PSOE And The Mallorcan Debt Mountain

Some serious questions need to be answered. The government of José Bauzá may be exaggerating the size of the Balearics debt and laying all the blame at the door of the previous administration, but there were clearly some pretty odd things going on during that administration.

Bauzá hasn’t discounted the possibility of setting in motion legal processes if there were irregularities over and above mere inefficiencies at both regional government and Council of Mallorca levels between the springs of 2007 and this year. Recourse to the law does smack of possible vengeance by the Partido Popular. Voices in the party levelled accusations of a politicisation of the legal system in respect of the pursuit of officials dating to its 2003-2007 period of office. There is just a hint of payback.

The Balearics debt has accumulated over years, not just the four years of the PSOE administration. There has been a spend-spend mentality at all levels of government in the islands, including that of the Partido Popular from 2003 to 2007; a fair amount of which spend is still under scrutiny by anti-corruption prosecutors.

However, it was the case that the last administration did opt for a spend budget in 2008 at precisely the time when it could least be met. It may have been unfortunate that crisis took hold, but there is no getting away from the fact that PSOE helped to push the islands into ever deeper debt.

To an extent, doubly unfortunate therefore, the mounting debt was the consequence of a fall in tax revenues brought about by crisis, but fiscal explanations lack the appeal of being “sexy” when compared with the missing millions designed to take a headline-writer’s fancy and flabbergast a public.

The International Monetary Fund, as well as barons in Brussels, who have been pressing Spain on the need to reduce the burden of regional debt, must have gasts as flabbered as the rest of us in trying to understand how the rotten borough that was (still is, to be honest) the Council of Mallorca could have spent some 100 million euros of state money, intended for road-building, on grants and paying salaries. Actually, it is quite easy to understand, as sound governance of public finance has long been only a chapter in a textbook and not something put into practice in Mallorca.

There was also the farce of the Manacor to Artà train, now effectively abandoned, into which vast sums were pumped despite heavily conflicting evidence as to how much traffic the railway line would generate. A delicious but sad irony of the work that has seen land ripped up and levelled is that it was the brief of a transport minister from the environmentally righteous PSM (Mallorcan socialists) who later also became environment minister in the PSOE-led regional government. The work on the line paralysed, the damage to the landscape has been environmental vandalism, predicated on a project with a questionable business rationale. How much will it cost to put the land right again, if it ever is?

Going back to the Council of Mallorca, we now have another intriguing example of public financial management. It relates to a consortium known as Eurolocal-Mallorca. What its precise purpose is, is not entirely clear. Ostensibly it is intended to support active European participation in local Mallorcan authorities, which means … . Well, which means what?

The consortium was established in 2009 and was an initiative of the former president of the Council, Francina Armengol. In its two years of existence there is little evidence as to what it has achieved (perhaps unsurprising given the vagueness of its purpose). It has operated with a budget of 126,000 euros and its director has been trousering 70 grand a year.

Mainly, or so it would seem, the consortium people have spent their time heading off to Brussels. Why? Who knows. But mention Brussels, and who can forget the occasion, in February 2009, when some 40 mayors plus government politicians and others (150 of them in all) headed off to the Belgian capital for a spot of lobbying against the European pyrotechnics directive that Europe had no intention of using to try and ban demons’ fire-runs. Ah, those were the days; when public money could be easily spent on a jolly with airline tickets and accommodation chucked in.

The new president of the Council, Maria Salom, is going to close the consortium down. Having also decided to shut another spectacular waste of money, the Council’s tourism foundation, one wonders what other bodies are lurking that need disinterring and what other questions will emerge that need answering.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay

Payback time. As reported in “The Bulletin” (17 August), the Council of Mallorca faces a likely demand from central government to pay back subsidies for road building that didn’t happen and which were used for other purposes.

The Council faces an additional demand. The national finance ministry is owed 9.8 million euros by the Council. It is the shortfall between money that was paid on account by Madrid in the expectation that tax revenues generated by the Council would meet the estimate of this payment and would be handed over to the finance ministry.

This system of advance payment, a sort of cash-flow measure if you like, works only if the local authority is in a position to pay it back and only if the estimate was realistic in the first place. The estimate may have been realistic, in historical terms, but the demand for the 9.8 million relates to the year 2009. The year of crisis taking hold. Tax revenues plummetted.

