Mallorca’s Political Formula One (27 November)

While sport for all may be being brought into question because of the lack of financing of Mallorca’s sports facilities, sport for an elite poses its own question: is Mallorca really going to get a Formula One circuit?

Long in the suggestion, the regional government is, as it said it would, giving the proposal a serious once-over. The seriousness of this once-over has to do with the financing of a circuit, the government hoping that, were it a real goer, the money would be mainly or totally private.

When the idea for the circuit was doing the rounds last year, the cost of the project was put at some 90 million euros. A plan has in fact been drawn up, one that would pretty much completely re-develop the Rennarena in Llucmajor, which currently is totally inadequate for F1.

The plan would, for example, require a lengthening of the circuit by almost three kilometres plus creating grandstands capable of holding way more than the existing 1500 spectators. As with any plan for a building project, there are the inevitable procedures. The government says it will look at how this bureaucracy can be tackled, which probably means ignoring any planning issues. Already, one can hear the sound of GOB and other environmental protectors revving up their engines (with bio-fuel) in the protest pit lanes.

But talk of finance and procedures are only partially relevant. The chances of Mallorca’s F1 circuit ever even getting onto the starting-grid of potential grand prix, let alone being shown the green lights, have to be slim.

Bernie Ecclestone has been courted and Bernie has made some encouraging remarks, but then Bernie says all sorts of things. One of them is that he is against there being more than one grand prix per country. This hasn’t stopped Spain from currently having two – the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona and the European Grand Prix around Valencia’s street circuit – but Rome has pretty much given up on staging a street race from 2013 since a letter from Ecclestone in an Italian newspaper said that “no one” wanted two races per country (Italy already has Monza).

It also hasn’t stopped the USA being awarded two grand prix from 2013 – the revived US Grand Prix in Austin, Texas and a so-called Grand Prix of America in New Jersey. However, and despite F1 not being particularly popular in the USA, Ecclestone is largely motivated by commercial opportunities and by a desire to develop F1 geographically.

With these motivations in mind, where does a grand prix in Mallorca fit in? What is being hoped for in Mallorca is that it would replace Valencia as the location for the European Grand Prix. Valencia’s contract lasts until the 2013 race, though it has been rumoured it might be dropped after next year. So there may well be some substance to the Mallorcan hope. But it is one based on an assumption that there will still be a European Grand Prix. Rome probably saw this as its chance, but, and notwithstanding the American contradiction, Ecclestone is opposed to another race in Italy and may well see the end of Valencia as a reason to scrap the European Grand Prix.

There is significant competition from across the globe for circuits to be included in the F1 calendar, some of it from other countries in Europe. Croatia, for example, has its eyes on a grand prix. This competition merely adds to F1’s commercial and global ambitions in raising serious doubts as to whether Mallorca is a realistic option.

Given all this, therefore, should the government really be giving the proposal a serious once-over? The investment, were it to be private, wouldn’t be an issue, although the environmental objections are bound to be. But why would there be investment without any guarantee of success in securing a grand prix? It might be that, were the circuit designed appropriately or flexibly enough, it could also stage MotoGP, which is Spanish-dominated in terms of who runs it and the number of races – four in Spain for next year’s calendar. MotoGP isn’t F1, however; either its cachet or its cash.

The proposal isn’t particularly realistic, and one has the impression that its discussion both before the regional elections and now has been for political consumption. Former president Matas wanted a grand prix as well; one to be held on a Palma street circuit. That was an absurdity. Llucmajor isn’t, but the stewards flags should nevertheless be being waved furiously and warning that all the talk may just be PR and a raising of expectations that cannot be fulfilled.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Sport For All (26 November)

If you are a government minister, let’s say for tourism and sport in the Balearics, you would hope that you would have both some tourism and sport to be in charge of and both some tourism and sport on which you could lavish your ministerial munificence.

Tourism there is, but it has to scrape by on only a few quid for promotion, though when your ministry is in fact 32 million euros in the red, it’s surprising that there is a ministry at all.

Then there’s sport. Or rather, then there isn’t any sport.

