The Great Non-Debate: Tourism spend

Oh no, here we go again; the headline-grabber of tourism spend being up and likely to reach record levels. Why does this garbage refuse to be ignored? It’s difficult to do so, if the statistics office and tourism ministry insist upon shoving it down people’s throats.

The facts, such as they are, are these. Tourism spend in the Balearics during April was up by 35%. For the first four months, it rose by 7%.

If you weren’t paying attention before, let me remind you how this spend statistic is arrived at. The process of information gathering is by questionnaire; some 100,000 interviews at airports, ports and border crossings across Spain being conducted annually. Just think about this for a moment, and how thinly spread the exercise is.

Of the information that is gathered, only two of its five categories actually relate to spend on things other than accommodation, transport and the tourism package. There is, for example, no specific provision for spend in shops; just for restaurants and excursions. On-the-ground spend is limited, therefore, to 40% of the overall statistic (transport can include local spend, but equally it means spend on flights).

The good-news story of the increased spend is not all it seems anyway. An average spend per tourist of 866 euros is still some way lower than what used to be a more regular figure that was quoted, of plus-900. And, as ever, there is a huge discrepancy between what the statistics suggest and the reality.

Various bodies, those representing restaurants and other sectors of the so-called complementary offer, have been quick to point out that this spend is not translating into tills rolling over. Well, it wouldn’t, if much of it is skewed towards things other than the complementary offer.

One has to be careful where the statistics that these bodies produce are concerned as well. When they say that some establishments are suffering 50% falls in revenue, this doesn’t mean that all establishments are (5% appears to be an average). Nevertheless, there has been evidence to suggest that genuine and quite dramatic declines in revenue have been experienced.

The shops are probably the worst-affected sector of the lot, especially the souvenir shops. Yes, there are too many of them, just as there are too many bars and restaurants, but time was when over-supply didn’t really matter. It isn’t only the shops flogging siurells and what have you, but also those selling “different” stuff. One shopowner I know well was suffering an 80% loss at stages of last season, and he is not someone inclined to lapsing into BS.

The blame is, of course, directed at all-inclusives. The restaurant and other bodies have called for a debate within Balearic society to be opened to consider the increase in all-inclusives and the effect they have.

What on earth have they been doing for the past ten years? The trend was clear ages ago, and what precisely would this debate achieve, other than to reiterate everything that has been said about all-inclusives, time and time again? The organisations recognise the power of the tour operators, but still they want a debate. Well, let them. It won’t do much good.

The other great power in the tourism game, the hotels, defending themselves of course, say it is better to have tourists rather than lose them altogether. Which is fair enough, but they are also complaining that tourists aren’t spending money. And why would that be, do you think?

One of the elements of the tourism spend statistic should be looked at especially closely – the tourism package. This doesn’t exclusively mean all-inclusives, but how much are they a factor in this part of the spend (and others) and how much is the on-arrival upgrade to all-inclusive a factor?

To get a handle on spend by all-inclusive tourists, you need to refer back to the research TUI have done in Turkey, the research which revealed that, behind the tour operator’s assertion as to the benefits of all-inclusives, a mere 11% of spend found its way into the local community.

For the tourism spend statistics to ever be more than irrelevant, they need to be more precise and focused, but logistics as well as political expediency will mean that they won’t be. It is the headline of 35% up that is all you are meant to know, not what the figures really represent.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Two-Way Information: Tourist offices which aren’t

When is a tourist office not a tourist office? When it’s not manned by people with any knowledge that might be useful for a tourist.

Last summer, two tents, boasting tourist information, suddenly appeared in different parts of Playa de Muro. How very sensible I thought. The resort occupies a stretch of three to four kilometres in length. At its outer limits, tourists are a fair old schlep away from the town hall’s municipal building which houses the tourist office.

But there was something not quite right about these tents. They were often unoccupied and there was very little by way of information. To help them out, I took some along to one of the tents, even provided a plastic box, purchased at eleven euros, so that stuff didn’t fly away in the breeze; the tents were more canopies than actual tents.

The box disappeared. I was unimpressed both by this and by the general absence of any personnel or information. It doesn’t reflect well on the town, I thought. But I had made an assumption, always a dangerous thing to do, that these tents were part of Muro town hall’s tourism information provision. They weren’t.

