Stricter requirements for construction projects on Ibiza

The Island Council of Ibiza has further tightened the conditions for building projects in rural areas in the current development plan (“PTI”) by amending the law at the end of 2016, after the Legislative Decree 1/2016 of the Balearic Government came into force in Palma, Mallorca, at the beginning of 2016, which among other things amended the Land Law of the Balearic Islands.

This decree (“decreto ley”) from Palma merely suspends the application of the existing regulations.

The reason given for this is the urgency to prevent irreversible situations. The suspension of the application of certain regulations is only provisional, until the corresponding final regulations are issued.  The government has set a deadline of the end of 2017.

The amnesty that has been in place since March 2014 for so-called illegal construction on rural land (suelo rustico) was thus also lifted for Ibiza in January 2016. Previously submitted documents have since been processed further, provided that all the necessary documents were submitted to the responsible municipality in time. The situation is different for building applications in the protected area of special interest, the so-called ANEI zone (Areas naturales de especial interes), where the decree has a retroactive effect of 3 months. This means that a building application for a real estate project in the ANEI zone was only processed by the municipality if it had been submitted three months before the decree law came into force.

Since the beginning of 2016 the old status quo has thus been restored in Ibiza: illegally constructed buildings can no longer be challenged because of the time that has passed, but this does not make them legal. However, if the properties are located in a nature reserve and the buildings were erected after February 1991, the authorities can intervene at any time and order their demolition in individual cases.

On 30th November 2016, the Ibiza Island Council, as explained above, further tightened the conditions for building in rural areas with changes to the development plan (“PTI”). According to the amendment to the law published in the Official Gazette, the aim is to put an end to property speculation in rural areas in Ibiza and to protect specially protected areas from massive development.

The following cornerstones of the amendment to the development plan in Ibiza should be emphasised:

– The volume of construction on normal rural land (“suelo rustico comun”) for detached houses will be reduced. The upper limit is now 320 square metres, which includes the annexes. Only one swimming pool may be built per family home; the size of the water surface may not exceed 35 square metres.

– General halt to construction in the Red Natura 2000, SRP-ARIP (nature reserves in unique locations), SRP-APR (fire-prone zones) and SRC-F (forested zones) nature reserves.

– No single-family houses may be built on land parcelled after November 1, 2016, unless the parcelling was due to a gift between parents and children or an inheritance among family members. This is to prevent excessive parcelling and building on land.

– All fencing must be adapted to nature and must not be higher than one meter.

– All construction projects of buildings in rural areas must provide a rainwater collection basin of at least 15,000 litres.

The question of whether the change in the development plan should also be applied to building applications already submitted remains unresolved. For example, the law’s transitional provision (“Disposicion transitoria”) states that the changes do not apply to building applications for which complete documentation is already available (“documentacion completa”). Does the “complete documentation” mean that it must be available when the municipality forwards the building file to the Island Council? Or can the Island Council decide until it issues its final report (“informe favorable del Consell”) whether a building file contains the complete documentation? In the context of the application of this standard, there will always be questions that can only be solved by interpreting the legal regulation.