Podemos Takes Aim At Hoteliers Over Holiday Rentals

Laura Camargo, the Podemos number two in the Balearic parliament, certainly knows how to win friends and influence people. Or rather, she knows how not to win friends because she isn't particularly interested in their being her friends.

We are talking Mallorca's hoteliers and indeed the hoteliers on the other islands. They, says Laura, consider the islands to be their "cortijos", which literally means farmhouses or farm cottages but in a broader sense can be taken as meaning their domains. The hoteliers treat the Balearics like they own them but there are, as Laura has been at pains to point out this week, "many more people who have the right to offer accommodation to the tourists that we receive each year". Podemos has confirmed that it will be taking part in dialogue to arrive at the best possible agreements on the regulation of holiday rentals. And if the tourist tax is anything to go by, then this probably translates as what Podemos wants on holiday rentals will be what the legislation ultimately contains.

As mentioned in this column last week, it is the government's intention to have legislation signed, sealed and delivered within six months. Whether this schedule takes account of all the haggling with Podemos is not known. But legislation is on its way. What it will look like, no one can say with much certainty at this point. Of elements of the law that have been creeping out, we understand that town halls will be able to determine areas which cannot be used for tourist rental (a different emphasis to saying which ones can be used), that there will be a set of quality standards introduced for accommodation, that a maximum number of places will be imposed according to the type of property and that any property has to be five years old in order to be eligible for tourist rental.

The thinking behind this latter point is to prevent speculative developments with tourist rental alone in mind. It isn't one that the Partido Popular is wholly in agreement with. It doesn't want this provision but nor does it want more supply of accommodation. Which sounds as if it remains inherently opposed to a form of regulation which would facilitate greater supply, as in it remains opposed to apartments being openly marketed as tourist rentals.

All will be revealed over the coming months, but in the meantime there have been a couple of revelations this week that make one wonder as to how permissive any holiday rental regulation might be and also make one wonder as to the veracity of the notion that Podemos is behind what are two inextricably linked pieces of legislation: those for the tourist tax and holiday rentals.

The first of these was the lesser of the revelations, as we have known for some time that the tourism minister, Biel Barceló, has concerns about overcrowding because of the sheer volume of tourists in peak season. He said on Monday that "we have to get used to there being limits on beaches and other natural spaces, just like at a cinema or a football stadium". He made much of the fact that the current tourist model generates inequalities, pointing to the time in the 1980s when the Balearics had the highest per capita income in Spain courtesy of six million tourists. With more than double this number now, the Balearics have slipped to seventh in the income stakes.

The problem for Barceló is being able to define the type of limits that might be suitable. The second problem is how such limits might be enforced. But inherent to both these problems, in the immediate short term, is the issue of holiday rentals. More permissive regulation doesn't per se crank up the volume of accommodation to unsustainable levels, but it has to be reasonably permissive in order to tackle the blatant abuses that are being perpetrated and will continue to be without highly effective enforcement. It is this illegal supply that is a contributor to the overcrowding, but so it might be said is the legitimate supply. Barceló was not looking at the immediate short term, rather at five, ten, twenty years from now, but does one conclude that there is to be a strategic objective to cut hotel places?

The third problem for Barceló is that drawing on what was the situation thirty years ago is not a solid argument for basing decisions on in the current day. Apart from anything else, it may be that other regions have caught up rather than the Balearics going backwards. His analysis may well be simplistic.

The second revelation came from "Preferente" on Tuesday this week. An article said that three weeks before the general election in December, Barceló and President Armengol met with the grand hoteliers of the Balearics. They included apparently Fluxá, Escarrer and Barceló (Simón, that is). What was said at this gathering, according to the article, was that Podemos had the government (PSOE and Més) by the short and curlies over the tourist tax, intimating that it was basically Podemos who were driving it.

The hoteliers, it would appear, bought this, though one finds it difficult to believe that they, given who they are, would simply swallow the argument. The implication, though, was that both PSOE and Més were less evangelistic about the tourist tax than may have been thought. PSOE perhaps, but Més? The article then said that Armengol had been lying to the hoteliers and pointed, rightly enough, to the fact that it was PSOE and Més who between them had brought the tourist tax legislation before parliament. Podemos, it shouldn't be forgotten, abstained on the first pass at legislative approval because its demands were not being met in respect of, for instance, geographical distribution of the tax revenue and its sole use for environmental purposes. This isn't to deny that Podemos is highly influential in the drafting of the tax legislation, but for PSOE and Més to have apparently sought to distance themselves from it at that meeting does take some believing.

If nothing else, and if what was said at that meeting is indeed accurate, then it exposes the purely political nature of current tourism decision-making. The tax is one thing, and the holiday rentals will doubtless be another. In truth, this is no way to be running or legislating for Mallorca's principal industry. But then we probably already knew this.