Linked to the ministry is one agency from within the Balearic Government’s tourism organisation that has been allowed to escape the axe for being either pointless or up to its neck in misappropriation of funds, or both.

The Fundación Illesport came to public notice recently, as it was invoices to this foundation that first alerted the world to the inconvenience with which the Duke of Palma now has to contend. The foundation was handing over great wads of cash in return for what would appear, allegedly, to have been very little.

But the foundation has long been there, doing something about sport, which mainly seems to have involved spending the tourism ministry’s money, of which there now isn’t any. It’s a reasonable question to ask why a foundation has been needed when presumably they could just as easily have got some secretary in the ministry to prepare cheques, so one has to assume that the foundation has some altogether greater function.

It does, or did. It was still really only a case of doling out ministry money, but the foundation is (was) responsible, among other things, for sorting out financial assistance to town halls for their sports facilities. An agreement of May this year should have realised the release of 24 million euros to different municipalities, only eight million, therefore, short of the ministry’s total debt for this year.

Should have, because now the foundation says that it hasn’t got any money to meet these grants. A town hall that stands to suffer most from the lack of funding for sports facilities’ improvements is Sa Pobla; to the tune of 338 thousand euros. The mayor is threatening legal action.

There had already been an indication that money for sport was not going to be forthcoming, as a couple of weeks ago Santa Margalida had been told that it was not going to get the quarter of a million it had been promised.

As a consequence, sport, in the case of sport to support the health and welfare of the island, is being allowed to trail in well down the list of all the runners and riders that the government has to feed and nurture.

There are, though, two types of sport: that for the people of Mallorca and that for tourists. The tourism and sport minister, Carlos Delgado, took office with a brief that included giving a new impulse to sport in Mallorca and the Balearics. If there is an impulse, it appears to be directed at sport for tourism. When announcing recently that there was going to be only a negligible amount for tourism promotion, he did also refer to initiatives to further develop three “puertos deportivos”, one being that of Alcúdia.

What this would entail wasn’t made clear, and even though only three “sport ports” are being targeted, the priority for sport, where the ministry is concerned, seems clear enough, and it isn’t sport for the locals.

Sport usually finds itself losing out when governments come to having to make tough decisions. Perhaps we should be grateful that there aren’t proposals to sell off the playing fields and sports areas and hand them over to developers. Yet.

But sport plays a central role in the life of the island’s communities. One only has to scan through pages of the Spanish press on a Monday to get an appreciation of the scale of sport and its organisation in Mallorca. Pages of results, reports and photos of teams for football, basketball, athletics, whatever; men and women, boys and girls.

Sports tourism is one of the Big White Hopes of tourism diversification. It deserves to be prioritised. But for every development of a resort’s watersports, for every possible new golf course or – the new vogue – polo field, and for every route set aside for German oldsters to clack along with Nordic walking poles, sport at the local level should not be neglected.

The tourism ministry and its foundation will know that sport will just carry on without the injection of new money. But nothing lasts without investment. As a slogan once had it, “sport for all”. And not just for tourism.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Going To Waste (25 November)

Between the two town halls of Alcúdia and Sa Pobla, the company Tirme, which provides rubbish-treatment services on Mallorca, is owed in the region of 4.6 million euros. The amount is divided roughly evenly between the two administrations, a difference lying with how much interest they both owe (Alcúdia more than Sa Pobla).

This is not the first time that Tirme has gone in pursuit of outstanding debts from town halls. At the end of May, Inca got a demand for not far off two million. Just one strange aspect of the non-payments is that they relate to the period from 2008, in the case of Alcúdia, and from 2009 where Sa Pobla is concerned. How many other town halls are similarly in debt to Tirme? And if there are others, but even if not, how does a company operate when it is not being paid such vast sums?

Alcúdia and Sa Pobla are both negotiating payment terms, and the respective administrations are of course blaming the previous administrations. Which seems fair enough, but, just as one wonders how Tirme copes with not being paid, one wonders how it is that town halls can apparently just not bother paying. Sa Pobla is also in for about 1.35 million to three other service providers, including the rubbish collectors.

