The Secret Technocrats (20 November)

These are good times to be a technocrat. It is the one job that currently offers good employment prospects, and not any old employment. Not that a technocrat is technically a job. You don’t apply for a position as a technocrat, you become one because someone says you are and because you have whatever the technical ability required at the time might be.

There is something alarming about all the technocrats who, like meerkats looking out for impending economic catastrophe, have been poking their heads up from under university desks and elsewhere. The new European government of Frankfurt has appointed them. In Italy, they have become the Full Monti, a whole puppet government of their own, Angela’s economic angels; Merkel and the Meerkats.

What is alarming is that the mere mention of technocrat has come to be accompanied by a contemptuous spit, the title uttered in the same breath as the names of European leaders most of us would rather forget.

Technocrats are not politicians, but they have fulfilled political functions and have also filled political positions. But strictly speaking, a technocrat has no interest in politics; all that concerns him are the number­-crunching of economics or the plans of production and productivity. Technocrats are of an age that we thought had long gone. They are the political incarnation of the one-­time mass producers; Henry Fords, and each one uniformly the same shade of black.

They are of the old scientific management era before the softer and more humane principles of management kicked in. They are from a dark age and are something of the dark. Stalin did not devise economic and production plans, nor did Hitler and nor did Franco. Technocrats did.

Though not ostensibly political, the technocrats of Europe’s dictatorships would never have got where they did without being as one with the prevailing political philosophy. Technocrats bend to the rules of politics, those set by others, such as the Frankfurt Group, while apparently seeming to make the rules.

As Mariano Rajoy contemplates the trophy that is his, might he just have a concern that he might find himself surplus to requirements? It’s not impossible. There is a difference, though. Greece had a lame­-duck premier and Italy had Berlusconi. Rajoy is neither.

There is also a hint that he might just pre­-empt any technocratically­-driven putsch. Gone largely uncommented upon prior to the election was his statement that he was considering bringing “independent” figures into his government. In itself, this is not unusual. Blair had independents. One of them, a former journo, more or less ran the Labour government. Alastair Campbell wasn’t a technocrat, though, unlike Sir Alan Walters, Thatcher’s own mini­-Milton Friedman. Neither, however, was formally a member of the government.

Independent has become a more acceptable description than technocrat, but technocrats, in a contemporary guise, is what many independents brought into assist governments are. Which brings us to Rajoy, his independents and whoever they might be.

Spain’s economy after the Civil War and before Franco’s death can be divided into two periods: the catastrophic era of post­-war autarky; and the boom from the start of the sixties, inspired in part by the Stabilisation Plan of 1959 and by technocrats who were brought into to oversee the modernisation of the Spanish economy.

The technocrats took much credit for Spain’s transformation, though it has been widely argued that they just got lucky and cashed in on a period of rapid growth in Europe as a whole.

Whether or not the technocrats really were that instrumental in Spain’s subsequent success, they were always sure of Franco’s support, and that is because the technocrats shared a common background: Opus Dei.

The Opus comprised an elite from business and industry and one with the same rigid Catholicism that Franco adhered to. But it is the shadowy nature of Opus Dei, questions as to what influence it may have, its technocratic past and also its potential political links that make Rajoy’s mention of “independents” intriguing at best.

The Partido Popular, transformed as it has been from its unsuccessful origins as a party created by Franco’s former tourism minister (albeit with a different name), has nevertheless failed to totally shake off these origins and all the baggage that goes with them, which includes Opus Dei.

As Rajoy is considering introducing independents to his government and as there are lingering suspicions as to what and who lurks within the recesses of the Partido Popular, he needs to be clear as to who it is he plans to appoint. And as importantly, what associations they might have.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Long Hello And Goodbye (15 November)

In the final week before the national election, no polls can be published; they might distort public opinion, or so the theory goes. Come the final 24 hours before the election, and everyone has to shut up and allow themselves a period of reflection before heading to the polls on Sunday to do the awful deed.

Putting a block on more polls is unnecessary; there hasn’t been a need for polls for months. PSOE’s long goodbye should go into the Guinness Book of Records for the most time it has been known that a political party would lose the next election. And badly.