The Council is far from being the only local authority which faces a demand for payment. The town halls of the Balearics are into the finance ministry for a total of 32 million euros. Palma owes 7.9 million, and the five largest towns in Mallorca after Palma – Calvia, Manacor, Llucmajor, Marratxí and Inca – all owe over one million euros; very nearly two million in Calvia’s case. Of other towns, Alcúdia owes most – close to 800,000; Pollensa faces a demand for 350,000, Santa Margalida for 439,000. The only municipality that is owed by the ministry is Escorca – all of 1,600 euros.

How are the local authorities going to pay these demands? If they are all like Santa Margalida, they won’t be paying. Its mayor says there isn’t any money. Of course there isn’t. One estimate of Santa Margalida’s debt puts it at eleven million. The Council of Mallorca would seem to have little hope of handing over virtually ten million, not when it is technically bust and over 300 million in the red.

The demands have led to all manner of accusations as to where the blame lies. In Santa Margalida it is the fault of the previous Partido Popular-led town hall administration. For Manacor’s PP mayor it is the fault of the PSOE socialist national government for not having reformed local authority financing. Pollensa’s PP mayor says that central government got its sums wrong.

Wherever the fault lies, extracting repayments out of many town halls is going to be a tough call. Manacor, for example, faces, in addition to over a million being demanded of it, the unexpected cost (around one million itself) of complying with the idiotic demolition of the Riuet bridge in Porto Cristo. And it’s not as though the towns can just wave their hands, plead penury and expect to not have to pay. Higher authorities than the town halls have been known to seek legal and financial redress from the municipalities and indeed from mayors for non-compliance with certain orders; as Antoni Pastor, Manacor’s mayor, knows only too well.

What does the finance ministry do though? Does it withdraw advance payments and expect future tax revenues to cover the repayment? If so, then the town halls will be bankrupted. In addition to the debt which hovers over most of them are the constraints placed on them in respect of seeking credit. Tax revenues down in any event, how do they continue to function?

The system of public finance gives the impression of being close to collapsing. While there is a sense of chickens coming home to roost and of previous profligacy now being punished, this does nothing for assuring that public services are maintained. One ray of light in the mess comes from what Alcúdia’s lady mayor has to say, that some formula will be worked out. It may well be, and it may well be that her colleagues in the PP nationally, if and when they assume office after the election in November, will find an accommodation. A question would be, what sort of accommodation? The PP is more minded to slash public funding than the current government.

Where the Council of Mallorca is concerned, its repayment burden simply adds to its precarious position and to its highly questionable viability. And what exactly was it doing spending state money on projects other than those for which the money was intended?

Perhaps this was it though. The Council, as with the town halls, had just looked upon the state as their sugar daddy and had expected that the good times would continue to roll along with the cash, whether fully accounted for or not. Unfortunately, daddy bet the house and lost, and the IMF and others have attributed Spain’s financial troubles less to shaky banks and more to the amounts spent by regional authorities.

The local authorities can’t pay and probably won’t pay, and so Spain’s financial woes just deepen.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Rationalising Tourism

A fortnight is not a long time in Mallorcan politics. It has proven to be a very short time when it comes to the organisation of the island’s tourism politics. Two weeks ago, 27 July (Guilty By Associations), I wrote about all the various bodies that litter Mallorca’s tourism industry, little knowing – but always hoping – that there was about to be some tidying up. One of these bodies, the Fundación Mallorca Turismo, is to have its foundations dug up. It will collapse into the island’s dusty ground whence it should never have been allowed to rise in the first place.

Responsibility for all tourism promotion and affairs is to be handed back to the regional government and to the Delgado tourism ministry. The Fundación, which falls under the Council of Mallorca, will be wound up.

One imagines the decision was not a difficult one. The Partido Popular, in charge of the Council and the government, has made it clear that it will seek to eliminate duplications in public administration, and the divvying up of tourism responsibilities between Council and government was one of the most obvious and one of the most absurd.

During the last administration, the Council and therefore the Fundación had acquired ever more responsibilities for tourism. Not all were duplications, but some, especially those in respect of promotion most definitely were. Quite what the thinking was, was hard to fathom, yet one partner in the old administration coalition, the PSM (Mallorcan socialists), had sought even more tourism powers for the Council. It was hard to fathom because tourism is central to Mallorca’s economy, and so should be right, slap bang in the heart of the government, not in an island authority. The PP is righting this mysterious wrong.

