Alex Trelinski
10 ILLEGAL tourist flats in a Palma apartment block have each been fined €80,000 for not having a licence and the owners have been told to stop renting them out.
The penalty has been imposed by the Consell de Mallcora’s tourism department following a protest by residents outside the block on Calle Gaspar Bennazar last July.
Inspectors will check if the closure order has been complied with and if that doesn’t happen, the matter will be handed over to the Prosecutor’s Office.
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It’s not known whether the same person or company owns all of the flats that have been sanctioned.
Last August, €80,000 penalties were doled out to 12 flats in the same building in the Levante area of Palma.
A further seven flats were hit with similar fines in November.
As of last autumn, only 621 properties in Palma had official licences to rent to tourists.
The authorities in Mallorca are particularly concerned about the number of holiday rentals via the Airbnb platform, with claims that at least 70% of them are illegal.
Over the latest fines, Mallorca’s head of tourism, Jose Marcial Rodriguez Diaz, said illegal letting is not just unfair competition, but ‘a terrible problem for coexistence, which is something we want to stop’.
He said the order to close the 10 holiday lets and the fines were the result of ‘long work’ by his department which has ‘scrupulously complied with all administrative processes’ and allowed it to act legally.
The range of fines on Mallorca for illegal holiday rentals starts at €40,001 with the top level being €400,000.
