Touristic private boat rental is forbidden in the Balearics

The president has defended the balearic management model of the coast during the extraordinary session of the Nautical Board and announces that this Friday, August 1st, the Government’s Council will approve the legal answer to the State’s norm.

The Balearic Islands Government has celebrated today, July 29th, an extraordinary session of the Nautical Board to assess the direct rejection to the new State’s norm that allows the commercial activity of private boats through a temporary use change. In the mark of the session, celebrate in the Club Nàutic s’Arenal, the president of the Government, Margalida Prohens, has personally transferred the position of the Balearic executive and has announced that this Friday, the Government’s Council will approve a modification of the Decree of the nautical renting which will prevent this State’s measure to be applied to the Balearic Islands. The Sea and Water Cycle councilor, Juan Manuel Lafuente, and general director of Ports and Maritime Transport, Antoni Mercant, have also intervened.

“We won’t allow a model which ignores our insular reality to be imposed and we won’t compromise our waters’s environmental sustainability and maritime security. We have made it very clear: in the Balearic Islands, touristic rental of private boats won’t take place”, has affirmed the president Prohens.

This is a legal and immediate State’s answer which the Government considers unacceptable for specially sensitive territory, such as the Balearic Islands. The Resolution of July 22nd, 2025, published in the BOE, allows recreational boats of private use to operate commercially for three months a year. Even though the measure will enter into force on August 15th, the Government of the Balearic Islands has warned from the first moment that this regulation cannot be applied homogeneously in all the State’s territory, since the Balearic Islands suffer a major nautical pressure and have a limited load capacity which requires a strict ordination.

From the legal point of view, the autonomic modification will be clear and firm: in the Balearic Islands no nautical rental activity with temporary use boats will be allowed. The autonomic Decree will keep the renting restriction only to boats of the sixth list with maritime registry, excluding explicitly those of the seventh list that ask passing temporarily to commercial use. This way, the fiscal, operative and legal regime are preserved and differentiated between private and professional means, essential to keep public control amongst moorings, taxes and concessions.

One of the main arguments defended by the Government is the impossibility of authorizing a double use of moorings. In the Balearic Islands, a waiting list with over 7.000 applications for social or private use moorings currently exists, and allowing boats that already have a place for particular use to operate with commercial means would suppose a deep distortion of the system. The lucrative activity must develop in authorized areas such as commercial ones, with the technical, financial and environmental conditions that that implies.

During the session, the president has reiterated that the sustainability of the coast, the maritime security and the balance of uses in the ports are red lines which must not be trespassed. Councilor Lafuente has explained that the modification of the current Decree answers to the necessity of actualizing the normative mark with more precision, clarity and capacity of answer before the changes exposed by the State. The new text will reinforce the autonomic regulation of the recreational nautical activity and will make it clear that the private boats leasing with temporary use change is not allowed in the Balearic Islands.

This measure answers to a worry shared with the main Patronals and nautical clubs of the Balearic Islands, which also has expressed its rejection to a covered liberation of the field. The Government understands that the door to commercial activity of private boats, without a regulation adapted to the territory, supposes breaking the balance between social and commercial use of portuary spaces, and incrementing even more the saturation of coast already tense during summer season.

President Prohens has highlighted that this conflict is not only legal or technical, but a model question. “This Government will always defend the autonomy of the Balearic Islands to organize maritime activity according to its necessities and limitations. We don’t want more boats saturating our coast or turning the seas into speculative activity with no control”, she has concluded.

Meanwhile, and as a complementary measure, last Friday, July 25th, Ports de les Illes Balears (Ports IB) already approved a resolution that forbids explicitly the commercial use of moorings conceded for particular use. This measure has been adopted in exercise of the exclusive competences that has the community over the public portuary dominion, and establishes that any economic activity that is carried out with a moored boat in a social spot will mean a severe infraction. This will imply the opening of a sanctioning report and, in its case, the immediate revocation of the authorization.

PortsIB has also required all the concessionary entities of the ports in regime of indirect management to present in a maximum period of ten days a detailed report with the distribution of the moorings according to its use, clearly differentiating between social and commercial uses, as a transparency and control measure.

With these actions, the Government consolidates its legal and political answer before a State’s regulation that considers it inadequate for the Balearic territory. The new decree that will be approved this Friday will be the key tool to guarantee that the Balearic Islands keep marking the conditions of the nautical activity in its coast, in coherence with a safe, sustainable and socially fair model.