One area of responsibility that will stay with the Council is that for the Mallorca Film Commission. Going to the ministry, in addition to general promotion, are various others, such as the commercial missions to China and so-called product clubs – for cycling tourism and the other tourism “alternatives”. What happens to staff is not entirely clear. There will probably be some jobs found for them at the ministry, but underlying the scrapping of the Fundación, in addition to the wish to get rid of duplication, is an unstated sense of the PP being determined to also get rid of a system of jobs for boys and girls. And it is this system which raises a huge question mark over the whole of the Council of Mallorca.

Maria Salom, the president of the Council, has announced that the Council is up to its neck in debt to the tune of 329 million euros. It is some way short of the debt that the regional government has, but it is a public debt that Mallorca can ill afford to have hanging over it and it is a debt that is hard to understand, for the simple reason that it is hard to understand what the point of the Council is.

Salom, you begin to think, is like a chief executive sent in with the express purpose of rationalising a business within a conglomerate; rationalisation that is usually a euphemism for elimination. The left are expressing their concerns that this might in fact be the intention. Coming on top of the announcement of the closure of TV Mallorca, also under the Council, the winding up of the Fundación might indeed represent a step in the direction of what the PSIB (the Balearics wing of the PSOE socialist party) is claiming is a process of seeking to “liquidate” the Council. Salom, to emphasise the point, has said that were the Council a business it would be declared bankrupt.

I make no bones. I’m not a PP fan. But the left are surely barking up the wrong tree when they see a political agenda to what, were it to come about, would be sound public administration. I’ve argued the case for cutting back the Council or getting rid of it for some years. Not for political reasons, clearly not in my case, but for organisational reasons. And with the island’s public finances more or less down the pan as it is, then quite how sustainable the Council is, is a very reasonable question to pose.

PSIB seems to think that responsibilities for the highways and social well-being would disappear along with the Council. This is crazy. The government is just as capable of administering these as the Council is. The fact that such responsibilities are granted to the Council under agreements relating to the running of the autonomous community of the Balearics doesn’t mean to say they have to be granted.

I see no political agenda. This would not be a Thatcher-style vindictiveness, one that put paid to Ken Livingstone’s GLC. It would be straightforward pragmatism, something that the left seem not to appreciate.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Sun Always Shines On TV

“Summer arrives.” And every evening from Monday to Thursday, the Mallorcan summer and everything that is happening during it is presented by Maria Salas. The sun always shines on TV Mallorca. Until it no longer shines.

It might as well in fact rain until September, when TV Mallorca’s harvest moon may terminally wane and when the sun will no longer shine. Where once was Maria and her sunny days of a Mallorcan summer will be a blank screen of an endless Mallorcan winter.

Presidents Bauzà and Salom have decided to reach for the off switch: the permanent off switch for the channel. The closure of TV Mallorca is far from unexpected; it’s just a question as to when it closes. It has been leeching money and its purpose has been questionable throughout its four years of existence.

There have been suggestions that it could be absorbed into the other Mallorcan television channel, IB3, or that it could become a second IB3 channel – IB3-2 presumably – but neither suggestion has found favour with the hatchet wielders at the regional government and Council of Mallorca.

The decision to close TV Mallorca and to send in a lawyer as its new director-general to oversee its closure has brought forward protests. Two hundred demonstrated in the Plaza España. One might be tempted to suggest that this was the sum of its audience, but that would be unfair. Its now ex-director-general said earlier this year that the channel was watched by 77,000 people on the island, without detailing for how long they watch or how often.

All manner of groups have leapt to the defence of TV Mallorca. They read like a list of the usual suspects on the left: the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB); the Esquerra Unida (the united left); the ecology warriors of GOB (quite what this has to do with them is not clear); PSOE (Francina Armengol, the former president of the Council of Mallorca, calling the closure decision a “political, social and economic error”); the Mallorcan socialist party; and something called the Association of the Memory of Mallorca.

Amidst this little lot there is the unmistakable sound of a political point being made, one that comes back to the Catalan question, though this does rather overlook the fact that IB3 is also a Catalan station.