One gets the impression that the whole business world in Mallorca – that which has anything to do with the town halls or other public bodies – is surviving on the promise that they might one day actually get paid. But promises don’t amount to a great deal and they certainly don’t amount to cash flow or reassurances to lenders, if they are applicable.

Tirme, though, isn’t quite like other businesses. Most would find 4.6 million plus the couple of million from Inca and whatever else might be outstanding rather too much debt to bear. Tirme doesn’t. Or doesn’t appear to. This may be because of who owns it – Endesa, Iberdrola, Urbaser and FCC. Tirme is also a monopoly, and its concession for waste treatment lasts until 2041.

Tirme’s monopoly position is understandable in that its operations do demand heavy investment, so it has every right to be able to expect to have a period in which it can make a return on its investment. But not everyone is happy with this monopoly nor with how Tirme prioritises its investment and its operations.

A key part of Tirme’s remit is recycling. Mention the R word and you can be sure that one organisation will prick its ears up: GOB, the environmental pressure group. In August, GOB issued a statement attacking Tirme for what it claimed was the company’s concentration on incineration as opposed to recycling. GOB maintained that recycling plants were operating well below capacity, while the ovens were going full pelt in optimising as swiftly as possible the investment on incinerators at the Son Reus plant in Palma. Moreover, reckoned GOB, the incineration was allowing for the generation of electricity that was being commercialised.

GOB has accused Tirme of engaging in misleading marketing where its operations are concerned and has accused the Council of Mallorca, which, and truly bizarrely, has managed to extract a reduction in the cost of waste treatment for 2012 of slightly less than two centimos, of complicity.

But then, the story of waste management and treatment is far from straightforward; you wouldn’t expect it to be, because nothing ever is in Mallorca.

In January this year, the anti-corruption prosecutors embarked upon the so-called “Operación Cloaca”. This had to with allegations of false accounting centred on waste management operations sanctioned by the Council of Mallorca. Of those detained at the time, and I would make it perfectly clear that Tirme was not implicated in the Cloaca investigation, was an executive with FCC-Lumsa, one of the companies with a concession for recycling collection; FCC, which is a shareholder in Tirme.

Cloaca highlighted the dual system of waste collection (door to door as well as from green points) which had resulted in effect in payment for recycling doubling. Cloaca also revealed that town halls had been pressurised by an individual at the Council of Mallorca into adopting this dual system.

What Cloaca also highlighted was the sheer complexity of arrangements for waste management on Mallorca. Perhaps town halls simply don’t understand what it is they are meant to be paying for. Now, though, Alcúdia and Sa Pobla accept that they have to pay Tirme. But you wonder how many other town halls owe the company and whether the reason for non-payment has been more than just an inability to pay.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Don’t Just Book It … (24 November)

Mr. Thomas Cook does not quite fit with the image of the current-day tourism industry. A follower of the Victorian temperance movement, Mr. Cook organised trips for fellow abstainers (or those who did in strict moderation). His first excursion was from Leicester to Loughborough, which must have been exciting.

Mr. Cook will probably have long been turning in his grave. Though by no means all the tourist descendants of the Loughborough excursionists are on the extreme binge-drinking wing of the tourism market, some are and are therefore very much not adherents to the concept of temperance, even if they knew the term or understood it; for example, Club 18-30 is part of Thomas Cook.

More than just the devils of drink, Mr. Cook would doubtless be alarmed to learn that his name is associated with a company that finds itself in dire financial straits. Moderation in everything, money matters included, would have been the Cook mantra.

The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, as a prominent Victorian didn’t say in that he didn’t first come up with the expression but most likely did declare it, repeatedly, from a pulpit of the times. And money has been the root of Thomas Cook’s contemporary problems. It owes a mere one billion quid to lenders. Remarkably, only four years ago, the company could brag that it had nearly four hundred million sitting in the bank.

The tour operator has had a number of issues to confront, so its problems are not solely down to financial imprudence, but a lot of them are. A share buy-back and a series of acquisitions have helped to push the company to the brink. It is hanging on through the largesse of banks, which it hopes will continue to stump up around a hundred million a month, if current financing requirements persist.

