The left demands raising the Real Estate Tax (IBI) on empty apartments in Palma after giving up doing so when it governed the Balearic capital for the past eight years (2015-2023), in which house prices skyrocketed until turning the Palma real estate market into the most expensive in Spain.
Now, being in the opposition, they demand that the mayor of the PP, Jaime Martinezthat punish with greater tax pressure to the owners of those homes, after object last January when the owners of apartments with squatters stop paying this municipal tax while they cannot use the property.
The increase in the tax would be not only for large homeowners, banks, developers or investment funds, but for any owner with a home who does not put it on the rental market.
A fact that in most cases is due to the fear caused by the maximum protection granted to them by the new Government Housing Law from Pedro Sánchez to squatters and inquiokupas.
The initiative, which bears the seal of the Més independentists, has the endorsement and vote in favor of the socialists and Podemos, three parties in the opposition in the Palma City Council, and includes a progressive increase in the amount of the IBI of 1.5 % in the first year, 3% in the second and 5% in the third and subsequent years.
And according to Més’ spokesperson, Neus Truyol,»A home is not a market good but rather has a social functionl. It is not something to be used for profit, it cannot be left empty, but this social function has to be fulfilled,” as the pro-independence councilor stated in this week’s municipal plenary session in defense of this initiative.
To make this tax increase effective, the left proposes that the Government modify the regional registry of empty homes to include all types of housing that remain uninhabited. The only exception would be owners who were workers, but who are displaced and reside in another town due to force majeure, work or business reasons.
The left also demands that the municipal government of the PP of Palma create the Municipal Census of Uninhabited Housing and approve a new regulatory tax ordinance that makes the tax increase effective.
This tax increase would be collected, for the first time, when the corresponding resolution is issued. declaring the home as uninhabited.
Subsequently, on the first day of each year, and as long as the home is registered in the Registry of Uninhabited Homes, it will be collected.
“Having an empty apartment at this time of tragedy and housing emergency is a shame,” defended the socialist councilor. Pepe Martínez.
Truyol did not waste the opportunity to highlight the change in discourse of his partner in the socialist government, now that he is in the opposition. «I am glad that the PSOE is now with the banner of the right to housing because we disagreed a lot and the positioning was different, but PP and Vox did not.
For the pro-independence councilor, “an owner cannot abuse his privileged position and a home has to be available to residents so they can live. It is not an asset for speculation or business, review the Constitution,” said a councilor who defends that non-residents cannot buy a home in the Balearic Islands, but He did not say anything when his colleague in the Consell de Mallorca, Jaume Alzamora, sold his to a German citizen.
On the other hand, the PP Councilor for Urban Planning and HousingOscar Fidalgorejected the initiative of the left and its change of discourse once the three parties have gone into opposition.
«If this tax is so extraordinarily goodwhy didn’t you take any steps to create it? in the eight years that they were governing,” asked Fidalgo, who recalled that the previous Armengol Government expropriated 56 apartments last term, without any of them being put on the rental market.
«There are other measures on the table, but It is not our path to create taxes of this typebecause we do not believe in that type of policies,” concluded the PP councilor.
