The professor at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Rodolfo Espino, said this Tuesday that no matter how much the Mogán City Council wants to create an ecotax, legally it cannot. "City councils cannot create taxes," Espino said on social networks, adding: "according to articles 31.3 and 133 of the Spanish Constitution. Not even by changing their name and calling them rates." Espino, who was second deputy mayor in Las Palmas with Saavedra (PSOE) as well as a Treasury councilor and researcher at the Institute of Fiscal Studies, Mogán's thesis has no place in the legal framework no matter how much there is talk about the autonomy of corporations local.
Remember that rates must be and always are final, "because they are based on the tax principle of the benefit received: a rate is the consideration" for "the private use or special use of the public domain, the provision of services or the realization of activities under public law that refer to, affect or benefit the taxpayer in a particular way," he recalled, citing article 2.2 General Tax Law.
The Mogán City Council hopes to launch an ecotax in January 2025 that, according to Canarias7, the mayor, Onalia Bueno (CC), has once again highlighted that it will have a "finalist" character, as has been done in nearby countries such as Italy and Portugal. For Espino, Spain and Portugal are sovereign countries with Magna Cartas different from that of Spain. For Bueno, "everything that is collected will be for that maintenance and improvement, which is necessary and that cannot be deducted from the taxes of the residents who go to the tourist areas, and to have them in optimal conditions as they deserve."
Regarding accommodation nights, he points out that a tax is already being paid within the IGIC in the Canary Islands or in the VAT in the Peninsula: "now it is intended to pay another tax on overnight stays under another name, with a very modern discourse, but that "It is old and dates back more than 75 years in Spain, due to the dictator Francisco Franco who called it a tourism policy."