One of Thomas Cook’s more recent ventures into expansion was the protracted merger with Co-Operative Travel. Finally agreed to earlier this year by UK competition commissioners, the combined operation now finds itself having to plan the likely closure of some 200 travel agency shops.

The name which regularly crops up in discussions of Thomas Cook’s troubles is that of its former chief executive who left in August: “Super Nova”, Manny Fontenla-Novoa, often described as “colourful”, which is shorthand for all sorts of things. Super Nova had raked in only 14.5 million quids worth of salary and shares in the four years prior to his somewhat sudden disappearance.

There is no small amount of schadenfreude among some elements of the Mallorcan tourism industry at both Thomas Cook’s woes and the downfall of Super Nova. This stems, in part, from a dislike of the power that one of the Big Two tour operators wields, which can manifest itself in different ways, such as the way in which Thomas Cook decided that it would apply a so-called discount to hotels’ invoices in late summer 2010; the discount was in fact a reduction by 5% on what was due.

The schadenfreude is misplaced, however. The power of the Big Two may not be liked by all, but the local tourism industry would be in a fine mess without them. So if the Big Two became the Big One, and Thomas Cook went under, where would the industry be then?

It’s unlikely that this would happen. Thomas Cook does operate profitably. Special financing arrangements are normal in the winter period for tour operators, so there is nothing unusual in Thomas Cook seeking loans. The problem is the accumulated debt.

It is the uncertainty that its financial woes arouse that is troubling. Despite its operating profit and reassurances from the company, holidaymakers are likely to think twice about committing themselves to booking with a tour operator whose troubles are being given such a public airing. This may just slow down bookings to Mallorca for next season, while it might also be noted that a loss of consumer confidence caused by the Euro crisis has been one of the very recent and uncontrollable factors that have affected Thomas Cook.

In the circumstances, therefore, it wouldn’t be surprising were holidaymakers disinclined to “book it ” with Thomas Cook. Not just yet anyway. This might be good news for other tour operators, but, and schadenfreude notwithstanding, it isn’t particularly good news for Mallorca.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Going Benalup: Unemployment and easy credit (22 November)

There is a town in the province of Cádiz in Andalusia that has the worst unemployment rate in Europe. It is called Benalup (or Benalup-Casas Viejas, to give it its full name). In an article by Giles Tremlett in “The Observer” on Sunday, the collapse of what, for a brief time, had become a boom town is chronicled, and the story of Benalup tells you mostly all you need to know about why Spain is in such a mess and is going to have one hell of a struggle getting out of it.

Benalup is by no means unique, even if it can lay claim to that unwanted unemployment crown. Spain is full of Benalups, and Mallorca shares its problems. To summarise Tremlett’s main points, the Benalup belly-up effect was founded on excessive credit and on a glut of construction jobs that paid well and took teenagers out of education.

It won’t sit well with the La Caixa bank, known also for its Obra Social good works programmes, that it gets fingered as having triggered a lending war among the banks that flooded into the town in search of mortgage customers, many of them young and having turned their backs on school in the knowledge that they could earn handsome wages in the construction industry.

Construction was the first and most obvious victim of economic crisis, and it took its labour force down with it. In Benalup, those who had left school at sixteen and who had embarked on a side career of avaricious material grab are just part of the almost 50% of Spain’s under-25s that are unemployed. This material grab has left Benalup, as Tremlett remarks, “plastered with ‘for sale’ signs”, those of La Caixa’s estate-agency arm, which has been forced to repossess.

Much of the construction was centred on the coastal area. The Benalup story, therefore, is a not unfamiliar one of the two heads of construction and tourism that is the economy of much of Spain, Mallorca included. But Benalup, some kilometres inland, doesn’t have the luxury of the fallback position of tourism. Without the construction on the coast, it doesn’t really have anything.

The dependence on construction and tourism in different parts of Spain is just one factor that has undermined Spain’s economy. Subject to the vagaries of economic cycles, both industries also contribute to a devaluing of the general skills base and of the education system. Easy money can be had, or could, and the state would provide some assistance in the winter for those less inclined to slog around a building site.