Questionable though the necessity for TV Mallorca is, the economic error that Armengol has referred to deserves some consideration. In addition to the loss of some one hundred or so jobs, the station costs far less to run than IB3 (its annual budget of 10.5 million euros is a sixth of that of the other station). But as important is the effect that the closure will have on the channel’s suppliers (and it should be noted that it is both a television and a radio station).

Some 2,000 employees of these suppliers – production companies and audio-visual equipment providers – are said to be likely to be affected by closing down TV Mallorca. This may not mean that they lose their jobs or that the suppliers themselves have to close, but the loss of the station is clearly not good news for them. Moreover, these suppliers have grown up on the back of both IB3 and TV Mallorca in creating an industrial cluster that shouldn’t be underestimated in terms of its significance.

The ParcBit technology park in Palma is home to a number of these audio-visual companies, and the technology park is foremost in being the impulse behind what innovation, development and economic diversification there is in Mallorca. TV Mallorca’s role in adding to this impulse may be being overstated but it is nevertheless important. It would be interesting to learn what Josep Aguiló, the regional government’s vice-president, makes of the potentially negative impact of shutting TV Mallorca down. With his finance hat on, he would probably argue that it was unavoidable, but he is also in charge of business, employment and industry; the super-ministries that Bauzá has created have the potential to raise conflicts of interest, and Aguiló’s has the most potential conflicts.

Even if it is and remains a minority-interest channel, TV Mallorca has a role that is wider than simply being a broadcaster. The government’s desire to cut costs is understandable enough, but Armengol is almost certainly right when she refers to the error being made. Unfortunately, the discourse regarding the closure has become a political one, with the inevitable (and not wholly justifiable) hints, evidenced by the support of the likes of the OCB and GOB, that TV Mallorca is a victim of alleged PP anti-Catalanism and anti-regionalism.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Hello, Goodbye: María Salom and the Council of Mallorca

María Salom is not a name likely to ring many bells with you, but it may become familiar in the future and give us (well, me) the opportunity for some plays on her name: Salome, biblical seductress; Shalom, the Hebrew for peace and, idiomatically, for both hello and goodbye.

Hello to María Salom. Who is she? Salom is a member of the Partido Popular and is being lined up as president of the Council of Mallorca, a candidature that helped to cause the rupture in the party on account of Jaume Font having been overlooked. The candidature brought further into the open the splits within the party, causing indignation among leftish elements opposed to the perceived anti-Catalanism and alliance with the PP nationally of the local leader, José Bauzá, and causing Font to go off and form his own party.

Salom’s candidature is widely believed, by the indignant left, to have been one dictated by the national party. She herself was closely aligned with Madrid, having been a deputy in the Cortes before assuming a similar role in the Balearic parliament last October. Back in the Mallorcan mainstream, and with local elections looming, she has been making her views known about the body over which she hopes she will preside.

In January, Salom referred to the Council of Mallorca as an “inefficient and expensive mastodon”. She said that she would press for an ending of the Council’s “accumulation of functions” and their duplication with other institutions. This was to be applauded, but her choice of animal to describe the Council was open to an interpretation she may not have intended. The mastodon has been long extinct. The Council’s extinction would not be lamented, but when you are looking at becoming its president, you don’t presumably advocate making yourself redundant. Or do you?

She is now saying that she will lop off some 15 million euros of the Council’s budget and divert it towards social policy. Amongst savings in her sights are those on “advertising material and other superficial items that are not a priority”. Whatever might she have in mind? How about the 400,000 euros the Council splashed out back in the summer of 2008 to start a campaign to promote the use of Catalan in restaurants? Yes, you have read this correctly. 400,000 euros.

This was just an example of the idiocy that the Council has got up to. Let me stress, this is not to deny the promotion of Catalan, but when it is being directed in a pointless fashion, as it was with this restaurant campaign, any good intentions are exposed as daft. As daft and as pointless as the Council often portrays itself and as pointless as it is as an unnecessary tier of additional bureaucracy.

One would imagine that this would be just the sort of thing Salom would put a stop to. Not only because it was a waste of money, but also ideologically, if one assumes that she is on-message where Bauzá’s anti-Catalanism is concerned.

What one has thus far heard from Salom regarding the Council, short of her actually wanting to close it down, makes much sense. So why is there another sense? A sense of unease.

