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.

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.

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.

So-So: Whither PSOE?

Among the many strange aspects of Mallorca’s politics, one of the stranger is the sheer anonymity of the party now exiting stage left. PSOE in Mallorca has been largely synonymous with Francesc Antich, especially during its period of government just finished. In its previous administration, it had more recognisable characters, such as Joan Mesquida, now the national secretary-general for tourism, and Celestí Alomar, the then tourism minister and now head of the Balearics division of the Costas authority, but they became recognisable largely because it was they who were responsible for the aborted and hated eco-tax.

In the past four years, however, barely anyone else from PSOE has come to the public’s attention. Carles Manera, the finance minister, was largely unknown; Joana Barceló only grabbed the headlines when she was landed with the poisoned chalice of tourism. Greater publicity attached itself to members of the government who weren’t in PSOE, and usually attached itself to them for the wrong reasons.

Antich is now off to Madrid. The next local leader of PSOE may be Francina Armengol, given a stuffing by the Partido Popular at the elections for the Council of Mallorca. Apart from her, well who is there?

Perhaps it is to PSOE’s credit that no one knows who their leading lights are. It has been hard not to know about politicians from other parties engaged in dubious practices or internecine strife, the latter most evident within the PP. But it can also be seen as a failure of the party to really promote itself. The column inches devoted to the PP and to its various characters is disproportionately high compared with those dedicated to PSOE. And it isn’t simply because the PP’s in-fighting makes it far more interesting than PSOE.

One reason why the PP won the elections so easily and why it, and its politicians, are more in the public eye comes down to the fact that it has a more effective party machine. Its organisation is better.

When one talks about party organisation, one issue that crops up is that of funding. The lion’s share of funding comes out of the public purse, and the larger the party and the greater its representation the more money it gets. Like Real Madrid and Barcelona scooping most of television’s football money, the rich get richer and the smaller parties and teams lose out.

Given public funding, PSOE and the PP should theoretically be on roughly similar footings, but there is also the matter of other sources of funding. Measures have been taken to make this funding more transparent, but the 2009 report by the Council of Europe into the transparency of funding in Spain revealed ongoing disquiet as to quite how transparent it is, with municipalities particularly coming under its microscope.

Linked to the issue of funding is one of the sociology of political parties in Mallorca. And it is here that the PP knocks PSOE into a cocked hat. Historically, albeit that the history has not even yet reached thirty years, Mallorca is a PP stronghold, a reflection of an innate conservatism among Mallorcans but also of the strength of networks. The PP has been the vehicle through which to get on, to enjoy the spoils in a way that PSOE has never offered.

Ideology plays only a small part in local politics and where it has appeared to, it has been more a thin veneer over the desire for power and for tapping into the Mallorcan networks. The Unió Mallorquina was a classic example. On the face of it, it only differed from the PP insofar as it had a nationalist agenda, but it was one that was understated. It was never a radical party, because radicalism doesn’t generally fit with the Mallorcan mindset. Its ideology was secondary to its existence for existence’s sake.

For PSOE, the challenges are several. It needs to improve its organisation, to become more visible, to portray greater personality. And it needs to define what it stands for. But here it really faces a problem. As with other parties ostensibly of the left which try to occupy the centre or even veer off towards the right, it can create an ideological confusion. On issues other than the economy, what is PSOE in Mallorca? Is it regionalist, and thus the opposite of the PP? Is it Catalanist? Ditto. What is it? But if ideology doesn’t really count for much in Mallorca, the party faces a starker question – whither PSOE?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

War: What Is It Good For?

If you are looking to start a war, then who better than someone who bears the name.

The Guerra Un-Civil of the elections has started, and a Guerra has entered the fray, limp howitzers of bile being volleyed over the current opposition and dripping from them like trails of blood from the corners of a Count Dracula mouth. This, the Dracula one, is an image that is increasingly disturbing me. It is as a result of a worryingly euphoriant eureka moment when I suddenly realised that José Ramón Bauzá has more than just a hint of the cape and high collar of a Transylvanian about him.

While Count Bauzá is drawing on the blood of the body Catalan, PSOE has appointed a witchfinder-general, its one-time central government vice-president. His name? Guerra. Mr. War. Alfonso of this ilk.

In war, there are the dispensable. Into the battle, therefore, cast an OAP politician everyone had forgotten was still with us. If he takes the flak, it doesn’t much matter. Mr. War has come out all guns misfiring from a prosthetic hip. He has taken aim and his pop-gun has let out a pantomime sheetlet with a corruption bang scrawled on it.

