The hotel associations of the Balearic Islands have asked the PP to reconsider its amendment presented at the request of the PSOE to the decree-law of administrative simplification, which authorises tourist uses in properties outside planning on rural land and which can be legalised with this regulation.
The Hotel Federation of Mallorca, the Hotel Association of Menorca and the Hotel Federation of Ibiza and Formentera have issued a statement in which they request that “No allegation that harms society will prosper concerning accommodation linked to tourist and non-residential use.
Thus, they stressed that for several years, the Balearic Islands have been suffering a “housing emergency situation” and it is getting worse. A crisis that they recognized as “directly affecting thousands of citizens” who suffer from a “shortage of affordable housing” and “gentrification in neighborhoods due to the exponential increase in tourist rentals in multi-family buildings in recent years.”
“In this context of extreme need for housing, it cannot in any way be aggravated by measures giving priority to the tourist use of housing,” the hoteliers argued.
In this way, they argued that the current moratorium on tourism and the regulatory policies implemented by the government, within the framework of a political and social pact, aim to “stop the growth and pressure of the tourist real estate market on the residential supply.”
They therefore stressed that “they do not understand or accept” that an amendment is being promoted of a regulation designed to order constructions on rural lands and allow their legalization, if certain conditions were met and as long as their tourist use ceased, whether or not they had a license.
In this sense, they cited the statements of the PP spokesman in Parliament, Sebastian Sagrerasin which he acknowledges that urban legalization is still being considered, but “the ban on allocating legalized housing for tourist rental is eliminated, contrary to what was initially motivated.”
For hotel entrepreneurs, this proposal “lacks coherence” with the objectives and discourse that the government itself has established of “serene” and “thoughtful” work, within the framework of the Pact of Social and Political Sustainability of the Balearic Islands, with which they have stated that “a consensus will be sought and the priorities will be the actions aimed at reducing saturation and improving coexistence.
“It is particularly worrying that while the Government promotes a process of dialogue for a social pact and comprehensive that addresses the problems of congestion, gentrification and housing shortages, is considered, on the other hand, as an amendment that favors tourist use in homes where it would disappear,” they stressed.
Then, they stressed that the objective of a decree-law with these characteristics is “the simplification of administrative procedures, and not the reactivation or granting of tourist licenses withdrawn in accordance with the law”, if the decree were maintained in its original formulation.
Hoteliers point out that the regulatory contradiction “not only creates legal uncertainty” but “also goes against the objective of the decree.”
“Allow new tourist licenses or maintain those that have already been cancelled, “Not only does this aggravate the difficulty of accessing housing, but it also compromises the possibility of finding real solutions to the housing crisis, which was one of the causes that provoked the citizens’ protests,” they said.
For these reasons, they insisted that Government must make ‘courageous decisions’ on housing and they requested that only isolated single-family homes be able to carry out an activity other than residential.
“We must work on particularly sensitive issues, with the analysis and precautions due to the special laws that apply to each person, to prevent precarious housing titles granted contrary to urban planning from becoming gifts to individuals to the detriment of society. all this, and all the more so since, for many years, they have benefited from economic advantages despite their illegal situation,” they stressed.
