It's Back: The eco-tax

So, it's pretty much official. It has yet to be ratified, but a Balearics eco-tax, or a tax on tourists under some other name, will in all likelihood feature in the manifestos of Podemos, Més and PSOE. If, as seems possible, these three parties form a coalition government, an eco-tax it almost certainly will be.

It comes as no surprise that Podemos and Més should favour such a tax. PSOE is more of a surprise. I had previously doubted that PSOE would wish to revisit the crash scene of a tax it was responsible for introducing during its first administration (the pact of 1999-2003). The PSOE hierarchy might, when push comes to manifesto shove, take the view that it is too emotive an issue and too much of a risk, but Cosme Bonet, one of the party's electoral programme co-ordinators, appears to believe it is a risk worth taking in order that "tourism contributes to the conservation of the environment". He prefers to not refer to the tax as an eco one, but eco-tax is precisely what it would be.

Bonet has also said that it would be a tax with the consensus of the tourism sector. If he believes there will be consensus, he is probably deluding himself. The hoteliers, for one, will take a great deal of persuading. It was, after all, they who got the Matas Partido Popular administration from 2003 to abandon PSOE's unpopular tax. There again, the hoteliers had every reason to have been indignant with the old tax. It was they who shouldered the burden for its collection. One of the flaws of the eco-tax was that it was discriminatory; it was not applied to non-hotel accommodation.

This time, as far as the Més spokesperson David Abril is concerned, the hoteliers will not be singled out. The tax would be universal, and by that he means the inclusion of private holiday accommodation, currently not regulated, that Més would regulate. As PSOE has previously suggested that it would also seek regulation and as Podemos has intimated as much, a tax would apply more widely, just as it does in Catalonia, where private accommodation is properly registered and regulated. But this will hardly be a move to mollify the hoteliers or guarantee a consensus.

Tourist taxes are the flavour of the moment and not only among the Balearics left. In the Canaries, the Nueva Canarias party has presented a proposal for a tax to the regional parliament. Its purpose would be to raise additional funds for modernising outdated resorts and tourist services. The party reckons that 100 million euros could be raised. The hoteliers in the Canaries are dead against the idea. Among reasons for their objections is the Balearics eco-tax fiasco. Others include arguments that the sector is over-taxed as it is and that far too little of the revenue raised by the Canaries' tourism sector actually finds its way back into the system. This is a reasonable argument. The tourism sector generates tax revenues of over 1,500 million euros annually, yet, as an example, only 17 million are earmarked for tourism promotion (which is still a lot more than in the Balearics). It is an argument which, not for the first time, raises questions as to how tax revenues raised by the regions are then redistributed and used.

In Madrid, the PSM (Madrid socialist party) wants to introduce a tourist tax, one that has been spoken about for years but regularly rejected. The difference here though is that it would be a tax for a city, and there are plenty of examples of European cities which have such a tax. The Canaries' objections refer to the fact that tourist taxes are applied to cities and not tourist regions, but they then run up against one very important exception. Catalonia. Its tax is for the whole region and so includes tourist areas such as the Costa Brava as well as Barcelona.

Catalonia's experience of a tourist tax was always going to be one closely observed by other regions of Spain; it hasn't had any harmful impact. It is a tax that isn't too onerous (ninety cents a night is a typical rate) and that is limited in terms of the number of overnight stays: for a two-week holiday, for instance, it only applies to a maximum of seven nights. But Catalonia is not Mallorca and nor is it Tenerife. It clearly has hugely popular mass-tourism areas, but these don't generate quite the same media interest that Mallorca does. The old eco-tax was as much a PR disaster because of negative international media coverage as it was a disaster of discriminatory implementation. Any new tax would come in for the same treatment; the same hue and cry. Would it, therefore, be too great a risk?