Nothing has altered the path to the inevitable Partido Popular victory: not a Rubalcaba bounce when Zapatero confirmed that he knew the way the wind was blowing; not a surge of support from the right when PSOE carved up the constitution and committed the deficit requirement to law; not a wave of thanks to PSOE when ETA called it a day.

The eclipse of PSOE on Sunday will be the culmination of the process started by the credit crunch and Zapatero’s attempts to calm a nation’s fears. By saying there was no crisis, he was whistling in the dark; his delusion, a fiddling of inaction while capitalism burned. He responded too slowly, but he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. The game was up as soon as crisis raised its unlovely head. The story would have been the same had the PP been in government – and they know it.

Mariano Rajoy will be the next president of Spain, and president, by title and tradition going back to the nineteenth century, it is; calling him prime minister is in line with how titles normally work in a parliamentary monarchy. Rajoy’s ascendancy has been the long hello, so long in fact it is difficult to understand how he comes to still figure. Beaten by Zapatero in 2008, long dismissed as inadequate by many commentators and even members of his own party, one of them being the former PM José Maria Aznar, it is a mystery what he is doing about to take office.

Rajoy is becoming prime minister (president) by default. He has had to do nothing and say nothing. The prize has been his ever since the flames from Lehman and utterances regarding the previously unheard of subprime market first flickered across dealers’ screens. Prime minister by default and prime minister by superior force and direction. Just as the Balearics Bauzá is a puppet on a long string stretching from PP central office, so Rajoy dances to the tune of his own master. And if Rubalcaba is to be believed, that is Aznar; Aznar who has been contemptuous of his successor and now treats him as the dummy to his ventriloquism.

The electoral slogan for Rajoy is both simple and simplistic. “Súmate al cambio”. Join the change, more or less. When all else fails, and it normally does, politicians bring out the change word. It is the default slogan for a default prime minister; vote for me, I’m not the other lot. But what will Rajoy change? More pain and more austerity are not change; they are more pain and more austerity, and the electorate is heading to the polling stations to vote for masochism.

“Masoquismo” and “machismo”. Macho politics with which to confront the unions and employment conditions. Mariano as Margaret, tackling the enemy within. Change is necessary, but at what cost socially (and industrially), as Thatcher stubbornly ignored. The unions, though, have been but one part of the collusive complacency of Spain’s social capitalism model; they have been a loveably roguish pantomime villain to the Prince Charmings of successive governments of both blue and red who have flaunted the glass slippers of boom-time politics.

It was Zapatero’s misfortune to be the shoemaker who couldn’t repair the slipper. He can be accused of a lack of foresight, but foresight with hindsight is a wonderful thing; he danced to his own tune, as had previous Spanish leaders, one with an exciting boom-boom beat, but he ended up a busted flush and a boom-time rat.

Yet for all this, Zapatero helped to mould a Spain far more at ease with itself. The pain that Rajoy is about to inflict, and it is going to be painful, might just be acceptable, though by no means to all, but if he insists on a change that is a back to the future in terms of cultural, social and religious policies, he may not find the populace so willing to support him.

Come Sunday, the electorate of turkeys will vote for Christmas, and after Sunday, things will change. Just don’t expect them to be very pleasant.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Face To Face (8 November)

Face to face, face off, face up to facts, put a brave face on things, put a face to someone. Idiomatic contortions of “face” just go to emphasise how important the face is.

The face determines much. It determines reaction and impression by others, and it betrays reaction and impression on behalf of the “face” him or herself. Face to face, “cara a cara”, determined much. This was the face off between the Spanish prime ministerial candidates, facing up to the facts that inform the election, or diligently ignoring them, one putting a brave face on things, both being people you could put a face to.

Even if you were already familiar with the faces of Mariano Rajoy and Alfredo Rubalcaba, exposed to the television camera, facing each other across a vast desk, you saw things you hadn’t previously. Rubalcaba looked younger than his Solzhenitsyn appearance suggests, though he seemed to visibly age during his encounter with Rajoy who had seemed to have taken a leaf out of his predecessor Aznar’s book and had formed an acquaintance with hair dye; his beard looked strangely grey against a full head of vibrant brown.

