We Can Be Together: The case of “L’Estel”

When it comes to insults, it doesn’t get much worse than “hijo de puta”. The literal translation is bad enough, but it also means something rather more unpleasant, a word I fancy I first became aware of when Grace Slick and Marty Balin were proudly proclaiming their anarchy in song at the end of the 1960s. “Up against the wall, motherfucker.” It was astonishing that Jefferson Airplane could get away with such subversion (in that their record label did not censor the record, despite having censored other Airplane material), but they did, and the word has passed into subversion folklore, now revived – in a different language – in Mallorca.

Jefferson Airplane were reincarnated as Jefferson Starship (and eventually just Starship). They acquired the stars and lost their subversiveness. There is a star in Mallorca that hasn’t. “L’Estel” (the star) is a fortnightly magazine. It is the centre of a real old row, having called President Bauzá “hijo de puta”. The government has instructed the legal authorities to take action against the magazine because of the insult.

Are the government and the president being over-sensitive? Yes. But the insult is only part of the story. The magazine also had a go at the Partido Popular in general and at “forasteros” (Spanish “foreigners”) who don’t speak Catalan. Furthermore, it suggested that the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB) should be the Balearics shadow government. You might, therefore, detect a bit of a theme here. Let’s put it this way, had a magazine written in Castilian called Bauzá a “hijo de puta”, chances are that it might have caused little more than a ripple.

To add fuel to the fury that is apparently steaming from the ears of the PP is the fact that the magazine has enjoyed government and Council of Mallorca funding; at least it did so during the four years of the previous administration. The magazine hasn’t quite bitten off the hand that has fed it, given that it was most unlikely to still be on a government grant list, but the insult does show a bit of ingratitude to the taxpayer.

The row comes hard on the heels of the government’s withdrawal of funding for union worker representatives. For the public, that part of it more inclined to be sympathetic to the PP, both the grants for the representatives and for the magazine have been indicative of a pandering to the left, to the unions and to Catalanism.

And the left and Catalanism are very much what you find in “L’Estel”. One of its main contributors, for example, is a member of the Ibizan wing of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Catalonia Republican Left). Another, Miquel López Crespí, is one of the usual suspects to be found behind banners at gatherings in favour of independence and the “Catalan lands”. Its publisher is Mateu Joan i Florit, one more to add to our growing list of spectacularly bearded lefties. He outdoes both the Solzhenitsyn of PSOE’s Alfredo Rubalcaba and the prolific grey growth of the UGT union’s Cándido Mendez. To get an impression, think Rowan Williams with a suntan or even Fidel Castro.

Despite the unpleasantness of the insult and despite the grant, this has all the feel of a political agenda. There is of course clearly an agenda on behalf of “L’Estel”, certainly with its suggestion that the ostensibly independent but very much pro-Catalan and pro-the Catalan lands OCB should somehow be forming an opposition, but is the government right to go after a magazine in what might be construed as an attack on the freedom of speech? It runs the risk of creating a “cause célèbre” in seeking a prosecution – that could be made to be seen as a persecution – of a publication that claims to work “in favour of the independence of our nation” (by which one guesses that Florit, who uttered this, means the Catalan nation).

Whatever the rights or wrongs of the insult and of the government seeking recourse to the law, what we have here is a case of the tensions being ratcheted up. It was precisely this that concerned many, including myself, prior to the regional elections. It was a question of how long it would take for these tensions to start to surface. They now appear to be.

Jefferson Airplane’s song was called “We Can Be Together”, the “we” being those who opposed the American government. There is always another “we”. And in Mallorca, we are all likely to become more and more aware of who the “we’s” are. Because one thing is for sure; they aren’t all together.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

 

Necessity For Change: Tourism

Remarkable. Firstly, that I’ve got a good word for the Partido Popular; secondly, that it is displaying some uncommonly common sense. Where tourism is concerned, the PP have it over the other parties. They try not to obstruct where others do try. They make enemies along the way, and they are nowhere nearer striking a sensible balance between the needs of the established tourism industry (primarily the hotels) and those of the non-established, such as the holiday let business. But praise where praise is due.

A caveat. It was the hoteliers, in the form of the Mallorca hoteliers federation, that staged a conference entitled “Tourism, The Necessity For Change”. Change, where the hotels are concerned, is change that’s good for the hotels. Nevertheless, the outcomes of this conference are generally positive.

Amongst them is the likelihood that Meliá Hotels International will create a new “megacomplex” of four-star accommodation out of existing hotels (the Royal Beach, the Antillas Barbados and Mallorca Beach) and that this complex will be themed. The exact nature of this theming is not yet clear, but the wish to do so is one to be welcomed.

