The Balearic Government led by the popular Marga Prohens will not allow new buildings to be built or legalized in flood-prone areas, as the Executive had already planned. However, after an agreement reached with the left-wing parties, it will not authorize its owners to carry out works on the homes already built, including those aimed at avoiding possible overflows, as the opposition demanded. As Government sources have confirmed to elDiario.es, the measures will be approved this Friday via decree that will correct the Balearic Administrative Simplification Law promoted this year by the conservatives. The regulations provide for streamlining urban planning procedures, and also contemplate an amnesty that will allow – except in risky places – to legalize constructions built illegally on rural land.
The regional cabinet also plans to give the green light this Friday to another decree, which will suppress the 34 amendments that Vox presented to the text of this regulation and that the popular ones incorporated by mistake during the validation of the Law in the plenary session of the Parliament on last 26 November. Among the measures that the extreme right wanted to ‘sneak’ into the text are the suppression of Catalan in public service and the authorization to build in areas of maximum protection, in addition to the possibility of building in coastal easement areas, legalizing fields of polo in especially vulnerable areas and retreat in areas of equality and gender identity in education.
After those of Santiago Abascal refused to repeat the vote in the same plenary session, the economic vice president of the Executive, Antoni Costa, immediately announced the approval of a decree that invalidates the amendments, approved, as he stated on several occasions, due to an “error human”. The left has committed to abstaining from the vote that is expected to take place next week, when the Autonomous Chamber validates the two decrees. In exchange, the PP will also abstain when voting on the repeal of the Autonomous Democratic Memory Law, whose suppression, among other measures, Abascal’s party imposed at the beginning of the legislature in exchange for facilitating Prohens’ investiture. The regulations that remember the victims of Franco’s regime will therefore remain in force in the Balearic Islands.
The intention to overturn Vox’s amendments to the articles of the Administrative Simplification Law became the genesis of a crisis between PP and Vox that detonated that same afternoon, when the extreme right decided to destroy the 2025 Autonomous Budgets in the first vote. and emptied both the articles and the sections that make up the text of these accounts of their content. Given the lack of agreement, Prohens has been forced to withdraw the project and extend the 2024 accounts until “the conditions are met” to approve next year’s – the 26 seats that the PP and a deputy from the local right have. of Formentera do not give it a sufficient majority – and a new pact is sealed that will allow the numbers to move forward.
It should be remembered that the administrative simplification decree was promoted last May, before, therefore, DANA devastated several municipalities in the Valencian Community at the end of October and left more than 200 dead. The text initially allowed the legalization and construction of homes in risk areas, but what happened in October led the popular ones to rethink the regulations. Until now, the conservatives maintained their intention, although not to legalize or build in these places, but to allow works to be carried out on existing buildings. Some measures that he has finally withdrawn as a result of his agreement with the left, as sources from the negotiation of elDiario.es have pointed out.
The approval of the Law two weeks ago was fervently criticized by left-wing groups, who see in it, beyond the agreement reached on flood zones, a “breakdown of the consensus” in matters of urban planning discipline on the islands as well as a succession of the policies of “perversion and territorial abuse” promoted by the former popular presidents Gabriel Cañellas, Jaume Matas and José Ramón Bauzá, of which, in the words of the Més per Mallorca deputy Maria Ramon, Prohens is “a worthy successor.”
For her part, the socialist deputy Mercedes Garrido criticized that this Law actually seeks to benefit private businesses, which will be “favored” by the suppression of the Balearic Environment Commission, the “à la carte” legalization of the Mallorcan municipality’s industrial estate of Campos – whose irregular situation motivated an arduous investigation by the defunct Anti-Corruption Office, a complaint today in the hands of the Prosecutor’s Office – and the “legalization of businesses in the hands of speculators, who see their home prices rise.” Regarding the discussions on the areas at risk of overflow, the parliamentarian regretted that, “without the misfortune” that occurred in the Valencian Community as a consequence of DANA, “today [en el PP] “They would see it as totally normal to build in flood zones, legalize and renovate illegal houses.”
Finally, Unidas Podemos deputy Cristina Gómez criticized that, with this regulation, “urban planning is favored” and “the usual urban planning benefits” are benefited. “And it’s not a way of speaking: all the people who have houses that should be for farmers are suddenly big asses. “They have eliminated the Environment Commission by considering it a political body and have replaced it with a single political position.” According to the environmental group GOB, with the approval of this Law “there will be serious consequences for the protection of natural resources and soil” in the Islands, whose citizens mobilized massively in the middle of this year to demand changes in an economic policy based on the tourist monoculture.
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