The Plenary of the Balearic Islands has approved, with the votes in favor of the PP and Vox and the opposition of the left groups —PSIB-PSOE, Més Per Mallorca, Més Per Menorca and Podemos-the so-called Land Obtaining Law through the development of strategic residential projects, a standard that will allow the reclassification of reserves to convert them into urbanizable land with the objective of streamlining the construction of homes in homes municipalities of more than 20,000 inhabitants. In addition, the rule provides for legalizations in rustic soil in, currently protected.
Both PP and Vox have defended the need to promote this law in the situation of “” existing in the Balearic Islands and the lack of affordable housing for residents. The most controversial point in the text is the one that allows the construction of housing in the so -called transition areas, municipal rustic land reserves, without having previously exhausted the urbanizable land in the municipalities of more than 20,000 inhabitants. So far these reserves could only be used if the entire urbanizable land had been exhausted in the municipality. The decision to unlock this land will be one of the municipalities themselves, which will have to approve in full.
The total homes that are built in these areas have to be priced, except if the promoters justify that it is not economically viable, when they can allocate 25% of real estate to the free market. In the municipalities of more than 10,000 inhabitants, this law expands the possibilities of building free housing in urbanizable soils, reserving half of the land A, either as social housing or as a housing at a limited price. A guy, the latter, who is 30% more expensive compared to the price of VPO.
Another controversial aspects included in the law is urban amnesty to all those erected before 1991, when the Law of Natural Spaces entered into force. Until now, these buildings could not be regularized because this area of Mallorca was governed by a 1972 decree that declared the Sierra as a picturesque landscape and shielded its protection. The PP defends that these constructions cannot be demolished and they would also remain as they were now. “It is justice to legalize a home that committed the infraction 40 years ago,” the Vice President of the Balearic Executive, Antoni Costa, defended a few days ago.
The Minister of Housing and Territory, José Luis Mateo, has predicted that the law will allow to build “affordable” housing that will be destined for community residents. “Where you let luxury neighborhoods proliferate illegal settlements we put tools to make housing for families and young people,” he said to the left bench. In Vox, deputy Sergio Rodríguez has accused the opposition groups of making citizens believe “that skyscrapers will be raised in the mountains” and has ruled out that the approval of this law has been one of the conditions to support the budgets of the Prohens government.
Resource to the Constitutional
The groups on the left have initially claimed the suspension of the plenary when considering that irregularities had occurred in the process because the text that was going to be approved did not coincide with the one discussed in the parliamentary presentation and, after not achieving the postponement, they have advanced that they will present an appeal before the Constitutional Court. The deputy of the PSIB-PSOE Iago Negueruela has accused the PP and Vox of benefiting real estate promoters and articulating a law that will allow them to skip urban planning. “What they do today is to extinguish the VPO and replace it with a house that will be up to 30% more expensive, the limited price housing is unlimited price for many because they can never acquire it,” he said. For the spokesman of Més Per Mallorca, Ferràn Rosa, the law only intends to build more “to sell more expensive” and has described it as “perversion” for using the housing emergency as an excuse “to water those who have already been lined for years.”
At the doors of the Balearic Chamber they have concentrated to protest more than two hundred people, convened by the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Palma and by the Ecologist Gob Gob, which armed with banners have shouted songs such as ‘Marga Prohens speculative’ or ”. The spokeswoman of the Gob, Margalida Ramis, believes that with the approval of this law “one of the greatest territorial damage in the history of the islands will be formalized.” It accuses the PP and Vox of “instrumentalizing” the problem of housing arguing the need for the law in the housing emergency and criticizes that it has not been subject to citizen participation. The vice president of the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Palma, Biel González del Valle, regrets that the appraised price housing that is intended to be built in these areas will have prices that will not be able to access the average and low classes.
