Rental houses

THE Balearic Islands govern‐ment is negotiating the pur‐chase of 120 houses currently owned by the Spanish ‘bad bank’ to make them available for affordable renting.

over ownership of thousands of unfinished and unused housing developments throughout the country.

ing a crash helmet.

Furthermore, half of all scooter drivers who crashed were found to have been un‐der the influence of alcohol or drugs. By age groups, the ma‐jority of accident victims are within the 20‐50 bracket, ac‐counting for 69 per cent of the total last year. And the statis‐tics have been found to in‐crease steadily year by year.

The ‘bad bank’, officially known as the Sareb, was cre‐ated by the Spanish govern‐ment to absorb toxic debt as part of the executive’s efforts to find a way out of the na‐tional crisis of 2008, which was largely caused by the col‐lapse of the property market ‐and therefore included taking

The government has now announced plans to free up a large part of these properties in ‘stress zones’, ie areas where there is a severe lack of affordable housing to rent.

This has prompted the Balearic government to re‐quest the transfer of owner‐ship of 120 flats and apart‐ments on the islands ‐ but the Sareb this week replied that if the Govern wants them, it will have to pay for them.

The Valencian regional gov‐ernment has already reached a similar agreement for the transfer of 500 properties to be put up for ‘social renting’.

Foreign tourism figures up

INTERNATIONAL tourism figures increased by more than 25 per cent in Mallorca in March compared to the same month last year.

Nearly 413,300 travellers from other coun‐tries landed in Son Sant Joan and other Balearic Island airports last month, according to figures published by Spanish Tourism Institute Tures‐paña. Over the first three months of the year, regional airports registered more than 772,400 international passengers ‐ 32.6 per cent more than in 2022.