The Balearic Government has recognized this Thursday that it cannot process the environmental permits for what is known as the ‘macro farm of horrors‘, located in Llucmajor (Mallorca), which was in the news spotlight after elDiario.es published the scoop the unsanitary conditions, extreme dirt and alleged animal abuse that occurred inside the facilities. The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and the Natural Environment, Joan Simonet, has admitted that, with current legislation, the current conditions of the farm do not allow this procedure to be carried out.
This was stated after being questioned by Ferran Rosa, deputy of the eco-sovereignty group Més per Mallorca, in the parliamentary appearance that the minister offered to report on the current situation of poultry farming. It is worth remembering that the farm gained media attention after, on May 26, this newspaper published unpublished images of its interior, recorded by the environmental and animal protection associations ARDE and Satya Animal between April 21 and 29. In that first report, this medium reported that the owners of the laying hen farm had received a fine of 150,000 euros from the regional Executive. for not having the integrated environmental authorization.
The mandatory nature of this authorization is included in the Royal Legislative Decree 1/2016which defines the requirements to be taken into account to regulate pollution from this type of exploitation. This year, in addition, Decree Law 1/2025, of January 17, came into force, which toughens the requirements for intensive poultry farms in the Balearic Islands. The fourth additional provision of the text establishes that new poultry farms, as well as expansions of existing ones, may be authorized only if they respect minimum distances from any residential area, determined according to their livestock capacity. Specifically, farms with more than 80,000 chickens must be located more than six kilometers from populated areas.
In the case of the Llucmajor farm, it is located approximately one kilometer from the urban centers of Tolleric and Badia Gran. If the farm has more than 80,000 laying hens, according to the new regulations, it should maintain a distance “of no less than 6,000 linear meters from the nearest urban residential land.” Therefore, if any new authorization is to be processed, it would have to comply with the requirements of the new decree-law, requirements that the exploitation currently does not meet, as this newspaper reported at the time.
The opposition questions the Government
During his speech, the eco-sovereignty Ferran Rosa recalled that the General Directorate of Urban Harmonization and Environmental Assessment – dependent on the Department of Housing, Territory and Mobility – rejected the request for environmental authorization integrated into the exploitation of Llucmajor through a resolution signed on September 25which, in his opinion, highlights the contradictions of the Department of Agriculture in not having previously filed the file.
In said resolution, the general director, Paz Andrade, points out that, to authorize the environmental processing, the entry into force of the ley 2/2025 -derived from Decree Law 1/2025-, mainly in relation to the maximum number of laying hens – as was the case, at that time, of the Llucmajor farm – and the distance from urban centers, conditions that the project does not meet. “The installation is not authorizable,” concludes Andrade.
Not in vain, the description of the project, included in the resolution, indicates that the Llucmajor farm has a maximum authorization of 40,000 laying hens, despite which it was operating with six buildings with a capacity of up to 135,696 birds. The request to legalize the facilities, however, was rejected. The resolution of the General Directorate thus confirms that the farm has been operating illegally for several years.
In addition to filing the application for environmental authorization, the document calls on the promoter (Avícola Son Perot SA, the company that operates the Avícola Ballester brand) to reduce the capacity of the farm to a maximum of 40,000 laying hens, in addition to presenting, before December 31, 2025, a verifiable plan for compliance with these objectives, which the company must present to the General Directorate of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development, headed by Fernando Fernández (PP).
You must also process “the corresponding necessary authorizations which you do not currently have”, relating to both the maximum capacity of the exploitation and its landfill, Sa Llapassa; have the APCA authorization (potentially polluting activities in the atmosphere), and comply with Law 3/2019, of January 31, on agricultural activities, as well as Royal Decree 637/2024, of July 27, which establishes the basic rules for the management of poultry farms.
Ferran Rosa (More for Mallorca): “They take our hair”
Rosa, in his speech, expressed surprise that Simonet appeared on November 13, when the “scandal” became public on May 26. “Not only does it affect the residents of Llucmajor, but it scandalized a good part of the population of the Balearic Islands,” he argued. The environmentalist deputy began his speech by referring, precisely, to the resolution that rejected the integrated environmental authorizationsigned on September 25 and published on October 9 in the Official Bulletin of the Balearic Islands (BOIB).