The electoral debate on Spanish television was an event akin to a major football final. The lead-up was endless, a clock in the top right-hand corner giving a countdown to how long it was before the face to face occurred. Analysts there were in abundance, children had been asked as to their choice of next prime minister, campaign leaders of the two camps talked up their boys, the one heading the PSOE campaign standing in front of a legend which read “formularubalcaba”; socialist medicine, one presumed.

Then there were the presenters. Spanish television has taken the message of equality to the extreme. Barely a male was to be seen amidst the great numbers of female presenters. And what strikes one about them is the fact that nearly all are gorgeous. There aren’t many heirs to the throne or Spanish national football team captains and goalkeepers to go around, but a career in television does offer its marital and partner opportunities, though what does one make of the strikingly blonde Maria Casado, whose surname suggests that she already is married?

And so, eventually, to the face to face itself. The moderator wished everyone a good evening, including America, which might not have been glued to television screens as much as he might have hoped; Obama, one imagines, had better things to do than devote a couple of hours to potential leaders of a country that barely registers in the international scheme of things.

Though of course it might register, if the economy goes totally belly-up, and it was this, the economy, that formed the first part of the debate, the rules being set out by our moderator friend, a moustachioed gentleman with a resemblance to Bob Carolgees minus Spit the Dog.

It mattered little what was actually said. Far more important was the watching, the studying of the faces. Here were the two men with the fate of a nation in their hands, and what a choice they offer. The best one might say about either is that he is a safe pair of hands, possibly, but both are terminally dull, terminally bearded and grey, despite the efforts of the make-up people. Spain doesn’t do charisma politics.

They argued occasionally, some heat was given off, dismissiveness of the opponent was shown on the face, but only once was there genuine contempt, Rubalcaba’s glance at Rajoy during the bit on social policies saying all you needed to know. It was all pretty well-mannered and formal. “Señor Rajoy” and “Señor Rubalcaba”; both deployed the “usted” form. Little enlivened proceedings except for when Rubalcaba suddenly produced a graphic during the pensions debate; it was as though he were on a chat show and had remembered that he had a book to promote or as though he were on “Blue Peter” – here’s a graphic I made earlier.

When it came to an end, you were none the wiser. Bob Carolgees signed off events with thanks all round. There was no shaking of hands, no smiles for the camera, just a long, lingering shot of the desk on a stage in front of an absent audience. Frankly, it had all been an enervating experience, but then politics often are, especially when the protagonists are as stripped of vitality as these two.

Rajoy probably won, but then so he should as he went into the face to face in a position of strength, PSOE fast disappearing down the opinion poll plug hole. Rubalcaba’s face will have done little to have reversed the trend.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Tourism Made Simple For Politicians

Amazing. Rajoy speaks! He has left it late, but with just a couple weeks remaining before the general election it is about time that he proved that he hadn’t permanently lost his voice. He has been speaking, and what words of wisdom have been pouring out of the Partido Popular’s prime ministerial candidate. Words of tourism wisdom.

Somewhere in the bowels of PP HQ is a room where candidates are taken to be given their primers on subjects they have no knowledge of, like tourism for instance. Various strategists, PR people and speech-writers sit the candidates down and open the “Juanita y Juan” book of tourism made simple for politicians.

“Right now, Mariano, repeat after me. Quality tourism.” “Quality tourism.” “Good. Do you know what it means?” “Erm …” “Not to worry because it doesn’t mean anything. Now, listen carefully, I will read out a list of things that will overcome seasonality and I want you to then repeat them. Understood?” “Seasonality. Yes, good, it’s a bit of problem for tourism. Isn’t it?” “It is, so it’s very important that you know what you’re talking about. Here goes. Culture, nature, nautical, sport, film, gastronomy, bird-watching and golf.” “Ah, golf! Yes. Seve Ballesteros. Fore!” “Yes, Mariano, unfortunately he is in fact dead.”

Rajoy has certainly been taking his lessons seriously. He has come up with a cunning plan. He’s going to tackle structural problems of the tourism sector, such as there being too many obsolete resorts. Gosh, what an original thought. Where have we heard this before? Ah yes, Playa de Palma. How long has it taken for its redevelopment not to occur? Only about seven years. So far.

