The Constitutional Court has admitted an appeal filed against Law 4/2025, approved by the Balearic Parliament, which allows the construction of housing on rural land without prior services in municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants, as well as increasing residential density and buildable land in urban and developable areas in municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants. The law also regulates so-called strategic residential projects.
The appeal was promoted by several citizens’ organisations and has the formal support of more than fifty deputies from the Socialist, Sumar/Més and Mixed (Podem) groups, who worked with their legal teams to bring the law before the Constitutional Court. For these entities, the admission of the appeal is “an important step in the defence of the territory and the right to decent housing”, against what they describe as “a new route for urban speculation in rural areas”.
GEN-GOB interprets the admission as “a serious warning to municipalities”. In a statement, the group notes that if the Constitutional Court ultimately declares the law unconstitutional, it will be local councils that must face the consequences of the licences granted under its provisions, as well as pressure and claims from affected developers. For this reason, the environmental organisation calls for “prudence” when processing or authorising projects under Law 4/2025 until the court issues its final ruling.
Controversial points of the law
The appealed law allows strategic residential projects to modify the conditions set out in current municipal planning, increasing the maximum number of dwellings per plot and the buildability coefficient. According to the organisations supporting the appeal, this flexibility could lead to developments that fail to consider basic urban planning needs such as parking, supply networks or other essential facilities for daily life.
Another major point of controversy is the introduction of positive administrative silence for this type of project. If the administration does not respond within the established timeframe, the development is automatically authorised. For the appellants, this mechanism weakens environmental oversight and reduces public participation, leaving decisions with major territorial impact effectively dependent on administrative silence.
From a legal standpoint, the appeal argues that the law undermines legal certainty by abruptly altering the planning regime for urban and rural land through exceptional measures. It also warns of an impact on municipal and island autonomy, as it transfers part of the decision-making power from local councils to the regional government for projects deemed “strategic”. Additionally, the appeal highlights possible conflicts with basic state legislation on urban planning, environmental protection and rural land conservation, by introducing rapid regularisations and positive silences that may render existing controls ineffective.
The entities also contest the reduction of protection for rural land, which they believe could act in practice as a disguised amnesty for activities and constructions that would normally be considered illegal. They warn that this situation “creates inequality between citizens who have respected the rules and those who have pushed ahead with transforming land and building outside the law”.
The admission of this appeal comes in addition to another already under consideration by the Constitutional Court against Law 7/2024 on urgent measures for simplification and administrative rationalisation. The environmental movement denounces that Parliament is approving a series of laws that “directly target rural land”, shifting urban pressure from built-up areas to the countryside. They recall that, under the justification of simplifying procedures or supporting the agricultural sector, major changes have been introduced in planning criteria, and that this new law is presented as a tool to facilitate access to housing when, in reality, “it opens the door to speculative operations on rural land”.
GEN-GOB also expressed gratitude for the work of all individuals and legal teams involved in filing the appeal, and voiced confidence that it will succeed. The organisation considers this latest admission a further step in defending the territory and combating urban speculation on islands such as Ibiza, particularly in sensitive areas of rustic land.