The Awkwardness Of Government

If there is one certainty to have emerged from the uncertainty caused by the December election, it is that Mariano Rajoy simply doesn't get it. He doesn't get the fact that the PP received a stuffing. He doesn't get the fact that by not putting himself up for being reinstated as prime minister and then refusing to stand aside and let someone else do so is selfish and stupid. He doesn't get the fact that things have changed, and changed dramatically. In the course of one day, 20 December, Mazza became a relic. He became history. A thing of the past. Spain had moved on without having a clue in which direction it was actually heading.

Which of course may be what he's banking on. The citizens, now alerted to the dreadful mistake they made, will hope for a new election, at which they will demonstrate their eternal gratitude to Mariano, say sorry for having misbehaved so badly in December, recognise their collective folly and reinstall Mariano and the PP with a landslide. The weeks since the election have shown that none of the other lots are capable or responsible. Only the PP, with Mariano at its head, can once again save the citizens from themselves. Oh, and don't worry about all the millions that have gone missing on account of alleged corruption cases. Keep them. In fact, have some more. We, the citizens, promise never to do anything like 20 December again.

It's possible in Mariano magic land, that he and the PP actually think like this. So divorced from reality, so desperate has Mariano become in wanting to hold on to power that he came up with the bizarre proposal made to the boy Pedro of PSOE whereby PSOE would support his investiture in return for the PP giving PSOE-led administrations in regions and municipalities its support and so meaning that they - the PSOE administrations - could get Podemos off their backs. In fact, even this wasn't quite as bizarre as it sounded. Something similar had occurred in Andalusia over the months it took Susana Diaz (PSOE) to ensure her re-investiture as president of that region. In the end, this deal with the PP was not needed, but it seemed then, as it does now, as though it was an arrangement best described through the use of the phrasal noun carve-up.

Ultimately, whichever way Pedro jumps (Mariano won't care about this), he will be acutely aware that one element on the Podemos charge list is that of the "casta", the two-party dominance that The Hairy One has been so determined to shatter. Would the citizens, indeed members of his own party, ever forgive him for reinforcing the existence of the casta, given that Podemos (and the C's) have so dramatically disrupted its co-habitation? He would have had a lot on his plate when the federal committee gathered yesterday.

At least Pedro has been able to rely on the support of sweet and friendly Francina (he doesn't enjoy the wholehearted support of the PSOE collective of barons and baronesses). But Francina's support came with a caveat. While saying on the one hand that Pedro should be given total freedom to negotiate however he wished, there she was, insisting that this freedom should be in the image of the dialogue, consensus and fully and well-functioning Balearic model, one with Podemos in the wings putting the boot in, courtesy primarily of The Boot Girl Laura. Francina is, of course, bound to say this. She would hardly say anything else, though she might have taken note (and perhaps Pedro has) of the words of the Grand Baron of PSOE, one-time dashing premier, Felipe González, who made it clear that he believes that the Podemos wrecking ball is aimed at a total destruction of the "system" and not merely some redevelopment work. These are, it must be said, awkward moments.

Back in Congress, where the elected members are enjoying a sabbatical at taxpayer expense and not doing anything on account of there not being anything to shout at each other about, the infant Íñigo Errejón was busying himself with some sheets of paper and a set of crayons. Íñigo was making sketches of the seating arrangements. Podemos want these, he stamped his foot and demanded. Here is another awkward aspect of these changing times. They've not previously had to worry about accommodating great banks of stroppy sorts in the Congress semi-circle. But just as important for Íñigo would have been where Carolina Bescansa is to be in this maroon party forum within the grander forum of the Cortes. He will surely not be wishing a repeat of the baby business. Moreover, how will Podemos juggle the competing hairstyles within its ranks? Do they opt to put the flamboyant ones together, with Pablo's ponytail brushing up against Natty Dreadlock In A Babylon, the bloke who's the head of the Rastafari Tenerife wing of We Can? Yet more awkwardness.


Index for January 2016

Balearic land planning decree - 14 January 2016, 16 January 2016
Blasphemous video - 7 January 2016
Bridge breaks and holidays - 13 January 2016
Bullying and suicide - 22 January 2016
Consensus and Spain's politics - 6 January 2016, 20 January 2016
Corruption - 29 January 2016
Demons' promotion - 15 January 2016
Education and language - 28 January 2016
Holiday rentals and overcrowding - 30 January 2016
Investment in the Balearics - 21 January 2016
Llorenç Moya - 11 January 2016
Mallorca in numbers 2015 - 1 January 2016
Manacor, the demon and the model - 19 January 2016
Nativity scenes in Mallorca - 4 January 2016
Nóos trial - 12 January 2016, 18 January 2016
Palma's name - 3 January 2016
Photographic heritage of Mallorca - 25 January 2016
Pine trees - 17 January 2016
Real Mallorca - 8 January 2016, 10 January 2016
Seasonality and tourism jobs - 2 January 2016
Sharing economy and holiday rentals - 5 January 2016
Spain's government: negotiations - 24 January 2016, 31 January 2016
Tourist tax - 9 January 2016, 23 January 2016
Towns' images - 27 January 2016
Utopia - 26 January 2016