Partly, this has to do with the charge that she is a put-up job by the PP in Madrid and, therefore, an instrument of how the national party perceives the future for regionalism (not very favourably). But there is also the matter of her past.

The Sóller Tunnel case was the first great corruption scandal to hit Mallorca following the introduction of autonomy. It claimed the first president of the Balearics regional government, the PP’s Gabriel Cañellas, who was forced to resign when he was implicated on a charge that involved the payment of some 50 million pesetas (300,000 euros) for electoral purposes. The case was eventually dropped, in 1997, primarily because of the invoking of the statute of limitations.

In August, 1989, a bank account was opened into which was paid a sum of money by … María Salom. She was, when the case first came to court in 1995, cited as one of the signatories for bank accounts into which went euphemistic “donations” from a company called Cuart, owned by a friend and business partner of Cañellas, which was granted the concession for work on the tunnel.

Salom was never charged. She appeared as a witness, but that was all. She has since responded to questions about the case by saying that it would take too long to explain. Which it probably would. She was only young at the time when that first bank account was opened, 21 in fact. And she was a woman. She was probably just doing her job.

None of this would probably matter or would have been raised, had it not been for one thing. Font was supposedly denied the candidature as president of the Council because he was, at the time, implicated in a corruption case (the charge has now been archived). Bauzá has made much of not allowing anyone implicated to be forwarded for electoral nomination. Once Salom was presented as candidate, the whiff of possible hypocrisy brought the Sóller Tunnel case back to the fore.

What would take too long to explain casts a shadow over her candidature. It may be unfair that it does. She is saying much about the Council of Mallorca with which it is hard to disagree. But there is still the worry that she is somehow a stooge for an anti-regionalist and pro-Spain PP. It doesn’t really help that, by coincidence, her husband’s surname and now part of hers is De España. However, if she were to become president, might she in fact go further than she has thus far alluded to? Hello to the presidency, but goodbye to the Council of Mallorca. It would be a seductive message.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Chickens Coming Home To Roost

Mallorca is alive to the sound of clucking. To the sound of chickens coming home to roost. It wasn’t that there was something bad or stupid done in the past, just that the hatching of plans taken some years ago is being exposed as questionable.

The brave new world of post-Franco democracy ushered in a devolved form of government to the newly autonomous regions which in turn decentralised powers to further authorities. In Mallorca this meant the regional government, the Council of Mallorca and the town halls. It was, still is in theory, the very model of ideal government, one of taking democracy to the local level and to ever smaller units of administration.

The brave new world was the rejection of the corrupt, authoritarian centralisation of Franco. It was the introduction of local accountability, of local decision-making. It was idealistic and participative. By filtering democracy downwards into more compact entities, it was a means of combatting corruption. Supposedly.

The brave new world has been only partially successful. But it is still young, relatively immature. Should it be granted time to reach some maturity? Powerful people and institutions are pecking at doubts as to whether it should be.

What the euphoria of the brave new world neglected were practicalities and costs. The structure of government had been questioned even before the crisis took hold; I had on more than one occasion. But the previous murmurs of questioning have become shouts.

To begin with, there is President Zapatero. He has issued a warning to the governments of the autonomous regions that they have to curb their spending and debts. The total regional debt is 105 billion euros. The regions are being seen, as I reported the other day, as perhaps the single greatest risk to Spain’s finances.

Zapatero, likable and admirable in many ways, hasn’t become a completely headless chicken, but his mantra of “reforms, reforms, reforms” allied to his threats of central intervention if the regions don’t tow the line suggest a volte-face in his attitudes to the regions to which, hitherto, he seems to have been only too willing to cede more and more responsibility.

Then there is Zapatero’s predecessor, José Maria Aznar, who has alluded to this change of attitude. He has condemned “quick changes of policy” and what he sees as threats to the autonomous model of government enshrined in the brave new world. And this is a Partido Popular politician saying this. Without anyone actually spelling it out in the kind of dramatic way that might suggest a complete abandonment of the autonomous model, the costs of regional government are nonetheless drawing into question the sustainability of the current system.

