Who Wants To Be A Nine Times Millionaire? (14 November)

Nine million is a fair amount of wonga. You can do all sorts of things with nine million, like paying the Duke of Palma’s institute four times over – allegedly. Or it could pay the mortgage for ten apartments of the sort that President Bauzá has in what is described as one of the the most expensive parts of Spain – Sa Calatrava in Palma – and not allegedly, but fact.

So yes, nine million goes a fair old way. But it still does depend upon how you might intend blowing it all. That’s why I’m giving you a little game and then test. It’s best if two of you play; something for one of those boring winter afternoons in Mallorca when there’s nothing open and the skies are ominously silent and without any sign of aircraft. One of you has to imagine that he or she is the tourism minister (to get into the right mood, think being a bit of a shorthouse, if you aren’t already one, and being generally disliked especially by members of your own party). The other has to pretend to be in charge of the tourism promotion pot at the Balearics Tourism Agency. Ok, ready?

Tourism minister: “Right now, Juan (feel free to substitute a different name, if you wish), the president, myself and the finance chappy have been putting our heads together and we’ve come up with your budget for next year. Hold your hands out.”

Juan: “Nine million! What do you expect me to do with nine million? Have you any idea how many countries we’re supposed to be promoting to?”

Tourism minister: “Look, it doesn’t matter. The Brits’ll be flocking in next year anyway. And the Krauts. The Ruskies, too. Up 80% more already this year. Think of all that bling jangling as it reaches for the folding notes. It’ll do wonders for the tourism spend statistics. Great PR for when they’re all rioting in the streets next summer when Rajoy pulls the plug on pensions.”

Juan: “But nine million. That’s barely enough to pay for Nadal’s arm let alone Nadal. Then there’s the boat. And the prime time. The prime time, minister, in God knows how many countries. Nine million. That’s the approximate equivalent of only one euro for every tourist who comes to Mallorca.”

Tourism minister: “Yea, but we’re not using Nadal, unless he does it for nothing. And what’s this one euro for every tourist business got to do with anything?”

Juan: “Well, nothing really. I just thought it sounded good. You know, like in a political way.”

Tourism minister: “Brilliant. You’re on to something. I’ll use it for my next speech. The government will be spending one euro on every tourist coming to Mallorca. It’s so ambiguous it’s genius. Is it austere or is it generous?”

Now, having undertaken your role play, you have to, using your skill and judgement, come up with how you would spend just nine million euros for a whole year to promote not just Mallorca, but also Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera, not just to the UK, but also to Germany, Scandinavia, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Ireland, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, China … .

Ah, you see, it’s not so easy, is it? Put you on the spot a bit. It’s no use saying they should splash out on some grand TV ad campaign, because they’re not going to. Not on nine million they’re not.

While one of you figures out how best to spend the meagre nine million, the tourism ministers among you need to think strategy. That’s a tough one, as there haven’t been many tourism ministers who have ever done that. But it’s important. Really important. You might be able to get away with spending hardly anything next year, but nothing lasts for ever, as Mallorca well knows having slid from its one-time position of invincibility. But this is Mallorca’s big chance, perhaps its last chance.

Events have conspired to create a record summer for tourism in 2011 and will do so again in 2012. But after next year? It’s going to take some money, and rather more than nine million annually.

By the way, those of you who come up with the most creative ways of spending the nine million will be entered into a prize draw. First prize is two weeks in a Mallorcan-owned all-inclusive hotel. In winter. In the Dominican Republic.

(And by way of clarification, the budget for tourism promotion last year was 27 million, which should in fact have been 44 million.)

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Modern World – Reality at the town halls

Hard on the heels of the report into the growth in town hall spends on personnel over the past decade, comes evidence that, when it comes to paying suppliers, Mallorca’s town halls are far less willing to splash the cash; cash they owe against invoices raised for work done. While staffing levels have risen – in some instances by some astonishing amounts – and have clearly eaten into town halls’ revenues, companies over which some of this staff have supervision are being left unpaid. And in certain instances, especially construction companies, they have gone out of business or maybe are about to. Work that has been funded by central government is being paid for, but other work – ostensibly paid for by the town halls – is not.

