This is a website for buyers, owners, and sellers of property in Spain, offering reliable information and resources to help you get things done with confidence. It is run by Mark Stücklin, author of the Spanish Property Doctor Column in The Sunday Times (2005-2008), and the book ‘Need to Know: Buying Property in Spain’ published by Collins.
Evidence emerges that politicians and political parties in Mallorca stirring up animosity towards foreign buyers and tourists have been happily selling property to foreigners themselves.
The local press in Majorca reveals that Jaume Alzamora, the spokesman for hard left part Més per Mallorca, who has been one of the voices leading the call to ban foreigners from buying property in the Balearics, sold his home in Artà to a German for €650,000. He then went on to build a new villa with a pool despite having called for a ban on new private swimming pools on the island.
Another leader of the Més party, Lluís Enric Apesteguia, is fighting off claims of hypocrisy now that it has come to light that his mother sold her home in Deià to a Swede, reportedly for more than €1m.
Added to which the Balearic Socialist party sold its headquarters in Alaró to a German buyer in 2022 after backing calls by Mes and Podemos to exclude foreign buyers from the Mallorca property market.
“This blatant contradiction highlights the double standards of Més per Mallorca and PSIB-PSOE, who, during the two terms they governed alongside Podemos, launched a campaign against foreign investment in the real estate sector, arguing that this phenomenon was responsible for the housing crisis affecting the islands,” says a statement from the Balearic Association of National and International Real Estate Companies (ABINI). “Their leaders have shown that they preach one thing and do another.”
Left wing politicians from the Més, Podemos and the Socialist parties who ruled the region between 2015 and 2024 have been leading calls to ban foreigners from buying property in Majorca and the other Balearic islands, arguing that outsiders are responsible for making housing unaffordable for locals, but ABINI lays the blame for the housing crisis at their door.
“ABINI denounces that, after two terms leading the Balearic government, Més per Mallorca, Podemos, and PSIB-PSOE are directly responsible for the severe housing crisis affecting the islands. They did not act appropriately to prevent the uncontrolled rise in prices and demonstrated a complete lack of foresight regarding the growing demand for housing. Furthermore, their flagship proposal to limit or prohibit the sale of properties to foreigners is not only an impractical utopia, but the leaders of these parties themselves violate it for their own economic gain.”