What is actually meant by obsolete? Given that Spanish and Mallorcan resorts grew up in the sixties and seventies, it probably means they’re all obsolete. The sort of investment that would be required to make them un-obsolete will mean they remain obsolete for a further 40 or 50 years, by which time they will probably have fallen down anyway.

But then, investment has been available. Or was. Supposedly. Go back to 2008 and you may recall that 500 million euros were going to be pumped into updating tourism resorts. What do you mean, you don’t recall? They most certainly were. Something got in the way, though.

Also back in 2008 there was another little scheme, not a million miles away from what Rajoy has in mind for combating seasonality. Come on, you must remember the Winter in Spain campaign. Nope? Well, you wouldn’t be the only one, as it was quietly forgotten about not long after it was announced. Yet this was all part of the drive to get those high-spending European oldsters beating a winter path to the Balearics and elsewhere; the same European oldsters who will now not be coming this winter because there’s no money to subsidise their trips.

Despite having done his tourism homework, learnt his lines and acquired a status as the new guru of tourism, Rajoy is being pressurised by the tourism industry into giving them back their national tourism minister. There used to be one, the Mallorcan Joan Mesquida, before he got downgraded and became a mere secretary, or whatever it was he became. And he certainly knows a thing or two about tourism. As former finance minister for the Balearics, he was co-author of the eco-tax, that spectacular disaster of tourism PR that was jettisoned when the first Antich administration was turfed out of office.

There again, and as with the non-forthcoming 500 million investment and Winter in Spain campaign, this was all the fault of socialists. Haven’t got a clue when it comes to tourism. Not like Rajoy, good old capitalist right-winger that he is. Mariano’s going to have tourists flocking to Mallorca (and Spain) in winter, looking at birds and tucking into bowls of tumbet. No one’s ever thought of that before. He’s going to change the image of Spain and make it a tourist destination of quality with the quality tourists to match; none of the bloody riff-raff that’s coming in at present on their easyJets.

Yep, tourism has a bright future under Mariano, as he is clearly a quick learner, and he doesn’t always need the strategists to tell him what to say. The environment? No problem. Climate change doesn’t exist, as his cousin told him it didn’t. The economy? Well, he can probably a find a bloke in a pub to tell him how to fix that. And you wonder why, as Wikileaks proved, former premier Aznar has always had his doubts about him.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Bishop, The Politicians And The Gays

If you fancy being a bishop, then having a Christian name of Jesús is probably no great disadvantage. And so it is with the Bishop of Mallorca, Jesús Murgui. But neither his status as bishop nor his Christological appellation absolve him from criticism; he gets it in not inconsiderable amounts.

Jesús Murgui became bishop in 2004, succeeding Teodor Úbeda, who had been Mallorca’s bishop for 30 years and who had cultivated a reputation for being progressive. It is a reputation that Monseñor Murgui appears not to share. He is said to be a confederate of the archbishops of Madrid and Barcelona and formerly of the late archbishop of Valencia (Agustín García-Gasco who died in May); these three archbishops have been described as the most reactionary and conservative in the Spanish church.

Monseñor Murgui has another type of reputation, a less than wonderful one among the local Spanish media and also among his own priests.

When the press claims that a typical reaction towards the bishop among Mallorcan clergy is one of sarcasm, this may well serve the press’s agenda. Sections of the media are suspicious of him, to the point of being antagonistic. And partly, this is because he never speaks to them. In his seven years as bishop, he has given not one interview to the press. Where his reticence is excused, it is not on the grounds of shyness, but on a wish to avoid getting too political.

The problem for the bishop, though, is that, despite his reluctance to engage with the media, his views are known and they are political (in the current social climate of Spain), while he represents an institution, the Catholic Church, which is anything but indifferent to politics.

The First Estate of the Catholic Church is heavily politicised and seeks to influence the political process, and this is especially so in Spain, despite Roman Catholicism having been abandoned as the official religion and despite also a dramatic fall in church-going. It is this seeking of influence that makes the Fourth Estate of the press so ready to leap onto what emanates from the Church. And much has been emanating, much that will be espoused from pulpits this weekend.