The suppliers are caught in the vicious credit circle. Several town halls have had to seek bank money, but the banks of course are unwilling to part with it, or not all that is being sought. Pity the poor suppliers to the likes of Pollensa and Muro town halls, where considerable debts are sloshing around and where budgets are seemingly neither supported by tax and other revenues nor by lines of credit. Pollensa’s budgets for this year were described by the opposition as “science fiction”; Muro’s financial situation has been portrayed as being “frightening”. Pollensa was denied all the bank lending it wanted, and Muro faces a similar reluctance. Good luck, frankly, to anyone putting in an invoice to a town hall. The chances of it being paid are … who knows?

This is not a new situation. Many town halls have reputations as being lousy payers, and have had for years. Even an administration that is relatively flush, such as Alcúdia, can take ages to cough up, with all the frustration to say nothing of harmful effects for cash flows that this can cause. Chances are, as well, that unless invoices are pro forma, the supplier has had to declare those invoices and been obliged to pay tax and IVA, despite not having received a remittance. The situation has been exacerbated by the current lack of credit. Companies, though, have taken the risk, in all probability having to seek their own credit, which may not actually be available. Without doing so, and given the importance of public building projects, local economies would all have but ground to a halt. They may yet still do so, if suppliers keep going out of business.

The president of the federation of local authorities, in an interview with “The Diario”, has admitted that the town halls are causing serious problems for businesses. Joan Ferrà, himself the mayor of Puigpunyent, points out that town hall revenues are down by as much as 40%. While tax revenues are part of the story, Ferrà refers also to non-payments to the town halls and of course to the banks. He talks, vaguely, about the need for greater efficiency and effectiveness and about “good practice” when it comes to setting budgets and seeking cost cuts. To this end, he mentions fiestas and sports facilities as two areas that will have reduced spending, while staff will have to make do without using mobiles.

So, I guess our hearts should bleed for Vodafone and Movistar, as they will have reduced town hall contracts. Efficiency and effectiveness – where have we heard these words before? They were at the heart of the drive towards value for money in British public administration of the early Thatcher years. The town halls needed to increase staffing levels as they were operating from too low a basis of service, but one wonders as to how much attention has been paid to working practices. Staffs have grown like topsy, making town halls major employers, thanks to the spending frenzy of the Spanish boom years. More personnel was needed, but so also was more professionalism in terms of operational management, to which one can add factors such as inefficient working hours and departmental duplication in the governmental mini-me’s that are the town halls.

So, fiestas are to be more “austere”. Some already are. Pollensa cut its budget in 2009, for example. Trapped in a cycle of the traditional colliding with the modern, and in the social fabric of which the fiestas are integral, the town halls barely dare to question their fiesta spends. But the town halls have been, and remain, wasteful in this regard. Back in 2008, I asked, in the context of Can Picafort’s summer fiesta, just how sustainable the fiesta was. And this was before the real impact of the crisis kicked in. The amount of money going up in flames seemed grotesque, and was made even more so when Santa Margalida town hall announced that some 300,000 more euros were to be allocated to fiestas. It was madness. Here was a town hall willing to fork out on bread and circuses while the benighted village of Son Serra lacks a decent police presence and has a vandalised sports centre. There again, sports facilities are to be deprived of money, aren’t they.