The tents were put up by the local hotel association. Their primary purpose was not the giving out of information but its gathering. The hotels were engaging in market research.

There was nothing at all wrong with this; indeed, it was extremely sensible. But a false impression was given. The girls at the tents were disarmingly pretty and charming, but they didn’t have a clue when it came to local information. Which was probably because they weren’t local.

This is not having a dig at the hotel association, as there should be more research performed of tourists once they are in situ, but if, as a tourist, you see something proclaiming to be for tourist information, then that is what you expect it to provide. It was a case not just of reflecting badly on Muro town hall (which had nothing to do with the tents) as also reflecting badly on the cadre of personnel at the front-line of tourist interaction, the staff at the regular tourist offices.

The tourist information offices rarely seem to get much of a mention in the grand tourism scheme, but, from my experiences with offices in the northern part of Mallorca, their staff are knowledgeable, helpful and patient. I take my hat off to them. They do a fantastic job, often under pressure. You try switching between different languages, confronted by a never-ending queue of tourists seeking out information; doing this, day in, day out for several months, rarely getting the chance to take a breather.

It would be understandable, therefore, if this staff were themselves none too impressed by the wannabe tourist offices and the potential for a reputation for helpfulness and knowledge to be undermined.

The wish on behalf of the hotels to undertake some market research was fair enough. Whether the little that seems to be done has much effect is hard to say. Puerto Pollensa has issued a questionnaire for some time now, yet here is a resort which constantly seems to get in the neck for one reason or another. You fancy the results are carefully filed in some dusty archive room and never again see the light of day.

Approaching tourists under the pretext that market research is being done can, however, not be all it seems. The wretched time-share touts of Alcúdia (who mercifully seem not to be around this season) once used this as a tactic; all part, they said, of promotion of the resort. It was utter rubbish of course.

But however market research is done and by whoever, the key to it all is knowing what it is you really find out and asking the right questions. The questionnaire in Puerto Pollensa had such gems as rating, from one to ten, the “price/quality ratio of installations in your accomodation (accommodation spelt incorrectly)”. How are you supposed to answer this, even if you know what it means? What is the point of asking about staff “professionality” (does such a word exist?) in “non-food shopping facilities”?

Tourism market research. Yes, it’s a good idea, but only if it’s done meaningfully and not behind the guise of something else.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

How To Screw Up: Hotels

Here’s a case study for you. Assume it’s still last year, you own a hotel, a fairly small hotel popular for years with British families and firmly “British” in reputation. You get a bit edgy about the way things are, not just with the British tourism market but also with the competition from all-inclusives (you are, at present, a mix of self-catering and board). What do you do? Do you carry on in the same way or do you change completely?

I’m naming neither the hotel nor the resort, but the case study has panned out as follows. The hotel has switched to being primarily German and primarily all-inclusive. It is still possible for British tourists, of which many have been loyal and regular visitors, to book, but the Britishness has gone. The entertainment has changed. It was never grand, but it was homely, constrained by its budget and the domain of someone who was, in many ways, the “face” of the hotel.

British visitors have faced something of a surprise. In addition to the switch in emphasis to being German, which includes a different emphasis when it comes to the food, if they have booked all-inclusive, this hasn’t turned quite as they might have expected.

The hotel, remember, is fairly small. It has a restaurant, but it doesn’t have the facility for providing the sort of food, out of set dining hours, that is commonly associated with all-inclusives: pizzas, chips, burgers from a snack bar. Drink there is, on demand, but the guest is obliged to pay a deposit for his or her glass; a deposit for a plastic glass.

Because there are only set dining-times, if guests arrive after ten in the evening, there is nothing for them. The kitchen can’t be opened. There is no flexibility, despite the guests being all-inclusive.

Not all guests have booked all-inclusive. Those who have come on a self-catering basis are greeted with the possibility of their upgrading, at a daily rate, to all-inclusive. It’s what the hotel wants; it’s what it almost expects. The rooms for those who insist on remaining self-catering have to then have equipment re-installed that had been taken away on the expectation that it wouldn’t be required. The microwave, for instance, has to be put back.

Though primarily German, other nationalities are booked in. In addition to the British, there are the Russians. They are on their way. If the British and Germans don’t always see eye-to-eye, then the Germans and Russians positively detest each other. In a large complex, nationalities are diluted, but in a fairly small hotel, they are not. And they are all-inclusive. Likely to be there, all together, all getting on each other’s nerves.