If one homes in on Mallorca, behind the regional government lurks the Council of Mallorca. What is the point of the Council of Mallorca? It’s a question I was asking B.C. (before crisis). Were it smaller, it might be justifiable, but its size, its mirroring of the regional government makes it an expensive level of bureaucracy, the purpose of which seems to be to grant jobs for the boys. Moreover, as is highlighted with the waste-collection scandal, it offers an additional opportunity for misdeeds. This scandal has even exposed the appalling waste that appears to have occurred as a consequence of its involvement with rubbish collection, that of some town halls seemingly having paid twice for the same service.

The budget for the council in 2011 will be 428 million euros. One voice that suggests the council is “very expensive” in addition to it being an “inefficient behemoth” belongs to Maria Salom, the PP’s candidate for its presidency. It may sound as though she is one chicken acting like a turkey voting for Christmas, but she has called for an end to the accumulation of functions and overlaps with other institutions. Hallelujah. It may have taken several years, but someone finally seems to get it. She isn’t advocating the council’s complete dismantling, but she does want it stripped down. And so it should be.

And then you come to the town halls. The Majorcan hotel federation’s lady president, Marilén Pol, has said that they should be eliminated – all 53 of them. They cost too much and are unnecessary given the size of population. It’s an extreme proposition, but it is one that has been pursued in other cash-strapped countries.

An alternative is merger. There are examples of town halls working together, but there are others which show that it isn’t straightforward. The Mancomunitat in the north of Majorca doesn’t work at all, so much so that the six town halls involved have more or less agreed not to bother with future meetings. Where there are competing agendas, then it is unlikely that it would work.

Eliminating the town halls is not, I believe, a solution. They perform a social function in terms of local identity as well as adhering to the fundamentally correct principle of local democracy. But they have not succeeded in being the accountable, participative and transparent institutions they should have become, and they, like the Council of Mallorca, perpetuate bureaucratic burdens.

The chickens are coming home to roost because they have woken up to the fact that the structure of government is unwieldy and too expensive. The model is not fundamentally wrong, but it has got out of hand. The Council of Majorca should either go altogether or be pared back in terms of its function. The town halls need reforming, their spends on personnel alone having spiralled since the turn of the century.

Which leaves the regional government. It should stay. For it to not to would represent a shattering of the brave new world and a reversion to something worse – centralisation and Madrid control. And there would be something even more dramatic were the autonomous regions to be undermined. You only have to think of Catalonia and its independence claims to know what this would be. Anarchy.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

We Want Our Money Back: Town halls have to repay

Let’s say you are the head of a major European country which unfortunately finds its economy being held together by a flimsy piece of string and short of a Roberto or two. What do you do? Raise taxes? Yep, can do. Cut investment? Sure, why not? How about asking for your money back? Sounds a bit of a wheeze. And who should you ask for your money back? There are a few targets. Why not go for local authorities? What a splendid idea.

Mr. Bean’s bean-counters in Madrid have come up with a cracking scheme to trawl back some badly needed moolah to fund the central government’s drinks cabinet. That money we gave you, you now being a local authority; that money we gave you in 2008. Well, we want you to hand it back. Not all of it. That would be greedy. Just some of it. For example, that which you failed to collect in taxes. Yes, we know there’s a recession on and that you might yourselves be turning out pockets of old coats and jackets in the town hall wardrobe in the hope of uncovering the odd euro or thousands, but we’re brassic as well, and we’re bigger than you.

The local authorities of Mallorca are none too impressed with this latest initiative. It might demonstrate initiative on behalf of an improvising central administration, but mayors are not about to applaud. And it’s not just the mayors. Oh no. The Council of Mallorca. Them as well.

The funding in 2008, as with any funding, is meant to be partially balanced by what the local authorities drag in. The government, you might be surprised to learn, doesn’t just hand the cash over willy-nilly. Nevertheless, the town halls find the demands for repayment slightly lacking in logic. While on the one hand the government has doshed up for projects under its so-called Plan E system, and made a song and dance about how wonderful this all is, on the other it’s taking money back.

One has some sympathy for the mayors who say that all manner of projects will have to be stopped in order to boost central coffers. However, sympathy can be stretched. Take, for instance, Inca town hall. Under this payback scheme, it’s liable to have to fork out a touch over 600,000 euros. Strange. Haven’t we heard about 600k before when it comes to Inca? Oh yes, so we have. The 600 grand over-spend on the local swimming pool. The government doesn’t presumably just pluck figures out of the air. Of course not. It might, though, take a cursory glance at the books and work out that there might just have been some inefficiency when it comes to the spending of its money. Take also the Council of Mallorca. It’s in for a little under five million. Sounds reasonable if one takes account of what it has managed to fritter away or had “borrowed” by certain politicians. Remember, for example, the four hundred grand on a Catalan campaign. Yep, that was the Council’s money. Or maybe it wasn’t.

