The Magic Wand

The “vara”. Wand, rod, pole. Take your pick. A magic wand. Spare the rod. Poles apart. They all seem somehow appropriate in the aftermath of the game of pass the parcel to see who ends up unwrapping the mayoral wand.

New mayors may hope that they can wave their wands and make all the problems disappear, but the problems are only just beginning, and are mainly those of fractiousness.

The municipalities of Alcúdia, Pollensa and Santa Margalida highlight how fractiousness consumes the operations of town halls. In Alcúdia’s case, it will be new; for Pollensa and Santa Margalida, it will be business as usual.

The tensions that will now exist are only partly to do with party politics. They are more personal than this. And no more so than in Santa Margalida where Miguel Cifre has been handed the baton of mayoral office once again, fourteen years after a motion of censure resulted in his being kicked out of office.

Santa Margalida is a town of mutual dislike among its leading political lights. It’s why Cifre and his party of change couldn’t attract any other party with which to coalesce. He’ll run the town hall, if run is the right word, with a minority three short of that which was required. He’ll be a lame duck (aptly enough for a town which stages the annual nonsense of the duck throwing), and one despised by the Partido Popular in particular.

Another lame duck is now the second in command at Alcúdia, despite the fact that she abstained from giving any candidate for mayor her support. Carme Garcia’s decision to cosy up to the Partido Popular, one that went against the wishes of her party, the Mallorcan socialists, has unleashed a tsunami into what had been a rare oasis of calmness in the politics of local towns.

At every opportunity, at every meeting of the town hall, she can now expect to be hounded, attacked and vilified. And she will have brought it on herself. Photos of the councillors in Alcúdia, taken after the meeting to select Coloma Terrasa as mayor, were very revealing. Terrasa was smiling, wand in hand, ex-mayor Llompart was grinning and PSOE’s Pere Malondra was laughing. Garcia looked even more frumpish and put-upon than usual.

Llompart and Malondra further exposed her decision to side with the PP as an act of opportunism. It was rumoured that they would try something, and so they did. Malondra was nominated to be mayor. Had Garcia voted for him, a natural political ally for someone who claims to be of the left, then Malondra would have become mayor. She didn’t. The boys of the Convergència and PSOE were laughing at her, and so it will be for four years.

Pollensa doesn’t have a lame duck, it has a Tommy Cifre installed as mayor. Two Tommy Cifres, there are only two Tommy Cifres. Thankfully. It’s confusing enough with two of them. One Tommy Cifre, there’s only one Tommy Cifre in the PP. The new mayor, and not the one Tommy Cifre from the Mallorcan socialists. Cifre, together with the La Lliga lovely, Malena Estrany, will hope to restore some order to Pollensa town hall. They surely can’t do any worse than what passed for administration under Joan Cerdà.

Fortunately, both Cifre and Estrany are respected, which was not the case with Cerdà who lost any semblance of respect as a result of the fiasco over the aborted pedestrianisation in Puerto Pollensa. It was this which turned him into a lame duck for much of his period of office. The charge of lack of consultation that was levelled at him (among other charges) is to be addressed by Cifre. He has promised “citizen participation”, and a system of monthly meetings with associations across Pollensa is meant to come into being.

The PP-La Lliga coalition, one short of a majority, will be praying it can rely on the support of the one Unió Mollera Pollencina councillor. If not, and despite what respect there might be for Cifre and Estrany, then the fun and games in Pollensa are likely to continue.

But fun and games are what we want. They are what makes Mallorcan politics the theatre of the absurd that it so often is. A stage for illusionists who in every town conjure up a generally misplaced sense of their own importance. They wave their wands on new regimes and in a puff of smoke the old ones disappear. That’s magic.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Carme Chameleon: Alcúdia’s coalitions

While there are many town halls whose administration, post-election, is clearcut, there are plenty where it is not. One, as mentioned previously, is Alcúdia.

The Partido Popular and its would-be mayor, Coloma Terrasa, have eight councillors, one short of a majority of nine. There are nine other councillors, split among the Convergència and PSOE (four apiece) and the PSM (Mallorcan socialists) with one.

It is the final one on this list, the PSM, which is the most interesting, as the party potentially holds the key to the future administration in the town and, if it were to prove to be so, would be evidence as to how bizarre Mallorca’s politics can be. Bizarre and opportunistic.

The PSM is everything the PP is not. It is left-wing, nationalist (i.e. veering towards independence), Catalanist, and as green as a party can be without actually calling itself green. The twain of the PSM and the PP should never meet, except in darkened alleys when they encounter each other for an ideological punch-up, but the twain could yet meet in the corridors of Alcúdia town hall power.