One hopes that the themes won’t be of the Flintstones variety; please God, anything but this. What one does hope is that it might be of a “theme” that Mallorca is crying out for, an all-year, all-weather complex; the theme would be akin to the Center Parcs concept. One fears that it might not be, in which case it would be a huge missed opportunity, but we will see.

Another outcome is that the tourism minister Carlos Delgado is minded to go ahead in permitting hotels to stage concerts. He could hardly say that he wouldn’t, having more or less single-handedly granted Mallorca Rocks its licences both as mayor of Calvia and now as tourism minister. He’s made his concert hotel bed, and now he has to lie in it; in different hotels. But good for him.

A further move, and one well heralded, is that the time when the tourism law is changed to enable condohotels seems to be drawing ever nearer. But one detects the first rumblings of division and self-interest amongst different hoteliers. There needs to a minimum size for apartments that can be converted to residential use (90 square metres), or there needs to be a stipulation that they are from existing three to four-star stock, or there needs to be provision to make sure that condos aren’t simply a “refuge for the obsolete”.

One would have thought that a refuge from the obsolete was a very good reason for allowing condos, always assuming investment were forthcoming to make them of sufficiently good standard. If the condo does go ahead, and it seems unlikely that it won’t, then this could be good news; residential apartments in hotels means that they won’t be all-inclusive.

The other side to this is that the condo idea, around for some years, is being exposed as blatantly self-serving when you take into account the fierce opposition of the hotels to the holiday-let sector. Forget all the other spin, this is the real reason for that opposition; one that allows the hotels to have the cake of conversion and of a lucrative residential tourism market and eat it, too, to the point of their gorging themselves.

And then there is something else. The PP government’s finance and business minister José Aguiló is flagging up an idea that is so sensible that is one that even ordinary Joe Soaps, who are neither members of governments nor anything in particular to do with the tourism industry, have thought up; and this is the idea of social-security breaks for businesses which lengthen the season, i.e. the likes of hotels which would stay open over winter.

The idea is such a no-brainer, one wonders why it has not been introduced and not even really discussed. One reason why it hasn’t is because of the debilitating culture endemic among many Spaniards and Mallorcans (and indeed other nationalities that have come to live in Mallorca) that you work for six months and then live off the state for the other six. It’s time for a cultural change and for an incentive for hotels to keep open, even on reduced staffs.

There is much to be positive about what the government has been saying these past few days. There is a “necessity for change”. The necessity has existed for years, but complacency, lack of will, lack of strategic thought have all prevented it. We might just have reached a stage when everyone finally understands the necessity and will actually do something about it.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Union Bashing In A Balearics Style

Are the Balearics heading for a Thatcher moment? The enemy within given a sound man-bagging by the Iron Gentleman?

José Bauzá and his merry men are indulging in a spot of union bashing. This isn’t the end of the brothers’ power as we know it, but it might be the thin end of the industrial relations wedge. Where Bauzá leads (or is rather instructed by central office), so a Madrid newly coloured blue come November will follow.

It is becoming clearer why Bauzá has suddenly acquired an hirsute appearance. It is so he can look in the beard the likes of Cándido Mendez, the secretary-general of the UGT union. Mendez’s fierce grey number makes Bauzá’s designer accessory seem distinctly wimpish, but a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, which is to not shave and look as hard as possible when confronting the ferocious Mendez.

The Thatcher moment, not that it actually is a Thatcher moment (yet), involves union worker representatives in the public sector. The Balearic Government is eliminating 89 of these representatives, 31 in the health sector, 34 in education and 24 in general services, along with a fund which pays for them. There are two classes of worker representatives, and the ones affected by the government’s decision are those who, in effect, work full-time in their representative capacity.

As with much of anything of a political nature in the Balearics or Spain, there is a symbolic aspect to the worker representatives (found in both the public and private sectors), as they are an embodiment of workers’ rights in law and under the constitution. The concept was taken from what was an established model in European countries such as Germany once democracy came to Spain. Prior to this, industrial relations didn’t exist. There wasn’t much industry to speak of and what relations there were tended to be somewhat one-sided; a snivelling waiter would be hauled out of a bar and a decree from the Generalísimo, announcing a 10% pay cut, would be nailed to his head.

The unions are none too impressed by the decision, and you would hardly expect them to react otherwise. The UGT (general workers) is threatening to break off relations with the government; the CCOO union believes the decision is the fore-runner of far wider cuts in the public service. Both unions accuse Bauzá and his boys of acting unilaterally and undemocratically.

