Balearic Islands - Administration

Administration

Each one of the four main islands are administered, along with their surrounding minor islands and islets, by an insular council (consell insular in Catalan) of the same name; these four insular councils are the first level of subdivision in the autonomous community (and province) of the Baleares.

Before the administrative reform of 1977, the two insular councils of Ibiza of Formentera were forming in a single one (covering the whole group of the Pitiusic Islands).

This level is further subdivided into six comarcas only in the insular council of Mallorca; the three other insular councils are not subdivided into separate comarcas, but are themselves assimilated each one to a comarca covering the same territory as the insular council.

These nine comarcas are then subdivided into municipalities (municipios), with the exception of Formentera which is at the same time an insular council, a comarca, and a municipality.

Note that the maritime and terrestrial natural reserves in the Balearic Islands are not owned by the municipalities, even if they fall within their territory, but are owned and managed by the respective insular councils from which they depend.

Those municipalities are further subdivided into civil parishes (parroquias), that are slightly larger than the traditional religious parishes, themselves subdivided (only in Ibiza and Formentera) into administrative villages (named véndas in Catalan); each vénda is grouping several nearby hamlets (casaments) and their immediate surrounding lands — these casaments are traditionally formed by grouping together several cubic houses to form a defensive parallelepiped with windows open to the East (against heat), sharing their collected precious water resources, whose residents are deciding and planning some common collective works.

However, these last levels of subdivisions of municipalities do not have their own local administration: they are mostly as the natural economical units for agricultural exploitation (and consequently referenced in local norms for constructions and urbanisation as well) and are the reference space for families (so they may be appended to the names of peoples and their land/housing properties) and are still used in statistics. Historically, these structures have been used for defensive purpose as well, and were more tied to the local catholic church and parishes (notably after the Reconquista).