“Ibiza is approaching its limit”: experts warn of housing collapse and call for urgent measures

The housing access crisis is no longer an isolated problem in Ibiza. Architects, engineers, lawyers and representatives of the judiciary agree that the island is facing a structural challenge affecting the residential market, public services and the sustainability of its economic model. That was the main conclusion of the debate organised by ConstruNews last Thursday, which brought together several specialists to analyse the island’s present and future from a multidisciplinary perspective.

The panel, moderated by Xavier Jiménez Sama, director of ConstruNews, included Antonio Calvo Mínguez, co-founder of the Ibiza Building Observatory; David Berlanga, president of the Ibiza and Formentera delegation of the Official Association of Industrial Technical Engineers; Jordi Carreño, architect at the Vila 13 studio; Mabel Navarro, a lawyer specialising in Administrative and Urban Planning Law at SMP Abogados; and Sergio González Malabia, president of the Court of First Instance of Ibiza.

The figures used as a starting point reflect the scale of the problem. Ibiza has gained 23,000 new residents over the past decade, while around 32,000 people live in situations of vulnerability or hardship, according to figures compiled by Cáritas. Added to this is the annual arrival of around 30,000 seasonal workers, according to estimates by the Consell Insular de Ibiza, who are competing for an increasingly scarce housing stock.

Empty homes at the centre of the debate

Antonio Calvo placed the focus on the lack of management of the existing residential housing stock. “The real population has tripled in recent decades and the island is completely overwhelmed in terms of water resources and waste management. Nobody is acting on the 15,000 empty homes that exist, while the only insistence is on building more”, he said.

The expert added that “super-luxury homes coexist with a level of social exclusion never seen before, and the administration has not created a permanent crisis committee”.

The co-founder of the Observatory also defended public intervention measures. “The administration must activate fiscal and regulatory tools, such as surcharges on empty homes and mechanisms to control the island’s capacity according to its real limits in terms of water, energy and waste”, he said.

Mabel Navarro also agreed on the importance of regulation, although with legal nuances. “Urban planning regulations organise the territory and protect rural land, but the current system does not respond to the real needs of access to housing within reasonable timeframes”, she explained. She also warned that “too many years pass from the start of planning to the moment housing actually materialises”.

Regulations that organise, but do not solve

Jordi Carreño analysed the roots of the problem from the perspective of territorial planning. “For decades, the territory was protected in an exemplary way, but nobody thought about where the population that sustains the island’s economy would live”, he said.

He also criticised mistakes in the tourism model, pointing out that “the move from three-star to five-star hotels multiplied the need for labour without any provision for where those workers would live”. The architect added that certain urban planning decisions had worsened the crisis. “Regulations requiring only large homes to be built have had the opposite effect to that intended, because they have encouraged the emergence of shared substandard housing due to the lack of alternatives”, he explained.

Infrastructure at its limit

David Berlanga focused his contribution on the lack of technical planning. “The challenge is not only to solve today’s problems, but to design how the island will sustain itself in 10 or 25 years in terms of water, energy and waste”, he said. The engineer called for “micro-desalination plants, the full reuse of wastewater and electricity networks prepared for the electrification of transport”.

He also warned of a structural planning deficit. “We are still managing with emergency solutions problems that should have been calculated decades ago, when the infrastructure was sized”, he said.

Bureaucracy, another obstacle to housing

Administrative delays also played a central role in the debate. Jordi Carreño recalled that “a building licence in Ibiza takes an average of two years and eight months, which blocks any capacity for response from the private sector”.

Antonio Calvo added that regulatory instability makes the situation worse. “Every week, rules change, errors are corrected or articles are amended, making it impossible to work with technical certainty”, he said.

From a legal perspective, Mabel Navarro insisted on the need for simplification. “The coexistence of multiple regulations between administrations creates legal uncertainty and makes projects harder to deliver”, she explained.

In the final part of the debate, the participants agreed on the need for an overall agreement: “Ibiza needs a pact that brings together housing, infrastructure, legal certainty and realistic planning”.

The experts’ conclusion is that the island still has “room for action”, but the time available to change course is shrinking rapidly.