A problem for the unions is that José Public might well not share their concerns. The representatives are known as “liberados sindicales”, the liberado bit referring to the fact that they have been freed from their normal work. Yet the liberado tag has become something of a pejorative, as the function is seen as being a bit of a cushy number.

There is also a criticism that it observes a kind of Parkinson’s Law. Work doesn’t expand to fill available time, rather time expands to justify the work. And what is the work? This is another criticism, that the representative ends up indulging and supporting spurious worker grievances: Juan says that the new toilet paper in the factory loos has given him piles and so demands six months on the sick. This sort of thing.

This all said, the unions do have a legitimate beef. The government appears to have taken it upon itself to rip up an agreement dating back to 2006, and it did so at a meeting to which the unions were given a mere 24-hours notice. If Bauzá is wanting to appear to be playing the hard man, then he is succeeding, but at what price?

The government’s action cannot be seen as one it has taken by itself. It may have ignored the unions, but it was a decision almost certainly taken for it elsewhere: in Madrid by the Partido Popular central office. Almost exactly a year ago, the idea of reducing (or scrapping) the worker representatives was getting a good airing. In Madrid. The president of the community of Madrid, the PP’s Esperanza Aguirre, reckoned a reduction was a good idea, and so did the party’s leader Mariano Rajoy. The idea has been bubbling away ever since, and, as mentioned previously, what the PP plans nationally it will try out, thanks to the compliant Bauzá, in the Balearics.

The government will argue it’s all to do with saving money, but the actual saving is very small – a couple of hundred grand. The move is, therefore, political and political alone. It is also, in its own way, symbolic, and you don’t need to be an expert in politics or industrial relations to appreciate what it symbolises.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Turning Ugly: Spain’s deficit

The game is as good as up for PSOE. The socialist government of José Luis Zapatero faces the prospect of having its bottom soundly spanked at the national elections in November. The standing down of Prime Minister Shoemaker has not proved sufficient to revive PSOE’s fortunes. His Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn-lookalike replacement, Alfredo Rubalcaba, is destined to be cast into the Gulag of a political wilderness, thanks to the Partido Popular securing an absolute majority of at least ten seats.

The latest poll suggests that PSOE supporters have all but given up. They know they’re going to get whipped, just as PSOE supporters in the Balearics knew they were bound for a hiding prior to the regional elections in May. The local PSOE-ites chucked the towel in well before May, so clear was it that José Bauzá was heading for the presidency.

What has helped to make PSOE supporters even more disaffected than they already were is the agreement struck between PSOE and the PP to amend the constitution and enshrine within it the principle of budgetary stability. It was an extraordinary step. The Spanish don’t, as a rule, do constitutional reforms.

What makes it even more extraordinary is the fact that it does not obviate the need for a separate change to legislation, one that will seek to ensure that Spain’s budget deficit is reduced to the European cap of three per cent of GDP by 2013. This change to the law will not actually be formalised until next year. After the elections, therefore.

The bizarreness of both the constitutional amendment and the proposed change to legislation is that it is a carve-up between Spain’s two main parties. PSOE may already have accepted that it will lose the elections, but it has been acting as though it were, well, as though it were part of a coalition. It is small wonder that other parties, such as the regional powerhouses in Catalonia and the Basque Country, are somewhat miffed.

The case for budgetary stability is unquestionable, but playing the constitution card, given that legislative means exist to establish limits to spending and deficits, is  unnecessary and can potentially be seen as an undermining of Spanish sovereignty. It has been denied that the European Central Bank has put pressure on Spain to invoke the constitution in respect of budgetary stability, but this is how it is being seen in some quarters.

Theoretically, a constitutional change requires a referendum, even if legally the change can be made without recourse to popular approval (or disapproval). But the absence of a referendum, the suggestion that Europe is in some way interfering with Spain’s sovereignty and the collusion between PSOE and the PP raise a question as to quite how democratic this all is.

PSOE, and therefore Rubalcaba, may have seen the agreement as a last throw of the dice to try and recoup some electoral support, but if they did, it was an odd way of going about this. What they have done is to make themselves hostages to the agreement. They will be hamstrung as an opposition and will lack credibility when the PP steamroller through austerity measures that will make those that PSOE has already introduced seem like profligacy.

Who will there be to offer an effective opposition to Mariano Rajoy when he becomes prime minister? With PSOE embarrassed into silence, the opposition will fall to small parties or regional parties (and the regions, such as the Balearics, are as affected by the stability agreement as is the national government). But the main opposition may not be parliamentary. Step forward, once more, the “indignados” and the 15-M movement that was behind the occupations of squares across Spain before, in some instances, the police waded in.