The sole councillor that the PSM now has, Carme Garcia, is the first councillor the party has had in Alcúdia. Time to show some muscle, it would appear; time to be shown some respect. The PSM across the island has done fairly well out of the elections. Not that it fared any better at regional parliament level than it did in 2007. It has the same number of seats and its percentage of the vote went down fractionally. Yet, it can claim to now being the third force in the island.

A reason for this was the collapse of the Convergència. While it maintains pockets of resistance in town halls, such as Alcúdia, generally it has been consigned to the political dustbin, taking with it its own nationalism of the right. The PSM is now the third force and now the main voice for Mallorcan aspirations.

It is against this background that Garcia has said that she would consider an agreement with the PP whereby an alliance would create the nine councillors required. It would be the most unholy of alliances. More than this, it would be a complete sell-out of political credibility. Not of course that this stops parties combining with others when they have their eye on the main chance; think Liberal Democrats, for example. But a tie-up between the PP and the PSM would be utterly absurd.

Garcia, though she says that she would be capable of being mayor, doesn’t have the brassneck to suggest that a pact with the PP would mean that she should be mayor. Thank heavens for such humility. The people of Alcúdia might have granted the PSM the opportunity of town hall representation, but there should be some context in all of this.

The PP obtained almost 40% of the vote. The Convergència and PSOE were virtually identical – in the low 20s. The PSM got just over 6% from a turnout of 55%, which is its own story as it was by far the lowest among the five largest northern municipalities. I don’t know how many people this equates to, but from a population of some 19,000 and bearing in mind how many might actually be on the electoral census, an estimate might be around 300.

On any moral grounds, the PP’s right to administer the town hall and Coloma Terrasa’s right to be mayor should be givens. But they are not. The Convergència and PSOE formed the previous coalition. They might yet do so again, if Garcia could be persuaded. Such a scenario says much about the proportional system and much also about how local town politics are not always about political ideology. In the case of the PP and the PSM, they most certainly are, but the Convergència and PSOE are different.

Though ostensibly of the right and the left, they are chummy. This chumminess can be a virtue, and it worked well enough for most of the last administration, but it can equally be seen as being divisive, especially if it denies the PP its place in the town hall sun.

I make no bones. I don’t much care for the PP, but the electoral system can be held open to ridicule. The PP deserves to be installed, but there would be no thing more ridiculous than for it to be installed with the aid of the PSM.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Showtime: The new regime

So, as we all knew would be the case, normal order has been restored to Mallorca’s politics. The PP prevail once again, as they normally have prevailed. The Bauzá bounce has trounced Antich, sending him into the abyss.

So long and farewell, Francesc. You arrived on a train in 2007, announcing that the past four years were to have been its age, and you left in the lost-luggage department of discarded political parties.

You take with you Francina, ar-mangled at the Council of Mallorca by the charms of Salome. While you, Francesc, were stepping from the door of the train to the platform of a new age, Francina was declaring that her doors would always be open. But now they are just hanging from the hinges, banging in the wind of political isolation. Will we see either of you again?

With you, go whichever allies you had managed to persuade to come along for the ride or who you were left with no choice but to appoint: Gabriel Vicens of the PSM, environment and transport supremo, a John Prescott for the tree-hugging classes, a left hook here to a golf course, a right upper-cut there to a train or two. Yes, Gabriel, it was you who really derailed the Alcúdia train.

You fought long and hard to protect a wild orchid and some birds at Son Bosc. Now, the PP will come yomping across the finca, staking out the bunkers for the golf course and taking high-velocity air rifles to any bird that flaps into view. The PP’s gun dogs will sniff in the undergrowth for the bodies of old environmentalism.

Joana Barceló. Poor Joana. The final occupant of the tourism ministry. Ashes to ashes, you depart covered in an ash cloud and the shroud of misdeeds that were not of your doing.

We say goodbye to all these, tears dropping from our eyes as they wave from the back of the good ship PSOE And Friends which will drift around aimlessly for the next four years.

As we bid them adieu, we welcome the new king. Long live King Bauzá. The new emperor and his new clothes. We will find out whether he is wearing any. It is the lot of presidents of small islands that they can promise much but find they are as impotent as those who have gone before, and as reliant upon the largesse of Madrid as has always been the case. A Madrid that is eyeing up what the islands and other regional governments spend.

King Bauzá and his queen Salome will have been dancing the seven veils into the small hours of celebration and demanding: “Bring me the head of Francesc Antich”. And there it is, on a plate, because it was always going to be. For four years, Antich had awaited his fate, the inevitable reversion to the norm of Mallorca’s politics. The PP.

Away from the balls and palaces of Palma, the great unwashed in the provinces have been waving their own fond farewells. But for some, it is a long goodbye.