The hotel, and the season has barely started, seems to realise that it has made an error. It is already considering going back to the board and self-catering mix, abandoning all-inclusive and getting the British back. So why did it take the route it has for this summer?

It panicked. It saw that the British market was struggling, and so looked for more secure markets, the German one mainly. But it leapt too quickly. As things have turned out, the British market has recovered. Not totally, certainly not, but sufficiently, and aided by events in north Africa. It also miscalculated. As a smallish hotel, but with a loyal British following and a good reputation, the British market would probably still have been viable, even if Egypt and Tunisia hadn’t come along.

This case study is informative in many ways, one being a lesson for hotels which, believing they have to jump to the all-inclusive tune, have to be sure they can deliver. This one can’t, not in the way the guest expects it to. It’s too small. Even larger hotels in Mallorca have problems, because they were not designed with all-inclusive in mind.

But more than this, it is informative in acting as a cautionary tale for hotels that would ignore their loyal markets. Apart from the nationality mix, many British guests don’t want all-inclusive. Not everyone does. The worst aspect for the hotel is that the internet will be alive with the sound of its being criticised. It acted in a supremely short-term manner. It didn’t think through the consequences, and now it faces a challenge of recovering a reputation, one that is likely to be damaged more, as we are still only in May.

And more than all this, for guests who have been dissatisfied, it is not just the hotel but also the resort and the island which suffer. “Never again,” said one guest. And never again might mean Turkey in the future. The greatest lesson should be that everyone in tourism is in it together, but they are not. They are in it for themselves, and the rest can go hang.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing: the PP

The PP has delivered, thus bringing joy to a British expatriate community assumed to be, but far from exclusively, as tending to the right or a good deal further. Next year the PP will deliver unto Spain a new president, Mariano Rajoy. What, though, really is the PP? This is not an idle question, as it relates to how it is often perceived.

An old university friend of mine has lived in Barcelona since the late 1970s. Fluent in the languages, conversant with the nuances of language and of social and political life in Catalonia and Spain, he has also taught political theory – at La Salle University.

The other day, he asked me what I thought about the blue wave of the PP washing over the Balearics and then went on to give a perspective on the PP and on its treatment by the media. It’s his, but it is not his alone.

Amongst other things, one paragraph stood out. I quote:

“I would take issue with the British press. They constantly describe the PP as a ‘right-of-centre party’, implying that it is some kind of benign, Disraeli, villa Tory outfit, when in reality it is easily the most right-wing mainstream party in Europe.”

This isn’t a simple matter of semantics. Delete “centre”, and “right” on its own takes on a different complexion. A convention of using “centre-right” conforms with how we like to perceive the British Conservative Party, or how it, and most of the press, wishes it to be perceived. Whether the current version is, is a moot point, but within it do not lurk the issues that surround the PP and which are not of the centre.

The PP is a beast of immediate post-Franco times. Though it was founded in 1989, its lineage is clear; back to 1976 and when the Alianza Popular was created by Franco’s former tourism minister. Manuel Fraga was considered a moderate in Franco terms. But all things are relative. The AP struggled for the first few years of its life because it was seen as representative of the old authoritarianism.

The PP still suffers from a hardline image, despite its portrayal as centre-right and despite Rajoy attempting to make himself appear moderate; elements within his party are anything but. It can’t rid itself of its lineage. Indeed, it reinforces it. The neutering of the judge Baltasar Garzón has widely been seen as having been driven by the PP, with the Falange a willing castrator.

While this might all sound as though it is leading towards a paean for PSOE, it isn’t. I can damn PSOE as well as I can the PP. But, although PSOE – Zapatero and Antich – have proven not to be up to the task of tackling economic crisis in Spain or the Balearics, the party has been responsible for a significant shift in social attitudes. It is Zapatero’s one great achievement: one that elements within the PP would wish to reverse and destroy. And Rajoy has not convinced that he would be able to stop them, even were he to wish to.

To this social agenda, one can add the economic one. The Chicago school of slash-and-burn. Milton Friedman et al; Reaganomics, Thatcherism. I can already hear some voices cheering at the prospect. Spain needed and needs a dose of economic realism, but at what cost? And at what cost to Mallorca?