The education system is not that great anyway, and in Mallorca it is particularly poor. But through a combination of the system’s inadequacies, a lack of incentive to stay in education and the promise of riches from humping bricks about (now gone), general competitiveness is also undermined.

One solution to the unemployment in Benalup is a state­-funded training course, assuming you can get on it. Not that it necessarily opens up subsequent employment opportunities, as the course is for graphic design. In Mallorca, there are any number of young graphic designers. They are two a penny. Many are good, but where’s the work? Economies do not generate wealth or growth through graphic design. It is a pitiable non-­solution.

The Zapatero administration presided over the end-game of the great Spanish boom. It deserves to be criticised, but it is not alone. Successive governments have perpetuated an aspirational dream for a country that was in the economic dark ages only half a century ago. One mistake, aided by the banks, was to break with a traditional cash­-based society and replace it with one based on credit, and very easy and loose credit at that. The country’s richness, as evident from a lofty position in the IMF GDP league table, obscures a reality of over­dependence on certain industries and a lack of competitiveness.

There is fortunately some realism coming from the newly elected government, an acceptance that Spain isn’t that rich and that the mechanisms for granting the population the trappings of aspirational wealth were largely built on sand. Within a framework of this new realism, how, though, can Rajoy set about realising his election promises, such as that to reduce unemployment?

I’ll have a look at that in a further article. But for now, and notwithstanding the fact that the Spanish electorate does appear to “get it” where the country’s parlous position is concerned, I’ll leave you with a piece of history. In 1933, Benalup was the centre of an anarchist uprising and a police massacre. Thank God it’s not 1933.

The original “Observer” article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/20/spain-benalup-unemployment-euro-crisis

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

State Of Independence: Tourism strategy (21 November)

There was one revealing quote from the interview with Esteve Bardolet* (“The Bulletin”, 20 November). Well, two, but I’ll come to the second later. Bardolet, one of the rare people it is worth listening to regarding Mallorca’s tourism, said, in the context of working with the Mallorcan Tourist Board: “I was totally independent. Neither I nor anyone in my family had any business interests in the world of tourism, so I was able to be totally impartial”.

Totally independent, totally impartial. This is not how you would normally describe different players in Mallorca’s tourism industry. The Mallorcan Tourist Board would claim to be independent, but it isn’t, given that it comprises representatives with their own specific interests, and this, pretty much, was what Bardolet was implying.

An independent and impartial perspective on the tourism industry is almost impossible to achieve. In theory, the government should have such a perspective, but it is beholden to powerful voices from within the industry. Think for a moment about how, before the regional elections in May, the hotels were saying that they didn’t want Carlos Delgado as tourism minister. He might just have proven to be a bit too independent of mind. Now, however, all is sweetness and light, and the hotels are having the industry served up to them on a plate. “A word in your shell-­like, Carlos,” might well have been words whispered in a quiet corner of the tourism ministry, along with “side”, “knowing”, “bread” and “buttered”.

The government, perhaps recognising the impossibility of being immune to influences from the industry, is trying instead to involve all sectors of the industry, bringing the various associations as well as airlines and tour operators into the tourism agency. It’s a bold move and one that makes a lot of sense, as a collective is formed of those who understand the tourism industry. The trouble is that they understand it in their terms. Whatever good words airlines or tour operators may utter, they do not consider Mallorca in isolation. They ultimately do what is good for them. If that includes Mallorca, then fine. If not, well, that’s business.

Bringing together the great and good of the tourism business world does not automatically mean that everyone sings from the same hymn sheet or that noses aren’t put out of joint. Palma town hall, in doing something similar to the tourism agency, has managed to dislocate restaurant snouts, but what the restaurants are really upset about by being excluded is the fact that they can’t voice their own interests.

Meanwhile, there is the government’s inter­departmental tourism committee. I have long advocated that, in the government’s organisational structure, tourism should be at the top of the pyramid, if only notionally, and that other departments function in a support capacity. This committee goes some way to achieving this. While it may not result in independence or impartiality, it may just prevent the sort of governmental turf wars breaking out that have been detrimental to the interests of the tourism industry.

