The Return Of The Jedi: Spain’s census

In March the UK will conduct its decennial census. In September Spain will conduct its own. Both are in line with the recommendation of the United Nations that censuses should be undertaken every ten years. The two are, otherwise, different. In the UK the census covers everyone. In Spain it does not. The Spanish census this year will be conducted in a different way to previous ones. In a bid to save money, the Spanish national statistics office (INE) will ask only 10% of the population to answer its questionnaire.

The UN’s “bible” for conducting censuses stretches to 442 pages. I got about as far as page 10. One of the key principles is that of “individual enumeration”, i.e. capturing information about everyone. How does the Spanish approach conform with this principle?

The statistics office believes that the 10% will give the same sort of information as to what was previously a system of making house-to-house visits, while costing 25% less. It’s an ambitious claim when you consider that the statistics office also intends to use electoral roll information.

Censuses are not foolproof. Despite the UK’s legal requirement for everyone to fill out a form, people slip through the net, either because they object to the capturing of information or because they don’t want to reveal themselves. In Spain it would be hard to put a figure on quite how many might not want their existence to be known or how many would simply fall under the radar because they are neither registered as resident nor registered to vote. And the latest figures for foreigners who have registered to vote in the forthcoming local elections confirm that there is a vast number who, either because of inertia and apathy or for some other reason, are not registered.

The Spanish census will, even without electoral roll information, be a sample. Presumably, the statistics office has some statistical wizardry that will enable it to extrapolate data that will give a complete picture, but you might not be so confident that it does, given the record of some other exercises in statistics, tourism spend for example. Fundamentally though, it is difficult to see how this approach conforms with how a census should be conducted.

Does it matter? Perhaps it doesn’t. In terms of core population data, this is pretty much available as it is, birth records adding to the information that is held on everyone through their ID cards or residency and NIE certificates, assuming they have one. Every year a report on population, by municipality, is issued. But population is only part of the census story.

In the 2001 census in the UK and other English-speaking countries, a great practical joke was played on the census compilers enquiring after religious inclination: the fourth-largest religious group in England and Wales was Jedi, as in Jedi Knight. With the emergence of social media to inspire them, what tricks might be played this time round?

The UK census has also captured information on such issues as whether a home has central heating and educational qualifications. The last Spanish census in 2001 wanted to know about matters as diverse as migration, type of home and, of all things, fertility.

The census does, therefore, attempt to try and get to know something about people. It may be no more than a glorified piece of market research, but the government does at least try to compile a picture of everyone, Spanish or non-Spanish. It’s more than the political parties do.

Using the electoral roll in the census is doomed to fail the test of creating a Domesday, for the reasons I have noted above. It’s far from surprising that there should be a damn great hole when it comes to those registered to vote. Mallorcans themselves, 68% of them, in a survey just released by Gadeso, the research organisation, consider the political situation on the island to be “bad”. But being bad isn’t a reason for not taking an interest, especially as Mallorcan politics has such high comedic, nay farcical, characteristics.

Apathy towards politics, regardless of whether it is British or Mallorcan, is understandable, but locally the apathy is heightened by a lack of appreciation among expats as to what the parties are and what they stand for and by any efforts by the parties to come to an appreciation of their foreign constituents.

The one and only time I have been “doorstepped” in Mallorca was when the local Partido Popular pitched up at the gate mob-handed. Five of them, grinning like religious zealots on a mission.

They were determined to tell me how good the then-to-be-built motorway extension from Inca was going to be for foreigners. It was a bizarre and somewhat patronising assertion. Though I didn’t have much sympathy for the eco-warriors who had camped out to try and prevent the motorway, this opposition was a good enough pretext with which to tell the PP-ers I wouldn’t be voting for them. They had made an assumption that, as a foreigner, I would be sympathetic to them.

