When the police can act against squatters

tense, while the health risk is that much greater. Also combined with an energy drink, which was the case with the boy in Getafe, the consequences can be lethal in causing heart failure. The police describe the drug as “a bomb”. They have seized some during raids in the Son Banya shanty town and believe that it is being sold on the streets in certain areas of Palma.

Barely a week seems to pass without a report to do with squatting, but one report highlights the fact that, given the right circumstances, the police aren't as powerless (by law) to act than is often the case. In the space of just four hours on Friday last week, the National Police in Palma dealt with three separate squatting incidents, removed the squatters and made arrests.

Common to all three incidents was that an alarm system had been disabled and that a security company had called the police in. The damage and the security company information proved that these were very recent occupation offences. Five people were arrested, including a couple who had been evicted from the same apartment the day before - an alarm system was installed before they re-occupied it. Charges also included resistance to authority, as officers were assaulted during one of the incidents. In a way, tenants of a Palma police officer are now squatters, as they aren't paying the rent. These are tenants of substandard (illegal) accommodation that the officer, through his company, had been renting out - converted basement units. There has been more on this extraordinary case, which came to light last November when the officer was arrested. He has now been hit with a two-million-euro fine from the Balearic housing ministry, the largest fine the ministry has ever levied and higher than the total of all fines over the past five years.

Luxury Mallorca villas at a snip

Returning to the anticipation of a bumper tourism season, among the tourists adding to the island's numbers are visitors from the US. And they in turn are being attracted by property-buying potential. At the very opposite end of the property scale to squatters and tenants in basements, these are Americans who don't flinch at, say, a five-million-euro price tag for a luxury villa in Mallorca. Quite the contrary, as five million is a snip compared to what a similar property would cost in Florida, for example. “They have discovered a new paradise,“says a spokesperson for US luxury real-estate firm Nest Seekers International, one of the firms now moving into the Mallorcan market.

Americans are one division of the foreignbuying army which, despite a general fall in house sales in 2023, continues to represent over 30% of the total buying market - 31% to be precise. This percentage has been more or less constant for the past ten years, while data from both the College of Notaries and the College of Registrars point to an apparent “stabilisation” of house prices in Mallorca and the Balearics. Maybe, but this stabilisation still means the highest prices in the country along with the Madrid region 3,267 euros per square metre, the registrars report.