Sorry to have to say this, but things are going to turn ugly. And they may get uglier still. The constitutional amendment is not just bizarre and unnecessary, it is also a potentially dangerous precedent. The PP, emboldened by what, for most people, is an arcane matter of economics, might just eye up some other parts of the constitution, parts that are rather more understandable to José Public. Language, anyone?

In the Balearics, seen as the test site for what Rajoy has up his sleeve, Bauzá has been giving the previous PSOE-led administration a very public verbal beating, tossing around incredible sums of “catastrophic” debt left behind by PSOE, amounts that it denies. The Balearics are all but bust, we know this, but Bauzá’s is a tactic to paint as bleak a picture as possible and so try and ensure that the real pain to come is met with acquiescence. Unfortunately, he, and Rajoy, will not get quiet acceptance.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Battle Of The Beards

Beard is a slang term for a partner who disguises the other partner’s true sexual orientation. Let me say straightaway that I do not suggest for one moment that either Mariano Rajoy or Alfredo Rubalcaba would have a beard (except of course that both of them, in a hair sense, do) and that either is anything other than 100% heterosexual. That said, a touch of gayness might play well with Rubalcaba’s more liberal audience, while it wouldn’t with Rajoy’s conservative constituency.

José Luis Zapatero’s announcement of a November general election ushers forth, earlier than expected, the battle of the beards; the hustings of the hirsute will take place sooner than we had thought.

Zapatero, clean-shaven, will be succeeded by greying facial hair of either the left or right. The good money, at present, is on a right-wing full set, but Rubalcaba could yet take a Gillette to Rajoy, the polls suggesting that he has already started to trim the Partido Popular beard.

With Zapatero’s departure in November, we will lose one of the great comedy characters of European politics. What beckons next for José Luis Bean? A series of “The Thin Blue Line”? Inappropriate perhaps, if only in terms of colour. With his going, we will be deprived of one of the finest lookalikes to ever step onto the world stage, but we could yet get another.

Rubalcaba is a dead ringer for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (in his younger, less beardy days that is). And then there’s his name. Rubal? Ruble? Is there a closet Russian in the PSOE house, an old-time Commie waiting to emerge and lead Spain from its hard-labour Gulag of economic crisis? Or indeed plunge it deeper into crisis?

Unfortunately, we are unlikely to ever know or to ever have the satisfaction of having a former Russian novelist meeting Putin or Medvedev at European leaders’ gatherings. Instead there will be Rajoy, the greyest man of Spanish politics, bereft of charisma and any redeeming comedic features.

But whoever wins the upcoming election will be starting from a position of handicap. Both Rajoy and Rubalcaba can consider themselves already stripped of some support. Why? Because politicians with beards have been shown to poll worse than those without.

Spanish political facial hair has generally been absent since the days of Franco, who sported a sort of Hitler but never a beard. José Maria Aznar brought the moustache back into political fashion, along with hair dye, but Zapatero reverted to the clean-shaven presidential (or prime ministerial, if you prefer) look that had been favoured by Felipe González.

Now, though, the electorate is faced not only by faces with moustaches but those also with beards. It will make for a very difficult choice. On the basis that men with beards cannot be trusted, both may fail to win.

This is not anti-beardism on my behalf but a statement of the fact that politicians with beards don’t go down that well with electorates. And if one considers some of the leading political beards of the generation, you can begin to appreciate why: various Iranian ayatollahs as well as Ahmadineyad, Castro, David Blunkett.

When Europe’s political leaders line up for photos at economic crisis meetings any time after the Spanish elections, there will be one particularly conspicuous leader. Who’s the weird beard, will go the question. All other of Europe’s politicians have engaged the use of the razor. David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel; none of them bearded, or even close to being. Yet, there will be Rajoy (or Rubalcaba) in the glare of the cameras with bits of Euro-leaders’ lunch clinging to the chin. At a time when Moody’s is threatening to downgrade Spain’s credit rating, the last thing Spain needs is a future prime minister who can’t be trusted.

It is the beard factor that makes any prospect of Rajoy turning Spain’s fortunes around to be illusory. The question is, therefore: will he (or Rubalcaba) do the decent thing, in the name of Spanish economic recovery, and have a shave?

But to come back to the beard slang term, there is a definite contrast in style to the two political beards who will be battling it out in November. Rubalcaba’s Solzhenitsyn hints at something vaguely Bohemian and liberal. His beard is in keeping with the social policies that Zapatero has so successfully managed to introduce. It is the beard of a left-wing university lecturer who insists on wearing sandals.

