Officials on the Spanish party island of Ibiza have announced a crackdown on the number of hire cars allowed on its roads as anti-tourism sentiment continues to rage among locals. This summer is expected to see a repeat of last year’s protests against rising foreign footfall in the Balearic Islands, with early indications of continued unrest, including the blocking off of a picturesque mountain-top area in Ibiza.
In a bid to tackle the growing problem, authorities have imposed limits on cruise ship arrivals, cracked down on illegal short-term lets and promoted sustainable travel through the Love Ibiza campaign. And the island council’s latest plan to address its increasingly congested roads is through a legislative cap on the number of vehicles allowed on the island at a given time – with a further limit for rental cars.
The new rules, announced on Friday, will cap the number of vehicles on Ibiza’s roads at 20,168, the Majorcan Daily Bulletin reported.
Of these, only 16,000 will be permitted to be hire cars, with further restrictions on motorhomes limiting those allowed on the road to the ones registered on the island or with a place at an official camping site.
The Balearic Government has also proposed a wider tax on all hire cars, something Julio Nieto, president of the Baleval car-hire association, said would be “demonising” the sector, which he warned was “a consequence of generated demand” rather than generating demand itself.
Ibiza is just one of the many popular tourist destinations around the world suffering from overtourism, spurred by cheap flights, social media advertisement and weak infrastructure. But the island’s small population compared to its Balearic counterparts paints a stark contrast to the hordes of sunseekers it attracts each year.
The western Mediterranean island is only home to around 160,000 people – much less than Majorca’s 966,000 – but recorded over 3.3 million tourist arrivals in 2023.
The driving force behind angry demonstrative action has been the archipelago’s ongoing using crisis, especially in the home rental sector, with the number of wealthy foreign property owners driving single-room prices above €1,400 (£1,170), according to Diaro de Ibiza.
It has left hundreds of thousands of people at risk of poverty, local reports suggest, with authorities struggling to do whatever they can to curb the impacts of a problem that just doesn’t seem to be going away.