The mayor demands, together with the Alliance of Tourist Municipalities, the redefinition of this concept to improve their income
Benidorm demands “fairer and more proportional” financing from the State
The mayor of Benidorm, Toni Pérez, has claimed once again the need to redefine the concept of tourist municipalities to qualify for “more proportional and fairer” financing from the State. He did so during a round table organized within the framework of FiturTech, together with the mayors of the other seven municipalities that are part of the Alliance of Sun and Beach Tourist Municipalities (AMT): Lloret de Mar, Salou, Adeje, Arona, San Bartolomé de Tirajana, Torremolinos and Calviá.
In this context, Pérez has stated that Benidorm reports to the State an annual collection of 1,800 million euros in taxes, while it only receives 18 million euros per year in financing from the State. "It is evident that whoever collects does not want to share with the rest or, at least, with the municipalities that mostly generate this income, as is our case," lamented the first mayor, who also pointed out that "it would be as easy as giving each of these municipalities a small percentage of the VAT collection generated by tourist activity.”
Both Toni Pérez and the rest of the mayors have put on the table the proposal launched by the AMT last October to redefine the concept of a tourist municipality, which would facilitate access to greater income for all of them to be able to face the extra expenses that generate the services they provide to the floating population. The document shows that the current definition falls short, since only 14 Spanish towns meet the current requirements, while among the eight pioneer tourism municipalities of the AMT Sol y Playa, leaders of the sector's recovery process, only one is within the current parameters.
With the proposal outlined by the AMT Sol y Playa, it is proposed that to be considered a tourist municipality, the candidate localities will not be capitals of a province or an autonomous community, they will have a population that will be between 10,000 and 100,000 inhabitants and must comply with at least one of the following three requirements: that second homes exceed the number of first homes; that have more than four million overnight stays annually; and that the number of accommodation places is greater than 50% of the census population in each municipality.
“We make a huge effort to provide services such as security, cleaning and public lighting,” Pérez highlighted, also giving as an example that, despite having a registered population of 70,000 inhabitants, the city “has a Local Police force much higher than that of many other towns of similar size, because the minimum number of people on any normal day of the year never falls below 140,000 and reaches 400,000 at certain times.”