“The dismissal proposal was made on July 23,” he stated. Given that no allegations were presented, as of August 11, the process could have already been concluded, the eco-sovereignist has stressed, who has gone further: “The curious thing is that, throughout this period of the development of the integrated environmental evaluation procedure, they have not informed from minute one that the agrarian law had changed and, therefore, it was legally impossible” to grant said authorization.
At this point, Rosa has begun to list all the regulatory changes that have occurred since January 2025, reproaching the Government for its delay in filing a file that “could have been closed in January”, as soon as the new law came into force, and not in October, as finally happened. Furthermore, he has asserted that from the resolution of the general director of Urban Harmonization it is clear that the reports sent by the Department of Agriculture – specifically through the Livestock Production Service – were “conditional” instead of “dismissive”. “They were not dismissive reports, as you said today [este jueves]but conditioned”, he recriminated.
Based on these arguments, Rosa maintains, the Department’s technicians should have sent an ex officio report to the General Directorate “explaining that, as a substantive body, they urged that this file be archived because it was not legally viable according to current regulations.”
The eco-sovereignist recalled that these conditional reports from the Livestock Production Service were issued on April 15 and May 27, respectively, highlighting the fact that this second report was issued one day after this newspaper revealed, for the first time, the situation inside the farm, and that it established the conditions through which the farm could process this integrated environmental authorization, which is mandatory for its operation.
Conditions that, given that the minimum distances between the poultry farm and the surrounding urban centers are not met, are impossible. One of the options available to the farm to be able to legally continue its activity would be to change location and process new permits. Another alternative, which has finally been chosen, is to reduce the maximum capacity of the facilities to 40,000 hens to operate legally. “I feel bad, Mr. Minister, but I think they are kidding us,” said Rosa. “They did nothing at the time the law was approved and they did not do it until it was published in the press,” he lamented.
Simonet (PP): “Our reports are unfavorable”
Simonet, who in his first intervention limited himself to reading the files related to the exploitation investigated for its irregularities, as well as defending the management of his Department, responded to Rosa: “I believe that the General Directorate of Harmonization [Urbanística y Evaluación Ambiental] knows perfectly well what laws are approved.” “In any case, when they ask us for reports (…), they have all been unfavorable,” indicated the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and the Natural Environment.
“Not conditional, unfavorable,” Simonet insisted. In the environmental impact authorization reports, the councilor has argued, “they ask us to say what conditions there should be to overcome it if that were the case.” This is how Simonet has justified his actions, adding that the Minister of Housing, Territory and Mobility, José Luis Mateo (PP), had previously argued that the procedure was carried out in this way due to a matter of “double legal security.”
For his part, Marc Pons, deputy spokesperson for the PSIB-PSOE in the Balearic Parliament, has regretted that there are “obvious gaps”, in his opinion, regarding the procedure carried out by the Department of Agriculture, and that they would be reflected in the files. The socialist parliamentarian has described the process initiated by the Department through different reports and files related to poultry farming: the report and sanctioning file related to the management of the manure dump, as well as its management plan – signed on December 12, 2023 and September 26, 2024, respectively -, according to which three serious and two minor infractions could have been committed, as reported elDiario.es.
However, Pons recalled, the General Directorate of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development suspended on November 5, 2024 a sanctioning procedure, as well as the precautionary measures associated with it, initiated against Avícola Son Perot SA. All of this despite the serious deficiencies detected by the technicians of the Balearic Executive itself. “The person who signs this suspension of the measures is the general director of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Affairs, Fernando Fernández,” detailed the socialist, who added that he did so despite the fact that the suspension was not accompanied “by any technical report that supported the suspension of the sanctioning procedure.” Likewise, it has been questioned whether an alleged crime of administrative prevarication had not been incurred.
“It is not prevarication by any means,” Simonet concluded. The minister of the branch has argued that, when there is an open procedure both in the Prosecutor’s Office and in a Court, the head of legal services of the Ministry prepares a resolution. “It is not written by the general director,” he clarified, adding that it is developed based on the current regulations on administrative procedure as well as the agrarian law. “Total tranquility in relation to this issue,” he stated: “The sanctioning procedures are suspended and then reactivated again.”