One of the criticisms levelled against José Bauzá is that he is merely an instrument of the bidding of the PP nationally. When Rajoy wins the next general election, a target for the PP will be the autonomous regions, of which the Balearics are one. A compliant PP president in Palma, and the agenda to slash dramatically the regions’ spending, and one advocated by the IMF and others, will be set.

Bauzá, the PP, have enjoyed a good week. They have enjoyed a largely uncritical and non-analytical examination as to what is to come and as to the wolf that hides in the clothing of the sheepish Rajoy, who has been distinctly coy so as not to frighten the flocks of the Spanish electorate. And when the divisions that exist within the PP in Mallorca re-surface, ones related, for example, to the control by the national party and to anti-Catalanism, are grafted onto a national agenda of social illiberalism, the past week might start not to look so good.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Carme Chameleon: Alcúdia’s coalitions

While there are many town halls whose administration, post-election, is clearcut, there are plenty where it is not. One, as mentioned previously, is Alcúdia.

The Partido Popular and its would-be mayor, Coloma Terrasa, have eight councillors, one short of a majority of nine. There are nine other councillors, split among the Convergència and PSOE (four apiece) and the PSM (Mallorcan socialists) with one.

It is the final one on this list, the PSM, which is the most interesting, as the party potentially holds the key to the future administration in the town and, if it were to prove to be so, would be evidence as to how bizarre Mallorca’s politics can be. Bizarre and opportunistic.

The PSM is everything the PP is not. It is left-wing, nationalist (i.e. veering towards independence), Catalanist, and as green as a party can be without actually calling itself green. The twain of the PSM and the PP should never meet, except in darkened alleys when they encounter each other for an ideological punch-up, but the twain could yet meet in the corridors of Alcúdia town hall power.

The sole councillor that the PSM now has, Carme Garcia, is the first councillor the party has had in Alcúdia. Time to show some muscle, it would appear; time to be shown some respect. The PSM across the island has done fairly well out of the elections. Not that it fared any better at regional parliament level than it did in 2007. It has the same number of seats and its percentage of the vote went down fractionally. Yet, it can claim to now being the third force in the island.

A reason for this was the collapse of the Convergència. While it maintains pockets of resistance in town halls, such as Alcúdia, generally it has been consigned to the political dustbin, taking with it its own nationalism of the right. The PSM is now the third force and now the main voice for Mallorcan aspirations.

It is against this background that Garcia has said that she would consider an agreement with the PP whereby an alliance would create the nine councillors required. It would be the most unholy of alliances. More than this, it would be a complete sell-out of political credibility. Not of course that this stops parties combining with others when they have their eye on the main chance; think Liberal Democrats, for example. But a tie-up between the PP and the PSM would be utterly absurd.

Garcia, though she says that she would be capable of being mayor, doesn’t have the brassneck to suggest that a pact with the PP would mean that she should be mayor. Thank heavens for such humility. The people of Alcúdia might have granted the PSM the opportunity of town hall representation, but there should be some context in all of this.

The PP obtained almost 40% of the vote. The Convergència and PSOE were virtually identical – in the low 20s. The PSM got just over 6% from a turnout of 55%, which is its own story as it was by far the lowest among the five largest northern municipalities. I don’t know how many people this equates to, but from a population of some 19,000 and bearing in mind how many might actually be on the electoral census, an estimate might be around 300.

On any moral grounds, the PP’s right to administer the town hall and Coloma Terrasa’s right to be mayor should be givens. But they are not. The Convergència and PSOE formed the previous coalition. They might yet do so again, if Garcia could be persuaded. Such a scenario says much about the proportional system and much also about how local town politics are not always about political ideology. In the case of the PP and the PSM, they most certainly are, but the Convergència and PSOE are different.

Though ostensibly of the right and the left, they are chummy. This chumminess can be a virtue, and it worked well enough for most of the last administration, but it can equally be seen as being divisive, especially if it denies the PP its place in the town hall sun.

I make no bones. I don’t much care for the PP, but the electoral system can be held open to ridicule. The PP deserves to be installed, but there would be no thing more ridiculous than for it to be installed with the aid of the PSM.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Something’s A Bit Fishy: La Gola

They were trawling dead fish out of La Gola again. Hundreds of young sea bass suffocated in the water of the canal, creating a fine old take-away for the seagulls which came from miles around to feast.