If the political parties were serious about the foreign vote and if the census might achieve some semblance of electoral-roll completeness, then they should start by saying what they might, or would do for foreign voters. They should start by trying to understand the foreign-voter’s motivation. But if they start asking about religion, they’ll get one answer. I’m a Jedi.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

By The Left: PSM and nationalism

I guess I have always been a bit of a leftie. Not that I have ever taken it particularly seriously. At university it was more a case of playing. I haven’t drifted as far though as a friend from those days who was a card-carrying Trot and nowadays reads “The Telegraph” and is some banking and economics expert. University is the playground of politics. Ultimately it doesn’t really mean anything, other than as a launch-pad to a political career.

However, had I grown up in Mallorca, had I grown up in the past three decades in Mallorca, and had I gone to university, I can well believe that I would now be a Mallorcan leftie, suspicious of and antagonistic towards tourism, wedded to the beardie fringe of the environment, speaking only a Mallorquín Catalan and practising my Mallorcan bagpipes to the annoyance of the neighbours. I am actually full of admiration for those with ideals, even those that seem somewhat nuts.

There was this interview on Sunday in “The Bulletin”. Chances are it won’t appear on the paper’s website or if it does it will soon disappear from cyberspace, given a less-than-rigorous approach to archiving. (It hasn’t appeared.) Shame, it was not without interest. The subject of the interview was one Lucy Jane Collyer, British-born but Mallorcan-grown, so to speak. She is 27, became politically active at university and is now a member of the PSM Mallorcan socialists. I can, you might find this hard to believe, connect with what she has to say, the PSM standing for social justice, the preservation of the environment and the protection of the (Catalan) language and culture. I can also agree with what she says about tourism, inasmuch as she refers to the need for “sustainable development and the development of new and alternative industries to tourism on which we have become so dependent”. I also agree with her when she dismisses the idea of President Antich calling an early election, even if there might be a touch of party self-interest here, given that the PSM has secured itself a couple of healthy ministries since the Unió Mallorquina (UM) were shown the door.

All of this is fine. Where I start to have problems though are with the fact that certain issues are simply not explored. Take this one. The PSM is a member of the European Free Alliance, a European grouping comprising some credible parties such as the Scottish National Party and others that are crackpots. Lucy is to present a motion to the alliance on something called “regional insularity”. What on earth is this? Insularity, by definition, means inward-looking or narrow-minded. Is this what is actually meant? It seems to imply, and there is a later reference to the support for local produce and farmers and the like, something of a back-to-the-future autarky – self-sufficiency if you prefer. It is hard to know because the subject hasn’t been explored. Raise the “insularity” flag and someone should be asking some tough questions.

Then take the issue of nationalism. Behind a photo of Lucy is the party’s banner “PSM Entesa Nacionalista”. The PSM is a nationalist party. All we get though is that nationalism doesn’t mean what it means to the English (the BNP presumably) and that it is different to the nationalism of the PSM’s great rivals, the UM. To the English, the nationalism of the lunatic far right is quite different to the sensible left-of-centre SNP. But there is still confusion. What actually is nationalism? And in the Mallorcan context, what does it mean? In one respect, it makes no sense. How can an island – an island, mind – with no sense of or aspirations to nationhood spawn not one but two “nationalist” parties? Or maybe there is such an aspiration. Who knows?

In the article, Lucy says that the PSM wants “to include all members of society … regardless of there (sic) origins”. In other words it is open to all. Great. But it is not good enough to declare this openness by pointing out that a Briton, albeit one brought up in Mallorca, enjoys a prominent position in the party or that the UM once spoke about Mallorca being for Mallorcans. The Catalan issue, for example, is one that can and does alienate and deter those who might have sympathy for the PSM’s nationalism, whatever this is. Protecting the language, fine, but go to the PSM’s website and it is all in Catalan. No nod in the direction of Castilian or English or German. Like so many other bodies, town halls for example, who might profess inclusiveness, the PSM fails on account of its linguistic dogma. And one keeps coming back to what is meant by its brand of nationalism. The interview missed a golden opportunity to explore this and its implications for those from other countries.