The town halls are the Spanish economy in microcosm. Easy money was thrown at beefing up administrations and at creating projects. Much of this was necessary, but was approved by politicians – locally and nationally – overtaken by the thrills of growth but lacking a vision of sustainability. The national government now has its programme of economic sustainability, one that is long overdue and born out of the economic crisis. If it is to work, then different levels of government, including the town halls, are going to have get used to reduced spends, as are residents of the towns. More fundamentally, they – the town halls – are going to have to appraise their practices and priorities, as I said on 11 January. They cannot continue to operate way beyond their means, because the consequence is that suppliers don’t get paid. But whether some of these suppliers should have been engaged in the first place is another question, as some of the projects have been of such deeply questionable value – like Can Ramis in Alcúdia. Ah yes, value. Value for money – efficiency and effectiveness. Welcome to the modern world.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

As it’s the fiesta season, more on fiestas following on from yesterday.

 

Financial reality is biting. The budgets for some towns’ fiestas have been cut. Pollensa is apparently reducing its budget by some 25%. This in itself is quite an achievement given that the town hall has still to approve its budgets for 2009, but whatever. The music festival is unaffected, it is not seeing a reduction. Let us be thankful for this. Otherwise there might not be the wonder of, er, Tony Hadley. Alcúdia, meanwhile, will be exerting “control” to ensure that there are no excess costs. The same sort of control that led to the Can Ramis fiasco perhaps. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.

 

If there may be some cuts to the likes of Virgen del Carmen and Patrona, these will not be to the cultural highlight that is the sophistication of the Pollensa Music Festival. It is a fine series of events, but whether it can be bracketed together with the fiestas is questionable. It is cultural and traditional only in the sense that tradition can be said to be less than 50 years old; it is cultural (Mallorca-wise) only in that there is a smattering of local talent; it is cultural (internationally) in that it is cultured and of a musical culture and tradition. 

 

The fiestas are the epitome of local culture and tradition. For there to be cuts to their budgets is sensible in the current climate, but is not sensible in that the fiestas represent precisely the type of “alternative” tourism attraction that the Mallorcan tourist authorities keep banging on about. One might, however, legitimately ask whether less lavish fiestas and therefore spend would materially affect tourism in terms of numbers. I have my doubts. 

 

But to come back to the music festival. This differs to the fiestas in one very major way. Though there is a budget for its staging, there are also revenues generated. Tony Hadley, for example, will set you back 40 of your European euros or 30 if you prefer to slum it in the one and nines. Only one event during the festival is free. The fiestas do not generate revenues, well not directly. 

 

At Puerto Alcúdia’s Sant Pere fiesta there was, for instance, the Mallorcan performer Tomeu Penya and his ensemble. The Orquestra Mediterrani was at Sant Pere; it will also be at Virgen del Carmen to serenade the fiesta-goers after the sun has gone down. These are just two examples of perfomers. Then there is all the rest, especially the fireworks. It’s all free. And there’s nothing wrong with that; the more that’s free the better. The only problem is that someone has to pay. There’s no such thing as a free lunch for the elderly fishermen of Alcúdia – for example. They (Pollensa town hall) can probably get away with not cutting the music festival budget because they’re getting something into the coffers; the only something they get into the coffers for the fiestas are local taxes, some grants and maybe some sponsorship or some badgering of local businesses.

 

Conspicuous by its absence in the list of town halls mentioned in “The Diario” is that of Santa Margalida. Last year, some of you may recall, it was reported that the town hall was planning to increase its fiesta budget by well over a half from the 512,000 euros spent in 2008. It will be interesting to see if it has; it will also be little short of scandalous if it has. Or rather, it wouldn’t be if there were a mechanism for recouping at least some of the outlay, and not through local taxes. I have no good practical suggestion as to how, but some sort of levy might not go amiss. If the fiestas are to remain and if they are to become more spectacular with ever more money going up in smoke in the form of fireworks, then those who enjoy them should be prepared to put their hands in their pockets.

 

The alternative view is that, if nothing else, the town halls should exist for staging grand fiestas. Perhaps that is where both the problem and the solution lie. Budgets for fiestas may be having to be cut, but one does wonder about the waste that leads to these cuts being necessary. Control, anyone?

 

 

Incidentally, the programme for Virgen del Carmen this year is now available on the WHAT’S ON BLOG – http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com.