This is the small La Gola lagoon in Puerto Pollensa. Together with its accompanying park, it is referred to, by politicians who rush to make such environmentally righteous statements, as the green heartbeat of the resort. Or something like this. It’s tosh, whatever it is. I have previously used La Gola to denote an item of expenditure, one of questionable sense. “It’ll cost you a lagola, mate.” 800 grand, give or take the odd thousand; what it cost to do whatever it was they did. They being the collective of the town hall and regional government. (There is another cost quoted in respect of La Gola; one substantially greater – four million.)

To be fair, some parts of the park look reasonable enough. The problem has been, ever since it was officially opened and before this, keeping it in order. Out of order, it has been a haven for graffiti-ists, botellón-ists and all manner of other ists. Amidst the periodic disorder, they built a visitors’ centre. It’s not completely useless, as it does give information about bird and wildlife in other parts of the island, e.g. the Tramuntana mountains. But whether twitchers or others flock pilgrim-like in great numbers to it in order to avail themselves of its wisdom, I really couldn’t say.

It is the case, though, that La Gola and the wetlands of Albufereta and the now newly-reopened Can Cullerassa finca, a few kilometres along the coast, are important in attracting the keen birdwatcher. La Gola has recently been visited by an obscure heron, one that caused great excitement among the feathered-friend-fancying fraternity.

The appearance of the heron might be considered evidence of the green heartbeat actually beating. On the other hand, it might not be, and the sea bass would probably be inclined to agree that it wasn’t. The fish were fried, it would appear, because no one has got round to properly dredging the canal. Clogged up, sea water can’t get in adequately.

La Gola is something of a metaphor for what occurs elsewhere in Mallorca, one that relates to a division of responsibilities that the relevant bodies seem either unaware of or unable or unwilling to do anything about.

Pollensa town hall, the usual suspect when anything goes wrong in Puerto Pollensa, will doubtless get it in the neck over the sea bass and for the general upkeep of the pond, but, for once, it isn’t the town hall’s fault. The water, indeed the whole park, come under the auspices of the regional government’s environment ministry. The town hall is meant to keep the park up to scratch, which is a sore point among the locals, but as for the water: not its job.

Ultimately, it’s probably the responsibility of the national Costas authority, a division of the central environment ministry, but which devolves responsibility back to its Balearics wing. This, as with other regional Costas wings, devotes its energies primarily to knocking things down, such as buildings on beaches, rather than keeping things shipshape.

The division of responsibilities in the La Gola case should be clear enough, but the environment ministry is being charged, by locals in the port, with not giving sufficient priority to its maintenance or to removing sand that is dragged in from the sea. It could well be that, governmental coffers having been silted up, it has to give priorities elsewhere.

A lesson of La Gola is that they went in, like some invading force in Iraq, all environmental guns blazing but failed to consider the longer-term consequences, such as maintaining it once all the money had been spent or seeing the need for the sappers to be set to work re-trenching the canal. It may just have been bad luck. Money running out and all that.

Meanwhile, the division of responsibilities means that the town hall will be mistakenly considered the guilty party by many, while the real culprits are hiding away in a bunker in Palma.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

A Free Bag Of Crisps: Spanish pensionistas

It’s the moment that bars dread. They see them coming. Should they put the shutters down swiftly? Should they flee? Take to the hills? They come ever closer. A huge gaggle of them. An invading army commandeering a bar. A court like that of the Catholic Kings which would turn up wherever it would on its itinerant and peripatetic caravanning around Spain and take over a hostelry or several. British bars generally are spared, because they are British. It is the Spanish, the Mallorcan bar which bears the brunt. Who or what is this unstoppable force? It is that of the Spanish pensioner. The pensionista excursionistas.

Maybe bars should join together and arrange for lookouts at all access points into a town or resort. These lookouts could warn of a sighting of a coach that isn’t loaded to the gunwales with nice, friendly, grateful, money-loaded tourists from foreign lands. Beacons should be lit. Rockets fired. The pensionista charabanc has hit town.