There was no better example of this than during the last administration. Faced with his government collapsing, Antich handed out key posts to the Mallorcan socialists. One of them, environment, resulted straightaway and with total predictability in the paralysing of the Muro golf course. It wasn’t the government as such which stopped the development, it was one department. But Antich was in no position to argue.

Not having coalition partners that require pandering to does help, but government departments have a tendency to work to their own agendas, neglecting the common good. The government’s committee will not eradicate this and nor will it remove the influences that specific departments are subject to from outside government, but it’s a start.

What would really make a difference would be were tourism given a true dose of independent thought, a meeting of minds with the sort of impartiality that Bardolet has displayed. A tourism technocracy, if you like. And more than just impartiality, there might also be some realism, which is where that second quote comes in. Though Bardolet suggested that the north European market needed to be looked to in the winter (though isn’t it already?), he said: “the winters, I fear, will never work”.

Is this just defeatism? Possibly, but possibly it is an understanding, which is what Bardolet has in abundance. Facile prescriptions for Mallorca’s winter tourism that emanate from all quarters, issued through a myopic insularity and parochialism and through constant reinforcement of a groupthink style, often fail to take realism into account. It’s a painful truth, but Bardolet may just be right. We could do with more such independent thought.

* Bardolet is a former vice-president of the Mallorcan Tourist Board and was awarded a gold medal last week in recognition of his contribution to tourism.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Reflections Of … (19 November)

“The way life used to be.” Ah, those were the days. Diana Ross and the Supremes and all that 1960s malarkey. Happy times. Not that back in the ’60s they had to worry too much in Mallorca or Spain about having a day off for reflection prior to an election. Old Franco knew a thing or two. In addition to being a dictator, he reckoned the Spanish population was either too thick or too apathetic to bother with things like democracy and voting.

If they were apathetic then, they still are today, if predictions as to abstentions in tomorrow’s elections are anything to go by. But, I should hush my mouth. I’m not meant to talk about the elections today, as today is the day of reflection. Well, sort of. What is really means is that campaigning cannot take place, but there are certain limits also as to what can be said journalistically. Theoretically, no one is meant to pronounce on the day of reflection one way or the other or to be seen to be somehow influencing voting.

I don’t for one moment imagine that anyone would be the slightest bit influenced by what I might or might not say on this blog when it comes to the elections, and that’s for the simple reason that I imagine no one who reads it is in fact entitled to vote. But, as one is meant to remain silent on such matters, I shall do, which is why an article that I had written for today will be held over until tomorrow – it has to do with technocrats, but with a particularly Spanish angle; I’m sure you can’t wait.

The day of reflection is reasonably well adhered to. Spanish TV was following yesterday’s campaigning until the very last moment, just before midnight, and then promptly put on a ridiculous Jean-Claude Van Damme film; time for bed. The press today does report the campaigning but stops short of editorialising.

I know that had I editorialised and sent something off for today’s “Bulletin”, it wouldn’t have been included. Fair enough. But I wonder why, therefore, there is a different column in which there are references to the election. I won’t, for fear of the day of reflection police coming down on me, repeat what was said, but I fancy – know for sure – that had I written such things for today’s paper, they wouldn’t have gone in.

I suspect I know the reason why this other column was acceptable, and that’s probably because had the “offending” part of it had to be removed there would have been a ruddy great white space. Or maybe it wasn’t paid overly much attention to.

It is revealing that certain of my articles get vetoed by the paper. A recent one about Lidl was. I don’t think it was critical; in fact I’m sure it wasn’t. But no, too sensitive; might upset the commercial department. And too sensitive was one about the Bishop of Mallorca. Way too controversial and likely to offend staunch Catholics. There have been others. I am compiling a list of off-limits subjects.

