PalmaAdministrative simplification is not noticeable. At least, not enough. Companies, farmers, and self-employed workers start from a system that is so cumbersome, with so many accumulated procedures, administrations that do not always share information, and procedures that are duplicated, that the measures promoted in recent years by the Government are, for a good part of the sectors consulted, a drop of water dissolved in a bureaucratic sea built over 40 years. They do not deny that steps have been taken. What they question is whether they have managed to substantially change the daily relationship between the administered and the Administration.
And this is despite the fact that simplification has been one of the flags of the legislature. The Administrative Simplification Law modified dozens of provisions in very different sectors and incorporated everything from changes in administrative procedures to urban planning, agriculture, and the environment.
The president of PIMEM, Jordi Mora, recalls that the rule "was also mixed with other environmental issues" and graphically defines it as "a hodgepodge." Among the measures that were processed under the umbrella of simplification, there was one that did have very concrete consequences on the territory: the creation of an extraordinary procedure to legalize buildings, constructions, and uses on rustic land outside of planning when the restoration of urban legality can no longer be required. The law establishes a three-year term to apply for it, and the Council of Mallorca formally activated the procedure in February 2025. This measure has indeed been a success, but those consulted and specialists in administrative processing agree that this has nothing to do with simplification: "It was a political commitment that will surely provide many votes, but it has nothing to do with simplifying the administrative chaos we suffer," says Carmen, an Administration technician who asks to hide her surname, since she works directly in the field. "Steps have been taken, but it is impossible to fix this with one rule. It takes years and a much deeper change if we want results," she asserts.
When moving from the rule to the day-to-day life of companies, the assessment is not enthusiastic either. The Hotel Business Federation of Mallorca ensures that simplification continues to be one of the main demands of the sector because "there has been no substantial progress that contributes to reducing the burdens that companies bear."
The hotel employers' association demands curbing "over-regulation", but above all insists on an issue that is repeated in all the conversations held by ARA Balears: that the Administration stop demanding from citizens and companies information that another –even the same department– already has. In fact, hoteliers are calling for a true single window and more internal cooperation between agencies.
According to Miquel Àngel Benito, partner of Tot Herba and member of the Executive Committee of PIMEM –representing the industrial sector–, simplifying does not mean stopping control. "Addressing a real administrative simplification without losing control requires moving from a model based on distrust and bureaucracy to one based on risk management and technology. The goal is not to eliminate supervision, but to make it intelligent," he argues.
His recipe involves more interoperability between administrations. That is to say, that they "can cross-reference data and not make you go to different places to certify things they already have internally," ex-post controls in procedures where possible, risk-oriented inspections, and effective sanctions in case of non-compliance. He also adds a principle that he considers essential for small businesses: proportionality. "You cannot ask the same of a small shop as of a large department store," Benito adds.
Two inspections to count goats
The coordinator of Unió de Pagesos (UP), Joan Gaià, provides an example that shows to what extent this principle still fails. This summer, he explains, veterinarians went to his goat farm to perform the annual tuberculosis tests. During the inspection, they identified the animals using the chips and the information was recorded by the Administration itself.
Five days later, Gaià received a phone call: they had to return to the farm to carry out an inspection linked to the CAP and count the animals again. “I told them: ‘You came five days ago, an official performed the check, performed the reading of the chips, and you have this information within the Ministry’,” he recounts. It was no use. Gaià ensures that he even brought the situation to the attention of those responsible for Agriculture and Fogaiba, who understood the problem and tried to avoid the duplication.
“In ten days they came to do something that we already had done on a computer, which an official had done and which was totally valid,” he laments. And he contrasts the administrative cost of the inspection with the amount of the aid that justified that control: about 500 euros linked to environmental practices, as he explains.
“Losing a morning and having these headaches is not worth it for me,” he states. “No, obviously,” he replies when asked if the farmers have noticed the simplification.
PIMEM introduces a nuance regarding the harsh criticism from hoteliers and farmers. Jordi Mora considers that the Simplification Law is going in the right direction. “What came out seemed good to us,” he says. The employers' association even publicly valued that first step positively. But he immediately adds a second part: “Much more still needed to be done”.
Mora recalls that, before the 2023 elections, Marga Prohens committed herself before PIMEM to promote a continuous policy of simplification. The PP candidate announced during the campaign an omnibus law to reduce what she defined as a legislative “web” or “tangle” and to speed up procedures. According to Mora, the promise that was conveyed to them was to advance with a simplification law every year. “Administrative simplification is a path that never ends, that must be worked on constantly. You don't do everything at once with one law,” he states.
The Executive defends that simplification is indeed advancing and puts concrete data on the table. One of its main commitments is the automation of repetitive tasks through computer robots. Between July 2024 and June 2026, according to the Government, these systems analyzed 432,440 files and 70,674 documents in 16 procedures related to areas such as agriculture, housing, and social services. The Executive calculates that this is equivalent to more than 45,500 hours of administrative work.
It also claims measures such as the payment of taxes via Bizum, the automated processing of self-consumption subsidies, the possibility of avoiding certain duplicate assessments in dependency and disability, and the integration of health data between nursing homes and the Health service.
The Government is preparing a new extension of responsible declarations, a figure that allows certain activities to be initiated without having to wait for administrative authorization, even though the Administration maintains the capacity for subsequent inspection. The debate is not so much whether things have been done, but what has really changed for the person waiting on the other side of the procedure. But companies and farmers raise another question: if afterwards one department continues to ask for documentation that another already has, or two officials have to check the same animals days apart, who has noticed the simplification?
The Administration technician consulted responds: “We have reached the point of ridicule where the Administration that manages a tax asks you to declare that you are up to date with it.” That is to say, “the Administration prefers that you say with a declaration, which is a simple piece of paper, that you are up to date, rather than actually checking if you are. It has been many years of bad habits and not always a will for public service. It will be very difficult to change this,” sentences this worker.
The record of the absurd: 30,000 types of procedures
Citizens of the Islands –and those in the rest of the State– can choose between 30,000 different types of procedures, depending on their needs. An aberration on which all experts agree, and on which the Government is working to try to simplify reality once again. The data is provided by the Association of Administrative Managers, which confirms the need for a “much deeper review of reality, because if it is not done, the reforms will have practically no impact,” warns its president, Miguel Ángel García. In his opinion, “there is such a quantity of realities, options, and models, that first it is essential to take each of the procedures, see what it responds to, if it is justified, or if it can be eliminated, because with a simple automatic check the Administration already has the information it currently demands,” he states.
But he insists that “if it is not done from a transversal vision, in the end, all that is achieved are isolated details, and we do not attack the problem which, of course, is gigantic,” he concludes.
In this sense, the Association of Administrative Managers has offered its services to the Government and is already working “with the team of the minister Antoni Costa, because our services have no sectoral interest, we are purely managers and we encounter it every day”.
The Government has explained to ARABalears that the administrative social collaboration, which is the concept being studied, “is a formula that intends to extend to the rest of the Administration the model of urban planning collaborating entities, companies that carry out part of the processing in this matter to reduce the burden on civil servants”.
Miguel Ángel García considers that “it would be a great commitment”. “Administrative managers know the procedures and can assume part of the path of a procedure, complete it, and then deliver it to the Administration. Furthermore, the margin of error would be minimal. We already do it with the General Directorate of Traffic, with vehicle ownership changes, and it works perfectly,” assures García.