Mallorca's territorial agony: five new villas built in rural areas every week between 2021 and 2024

PalmFive rural chalets built per week between 2021 and 2024: this is one of the figures reflecting the territorial destruction of Mallorca, made public this Thursday by Terraferida. The organization has resumed its activities and plans to tour towns across Mallorca to raise public awareness of the seriousness of the situation. A situation where no major action is being taken, because the urbanization process is diffuse but more destructive than ever.

Terraferida has completed the study Inventory of the devastation of Mallorca 2015-2024where it has classified and quantified the most recent urbanization processes. The latest period analyzed runs from 2021 to 2024, and the assessment is not very optimistic: during these three years, 546 hectares of agricultural and forest land in Mallorca were developed, most of which were used for 846 villas for residential and tourist use (57% of 2021-2024). "Strong, rapid, impactful, and widespread": this is how Terraferida activist Jaume Adrover described the urbanization of rural land in Mallorca, also highlighting that 80% of the island's territory is not protected and that only 15% is an ANEI (Area of Special Natural Interest).

Between 2015 and 2024, 1,391 hectares of land were consumed (546 hectares between 2021 and 2024), an area equivalent to the entire municipality of Costitx (not just the town center). "The destruction has been done almost imperceptibly," noted Mateu Vic, representative of Terraferida. Of the total, 806 hectares were designated for residential and tourist use; 250 for photovoltaic power plants; 133 for facilities such as shooting ranges, polo fields, and equestrian centers; 85 for road infrastructure and parking lots; and the remainder for quarries, commerce, industry, services, and warehouses, among other uses.

Outside the town limits, detached houses are no longer being built as they were in the 1990s, but rather large luxury homes with spacious swimming pools, and some even include their own golf courses. There is also concern about the proliferation of polo fields and equestrian facilities. In fact, Terraferida will be taking cases of villas with golf courses to the Agency for the Defense of the Territory – activists also question whether the General Directorate of Water Resources of the Government is even aware of their existence. By municipality, Adrover and Vic have highlighted that the Llucmajor-Campos highway, built by progressive parties when Miquel Ensenyat (MÁS per Mallorca) was president of the Consell de Mallorca, has caused a construction boom in the surrounding municipalities. In fact, Campos leads the ranking of new villas built in rural areas between 2021 and 2024.

"Villages are being turned into housing developments," criticized Mateu Vic, while Jaume Adrover also highlighted the implications that the urbanization of rural land has on mobility, water consumption, and the loss of crops and food sovereignty. Both agreed on the need to reach a social consensus around the need to protect rural land, which is currently becoming a space for luxury, oblivious to the housing emergency in Mallorca and the rest of the Balearic Islands. The activists recalled that between 2015 and 2023, 3,000 licenses were granted to build villas in rural areas, and that there are still 1,000 pending projects, a situation that could worsen the consumption of rural land. Given this situation, Terraferida is demanding an immediate moratorium on residential construction in rural areas and the protection of rural land; a new Island Territorial Plan (PTI) that prioritizes agricultural, natural, and educational uses; A housing rehabilitation plan within the historic centers of Mallorca's towns, based on social criteria and designed to create new jobs if needed; and a significant strengthening of tourist rental inspections and the Territorial Defense Agency to combat illegal construction.