There are tensions between editorial and marketing/sales. They occur in all areas of the media to differing degrees, but there is, or appears to me, a hyper-sensitivity locally. And this isn’t solely down to tensions caused by commercial realities. There really are only two subjects that are off-limits in terms of expressing criticism or disrespect, and those are the royal family (quite unlike Britain therefore) and the Guardia. But a certain censorship does apply, as in, for instance, why the former employment of a particular local mayor is never spelt out. You do wonder why.

There is too much sensitivity and it occurs at what is seemingly the most trivial levels. One only needs to go back to the fuss that the “John Nelson” column in “Talk Of The North” caused to know how something written without any apparent wish to offend can be blown completely out of proportion.

The local communities and indeed the island are small, so there is a perhaps not unreasonable restraint shown, but this hyper-sensitivity does also place a restraint on vibrant and at times important discourse. The day of reflection is a rather different case, but it is nevertheless indicative of an understated tendency to censorship or self-censorship that has never been quite forgotten from the days of when Diana Ross was topping the charts.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Not Being Paid A Complement (17 November)

The title of this article contains a deliberate mistake. Complement is wrong; it should be compliment.

The so-called complementary offer, by which one normally means bars, restaurants and clubs, is a complement to the primary element of the tourism industry, the hotels. It completes the industry, but by perception, if not by definition, it comes down the industry food chain and is considered subordinate. As a consequence, it fails to be paid a proper compliment, or so it claims.

Palma town hall’s efforts to up its tourism game by bringing together different bodies from the industry haven’t gone down well with the restaurant associations of either CAEB, the Balearics business confederation, or PIMEM, the small to medium-sized businesses association. They feel as though have been ignored.

The fact is that they probably have been ignored. And ignored for different reasons. One is that they don’t sing with anything like a unified or co-operative voice, and not just in Palma. Two, and following on from this, they don’t have a collective organisation with the clout that demands to be paid attention to and which can command some lobbying space of the type that the hotel sector can. Three is that other parts of the industry, the hotels in other words, look upon the restaurants, to put it bluntly, as parasitic and incapable of or unwilling to actively involve themselves in promotion efforts. Four is that, as a group, they simply lack the financial muscle to make themselves important players in helping to drive the tourism industry.

CAEB and PIMEM are doing something about the first two, combining their respective associations for restaurants, bars and entertainment in order to try and give themselves a voice which will be listened to. But why haven’t they done this before?

Firstly, because the different associations themselves have their own agendas. CAEB and PIMEM aren’t the only ones. There is also, for example, Acotur, the tourism businesses association. These organisations occupy similar territory, duplicating or contradicting each other as the case may be. Secondly, restaurants in mostly any town or resort you care to mention function with their own interests to the fore. Co-operation has generally been absent, except where powerful and small groups of owners work together for their own benefit. Thirdly, and this is the unpalatable truth, the hotels have a point; the restaurants have been parasitic. They have done well simply by being there, but now, thanks to all-inclusives, heightened competition, economic crisis, the rules have changed, and the restaurants have been marginalised.

This sounds like a damning indictment of the complementary sector, but the lack of compliment paid to them stems also from a peculiar ambivalence shown to the restaurants.

The Spanish hotel confederation wants the new national government to make changes to help the tourism industry. One of these is a reduction in IVA, and the example is cited of how such a reduction in France has helped the restaurant sector. Not the hotels, the restaurants.

So, what has this to do with attitudes towards Mallorca’s restaurants? Something very significant, and that is that the French tourism industry is very different to Spain’s. France doesn’t have anything like the concentration of resorts that Spain and Mallorca have. It has resorts, but there is little that is comparable. It does have all-inclusive hotels but not like Spain or Mallorca do.

A reduction in value added tax to boost French restaurants was not simply a case of being helpful. It was a recognition of the central role of restaurants within the tourism industry. France’s restaurants are not complementary. It’s the other way round; the hotels are. The French don’t need to bang on about gastronomy, because everyone knows about the cuisine, and given the nature of the French tourism industry, the restaurants are absolutely essential.

A reduction in IVA might make some difference to Mallorca’s restaurants, but not much. What would make a difference would be were they not treated as the tourism industry’s doormats. But because they have never had that position of centrality, as they do in France, they are in a position of weakness, which is why they get ignored and why there is an ambivalence towards them.

