Palma de Mallorcaculture & etiquette

This is the most misreported thing about Mallorca. A proposal to let municipalities with 'pressured' housing markets temporarily restrict purchases by non-residents, and to bar acquisitions by legal entities, went to the Balearic parliament in February 2026 and was voted down. Nothing is in force and no procedure is under way. Separately, the Spanish government's proposed surcharge on purchases of second-hand homes by non-EU non-residents — the widely reported '100% tax' — is a bill, not law, and has not been approved. What is genuinely in force is much older and narrower: under Ley 8/1975 the Balearic Islands are a restricted-access zone, so a non-EU or non-EEA buyer needs Ministry of Defence authorisation to acquire rustic, non-developable land. Urban property is unaffected by it.

Palma banned new tourist-letting licences in multi-family buildings in 2018 — the first Spanish city to do so — and the Tribunal Supremo upheld the ban in 2023. Since April 2025 the Balearic government's tourism containment decree has frozen new tourist places in multi-family buildings across the whole archipelago, leaving detached and terraced houses as the exception. Licences come in distinct classes with different terms and, for multi-family stock, require the community of owners' agreement. Unlicensed letting carries penalties running into the hundreds of thousands of euros. If a seller or agent implies a flat 'can be' holiday-let, ask to see the licence, not a plan.

This surprises people who expect the expensive region to be the punitive one. The Balearics apply wealth tax with no general rebate, but the regional exempt minimum is 3,000,000 euros — against the 700,000 default and the 1,000,000 the Comunitat Valenciana now applies — plus a larger-than-standard allowance for a main home. The design is deliberate: the state's solidarity levy on large fortunes bites above roughly the same threshold, so keeping the regional tax alive at that level retains revenue locally rather than surrendering it to Madrid. The practical effect is that ordinary and even substantial wealth pays nothing here, and the bite starts only at the top.

Everywhere in Spain the padrón unlocks the health card, school places, your TIE and the licence exchange. In the Balearics it does one more thing: it is what proves entitlement to the 75% resident discount on flights and ferries to the peninsula and between the islands. For a household that flies to the mainland even occasionally, that discount is worth more each year than most of the other paperwork combined. The obstacle is that you need an address to register, and this is the tightest housing market in Spain — which is why paying more for a first month with a proper contract is a good decision here, not a wasteful one.

The Balearics run the steepest progressive property transfer tax in the country, rising through several bands from 8% to 13% on the highest-value purchases, so the tax on an expensive property is a very large number in its own right. There is a full transfer-tax exemption for a first habitual home bought by a young buyer under a price ceiling — but it requires habitual residence in the Balearics for the years immediately before the purchase, which by definition excludes someone who has just arrived. Rates and thresholds here have moved repeatedly; confirm the current position with the Agència Tributària de les Illes Balears before budgeting.

Groceries, fuel, building materials and cars all carry an island premium, and the winter and summer versions of Palma are almost different cities. The consequence people do not anticipate is in public services: Balearic hospitals and health centres have struggled to recruit and retain nurses and doctors, and the reason repeatedly given by the professionals leaving is that they cannot afford to live here. Care in Palma is good, but waiting times and staffing are shaped by a housing market rather than by a health budget.