The trading, haggling and bartering of the town hall souks now begin. Winners who would be mayors or ruling parties may find they are neither. It is a peculiarity of Mr. D’Hondt and his proportional system that firstly, and like the Duckworth-Lewis cricket-matches-affected-by-rain method, no one has the faintest idea how it works, and secondly that a party can secure twice as many councillors as the next party cab off the rank and still find it necessary to keep the day job. Thus may be the prospect for Coloma of Alcúdia. One of eight PP councillors, but not a single friend among the other nine who might ensure she is pushed over the mayoral finishing-line.

The past few days of Mallorca political life have been jolly. The fun, though, is only now starting. We will wait four years for the next elections to entertain us, but these, the elections, are but the star attraction in the endless spectacular and Brian Rix with his trousers down Consolat de Mar and ayuntamientos’ farce that is Mallorca and its politics. Let the new show start.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Fight ‘Em On The Beaches

Puerto Pollensa is not going down without a fight. You wouldn’t expect anything else. The bell is due to sound on the end of the four-year bout and, punch-drunk, they’re still at it.

If it’s May, it is time for the quadrennial elections and also for the annual kerfuffle surrounding Puerto Pollensa’s beaches. All you need to know by way of background to this is that each year the town hall manages not to get the contract sorted out for the umbrellas and sunbeds in time for the season. True to form, it has happened again this year.

In an act of altruism, the neighbourhood association in the port has taken on the task. But not everyone has been happy, including the company that is meant to be getting the contract, while it would not be a matter of town hall affairs in the port were Pepe Garcia and the Alternativa not to have its say.

Garcia, who is standing for mayor, suggested that there might be some financial shenanigans. From a report I read, it seemed as though he was levelling this charge at the neighbourhood association, a most unwise thing to do given that he would hope its members might support him.

The association seemed to read it as I had and said it would consider whether it had been defamed. Garcia insisted that he hadn’t meant the association but the town hall, but he may suffer a loss of votes because of the misunderstanding. Which goes to prove that beaches, and their management, are not something to be trifled with. Nor are their local politics and local turf wars.

Other towns have their issues with the management of beaches. I shall not identify the town or the beach, but the following example is indicative of the potentially lucrative business of being awarded with the concessions for beach management and of how the “system” can operate.

One particular lot on the beach in question had, the relevant town hall’s inspectorate was to discover midway through the summer, too many sunbeds and umbrellas. The company with the concession was duly fined. Was it unhappy? Not really; too many sunbeds and a consequent fine were part of the “system”.

When the tenders were put out for the lots on the beach, excessive bids were lodged as a means of securing the concession. The town hall was more than happy with this; of course it was. The winning bidder then went ahead and put out more sunbeds than it should have. More revenue for the town hall coffers; this time through a fine. The concessionaire was still not unhappy. Yes, it had paid more than it should have done and yes, it was fined, but it was still making money. More in fact than it should have been making. One imagines the fines and the excessive bid were taken into account in the business plan.

It wasn’t as though the town hall ordered the removal of the offending sunbeds. No, they were allowed to stay. And why do you think that was?

This “game” demonstrates how the process of beach management can and does operate. In this particular instance, however, there was a twist to the story, because local people, fed up with the sheer volume of sunbeds, took action. It should be remembered that beaches are public spaces. They belong to the Spanish state, and ordinary members of the public are entitled to use them without the space being over-invaded by money-making ventures.

What then happened was that the town hall itself faced a fine for allowing the situation to come to pass. Our old friends the Costas authority may usually trample across dunes in heavy boots looking for illegal buildings, but it does also have the final say-so when it comes to what goes on on the beaches.

As a result, the concessionaire was presented with a situation that hadn’t been bargained for; the government’s fine to the town hall being passed on. But even more was to come. A concessionaire, and there was more than one, suffered from having its sunbeds slashed. Over 500 were wrecked, and the cost of repair was put at 40 grand.

Which all goes to show that management of the beaches and sunbeds is far from being as gentile a past-time as building sandcastles. What’s been happening in Puerto Pollensa is positively serene compared with what can happen elsewhere. Fights on beaches, and kicking sand in faces.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Quackers In Can Picafort

It is the fate of certain places that they get lumped in with larger ones nearby or are thought to be a part of these neighbours. So it is with Can Picafort. It’s part of Alcúdia, isn’t it? No, it isn’t. It isn’t even a direct neighbour. Playa de Muro intervenes. But that’s part of Alcúdia, isn’t it? Wrong again.

Can Picafort suffers a fate twice over when it comes to what it is a part of. “It’s part of Santa Margalida!?” ask some, incredulously, who do nonetheless know that it isn’t part of Alcúdia. “Well, I never knew that. I always thought it was its own place.”