No, to be honest, I don’t know that I do have much sympathy. Not all local authorities are staffed by wastrels and crooks, but if the Zapatero drive is a control and responsibility initiative dressed up as a financing one, then maybe it should indeed be applauded.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Mother Of Development: Muro, Ullal and land policy

The ongoing farce that is the Muro golf development shows no sign of pulling its trousers up from around its ankles and closing or keeping open, once and for all, the bedroom doors through which the two sides chase each other – the developers sniggering as they lay another trap and rile the environment ministry which would most likely prefer to take a horse-whip to the unfaithful miscreants.

The bee-eating bird has flown or has, at any rate, completed its procreation, and the developers have once more sent in the diggers. They’re over there! Where? Over there! In march the agents of the ministry, brandishing an order to stop them. It’s an area of bird protection. On no it isn’t. Oh yes it is. Though the developers dispute the protection area order, they have skulked off, for the time being, leaving the ‘dozers dozing in the summer heat. The government has “paralysed”, for the time being, the clearance work. (Incidentally, given that the bee population is threatened and that its demise would represent an ecological catastrophe, why are we so concerned with this damn bee-eating bird? Let it fly off and nose-bag some worms. But I digress.)

The way in which the developers promptly resumed their developing once the bee-eater had finished its was like a bunch of naughty schoolboys, blowing raspberries at the back of the class while the teacher’s back was turned. Right then, who did that? Not us, sir. Oh yes, it was. And of course it was. The developers have been despatched to the head’s study for six of the best, or would be were anyone sure that they had done anything wrong. They say they haven’t. Perhaps they had thought that the August hiatus would have meant they could plough up great tracts of finca without anyone noticing because they’re all on holiday.

The whole thing is a farce, in the same way as much other land conversion is farcical in that necessity rarely appears to be the mother of development. As I have asked many times, has anyone ever actually made the business case for the course being needed? Environmental issues notwithstanding, the biggest beef of opponents is that the course represents private business interests over all others. It’s the same beef being given a good larding where the projected Ullal development in Puerto Pollensa is concerned. Are the houses and apartments really necessary? Maybe they are. Or maybe they are just a case of private interest prevailing. No one has much objected to Lidl’s supermarket rising up from the asphalt of what was Karting Magic in Puerto Alcúdia, but is it really necessary? Eroski would say not, and are apparently going to close at least one of their supermarkets. All good in terms of competition, but is it the right sort of land conversion?

Ullal, Lidl and others all fall under a general land plan for Mallorca, one overseen by the Council of Mallorca which could, one supposes, still block Ullal, though it seems unlikely as it has, in effect, released the land. The golf development, on the other hand, isn’t a facet of this land plan as it is an issue for the regional government. Which all begs the question as to who is overseeing developments and as to whether there exists sensible, joined-up policy. And talking of sensible, the demolition of the Don Pedro hotel, which is covered by the land plan and which has been approved by the Council (which refers to the hotel’s “infamous invasion” of beach), is supposed, along with the demolition of the Rocamar in Puerto Soller, to lead, in return, to a new hotel being built. Where? In Cala San Vicente? In Puerto Pollensa? In Soller? No. In Sa Rapita. On the southside of the island. Go figure.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Clutching At Straws: Concerts and tourism responsibilities

Straw, clutch. Clutch, straw. Elton, Andrea. Andrea, Elton.

On 4 September, Elton John and Andrea Bocelli will be playing Real Mallorca’s stadium. Not at football, but at their day jobs – in the evening. At the risk of offending fans, excuse me if I stifle an unenthusiastic yawn. I may well be out of tune with my audience, some of whom – you, in other words – may be in the audience. At up to a mere 169 euros a pop. Pop music meets the classics at classic prices – they’ve got to be kidding.

Whenever, which isn’t very often, a major name in the music world – or two, as the case may be – pitches up in Mallorca, excitement goes into overdrive, among some. And where Reg and Bocelli are concerned, the government’s tourism ministry is getting excited. Together with the concert’s promoters, it is eyeing the gig up as a means of attracting tourists. Straw, clutch.