The Balearics wing of the PSOE socialist party met in Palma on Friday for a pre-election powwow at which Sr. Guerra launched into the Partido Popular and suggested that, far from having reformed themselves, its leaders should be banged up in chokey.

This meeting was more a pre-voting day wake than a call to arms for the battles that await in government after 22 May. The local PSOE knows that it’s going to be completely mullered at the polls. It’s why Sr. Guerra was dragged out of his bath chair and unleashed his rallying cry to the troops. The cry of a desperate party that already knows its fate.

There is nothing left for PSOE to cling onto than the lifeboat of corruption. Sr. Guerra reiterated the still malodorous charges and cases that waft from the rotten-egg fertiliser in the corner of José Bauzá’s new PP perfumed garden. But why bother?

It may be accurate to remind the electorate of the PP’s sleazy past, but does the electorate take much notice? Were it to, and were corruption as significant an issue as it is made out to be, then it would not be the PP which is currently set to secure a 30-seat majority in the local elections. It would, instead, be PSOE; its collective nose is relatively clean and has not had to breathe in the whiff of political impropriety.

PSOE has gone on the corruption offensive not just because it’s losing and because of the trial spectaculars of former PP president Jaume Matas, but also because it accuses Bauzá of hypocrisy. His grand clean-up of the PP was meant to have excluded any politician tainted by scandal from the runners and riders on 22 May.

Another PSOE grandee, Rosamaria Alberdi, the party’s Balearics secretary, has claimed that Bauzá is duping the electorate, pointing to both Maria Salom, the candidate for the presidency of the Council of Mallorca, and Antoni Pastor, the mayor of Manacor, as two who have been implicated in the past.

The problem for Sr. Guerra, Sra. Alberdi and PSOE is that the electorate has more pressing matters to consider. It was unfortunate for President Antich that global economic crisis should have consumed his period in office, but it did not help with any ambition to secure a second term, when the PP is historically the natural party of Balearics government. Since 2007, Antich has effectively been a dead man walking, given the near certainty that the status quo of PP dominance would be restored.

Corruption once did influence an election. The Sóller tunnel affair of the mid-1990s did have an impact and led to PSOE and Antich taking power for the first time. But, and despite all the publicity the various cases attract, it has lost its power to shock. The electorate is not stupid. It knows or suspects that all the parties are up to no good or have the potential to get up to no good. Consequently, making corruption a key issue, the issue, is limp. It is the dying call of a party that knows that it is losing the war. It’s not good for anything.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Fever Isn’t Such A New Thing – Elections in 2011

Election fever may be starting to take hold in the UK, but in Mallorca the fever is, as yet, just a mild sniffle. Regional elections for the Balearic Government do not take place till 2011, but plans are starting to be put into place. The greatest uncertainty surrounds the current president, Francesc Antich, who has been equivocal as to whether he will seek a further term. The good money, until now, has been that he will not stand again, and he has hinted that this might be the case, but his party – the PSOE socialists – would like him to and to continue as secretary-general of the party.

Whatever one thinks about Antich and indeed his socialist party, and whatever one thinks about his handling of affairs from the economic crisis to the corruption scandals, he has been a good enough president. More than this, he is one of the very few Mallorcan politicians who can be said to demonstrate anything like statesman-like qualities and genuine political maturity. His diplomacy and patience in dealing with the disruptions in government – none of them of his making – have been commented upon and been admired. He has also overseen a significant increase in the level of central funding coming into the islands for different projects. It was not, for example, his fault that one of the major projects – the rail extension to Alcúdia – was scuppered. He is dealt the hand he is dealt, one that pretty much any president in the Balearics faces – that of dealing with coalition partners and different levels of government that often have competing needs or which just act in a politicking manner.

The main alternative to Antich is the current leader of the Council of Mallorca, Francina Armengol. The fact that members of the Unió Mallorquina were prepared to resign from her administration does not fill one with great confidence; they resigned because they didn’t get on with her. It might be argued that they – the UM members – did a touch of toy-throwing out of the pram, but the fact remains that there were tensions and still are, following their return to the fold. The ability to deal with different factions and parties is arguably the most important aspect of a prospective leader’s CV, and Armengol has not proved that she can satisfy this demand.

Of course, even if Antich were to seek a further term, there is no guarantee that he would win it. However, the main opposition – the Partido Popular – is not in great shape, and there is a question mark as to who actually would be its presidential candidate. Nevertheless, the party is polling quite well, despite the corruption scandal involving the former PP president, Jaume Matas. The UM is most unlikely to offer a serious challenge, certainly not in light of the corruption charges and the decimation in its ranks. Perhaps the biggest potential pitfall for the PSOE would be voter apathy, a rejection of the political class as a whole and a vote against corruption, though this would be somewhat unfair on the PSOE which has not been caught up in the scandals.