Yet, gastronomy is meant to be one of Mallorca’s strengths. Maybe it is, but without an attitudinal shift on behalf of other players in the tourism industry, it won’t be. The restaurants have brought much of this ambivalence on themselves, but while the hotels continue to dominate the industry, a situation that will not change, they can’t expect to ever be more than complementary or to be paid their rightful compliments.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Going, Going, Gone: Tourism promotion budget

Is there such a thing as an auction in reverse? Because if not, then the Balearics tourism ministry appears to have invented it. Do I hear nine million for tourism promotion? Any reduction on nine million? Mr. Delgado, 3.6 million. Any reduction on 3.6? Going, going … . At this rate and by this time next week, the tourism promotion budget will have gone; not because it has been spent but because there won’t be one. There they were saying that there were a mere nine million, and the next day Delgado goes and trims the budget by almost another two-thirds.

The ministry does, after all, only have a total of 63 million for next year. It is the lowest budget of any ministry, and tourism is only the most important industry, but needs clearly must in these austere times. Even so, 3.6 million? And the question is, what will the ministry find to spend the other 59.4 million on, as everything is being cut.

To this end, we will be sad to see one body fall to the ministry’s axe, as it has kept us so royally amused for a few years. The Foundation for Sustainable Development; they’re getting rid of it, along with its stupid “tarjeta verde”. I may need to remind you that the foundation and the card were what replaced the eco-tax. All these tourists were going to be buying one of these discount cards, all the money raised was going to save Mallorca’s environment; that sort of thing. The only problem was that no one bought one, or if they did, the money wasn’t handed over.

They had to find something else to justify the existence of this pointless foundation (and one, it should be noted, into which various banks pumped not insignificant amounts of money as well as the government), so they let it run certain sites of environmental interest, such as Son Real near Can Picafort. Then they had to find someone to be in charge and recently the PP government gave the job to Jorge Campos, the founder and president of the fiercely anti-Catalan Círculo Balear.

Poor old Jorge. Gives up his presidency and then finds he’s out of a job. He should have known better, as it’s a surprise that the foundation had been allowed to stagger on as long as it had, especially as it was due for the scrap-heap under the Antich restructuring of the tourism ministry. So much for him having mates, like Bauzá, in high places. They’ll probably find him something else.

And so they should, as Campos’ brief time in charge of Son Real has had high amusement value in itself. For example, he insisted on putting up a Spanish flag at the entrance, thus provoking all manner of Catalanist indignation and Maulets radicals, who of course can’t stand him, into promptly going along and taking it down.

Meantime, Santa Margalida town hall was sent an invoice for a visit with people from the Alicante town of Vall d’Ebó, with which Santa Margalida has a sort of twinning arrangement. We’ve never had to pay such invoices before, said the mayor, who has threatened that if the demand (for 159 euros) isn’t withdrawn, the town hall will claim 12,000 euros from the foundation relating to a licence for works at Son Real that wasn’t pursued. Yep, things certainly have been fun, and petty, since Campos took over.

But the town hall probably won’t now be able to claim its 12,000, as it’s farewell to the Foundation for Sustainable Development. Sadly, it couldn’t sustain itself, but we greatly appreciate the entertainment. Of its responsibilities, Son Real will end up with something called the Espais de Natura Balear, while Costa Nord, its biggest responsibility, will go to the tourism agency, which is where (and the agency’s previous incarnation as well) it should have been all along. The foundation, though, and let us not forget, was a creation of former PP president Matas. And we know all about the various bodies Matas set up, though not quite as much as the anti-corruption prosecutors do.

The tourism promotion budget, or lack of it, is, though, the headliner. 3.6 million. It really is a pittance. But there’s more. What about those arts festivals the ministry is meant to support financially? Like the Pollensa Music Festival. The ministry’s not saying, other than to imply that unless an orchestra-pit load of private sponsorship can be found, it probably won’t happen. And if it and others don’t take place, the ministry will have to fork out for changing all the publicity material. I wonder if they’ve accounted for this in the budget?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

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.