The noise alone is bad enough. An elderly Maria, having secured a corner table, shouts across the room to another elderly Maria, and so it reverberates, back and forth, the pensionista vocal ping-pong. If it’s Spanish, it is not quite so decibel-shattering. If it’s Mallorquín, it breaks the sound barrier. A Concord boom of wailing. Cats on hot tin seats, screeching.

A bar in Alcúdia town was once deceptively Spanish. It was run by two British chaps. The pensionistas used to be blissfully unaware. They would enter, take over every available seat, place orders for a cortado or a caña and then … . Then they would issue their demands. Demands which were greeted, not by the resigned acceptance of a Spanish bar owner buckling, as though some protection-racket extortion were being performed, but by a curt four-letter word accompanied by a three-letter one (or their Spanish equivalents).

The demands are for free plates of crisps or olives or nibbles of other varieties. While a bar might commonly dish these out in any event, it is not the norm for them to be demanded, and demanded by entire busloads. But it is, and it is expected. The other norm is for the cortado to act as a lubricant to the packed lunch or boccadillo that pops out of many a handbag. Yet a further norm is the time. These are never swift cortados, these are never in-and-out jobs. The bar owner looks on forlornly, calculating the revenue from the cortados and balancing it against the loss from platos combinados that sit in the kitchen, waiting for their microwave. And waiting.

The bar is not the only potential target. Also in Alcúdia town, a friend explained how once there was a ring on the bell of her house. A pensionista was on the doorstep and asked if she might use the toilet. Being of a naturally altruistic disposition and being confronted by some Spanish antiquity in need of relief, she took pity. Pity which quickly turned to rejection when, as with male hitchhikers who hide behind a bush while their female companions flag down an unwary driver, the toilet-seeker called out to her compatriots. Household lavatories are ill-prepared for flushing on fifty occasions over a short period of time. Always assuming the period of time would have been short. And there was no guarantee of that.

Moving on from the pensionistas and, for once, a second, unrelated subject. Mallorca Rocks.

The confusion that surrounds the concerts at the hotel this season grows, the regional tourism ministry effectively turning down a request for a licence on the grounds that it doesn’t have the authority to grant one. Where are we at with all of this, if, as reports seem to suggest, the hotel cannot make the concerts open to the public (which presumably means an entrance-paying non-guest)?

The opposition to the concerts is, notwithstanding issues in respect of licences, unfortunate, to say the least.

Ask yourselves this. How can these concerts that would bring music acts of international renown to Magalluf and the island, that would positively enhance the reputation of resort and island, that would be a smack of originality among what is all too often a poverty of innovation, that would, moreover, finish before midnight on their once-weekly occurrence be anything other than a benefit, and one not just to Mallorca Rocks? I’ll say no more.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Showtime: The new regime

So, as we all knew would be the case, normal order has been restored to Mallorca’s politics. The PP prevail once again, as they normally have prevailed. The Bauzá bounce has trounced Antich, sending him into the abyss.

So long and farewell, Francesc. You arrived on a train in 2007, announcing that the past four years were to have been its age, and you left in the lost-luggage department of discarded political parties.

You take with you Francina, ar-mangled at the Council of Mallorca by the charms of Salome. While you, Francesc, were stepping from the door of the train to the platform of a new age, Francina was declaring that her doors would always be open. But now they are just hanging from the hinges, banging in the wind of political isolation. Will we see either of you again?

With you, go whichever allies you had managed to persuade to come along for the ride or who you were left with no choice but to appoint: Gabriel Vicens of the PSM, environment and transport supremo, a John Prescott for the tree-hugging classes, a left hook here to a golf course, a right upper-cut there to a train or two. Yes, Gabriel, it was you who really derailed the Alcúdia train.

You fought long and hard to protect a wild orchid and some birds at Son Bosc. Now, the PP will come yomping across the finca, staking out the bunkers for the golf course and taking high-velocity air rifles to any bird that flaps into view. The PP’s gun dogs will sniff in the undergrowth for the bodies of old environmentalism.

Joana Barceló. Poor Joana. The final occupant of the tourism ministry. Ashes to ashes, you depart covered in an ash cloud and the shroud of misdeeds that were not of your doing.

We say goodbye to all these, tears dropping from our eyes as they wave from the back of the good ship PSOE And Friends which will drift around aimlessly for the next four years.