Rajoy’s, on the other hand, is a studious and serious affair, as befits a studious and serious man disinclined to approve of liberal frivolities. It is the beard of a suited management consultant sent in to effect swingeing cuts. Which is exactly what he will do of course.

Bring on November, bring on the beards, and let’s get ready to stubble.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Lorenzo’s Foil: The Catalan argument

What’s the difference between Jorge and Chicho Lorenzo? Jorge is world MotoGP champion and Chicho isn’t. Jorge was born in Mallorca and Chicho wasn’t. He is originally from Galicia, which may explain why he has been brandishing the sword of honour in defence of the Castilian language and jabbing at the armour of Catalan. Lorenzo’s foil is just a tip of the épée in the Catalan argument, but it has caused an almighty row.

Lorenzo took to Facebook to attack Catalanists. Facebook took the page down when the insults began to fly. The whole incident has caused a storm mainly because of who Lorenzo is: father of Jorge, one of Mallorca’s favourite sons along with Rafael Nadal. Pity the poor Mallorcan sportsman who has to contend with a father or a relative’s opinions. Nadal had to put up with uncle Toni slagging Parisians off by referring to their stupidity.

Lorenzo’s foil, which I suppose you could say was foiled by Facebook removing it, comes at a time when arms are being taken up in the Catalan cause. And what has brought the swords out of the sheaths, in addition to Chicho’s Facebook campaign, has been the announcement by Bauzá’s Partido Popular government that it is preparing a law that will remove the requirement for public officials to be able to speak Catalan.

To the fore in opposing this law change is the teaching union STEI-i. The Catalan argument is at its most pertinent in the education sector; it is here that the real battle exists and was always likely to become hugely controversial, given the PP’s aggressive and negative stance towards Catalan.

The rhetoric surrounding the Catalan argument is extreme. Both sides, pro- and anti-Catalanists, accuse the other of being fascists; Lorenzo has, for example. Fascist may be a strong affront in a nation that once had a fascist dictator, but its use just makes it the more difficult to those who look on and observe the argument to be sympathetic to either side. There is something decidedly puerile about the fascist insult.

Bauzá, to continue the connection to the good old days of fascism, is being characterised as being like Franco. Both before and after the May elections, I referred to concerns that a PP administration under Bauzá would create social tensions because of its apparent anti-Catalanism, but to compare Bauzá with El Caudillo is going too far.

Nevertheless, these tensions were always going to come to the surface, and the heat of the rhetoric is being cranked up with Bauzá also being accused of attempting “cultural genocide” (Lorenzo has made the same accusation in the other direction).

The Catalan argument isn’t as simple as just being either for or against Catalan or Castilian as the dominant language. If it were this simple, then it would be easier to comprehend. But language isn’t the main issue.

The fact that Bauzá and the PP (and Chicho Lorenzo, come to that), while favouring Castilian over Catalan, also defend the use of the Catalan dialects of the Balearics adds complexity to what is more an issue of nationhood: Spain as a nation and Catalonia as a wannabe nation. What has been referred to as the “Catalan imposition”, the requirement for speaking Catalan in the public sector, and the one the PP would scrap, is wrapped up in the wider context of Catalonia’s ambitions to be a nation and for there to be a union of Catalan lands, of which the Balearics would be one.

Language equals culture and culture equals language; the two go hand in hand. The genocide charge being levelled at Bauzá is fallacious in the sense that he has no problem with the use of Catalan dialects, and these dialects could be said to be more representative of local cultures than pure Catalan.

But dialects are spoken by minorities, they are not the tongues of nations. To approve of them is to approve of diversity, not of nationalist pretensions. It is approval that can be considered as being tacitly designed to undermine such pretensions and in accord with attitudes of the Partido Popular nationally: those of being equivocal towards regionalism, be it that of the Balearics, Catalonia or anywhere, and of being fierce defenders of the Spanish nation, the whole of the Spanish nation, Catalonia and Catalan speakers included.

The swords are being drawn. There will be plenty more Chicho Lorenzos and plenty more Facebook campaigns and arguments, as there will be campaigns and arguments elsewhere. The worry is that the puerile use of the fascist insults gets more serious and that there is more than just a metaphorical brandishing of foils.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Small Is Beautiful?

President Bauzá’s right hand. A question is how far to the right is the right-hand man. Josep Aguiló, vice-president and in command of the economy, industry, employment, business. For a representative of what is intended to be a “small” government, he has got himself one hell of a big department.

Aguiló takes control of Balearic finances amidst a pantomime routine being played out by the governmental incomers and outgoers. It’s one to do with the state of the finances in the islands and specific administrations. The government’s debt is this high, say the incomers. Oh no it isn’t, respond the outgoers. Palma council’s up to its neck to this level of debt. Oh no it isn’t.

