An idyllic town in Mallorca has taken the bold step of banning tourists from driving in its historic centre following large protests decrying the build-up of traffic for locals.
Sóller, a traditional municipality of some 14,000 people in the island’s northwest, will limit access to the town’s 12 main streets to registered cars only from this year.
The council is set to introduce a ‘low emission zone’ of 70 hectares, pushing hire cares to park further out in order to reduce congestion.
Under the new rules, only vehicles registered to residents will be allowed on the central roads, with ‘some exceptions’, the Majorca Daily Bulletin reports.
Visitors will be expected to park in ‘soon to be set up’ areas of the ‘desvío’ (detour) road, which last year also suffered congestion woes.
Antoni Costa, the vice-president of the Balearic Government, has vowed to address persistent ‘overtourism’ on the islands, warning this week that ‘we cannot’ carry on growing as the islands ‘have reached their limit’.
The move comes amid growing discontent with the impact of tourists on popular holiday destinations across the country, culminating in large protests nationwide last summer – and desperate action from local councils to ease the pressure on residents.
File photo. Soller is set to introduce innovative new measures to manage overtourism
A demonstrator holds a sign which reads ‘it’s not tourismphobia, it’s Mallorcicide’ during protest
Sóller will hope to address the pressing issue of congestion by establishing a new perimeter demarcating areas where only residents are allowed to drive.
The border extends through the Ma-11 main road onto Calle de Isabel II, Calle de Sant Jaume, the Ma-2122 and the Calle Andreu Coll, Glosador, onto the Calle de Cetre.
The secondary streets inclusive of the old town will also be affected, according to a new map of the exclusion zone.
Plans for such a policy have been in the works for months, according to local media, and respond to mounting protests over congestion in the town.
But the local authorities have been pressed to provide adequate parking, made difficult by the highly-concentrated traditional Spanish layout.
‘Providing that there is parking I don’t think that there will be a problem, but if there is no parking then it could be a nightmare,’ one regular visitor told the Daily Bulletin.
The Can Tinet car park was expected to be opened in August last year as the first of several to reduce strain on the town’s narrow lanes.
While Sóller is largely isolated from the other major towns on Mallorca, the Balearics welcomed around 15.3 million international tourists last year.
This rose 6.15 per cent from 2023, in line with a wider trend of holiday destinations building back from the pandemic.
Panoramic view of Port de Soller, Mallorca
‘Overtourism’ has contributed to the felt strain of low wages and limited housing across Spain, with protestors turning out in major cities to demonstrate against economies built around catering to tourists.
Last summer, protestors in Alicante organised their first major march through the city, arguing limits should be placed on the tourism industry over concern locals are being priced out of housing and trapped in unstable seasonal jobs.
An organiser for the ‘Alicante donde vas?’ group behind the march told MailOnline at the time that they wanted to make the ‘conflict visible’, calling on the local authorities to ‘take measures to put the needs of the people who live in the city at the forefront, compared to the wishes of those who visit the city’.
‘The fatigue of many people in Mallorca, the Canary Islands, Barcelona, or Alicante, is enormous; the anxiety and stress of having difficulty renting a house; or for suffering horrible working conditions; or not being able to sleep well because there is a tourist apartment in your community… ends up causing pain and suffering that can fuel hostile reactions towards tourists,’ spokesperson Salva said.
Anti-holidaymaker protests escalate in sinister turn as ‘kill a tourist’ graffiti appears on wall in Majorca
A protester holds a sign reading ‘Take back your drunks, give back our homes’ during demonstration in Palma this month
Protests have adopted a more aggressive bent in some affected regions; up to 50,000 residents took to the streets in the Mallorcan capital of Palma last July to ridicule England fans over their Euros bow-out.
The second major protest in two months saw demonstrators hold up banners, written in English, that read: ‘Take back your drunks, give back our homes.’
The backlash took a sinister turn when graffiti reading ‘Kill a Tourist’ emerged in several locations in Manacor, on Mallorca.
Earlier in July, protestors in Barcelona sprayed tourists with water guns as they marched through areas popular with visitors.
Police said some 2,800 people had turned out to demonstrate, demanding a new economic model that would reduce the millions of tourists visiting each year.