One of the great advantages for Antich is that he is a member of the same party that rules in Madrid. A closeness to Zapatero can only work to Mallorca’s benefit, but there must also be the possibility that Antich, who has already had an earlier stint as regional president, may have his eye on a central position. That would be Mallorca’s loss but Spain’s gain.

The race to next year’s elections starts now.

(Since writing this piece, Antich has now announced that he will indeed be putting himself forward as a candidate in 2011.)

MORE SANT ANTONI INFO
On the WHAT’S ON BLOG is stuff for Sant Antoni in Alcúdia (Sant Sebastià as well) and in Muro – http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com

Marching Onward

There was another march on Saturday, another one to do with language. Responding to the pro-Catalan demo of three weeks back and also in the context of the pro-Catalan “Acampallengua” in Sa Pobla, the latest one expressed the desire for people to be able to choose their language, be it Castilian or Catalan. Bit by bit, demo by demo, the whole language debate is being elevated into public consciousness to a degree that begins to suggest more serious divisions in local society. While Saturday’s march was said to be non-partisan, the presence of the Partido Popular gave it a political dimension, while a group of youths shouting “no to fascism and yes to Catalan” said something for how the language debate is still linked to old wounds. Separately, in an interview in yesterday’s “Bulletin”, the PP’s Rosa Estaras stated that the “local government (i.e. the Balearic one) has gone over the top on this issue”. That the two languages enjoy joint official status in the Balearics has not prevented Catalan from becoming THE language for many working in the public sector and official documentation from some town halls being issued in Catalan only.

A curiosity of this march was the fact that, though the organisers claimed that there were between 20 and 30,000 people, the police, the national and the local forces in Palma, did not issue numbers. Government sources said that the priority was security not counting people, which all seems a little odd when one considers that the police did issue figures for the pro-Catalan march (and their figures were just a bit more than a quarter of those claimed by the marchers).

To Holiday
There was an advert in “The Bulletin” over the weekend. It was for “British sales representatives”. The name of the company was To Holiday. And To Holiday is? The holiday club scratch card mob. In “The Bulletin” last June was a letter from a veteran holidaymaker to Alcúdia complaining bitterly about the abuse he and his wife had been subjected to by scratch card personnel.

Interesting that it says “sales representatives” because when someone local intervened during an exchange between one of the scratch-cardists and a gullible couple, the girl said that she was not selling anything. Maybe not, so maybe the ad is just for those at the office who do the real sale. After all, the ones on the street are only interested in doing so-called market surveys. As if.

Euro elections
The Euro elections are almost upon us. It is at such times, well it is on this occasion, that recipients become “friends” to Sr. Bean. The PSOE has sent its mailshot. In English. How very thoughtful of them. And it actually makes sense for once, as in the English makes sense, even if all the words don’t; if that makes sense. “Dear friend”, it starts, and is bottomed – to use a term that can have other connotations – with “warm regards” and signed by José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and the lead candidate for the socialists, a certain Juan Fernanado López Aguilar. And very happy they look in the photo at the very bottom.

This is all fascinating stuff. That the PSOE has taken the time to do an English version, which the PP has not, does suggest that they are quite keen to curry favour with the Brit voter, or maybe they’re desperate. However, when one gets to the actual text of what the PSOE has to say, there is one thing that stands out and requires a bit of taking to task. Talking about the economic crisis, the letter says: “The crisis was not brought about by workers, entrepreneurs or families. It was caused by the greed and lack of control over financial markets espoused by conservative politicians and policy”. While not wrong, this does rather fail to mention the fact that politicians of a different political hue, i.e. the Spanish socialists, as with New Labour, were quite happy to endorse the policy.

There was another advert, one linked to the Euro elections. It was in “Euro Weekly”. It was on behalf of a party called Alternativa Española. The ad was calling on “Costa Brits” to vote AES. And this party is? A far-right splinter from the PP. On the Tel Aviv University’s antisemitism and racism site, there is a reference to a meeting in 2005, of “right-wing extremist and neo-fascist parties” in Vienna, one of which was AES. It was a meeting organised by the late Jörg Haider’s FPÖ. The British Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan puts his name to the advert. There is some confusion as to whether the British Conservative Party has allied itself with the AES. I sincerely hope not.