Flying The Flag

A brand new and large Spanish flag is flying near Can Picafort. It is larger than a flag of the Balearics and larger still than a European flag.

The Spanish flag now proudly flutters over the finca of Son Real in Santa Margalida. It probably should always have been there and had pride of place; law suggests that it should have, according to the director of the Balearics Foundation for Sustainable Development, Jorge Campos.

Who is Sr. Campos? He used to be director for climate in the Calvia town hall administration of the now tourism minister Carlos Delgado. As such, he can justifiably lay claim to environmental credentials. However, Campos was also, until recently, the president of the Círculo Balear, which he founded.

The Círculo, in terms of the great Castilian-Catalan argument, is firmly in the Castilian camp. Defender of the language, it is the opposite of the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB), the great defender of Catalan and all things Catalan lands. It has had a number of run-ins with the forces of Catalanism. Its building has been vandalised with graffiti, its presence at new year celebrations in Palma last year sparked off violence, and Sr. Campos has been in court to see members of the Maulets, the Catalan independence radicals, get slapped with fines for having chanted “Nazi”, “fascist” and “terrorist” at him.

Campos was appointed to the post of director at the end of July. His was and is a political appointment in that the choice is that of the regional government. But it was an appointment with far greater political baggage. It has been like a red rag to the Catalanist, leftist bull.

The foundation, of which he is now in charge, has not been without its own controversies. Established in 2004 by the former president Jaume Matas, its main function was to oversee the promotion of the “tarjeta verde”, the green discount card, which came into being as a way of generating revenue for environmental purposes once the short-lived eco-tax was scrapped.

The green card has been a spectacular flop, not helped by the fact, as revealed by an audit for 2008, that the foundation managed to bring in a mere 13,500 euros from its sales, a shortfall of around 400 grand. Last year, when all hell broke loose regarding corruption cases stemming from the tourism ministry, the foundation was implicated. Questions were being asked as to how, when costs were added to the lack of revenue, losses of over a million euros a year could have mounted up.

The foundation was meant to have been wrapped up, like the two agencies more at the centre of the tourism ministry corruption affair, and brought under the new Balearics Tourism Agency. However, it survives as a separate entity, linked to the new tourism ministry and therefore to Campos’s old boss and anti-Catalanist soul mate, Carlos Delgado.

Other than the green card, what actually does the foundation do? It is charged with administering sites such as Son Real, the running of which it took over in July 2008, but the environmental group GOB has not had much that is positive to say for the foundation. It has argued that it should be scrapped and has criticised its operations in the Albufera nature park in Muro. It is likely that, with Campos as its head, GOB would be even more dismissive, as GOB is a fellow-traveller on the Catalanist left with the OCB. The Círculo Balear, for its part, has lumped both GOB and the OCB in with the Maulets, claiming that the Maulets have received the “adherence” of these two groups (and others) which have the “appearance of democracy”.

And so we come back to the Spanish flag at Son Real. What might seem a relatively inconsequential issue is anything but. It was Campos who gave the instruction for the flag to be raised.

The environment is a political issue, but now it is being even more politicised within the context of the whole Castilian-Catalan argument. And just to reinforce this, between the time of his appointment and his stepping down from the Círculo three weeks later, Campos managed to cram in a meeting with President Bauzá to discuss language and cultural matters.

Why, though, has the foundation escaped the axe when others haven’t and when it appears to have made a hash of things since it was formed? It is not solely reliant on government money, that’s true, but might it be expedient for the government to maintain it, with Campos as its chief, as an additional counterpoint to the Catalan left? There are more to flags than simply running them up a flag-pole.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Taking To The Streets

The Mallorcans don’t really do demos. Not properly anyway. They do lots of them – sheets found in dusty corners of wardrobes brought out for a black daubing, loudhailers and chanting, obligatory photos of the “leaders” – but they don’t exactly amount to much. So common are they that no one pays much attention.

Occasionally, however, they do amount to something. Two years ago, there were two separate protests in Palma. Three weeks apart, they were both to do with language. The first was pro-Catalan, the second was pro-Castilian. Neither was that large, and the numbers involved fluctuated greatly according to who issued them. But around 10,000 people for both might have been right.

Despite the second protest arousing taunts of “no to fascism and yes to Catalan”, they were peaceful and uneventful. Less peaceful and more eventful have been the  end-of-year parades in Palma in celebration of Jaume I’s conquest of Mallorca in 1229. Deeply symbolic, the parade on the night of 30 December last year turned nastier than on previous occasions.

The violence that broke out at the Jaume I parade and the protests two years ago were evidence of language differences and of cultural and political differences. They hinted at a society split down the middle, which isn’t the case, as the majority is not as bothered as protesters might think. But then majorities rarely are; it is minority voices which shout loudest and cause the most problems.

One of the reasons for the trouble on 30 December was the presence in the parade of the Círculo Balear, a right-wing, pro-Castilian organisation which, in its own words, “defends the liberty and identity of the Balearics in a Spain for all”. The Círculo is a counterpoint to the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB), a left-wing, pro-Catalan association. Neither is a political organisation as such, but both have political agendas and both make these agendas clear enough.

The Círculo is back in the news thanks to another outbreak of confrontation, this time, of all places, in Sineu. The setting for this was the inauguration of a statue to another Jaume, number two, the second king of Mallorca. Without going into detail, suffice it to say that the OCB was on hand to dish out the fascist mantra in the Círculo’s direction.