The PSM and the UM are far more interesting political phenomena than the national parties, the Partido Popular and the PSOE. Far more interesting because of trying to understand what they stand for (and in the case of the UM because it’s currently up to its neck in the brown stuff of corruption) and because they have a mutual hostility in seeking to claim the nationalist ground. But it’s still hard to really say what either of them truly represents. And what either of them means by nationalism. Regional insularity, anyone? Worrying. Or it might be if we knew what the hell it meant.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

An Ice-Pick In The Head – Mallorca And Coalition Politics

At the risk of over-doing the political angle, when it appears that there is a collective failure to see the point, I feel I have to say something. It’s this coalition politics deal, the one that is said to blight Mallorcan politics. I’ll set to one side the corruption aspect, because it’s irrelevant in this context – as I said the other day. The argument goes, in Mallorca, that the diversity of political parties that constitute governments is bound to lead to failure. The current regional government administration comprises three elements – the PSOE socialists (the coalition leaders and providers of the president), the left-wing Bloc (itself a mish-mash of minor parties) and the centre-right Unió Mallorquina, the ones who have caused the problems because of the corruption cases and not because of … in-fighting.

It is this, in-fighting, which goes to the heart of the anti-coalition argument, and was one expounded in the weekly yes-no interlude in “The Bulletin” yesterday. The point of this debate was that both sides are missing the point, as do others who constantly harp on about the propensity for in-fighting caused by coalition. Let’s get it clear. There is in-fighting, there is bound to be in-fighting. It may be exacerbated by having a collection of competing political ideologies defined along separate party lines, but coalitions are not the only forms of government which give rise to in-fighting. All forms of government do. Politics, by nature, is about in-fighting. Politics is the collision of ego and power-grabbing and therefore in-fighting.

Simple-majority governments are no less immune. Go ask John Major about the “bastards” or Michael Portillo and his rapidly created office when Major looked to be on the point of going. Ask the Tories about Europe. Ask Gordon Brown or Tony Blair about each other. All in-fighting. Blair attempted to impose discipline on New Labour and succeeded for a while, but gave rise to the obscenity of the set pieces at PMQs and the fawning of the Blair Babes; it was not democratic, but a form of brainwashed groupthink. Go back a bit further to Kinnock and his obscenity – of letters of redundancy being sent out by taxi, all to the background of Derek Hatton shouting his mouth off, Eric Heffer walking out and the Militant tendency being dispatched into oblivion.

Political parties are not uniform. The Conservative Party has long been known for its “broad church”. Labour may have lost some of its more extreme elements, but is still a thing of left and right. In-fighting cannot be completely controlled out, whatever style of government obtains. Even totalitarian regimes can’t manage it. Go ask, were you able to, Leon Trotsky. What did he get for his troubles? An ice-pick in the head. At least politics is a bit less violent these days; well, in the “civilised” world at any rate. Essentially, though, any political party exists as an artifice; one of a superficially shared value but one, nevertheless, exploited by its individual members for the gain of power and prestige. So also does a coalition or any form of government.

Democracies create imperfect forms of government. Yet there is no “perfect” form of government, just as there is no “perfect” electoral system. Coalition works reasonably well where the philosophy of consensus exists, such as in Germany. Coalition or majority, it is the art of compromise that is often its saviour. And compromise can only come from a mature and stable political mindset, that of the individual politician. It is this, the – if you like – psychological and philosophical capability to set aside ideologies in pursuit of the greater good that allows whatever form of government to function.

A more pertinent question, in the Mallorcan and Balearics context, is whether there exists sufficient maturity, on behalf of politicians from a multiplicity of parties, small and large, to allow for government to function effectively. It is not just personal maturity but also systemic maturity; democracy is still a relatively recent phenomenon. One might argue that 30 years is long enough. Perhaps so, or perhaps not. Perhaps they are still feeling their way towards a more effective management of the political system. Whatever the case, it is wrong to blame the style of government and therefore Mallorcan politics as a whole, or to use the convenient but largely misunderstood accusation of in-fighting as a reason for somehow dismantling the system. Let them get on with it. They’ll get there in the end. Maybe.