In December last year, the Ibiza Town Hall announced the seasonal licensing plan for 2025 and the next four years, which is expected to be published in the BOIB in the coming hours, a regime that includes a 33% update in the price of these permits, which would cost from 6,000 to 8,000 euros per year. In this context, and while waiting for the approval of the new regime, a claim arises in the sector for the licenses to be “fixed seasonal” for a value of between 80,000 and 100,000 euros.
Julian Povedano, president of the association El Arca, has raised in dialogue with La Voz de Ibiza that “the rise from 6,000 to 8,000 euros is abusive and has no logic, because the standard of living does not rise so much.” “A year and a half ago I presented a solution to the authorities, a proposal for seasonal licenses to become fixed, so we did not have to be renewing them every four years,” said the cab driver with 30 years in the sector. “Let a price be set, pay them and out. Not 8,000 euros at a sunk cost, which we don’t have. How can I make that license profitable? Putting a car costs me 40,000, the facilities are another 10,000, all that so that tomorrow, around the corner, they can destroy my car. Enough of uncertainty and abuses in the payments”, reproached Povedano. In relation to the increase in the rates, the justification given in the decree is the lower amortization cost that the holders will enjoy when going from two to four years.
Discontinued fixed licenses for cabs
On this subject, the owner of El Arca assured that, in a telephone conversation, the councilman of Public Transport, Rubén Sousa, has “verbally” commented to him a potential price “of 80,000 to 100,000 euros” for these “fixed licenses”. Sousa himself advanced in an interview published in La Voz de Ibiza last August his position in favor of the creation of this figure. “One of the first things I did when I arrived was to propose a legal text that would allow us to take out ordinary licenses but with a time limit of exploitation. To issue ordinary licenses in order to provide security to the licensee, something that we cannot guarantee with the seasonal plan, which generates uncertainty and also some insecurity. Having a fixed ordinary license even if it can only work during the season when cabs are really needed, from May to October for example, solves this issue. Cabs are not needed in winter, cabs are needed in summer. We have seasonal licenses that have been vacant in recent years. It is difficult to retain staff for a license for two or four years, as has been the case up to now. So we created the ordinary cab of limited exploitation, which is a text that we have already put in the hands of the Balearic Government so that it can study it and implement it when the final text of the cab law is resolved. We think it is a good measure to provide security to the sector,” explained the councilor of Transport. This and other claims linked to the increase in insurance, which has motivated a national strike of the sector this Wednesday) and the administration of the GPS system have been raised by Povedano to the City Council, but has not received a response so far.
Dissonance over seasonal licenses in Ibiza
The position of El Arca, as La Voz de Ibiza has been able to find out, is not accepted throughout the cab sector in Ibiza. From the Association of Autonomous Taxi Drivers (member of FITIE and FITIB), have lowered the tone of the claim for the “fixed seasonal licenses” and said: “This is not currently covered in the Balearic Transport Act. The concept of seasonal is fine as it is and gives an optimal result”. However, they coincide in their discomfort with the 30% increase in the value of the licenses. “We still do not agree, but it is a decision of the economic policy of the City Council,” they pointed out.
Insurance increase, a national issue
Povedano has also spoken out against increases in insurance policies. In his case, he went from paying “990 to euros to 5,000”. “It cannot be that insurers establish agreements of this type among themselves, overnight and without any justification. They are making an irregularity,” he said.