Is this no more than just a bunch of activists playing silly buggers? Up to a point yes, but the minority voices are getting louder and you sense that the number of voices are growing; the division in society is beginning to become more apparent.

While the OCB is the mouthpiece for the pro-Catalan left, with the Maulets, a more revolutionary group, on the extreme left, on the right there are all manner of weird and wonderful groups, such as Hazte Oir (“make yourself heard”) and the institute of family policy. To these pressure groups, you can add the neo-fascist Movimiento Social Republicano political party and, lurking in the background, the Falange and Opus Dei.

What the groups on the right all have in common (to a greater or lesser extent) is a highly reactionary agenda of Catholicism, anti-liberalism, pro-Castilian and the state of Spain over all else. The spats between the OCB and the Círculo, and indeed the language protests of 2009, are just the tip of a not very pleasant iceberg which lies under the surface ready to sink the Titanic of normally sedate and pacific society.

Within this context, you cannot and should not ignore the Partido Popular. It was voted in because of discontent with the handling of the local economy and in the hope that it will reduce unemployment. All other issues played only a minor part in its victories. But these other issues are far from unimportant. The PP, or some of it at any rate, is not far removed from the same reactionary agenda.

An impression given is that there is greater sympathy for the likes of the OCB than for the Círculo. This may be an impression formed by the Spanish media, but a question is to what extent it is held within Mallorcan society. And the OCB, though it would deny it, appears to have been instrumental in a certain radicalisation of pro-Catalan youth; the annual “Acampallengua” is more than just a gathering of young people in fields to pitch tents and sing some songs in Catalan.

The worry is that a PP-led administration will bring the competing views of an emboldened right and an increasingly radicalised left more to the surface and that, unlike the 2009 protests, things won’t be so peaceful. They will be more like the Jaume I violence, and there will be more of it. Then you’ll realise that Mallorcans can actually do demos.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Gay Bull Of Mallorca

In some foreign field, there will be a part that is forever British. In a foreign field, or more accurately a foreign town, Osama bin Laden met his end; Abbottabad was named after one Major James Abbott. In Spain, British commerical empire, as opposed to British military empire, bequeathed the Osborne brandy name; the original Osborne was a Thomas Osborne Mann of Exeter.

In a foreign field, one between Algaida and Montuïri, is an Osborne bull. There are other Osborne bulls, dotted around Spanish fields. They publicise the brand. Like Milton Keynes cows, they are peculiarities on the landscape and they are very much sedentary. They do not move. Nothing happens to the bulls, unless, that is, they are painted.

Which is what happened to the Mallorca Osborne bull some three weeks ago. It was gay-ed up with all the colours of the gay rainbow. They might have turned it into a not so little white bull, but instead chose red, orange, yellow, green, blue and lilac.

It is the fate of large objects, especially those of single colours, in this case black, that they might attract the interest of those armed with a spray-can or some tins of Dulux. Maybe this was it. A paint manufacturer thought, “aye, aye, here’s a way of pulling a publicity stunt, and what better than the gay rainbow to show off a range of colours”.

The bull has been the target of previous alterations to its usual uniformly black appearance. These alterations have been like a red rag to traditionalists. They have been the work of uppity Catalanist radicals, claim the staunchly anti-Catalan Circulo Balear who have now called for the bull to be given a status of historic artistic patrimony. The various bulls were in fact declared as being of “cultural and artistic heritage” as long ago as 1994.

Siding with the Circulo in complaining about the homosexualising of the bull has been the Mallorcan federation of bullfighting. “Offensive independence graffiti.” The bull, remember, is meant to publicise Osborne and brandy. It has been hi-jacked by all manner of groups, both left and right. It may get painted now and then, but it is also being subjected to the competing stabs of tradition and radicalism.

The gay bull has now been restored to its blackness. The Circulo, the bullfighting federation and others came together with their roller brushes on poles. All the while, with the bull being painted one way and another, no one seemed to take into account that they were on private land. The owner is not exactly happy. “Who gave them permission?” he would like to know. He was also not too happy that, during the re-painting, Spanish flags were being sold at two and three euros a pop. He’s thinking of denouncing the re-painters to the Guardia.

The restoration of the bull has involved not just its being painted black. Its, how can I put, bullhood has also been restored. You can’t have a bull that lacks “cojones”.

The whole incident is of course splendidly stupid. What Osborne themselves think about it all, who knows. They’re probably quite happy. All publicity is good publicity and all that, and they don’t have to do anything.

Gaying the bull up, when it was, seemed somewhat timely. Indeed, consideration might perhaps be given to the bull’s becoming a gay icon and being transported around Mallorca. Not far up the main road from where it currently stands is the town of Manacor. And Manacor has recently declared itself to be the first gay-friendly town in Mallorca. Why not symbolise this with a bull that likes other bulls?

Or maybe they could take it up to Capdepera. To coincide with its annual mediaeval fair this month, the town will be staging, in its Cala Rajada resort, the first ever Mister Gay Mallorca gala. Quite what this has to do with a mediaeval fair I am unsure, but then I am similarly unclear as to quite what being painted with a gay rainbow has to do with the Osborne bull.

But there is one definite positive to the great bull paint fight of Algaida. The Circulo Balear believe that the bull is not a gay icon but a touristic icon. They are of course wrong, because its presence is not that well-known. One thing’s for sure. It is now. There’s nothing like publicity.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.