The stadium will be able to hold 34,000 for the concert. Not exactly Wembley, but still a fair number of people, but not so many for an island with an 800,000 or so population plus all the others who are knocking about. Two major artists. The tickets went on sale on 21 June. It is now the end of July. Hmm.

The ministry reckons that tour operators will be able to offer packages to come to Mallorca and take in the event. It will “prove a vital adjunct to the success of marketing the Balearic Islands this season” (quote from “The Bulletin”).

Let’s just consider this. Tour operators may indeed be able to offer packages, but isn’t this all a little late? How many tourists would actually come? However many might will make barely a dent in the overall tourism intake over a whole season. A season that, by implication from that quote, has already been something of a success. Has it really? The belated marketing of Reg sounds less like an enhancement of the tourist season and more one of desperation to sell tickets.

Elsewhere in tourism ministry-land, a previous bonkers suggestion that its responsibilities should be handed to the Council of Mallorca has not been taken up fully, but it has been taken up in part. Some of the ministry’s duties, those related to the regulation and administration of tourism businesses, are to go to the council, which presumably will allow the ministry to concentrate on more glamorous tasks, such as trying like hell to fill Mallorca’s stadium when Elton comes to town. It doesn’t really matter where the responsibilities reside, except for the fact that it will have the effect of beefing up the council when the reverse should be happening. If they want to save money, then they should slim it down not fatten it.

The ministry is also to create yet another damn body, this one a “mesa” (table) around which will sit government institutions and the private sector and have a chinwag about boosting some “alternative” tourism, such as trekking and bird-watching. Fair enough perhaps, but not if it merely creates a further link in the not always joined up chain of tourism promotion and not if, as one fears, this “alternative” tourism is largely illusory. Straw, clutch.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Kicking Off Again? Pedestrianisation in Puerto Pollensa

Two years after the scheme to pedestrianise the “front line” of Puerto Pollensa between Llenaire and the centre of the Moll was abandoned, it is about to make a comeback. The impetus for its return is an agreement to develop land in the Ullal area of the town (around and near to the Pollensa Park hotel). As reported in “The Diario”, the town hall will give this plan the go ahead this coming week. The developers will be able to build residential accommodation on some 100,000 square metres of land, in return for which they will also undertake the pedestrianisation scheme. According to the mayor, all parties which were informed of the plan last week, which seem to include the revolutionaries (as referred to yesterday), are in agreement. Given what happened last time the pedestrianisation scheme reared its head though, it’s hard to imagine that there will be unanimity this time round. Apart from anything else, it will mean that all traffic gets diverted along the bypass, which was built as part of the same plan as that for the pedestrianisation, envisaged as far back as the late sixties. Other revolutionaries, notably those of Gotmar who protested loud and long a couple of years ago, will surely not be taking the latest news lying down.

The plan is a potential minefield. Though the building development will be in the vicinity of wetlands deemed of ecological interest, the green light for it has come from the Council of Mallorca which has reclassifed the land as a so-called area of territorial reconversion (ART), which is the same provision that has been applied to areas in Bonaire and Puerto Alcúdia, prompting developments in both instances, the second of which includes what is widely presumed be and largely already built, but mystifyingly unconfirmed, a Lidl supermarket. Despite the Council’s acquiescence, one can yet anticipate objections from the environmental lobby.

What seems curious about this plan is that it doesn’t directly address the tourism problem that was highlighted yesterday. If it is indeed the case that Puerto Pollensa needs more hotel stock, might the development not be better served by sticking up a new hotel or two? This said, the chances are that a number of the new houses will end up as holiday lets. For a resort with a high dependence on residential tourism, this might seem fair enough, though it runs counter to the attitude at government level towards the letting business and would provide far fewer additional tourists than a hotel would.

Meanwhile, the same ART is being invoked to finally put the Don Pedro in Cala San Vicente out of its misery. It’s been a long death, but it would now seem that the demolition is going to occur; just a question as to when. This has been said for years, but now it seems as though it will happen. Much as the demolition might now appear inevitable, nothing ever runs smoothly, least of all in Pollensa; and so it may still also be with Pedestrianisation 2010.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.