Let’s just accept that the finances aren’t very good. They are bad enough that the Balearic parliament is owed several million euros by the regional government and is in serious danger of not being able to pay its staff. There’s just one example.

The pantomime routine is familiar enough. New lot comes in, blames the previous lot. Aguiló is blaming the previous lot for having approved a budget in 2008 that was too ambitiously expansionist. As it turned out. The Antich administration was clobbered by economic crisis, but it, like the central government, fooled itself into not believing what was happening. Maybe it was a case of trying to keep up spirits, but when Zapatero famously announced there was no crisis, he did so at a time when he was driving an economy whose wheels were fast coming off.

The new government’s mantra is one of austerity and small government. Austerity we can probably understand. Can’t pay, won’t pay, because there isn’t any money. But what is small government?

On the face of it President Bauzá’s small government is about having fewer ministries and fewer departments within these ministries. The number of directorate-generals have been slashed to the extent that only of the new super-ministries, Biel Company’s agriculture-environment-land behemoth, has more or less retained the same number of departments.

Moving the furniture around on the organisation structure doesn’t amount to small government. Some savings may be evident from tossing the odd wormhole-ridden Welsh dresser into a skip, but the result is one of being not as large rather than small; the tasks of government remain much the same even if there are fewer bodies to perform them. Maybe it’s because they are expected to work harder, but the salaries of Bauzá’s cabinet will in fact increase.

Small government is a political philosophy as opposed to a way of drawing an organisational chart. On the principle that structure follows strategy, which it does, or should do, then Bauzá’s administration bears a strong resemblance to that of President Antich. The new structure, though, obscures the strategy. Quite deliberately so, you fancy, as this is where small government really kicks in.

Small government, so the theory would have it, is a means of getting government out of people’s hair, of not interfering overly in citizens’ day to day. The concept, and you can also call it limited government, goes right back to the American founding fathers; Thomas Jefferson was deeply suspicious of governments that were too powerful.

Limiting the degree to which governments control people’s lives and tell them how to live is a positive, but Jefferson’s principles are not what small government has come to mean. Instead it is shorthand for government not spending money. It can also mean that demands on citizens to spend money, in the form of taxes, are reduced. But they still have to pay somewhere along the line. And the line is one of deregulation and privatisation.

The CCOO union, as I remarked the other day, was probably overstating it when it raised fears of privatisation in education, but the fact that it has raised it makes it a possibility. It is the process of government potentially relinquishing its direct hold over certain provisions that leads to the question about Sr. Aguiló. How far might he go?

The extent of measures that the new government might enact raises again the question as to how much the local Partido Popular is being guided or driven by the national party. Mariano Rajoy, who is likely to succeed Zapatero, has said that what will happen in the Balearics will be an “advance” on what the PP would do nationally. Without overtly saying so, Rajoy is implying that the Balearics are a test bed, an experiment. It’s how far the experiment is meant to go that is the issue.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Real Carlos Delgado?

So, after all the talk, the new tourism minister for the Balearics is indeed a professional. A professional politician. Regardless of whatever agreement Carlos Delgado and José Ramón Bauzá are meant to have cooked up at the time of the Partido Popular leadership election in 2010, for Delgado not to have been named as tourism minister would have raised serious questions as to unity within the PP; the unity of the party’s right-wing that is.

Bauzá could not have afforded not to have appointed Delgado to tourism. But despite the politicking behind the appointment, Bauzá may well have chosen wisely, even though one suspects his hands were tied.

The good thing about Delgado is that you know what you are getting. He has been clear and honest enough about his ambitions and his attitudes. Some of his pronouncements on matters unrelated to tourism have caused disquiet, most obviously the language thing, but on tourism his instincts seem entirely appropriate and forward-thinking.

The surprise has been, therefore, why there was opposition to his appointment. This surfaced in March when he spoke about his ambition to be tourism minister, and it came from hoteliers. The fear then was that Delgado would clash with the hoteliers, though it was never made clear as to quite why, which led to a conclusion that it was largely personal.

The appointment made, the hoteliers, in the form of the Mallorcan hotel federation, have now come out and said that they look upon the appointment very positively. But the federation always says this. It had plenty of opportunity to do so while the tourism ministry door was revolving during the Antich administration; whether it believed what it was saying or not. It’s known as being diplomatic.