The Spanish Episcopal Conference, its president is Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela, the Archbishop of Madrid, has recently met. As is customary prior to a national election, it has had something to say for itself, as has Monseñor Murgui. There is little difference between the sentiments of the Conference and those of the bishop, which are being shared with the faithful, three weeks or so before the election.

It will come as no surprise that the bishop is not exactly supportive of issues such as abortion and gay marriage, but what has really stirred things up is that his letter, due to be read out in churches on the island, points to the “danger” of voting for politicians who support gay marriage and to “impositions” by the State. By politicians, he really means political parties, and by implication he lends his support firmly to one party – the Partido Popular.

The PP doesn’t need the Church’s support to win the election. Though as a party it is identified closely with the Church, it would probably prefer that the bishop, and the Episcopal Conference, in fact kept quiet. Social issues are unlikely to be prominent at hustings for an election that is all about Spain’s economy, but they may not be overlooked by much of an electorate which, dissatisfied with PSOE’s handling of the economy, has nevertheless broadly agreed with its social policies and with its attitude towards the Church.

For example, an investigation last year by the Mallorcan research organisation Gadeso into religious attitudes found that a majority between the ages of 16 and 59 supported gay marriage. A surprisingly high 35% of those over the age of 60 also supported it. The Church is out of step with social attitudes, just as it has become increasingly out of step with society as a whole and offers waning influence.

One suspects, however, that it sees the election of a PP government as a chance to grab back some influence, hence its pronouncements ahead of the election. For the PP though, it would be a huge mistake if it were to try and turn the clock back. There are unquestionably elements within the PP who would want to do just that, and there is always the suspicion that lurking somewhere in its background is the influence of the mysterious Opus Dei. But as a government it will have enough on its plate without seeking to send Spain back to a reactionary age.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

When Joe Met Arthur

Can politicians ever just be friends, or will there always be more to the relationship? What was said between José and Artur when they took themselves off for a spot of lunch at Palma’s Bar Bosch? Did they pledge undying fraternal togetherness, and if so, what language did they use?

“When Harry Met Sally” posited the question about being friends. At one stage, disagreement as to the question and differing philosophies, following what Sally had taken as a pass by Harry (at an American diner take on Bar Bosch), led to them not seeing each other for several years.

José and Artur, respectively President Bauzá of the Balearics and President Mas of Catalonia, met in Palma the other day. They are more Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau than Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. The odd couple. They share certain things in common, but they don’t quite fit.

There is the Catalan thing. They both speak it, though José would prefer not to call it Catalan and would prefer that they spoke Castilian. There are the politics. Both the Partido Popular and Artur’s Convergència i Unió occupy some similar political terrain, but the PP is further to the right than the CiU. And then there is the independence question. It is here that they have very different philosophies. Though the CiU manages to downplay its separationist tendency, Mas is all for Catalan self-government; Bauzá most definitely isn’t.

What everyone of course wanted to know was what Mas made of Bauzá’s attitude towards Catalan. Everyone wanted to know, which is why he sidestepped the issue, other than to say that Catalan is our “common language”. Common to whom exactly?

Bauza’s Catalan is one of dialect and his argument is one that is dialectic; he and Mas agree to disagree as, for Bauzá, Castilian is the common language and the dialects of Catalan are specific to the individual Balearic islands, but ne’er should enter the language of Catalanism and independence.

Mind you, they probably didn’t discuss the matter in quite such terms, as they bit into an austerity-correct Catalan bread roll at Bar Bosch. Yet they were able to agree that the cultures of the Balearics and the language, or should this be languages, will be jointly promoted through the Ramon Llull Institute, and lent their support to the exhibition of the artist Joan Miró, a native of Catalonia but a resident of Mallorca, as it travels next year to London and Washington.

Far more important was that both Mas and Bauzá had the opportunity to slag off their respective predecessors. None of any of the current mess is our fault; here was some common ground, along with the dirty great holes full of debt and deficit in the ground beneath the Balearic and Catalonian presidents.

There was a chance for a touch of celebration. The Spanish Government and the European Union had just announced that they are going to pump God knows how many millions or billions into the so-called Mediterranean Corridor, a new high-speed rail link to connect Algeciras with France. Not that it is entirely clear quite how beneficial this will be for the Balearics, despite Bauzá having been firmly in favour. He says it will mean a reduction in the cost of imports. Possibly, though he might also want to have a word with maritime operators.