As we bid them adieu, we welcome the new king. Long live King Bauzá. The new emperor and his new clothes. We will find out whether he is wearing any. It is the lot of presidents of small islands that they can promise much but find they are as impotent as those who have gone before, and as reliant upon the largesse of Madrid as has always been the case. A Madrid that is eyeing up what the islands and other regional governments spend.

King Bauzá and his queen Salome will have been dancing the seven veils into the small hours of celebration and demanding: “Bring me the head of Francesc Antich”. And there it is, on a plate, because it was always going to be. For four years, Antich had awaited his fate, the inevitable reversion to the norm of Mallorca’s politics. The PP.

Away from the balls and palaces of Palma, the great unwashed in the provinces have been waving their own fond farewells. But for some, it is a long goodbye.

The trading, haggling and bartering of the town hall souks now begin. Winners who would be mayors or ruling parties may find they are neither. It is a peculiarity of Mr. D’Hondt and his proportional system that firstly, and like the Duckworth-Lewis cricket-matches-affected-by-rain method, no one has the faintest idea how it works, and secondly that a party can secure twice as many councillors as the next party cab off the rank and still find it necessary to keep the day job. Thus may be the prospect for Coloma of Alcúdia. One of eight PP councillors, but not a single friend among the other nine who might ensure she is pushed over the mayoral finishing-line.

The past few days of Mallorca political life have been jolly. The fun, though, is only now starting. We will wait four years for the next elections to entertain us, but these, the elections, are but the star attraction in the endless spectacular and Brian Rix with his trousers down Consolat de Mar and ayuntamientos’ farce that is Mallorca and its politics. Let the new show start.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

On Election Day – 2: The polling station

“Surname.” Out come the ID cards, or not as the case may be. The local policeman, organising the queues, confirms who is in the right or wrong line. “Fornes,” some chime. Fornes? I’m not voting for Fornes, yet I appear to be in his queue. It is of course a joke, or maybe it isn’t. F is part of the A-M line. The policeman, one of the local plod at loggerheads with the mayor, smiles at the joke. He’ll be tired of it later in the day no doubt. He’s extremely efficient, ushering with a gentle shove the oldsters who would tarry to enquire after someone’s hip operation as they are exiting the polling station.

I am in a quandary. Who actually do I vote for? I haven’t got my envelopes, so disappear behind a curtain as though I’m meant to undress and get into one of those hospital gowns that they’ve forgotten to make with a back. I go into default mode. PSOE. The habit of a lifetime. It won’t make a scrap of difference, but I do anyway.

A pink voting slip, a blue voting slip; will you vote for me one day? One day maybe. If there is iniquity in the voting system, it is that you don’t actually get the opportunity not to vote directly for Count Dracula of the PP. As for the Council of Mallorca, why would you anyway? It’s a pointless institution.

The Fornes gag is, though, revealing. Why are the locals voting? Yes, they’ll vote for the regional parliament, but it is the mayor that interests them more. This is really why they are here.

The two queues, A-M and N-Z (not many Z’s you’d imagine) are unevenly distributed. There is not so much a quiet mumbling and muttering as a general and loud chit-chat about the length of the A-M queue. Why the unevenness, I wonder? All heavily loaded in favour of Cifres, I conclude. The name-checking against the lists of the electorate must be a thankless task for the party faithful who have been assigned the task. The name is called out, and … It could be any one of hundreds. It’s a problem when everyone in Mallorca has the same name.

You begin to appreciate why there are all the various surnames. No one would have a clue who they were without them. And we go through the surname routine when it’s my turn. No, it’s one surname and two Christian names. One of the chaps moving the white, pink and blue sheets back and forth on the ballot boxes to permit the depositing of the envelopes seems to find this quite amusing. Not as amusing as I find the fact that Mallorcans and Spaniards have that many names they could individually be a football team.

Once the deed is done, I do some more wondering. It has taken around 45 minutes to get to the ballot box. It’s a pleasant, sunny day. There are other things one could be doing. I’ve voted, but what for? And I am meant to be one of those who is quite well-informed. I know well enough the issues as they affect Muro, but by the same token I don’t know them. And you feel like an outsider, which, in truth, is what you are, intruding on someone’s party to which they have reluctantly invited you.