One of Mallorca’s leading hoteliers, Gabriel Escarrer, the president of Meliá Hotels International, has issued a glowing assessment of Delgado. The right noises are being made, therefore, but behind them you wonder as to the degree to which they are designed to influence Delgado. He has a reputation of being his own man, and there is one issue, barely mentioned in despatches at present, that the good free-marketer Delgado will have to contend with – that of the confusion surrounding the holiday-let industry and the hoteliers’ hostility towards it.

This aside, most of what Delgado has said and is saying should be music to the ears of the hoteliers and others in the tourism industry. Creating theme parks, allowing for condohotels, reducing IVA; they are all positive. But his market liberalism has not played well with everyone. His declaration that he will make the general tourism law more flexible in order to permit concerts at hotels is a clear shot across the bows of Acotur, the tourist business association, and others that have opposed the Mallorca Rocks hotel in Magalluf, and a pop also at the association’s hounding of Calvia town hall for having granted the hotel licences for the concerts.

The controversy that has surrounded Mallorca Rocks is symbolic of what Delgado represents. Market conservatism is not a concept he adheres to. Acotur has brought criticism upon itself by opposing innovation and new business; it has cast itself as being reactionary and the defender of the status quo. If Delgado can break the shackles of such conservatism and vested interests, then he could well prove to be the tourism minister that Mallorca has been crying out for.

Much is being made of the fact that Delgado, as former mayor of Calvia, is the right man for the job because he has been mayor of a municipality with such a strong tourism economy. The argument doesn’t necessarily follow. When Miguel Ferrer, the then mayor of Alcúdia, became tourism minister, the same thing was said. This smacked of a rationalisation for an appointment that owed more to Buggins’s turn than to credentials for the job. Delgado is different in that he has been intimately involved with Calvia’s tourism in a way that Ferrer wasn’t in Alcúdia, but what actually has he done? PSOE, for instance, suggests that tourism initiatives in the town have been non-existent.

And this is the worry with Delgado. For all his instincts, for all his pronouncements, for all his challenge to forces of market illiberalism and for all his new best friends among the hoteliers, does his publicity outweigh the reality? We are about to find out.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Unprincipled

A double-header today. Firstly, Alcúdia and its pacts. A bit later, the tourism minister.

The other day, under the title “Carme Chameleon”, I looked at the possibility of the PSM (Mallorcan socialists) forming a pact with the Partido Popular to govern Alcúdia town hall. The title was quite deliberate. Turning colours. I hadn’t expected that it would happen, but, unless there is a change of heart, it is now on the cards. To use another song from the 1980s, Carme Garcia will have shed her skin and smashed a damn great sledgehammer into what pretence there is in Mallorca as to principled politics.

The spin is that she will align herself with the PP by setting aside ideological differences because the PP, which gained eight councillors (one short of the nine required), has the moral right to govern Alcúdia. There’s no debating this. Twice as many councillors as the next party, almost twice as much of the vote as the next lot, the PP has to be allowed to run the town hall. There is also, unquestionably, a bit of a sisters’ act going on, which, where Garcia is concerned, you can understand. The alternative for her would be to align with the mates of the Convergència and PSOE, which might pose problems for her, and them.

However, there is also ambition. Garcia is likely to end up as the right-hand woman of the PP’s Coloma Terrasa, whether Terrasa really wants her or not. Then there is credibility. Garcia’s has been shot to pieces. If she does indeed end up as a “teniente” to the new mayor, she will be treated with utter contempt. Her party, the PSM, is livid and she has been booted out of the party for arriving at a personal agreement with the PP. She has been branded as a turncoat.

The PSM is pleading with the PP to reject the agreement. PSOE is calling on José Bauzá to in effect veto it. If there were any principles, then the PP would do so and Terrasa would be left to govern with a minority, notwithstanding the difficulties this would create.

Garcia’s actions are disgraceful. They are not principled. Yes, she was returned as a councillor, but it was with a small percentage of the vote. Who did this small percentage vote for? Her or the PSM? Activists within the PSM might have enjoyed the opportunity of town hall representation, but they wouldn’t have enjoyed an alliance with the PP which is the complete opposite of the PSM. Nor, you would think, would PP supporters enjoy the idea of a Mallorcan socialist pulling some strings.

The proportional system can be held open to ridicule, and it is being made to look completely ridiculous in Alcúdia, while Garcia has made herself a laughing-stock.

Tourism minister
Moving onto the never-ending saga as to who might end up as the new tourism minister, the possibility of a so-called “professional” taking the reins at the ministry keeps on popping up.

It would appear that certain professionals have indeed been canvassed as to their willingness to become tourism supremo. One of them is Alvaro Middelmann, the boss of Air Berlin in Iberia, and the former president of the Fomento del Turismo (the Mallorcan tourism board). Why on earth would Middelmann want the job? He’s hugely qualified to do it, but what benefit would it bring him? It wouldn’t be financial, that’s for sure. And he’s pretty much said as much.