Odd couple they may be, but they are similar in having similar concerns. And odd it may be if a Catalonian government, albeit one that is of a conservative political bent, should offer a model to both Bauzá and his commandants at Partido Popular central office. Catalonia’s health service, as broke as that of the Balearics, is undergoing what amounts to a partial privatisation, though Mas rejects a system of “co-payment”, one that Bauzá’s master, Mariano Rajoy, has been accused of planning to introduce (paying to see a national health doctor, for example).

Of course, one doesn’t really know what Rajoy plans because he either doesn’t have any plans or, more likely, he’s keeping them firmly under wraps before unleashing them on an electorate that will have willingly voted for the slaughter. One doesn’t really know the full extent of Bauzá’s plans either. He had been asked (pressurised) by central office not to announce the Balearics budget until after the national elections, but he now will – on Monday.

When Joe met Arthur was a pleasant diversion before the pain is delivered. It was friendly enough. Maybe they will remain friends, but they will never agree on Catalanism, and when Rajoy wins, what might this mean for Catalonia? Friendly for now, but disagreement will not be far away.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

When Enough Luxury Is Enough

Are the Partido Popular environmental vandals? Judging by responses from eco groups and the usual suspects on the left to plans to “unblock” certain developments on Mallorca, then the answer is yes.

As sure as governmental night followed electoral day then no sooner had the PP returned to Balearics political leadership in May than the bulldozers’ engines were being revved up. It was simply a question as to how long it would take for parts of the island to be flattened and to then be built on.

I am not, though, without some sympathy for the PP, if only because they are cocking a snook at the maddeningly zealous previous administration and its PSM (Mallorcan socialists) component in particular. The decision of the Bauzá government to revoke laws of 2007 and 2008 and so permit development of some ten sites in Mallorca and Ibiza stems partly from the fact that it was facing claims of nigh on one thousand million euros from developers whose bulldozers had been stopped in their tracks.

This financial justification is probably a convenience, however. A stronger one is that, by loosening the legal noose, some activity can be put into the local economy. Which is probably true, but only up to a point.

The projects that had been put on ice range from the development of an entertainment and commercial centre in Playa de Palma to apartments in Cala Carbó in Cala San Vicente. But the projects may not stop with these. Enviro group GOB reckons that a new law would open the way to building of a sort that had been expressly prohibited – that of residential accommodation on golf courses.

Why should this matter? In a way, it shouldn’t, except that it would raise the prospect of plans, such as those for the Muro golf course, currently on hold, being expanded to include accommodation. It has always been maintained that this development would be for golf and for golf alone.

It matters in this regard: Opposition to the Muro course from ordinary people of the town, and not that drummed up by the normal agitators, has centred on what is seen as being a development for the rich. You could be reasonably sure that whatever accommodation was built on a golf course, wherever it is, would not be for the ordinary people. And so it would also be with some of the projects that would be unblocked: Cala Carbó, luxury houses; two in Andratx, luxury apartments and villas.

At a time when the PP government is cutting back, when it is unable to pay various suppliers and when it has shown not the slightest hint of having something approximating to a sensitive social policy, it enters dangerous territory if all that appears to be on offer is some employment, the consequence of putting up luxury homes; luxury homes, moreover, which are likely to find foreign and part-time occupants.

It is less that environmental objections should be of concern and more that the PP appears to be betting the house on the private sector exclusively and on exclusive developments, to boot. Short-term boosts to employment in the construction industry are fine, but longer-term economic gains by flogging property to what are often absentee landlords are minor. It is a policy that heightens social division and has the potential for heightening social tensions.

There is also a certain disingenuousness on behalf of the government when it comes to the environmental aspects of developments. The reform of the tourism law, while making it easier for hotels to renovate existing sites, will not involve new building, or so the tourism minister has said. However, the tourism law is not the same as land law. In addition to luxury hotel projects in Capdepera and Campos that have already been announced, there would be a further one in Andratx. Don’t discount there being others.

