most important urban planning conditions that have ever limited residential construction on rustic land.

The Governing Council approved the new agrarian law project on September 25th. But it must be kept in mind that it is still a draft law. The text must be sent to Parliament, overcome the parliamentary process, and may undergo modifications before definitively becoming law.

In this draft law, the minimum surface area of 14,000 square meters to build on common rustic land does not disappear. In Mallorca, it continues to be the reference in a large part of common rustic land, provided that municipal or island planning does not establish a larger plot.

Article 141 of the future regulation establishes that, to obtain a license to build an isolated single-family home of more than 100 square meters on a property of 14,000 square meters or more, the developer must meet one of four agricultural conditions. The first possibility is to link the part of the property not occupied by the house or its annexes to an agricultural holding for at least fifteen years. The obligation must be recorded in both the urban planning license and the Property Registry.

The same project formulates the philosophy of this part of the regulation with a sufficiently explicit phrase: rustic land "deserves to be conserved and dedicated primarily to cultivation and to livestock and forestry use". Between 2015 and 2023, nearly 3,000 villas were built in the countryside, according to data collected in the allegations that different agricultural entities presented during the preparation of the regulation. The estimated impact exceeded 580 hectares of agricultural and forestry land.

Only six tourist spots

The other major decision in the final draft of the agrarian law is tourist places, which is set at a maximum of six. Current regulations already provide for this figure, and the minister Joan Simonet wanted to reach ten, as he had committed to a significant part of the organizations and large operators in the field. But he has received strict orders, as ARA Balears has been able to learn, to drop the increase in places.

Consulted sources ensure that Simonet was not particularly satisfied with maintaining the figure, but the Consolat is currently not willing to increase tourist capacity in the countryside. The minister's argument was that many farms cannot survive solely on the sale of agricultural products and need complementary income. Tourism was one of those avenues.

Agricultural and environmental organizations questioned whether the way to save the countryside was to continue introducing activities that are not strictly agricultural. GOB, Unió de Pagesos, and Apaema went as far as demanding the withdrawal of the preliminary draft because they considered that it could contribute to 'disfiguring' the countryside. But one of the most vocal oppositions came from the Mallorca Hotel Business Federation (FEHM). The hotel association filed allegations against the expansion of agro-estates. It argued that the agricultural sector needs more public resources and more economic support, but questioned whether the solution was to increase the number of tourists who can sleep on the farms.

The executive vice president of the FEHM, María José Aguiló, summarized it to ARA Balears with a direct question: after having introduced tourists into residential dwellings, "do we now want to put them in the countryside?". The withdrawal of the ten spots does not mean, however, that the law stops promoting this modality. The island councils will have to reserve at least 10% of the tourist spots they make available to the public for agro-estates.

Now it will be necessary to see how this regulation evolves within the framework of parliamentary processing. Joan Simonet had had it ready for months, but the Government has calculated the most appropriate moment to avoid staging a new defeat in Parliament courtesy of Vox. For the moment, a deputy from this group has already registered a direct question to the Minister precisely about the impact of the regulation on the construction of houses in the countryside. Perhaps the flagship measure will not go very far.