The social gathering of the polling station, entire families swelling the numbers in the queues, the very ancient being wheeled in and being greeted from all quarters, the yap of impenetrable, rural Mallorquín with its sound of a mouth full of potatoes being consumed by a startled cat; these all add to a feeling of being distant, of not really knowing the issues. Because how can you when you are not a part of the networks, the families, the old ties?

There is very little reaching-out. Muro, like so many places in Mallorca, is a closed community. And the local elections reflect this. Fornes, for whom I’ve not voted, contradicts the traditional ruralism of the town. A modern man who did a modern job with a modern company, a representative of a town’s transformation, but one that remains somehow hidden because of the distance between the town itself and the resort of Playa de Muro. But he, for all his modernity, is still a son of this old world.

As I leave the polling station and turn the corner, there is Martí Fornes. He is dressed casually but smartly. His wife, or a woman I take to be his wife, is darkish blonde with some bling. She is rummaging in her handbag. Fornes has stopped to talk to someone. An old farmer-type character on a moped with a box of vegetables strapped to the back. In this one scene, you see everything you need to see.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

On Election Day

There is still something of the Sunday finery about the Mallorcan towns and villages. You notice it less in the resorts, but in the “pueblos” they put on best bib ‘n’ tucker on a Sunday. It’s snobbishness in truth.

There are lady wives of the old farmers or landowners who made good and got lucky by selling out to the tourism shilling or who found themselves, Forrest Gump-like when he was sent his share certificate for Apple Computer, part owners of some tourism empire, thanks to whatever force – family, friendship or something dark – was at work.

Now summer is nearly here, the Sunday firs have been put into mothballs and the dehumidifier will be raging twenty-four hours in their vicinity. The cashmere cardy assumes shoulder position instead, a few inches below a face that permanently betrays the presence of something that smells less than pleasant. It is the face of many an older Mallorcan woman whose man was once showered by all his Christmases in one go: a face contorted in contempt.

On election day, on a Sunday, the finery is finer than ever. The old, got-lucky farmers and even the not so lucky old men don that long-forgotten adornment – the hat. They head first to the polling station, then to church to pray for what they have just done and then argue about what they have done over a luncheon of pork and cabbage.

In Muro town, election day is Sunday and also market day. The unholy trinity of finery days and of making it nigh on impossible to find a parking space.

Of the elderly, especially the farmers, you wonder as to their allegiances. A great nephew may have become the black sheep of some obscure leftist tendency. They will probably assure the parents that their vote is secure, but opt instead for something more conservative. Some of these farmers were part of the old co-operative, the one of the Generalisimo’s era; they did alright by Franco.

The contrast is the “joven” clan, the youth element. Not so much the middle-of-the-road bank workers or hotel employees, but the dreadlocked, art and artisan, fervently Catalan-speaking, wish-they-could-have-been-part-of-the-protests brigade. Muro, like other pueblos, has this clan, graphic or web designers all, some who are teachers and others who are … well, they just are. There is little doubt where they stand. Or for whom they might vote.

At the polling station. The old Guardia building. Alerts have been put out that there will be heightened security. The police hang around, the local police that is. They are a strangely potent symbol of the town’s elections, having fallen out with the mayor and having threatened to denounce him. Their numbers are not great, but you suspect they will have voted for anyone other than Martí Fornes.

The more ancient “murers” tackle the process of voting as they do an encounter in a chemists. The explanation needs to be given several times, and there are still further questions, while the whole encounter is prolonged by dutiful enquiries as to the health and welfare of the polling station personnel’s family, extended family, extended family’s friends … .

Bars and restaurants become temporary HQs for the political parties. This is a phenomenon you can witness on other occasions. I did so during the cuttlefish fair in Puerto Alcúdia. One restaurant was the mayor’s, his supporters, his family’s and his extended family’s, his extended family’s friends and their friends – and relatives.

The mayor’s party, the Convergència Democràtica Murera, might be thought to be reeling from the announcement, two days before the election, that the order to protect birds had been officially adopted. It extends the area of protection from the Albufera nature park to parts of the Son Bosc finca. As such, it makes the golf course untenable for a party which might as easily be called the Golf Union of Grupotel.

But the local election is not solely about a golf course. It’s not really about anything much, other than the day itself. In the town, in the finery. Like all events in Mallorca, it is a social occasion. The result? Well, it does matter, but there are more important things to worry about, such as getting a table for the pork and cabbage.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.