Again, these should all generally be welcome, but they add to a growing perception of Mallorca reclaiming for itself its old cliché of a playground for the rich but also claiming for itself a society riven by division, a chasm made wider by the vociferous noises of the environmentally-appalled left and independence elements.

At some point, enough is going to become enough, and the phenomena of the “indignados” and Occupy will take on a specifically Mallorcan characteristic. The island has yet to experience what has occurred in Sardinia, where the wealthy have been pelted with wet sand, but trouble is being stored up. What might seem like practical changes to land use could cut an awful lot deeper than might be imagined.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

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.

The Last Bull In Barcelona

On Sunday evening the last bull in Barcelona, the last bull in Catalonia, will meet its maker, skewered on the matador’s sword of truth. The final red cape will come down on bullfighting in Catalonia and on the bullring, the Monumental, bringing to an end almost one hundred years of the “corrida” in the arena. On 1 January next year the Catalonian ban on bullfighting comes into effect. The bull is dead; long live the bull.

The ban, a largely political manoeuvre of anti-Spanishness dressed up behind the cloak of animal rights, will be only the second such prohibition in Spain. Others may follow, and if they were to, they would genuinely be in the name of animal rights. Driven by popular petition, to which the Catalonian parliament was not obliged to accede, the ban is colossally hypocritical; the bull-runs (the “correbous”), which are a Catalan tradition, are unaffected, while the bullfight, never a particularly strong tradition in Catalonia and far more associated with “Spain”, will be no more.

Or will it be no more? The politics of the bullfight are far more complex than the process that brought about the Catalonia ban, a process that allows for possible changes to laws on the basis of petitions (the so-called popular legislative initiatives). The national elections are looming, and Catalonia could yet find itself back to square one, and the bull, who might have looked forward to a long and happy life, could yet find itself back in the circle of the arena.

The national government has more or less abrogated any responsibility for decision-making regarding the bullfight. Despite it having effected a transfer of administrative oversight from the interior ministry to the culture ministry, and having also accepted that the bullfight is of cultural importance, it is left to regional governments to arbitrate on the bullfight’s future, if they so wish.

However, the Partido Popular, set to win the elections in November and generally in favour of the bullfight (or at least not particularly against it), may choose to challenge the right of the regions to decide. Catalonian PP members, of which there are indeed some, suggest that a constitutional court could decree that the regions don’t have the competency to decide. An opposite view is that the national constitutional court could not overturn Catalonian legislation.

The PP, justified in arguing that the ban lacks coherence given the non-ban on bull-runs, could make the bullfight an electoral issue, but it would be one of even greater irrelevance than fox-hunting was when Tony Blair was brandishing his animal-rights credentials; Spain has matters of far greater importance to worry about than bullfighting and than Labour had to.

It would be a political mistake in any event. Though support for the bullfight might play well in some parts of Spain, the Spanish no longer much care for the bullfight; overwhelmingly so, to the tune of about two to one. Moreover, the economics of bullfighting, for which there are conflicting views as to how much it contributes to national or local coffers, are such that it isn’t cheap to stage. Allied to the costs of bullfighting, there is the fact that the number of events has slumped dramatically – by over a third between 2007 and 2010.

Geographical variance in terms of popular support or rejection of bullfighting tends to bolster the current situation of allowing the regions to decide as to its future. Catalonia is a special case, as it always is a special case, but the ban there does nevertheless reflect an indifference towards bullfighting.

In Mallorca, where politicians at the time of the announcement of the Catalonia ban were divided as to whether they would support or not a similar move in the Balearics, the indifference is of a different order. Protests against bullfights and indeed against the island’s only correbou (that of Fornalutx, one that is not as disturbing as those in Catalonia where flames come from the end of the bulls’ horns) are token. Indeed the Fornalutx correbou protest this year, shunted off into a sports arena and ignored by the locals at the request of the mayor, was a PR fiasco.

For many, the Catalonia ban looked as though it might spell the end of the bullfight in Spain as a whole. It was never likely to because of the peculiarities of Catalonian politics; from November it will be even less likely.

The bull is dead. Long live the bull? Maybe not, and in Catalonia maybe not. The sword of truth may stay only briefly in its sheath, to return one day to the Monumental.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

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.