It’s all very well people banging on about the need for a professional to be in charge of tourism, but the problem is that professionals, if they are any good, earn a considerably larger wedge doing what they do outside of government than were they inside it.

There is also a potential problem as to perception. Middelmann, for example, is associated with one particular airline and with one particular market, the German market. Such associations could cause issues down the line, even if the perception were misplaced. Similar associations and perceptions could apply to others.

And then there is an issue of principle. What exactly is the deal with possibly appointing someone who hasn’t been elected? Carlos Delgado, the bookies’ favourite for the job, may be disliked, other candidates from within the PP may in fact be useless, but they have at least been elected.

Finally, if the tourism ministry is as bust as it is meant to be and if it fails to be a massive beneficiary of Bauzá benevolence, do you honestly think someone such as Middelmann, or any other highly-regarded professional, would risk their reputation when the mud starts flying about lack of promotion this, lack of promotion that? If a pro does end up at tourism, it’s probably because he or she needs a job. You wouldn’t want it otherwise.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Not Flush But Bust: Mallorca’s town halls

The total debt of town halls in Mallorca is just short of 475 million euros. Two hundred million of this is accounted for by Palma, the ninth most indebted city administration in Spain.

The 2010 report into town hall debt issued by the national finance ministry will make uneasy reading for the new Partido Popular administration. Apart from Palma, not run by the PP over the past four years, eight of the ten most indebted town halls in Mallorca were governed by the PP and still are.

The PP of José Bauzá is intent on austerity, adding to that which central government has already demanded of town halls. The fact that town halls have been barred from acquiring further debt just emphasises the parlous state of public finance in Mallorca and in Spain.

It is, or should be, an embarrassment to the PP that, outside Palma, two large municipalities – Calvia and Llucmajor – both controlled by the PP and, in the former case, ruled over until recently by cabinet aspirant Carlos Delgado, account between them for over 20% (100 million euros) of Mallorca’s town hall debt. Inca, another PP enclave and one formerly presided over by the new “speaker” of the Balearics parliament, Pere Rotger, has amassed close to 16 million.

While it is to be expected that larger towns might have greater debt, this doesn’t explain how tiny Escorca, with only 276 residents, manages to outstrip even Calvia, to the tune of 2.5 to 1, in terms of debt per head of population. It is the per capita debt that gives a rather more real picture of debt, and it is this which relates to the eight out of the top ten most indebted town halls being PP-run.

This figure is more real because the responsibilities of town halls, just as with the number of councillors a town hall can have, are determined by the size of a municipality’s population. Logically, the greater the responsibilities and the greater the population, so the greater is the demand for funding, which invariably means debt. The issue isn’t so much that there is debt, but that there is so much of it. (It should be pointed out that the costs for servicing smaller municipalities are, in relative unit-cost terms, higher than those of larger towns.)

The Spanish equivalent of the Audit Commission fired a warning shot across the bows of town halls in December last year by saying that there needed to be rationalisation, by which it meant merger of municipalities or the sharing of resources. Though the federation of local authorities in the Balearics had admitted some months before that cuts were going to have to be made, such as to fiesta budgets, it argued that the current system of financing was the best. Despite all the debt, therefore.

One reason why debt has become such an issue relates to the sometimes staggering increase in the cost of town hall staffs since the turn of the century. Take another small municipality: Santa Eugènia. It has a population of just over 1500 people. It is not one of the worst offenders when it comes to debt (just shy of 600,000 euros, three-quarters that of Escorca’s), but its town hall personnel costs rose 2700% between 1999 and 2009. Admittedly it was starting out from a very low base – the equivalent of 14,300 euros in 1999 – but the increase was still startling.

What shouldn’t be forgotten, however, is that during the first decade of this century there was an equally startling increase in Mallorca’s population – 25%.

Notwithstanding the figures produced by the finance ministry, doubts prevail as to the real level of debt at certain town halls. In Pollensa, for example, a lack of transparency is blamed for uncertainty as to the true nature of debt, while in Alcúdia the Mallorcan socialists, who hold the key to the town’s future administration, have made a comprehensive audit a stipulation of any pact it will broker.

Whatever the real figures, there is no question that there is one hell of a lot of debt sloshing about in Mallorca’s town halls, but it is debt that has been driven, in no small part, by extraordinary population growth. However, if you also take into account the fact that the local authorities’ federation reckons that town hall revenues have declined by as much as 40%, then you have a situation in which something has to give.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.