It’s a simple mistake to make, though. Can Picafort. Santa Margalida. Where’s the name link? There isn’t one. The resort is several kilometres away from the town that owns it: a once wealthy town, birthplace of Franco’s banker, Joan March, he of the Banca March. Its one-time affluence was what led a poor boy of the town to up sticks and find some then more or less worthless coastal land on which to build a home. Mr. Picafort. How he would be laughing nowadays.

The reversal in fortunes of town and resort is not dramatic, however. Can Picafort is, with the greatest respect, the poor man of the tourism-centre trinity of the bay of Alcúdia (you can pretty much discard Artà as a fourth member). Santa Margalida, if not a poor man’s town by any means, is not wealthy in the way that Alcúdia is.

Arguably, Santa Margalida should be better off than it is, if only because of the sheer volume of hotels in Can Picafort. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the benefits of the resort’s tourism have never quite rubbed off on the municipality. It could all simply be down to two quite different cultures that have never found a way to work with each other.

The meeting of these cultures was a feature of the town’s mayoral candidate debate. At present, the Partido Popular (PP) holds the whip-hand in the town. It governs in alliance with something called the CPU. Not a computer’s central processing unit, but the Can Picafort Unit.

One of the candidates, representing an amalgamation of the PSOE socialists and independents under an umbrella party called Suma pel Canvi, lambasted the CPU. It was responsible for “nonsenses” and “sins of management”, said Miguel Cifre. (How many Miguel Cifres are there, do you suppose, in Mallorca? But that’s a side issue.)

The PP and CPU are not responsible for all the sins of Can Picafort. One, the quite appalling state of the marina, has required a judge to arbitrate, giving the company which is meant to look after and develop the marina its marching orders. But the marina is symptomatic, despite an upgrading of the resort’s promenade, of what is widely felt to be neglect.

The bad blood between opposition and town hall government has never been far from the surface over the past four years. At times, it has come pouring out of the wounds inflicted on the PP, such as when the what is now the Convergència published a news-sheet with a front cover showing mocked-up 500 euro notes with an image of mayor Martí Torres. The squandering of public money was the accusation, which you might think was a bit rich coming from what was then the pre-corruption-charges Unió Mallorquina (UM).

The sheer pettiness of Santa Margalida’s politics was no better summed up than by what appeared to be a retaliatory gesture. The CPU’s Can Picafort delegate vetoed the handing out of trophies donated by the UM for a football tournament a day after the news-sheet appeared.

Back at the election debate, though, there was one issue which didn’t get a proper airing. It should have, because in the bizarre world of local politics, there is little more bizarre than the row that has been going on over Can Picafort and its August duck-throwing fiesta.

Can Picafort may be mistaken for being a part of somewhere else or for being a town in its own right, but its greatest claim to fame is that it’s the place where the burning issue is whether live or rubber ducks should be lobbed into the sea. If you think local politics and issues are mad elsewhere, they are positively sensible compared with those of Can Picafort. Absolutely quackers.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Sitting Pretty Vacant: Pollensa

It was like the awards ceremony when the winner doesn’t show up, or the dinner when the guest of honour cries off. This might be over-egging things, but Joan Cerdà’s absence from the ranks of mayoral candidate in the Club Pollença deprived the occasion of some fun. No more will Joan be the pig in a poke of a public haranguing. But he will remain; a Banquo’s ghost, haunting Pollensa for years to come.

How many mayoral candidates does it take to change a light bulb? As many as you want, and they will still manage to get the lights of Puerto Pollensa’s bypass and church square the wrong way up or simply wrong. How many mayoral candidates does any town need? It is quicker to name those residents of Pollensa who are not standing for mayor than to name those who are.

Even without Joan to liven up proceedings and to be the target of metaphorical rotten eggs and tomatoes lobbed in his general direction, the malcontents of Pollensa opposition politics were only too happy to try and generate the normal fun and games that surround Pollensa town hall. The collective slagging-off was just like old times. In fact, just like any time over the past four years of Cerdàdom.

The one candidate currently warming a seat in the town hall, PSOE’s Maria Sastre, was asked about the value of her sinecure – sorry, sorry, size of her salary. Only 1900 euros a month, she retaliated. But salary is not what is important. It’s all about effectiveness. Cue chortling.

The naughty boys of the opposition, Garcia of the Alternativa, Sureda of the Esquerra and Cifre of the Mallorcan socialists, have been the ones who have habitually been caught sniggering at the back of the room during council meetings.

One of them, Cifre, questioned the amounts paid on town hall staff – 40% of the entire budget, always assuming you know which budget is being referred to; the town hall has only recently signed off on the 2009 accounts. Or were they 2008’s? Everyone seems to have lost track.

What do these staff members and councillors do precisely? Garcia reckoned a full-time fiestas councillor was unnecessary. A full-time post would be better reserved for tourism.

Ah yes, tourism, and Puerto Pollensa. Remarkably, someone (Cifre) made the point that it is up to the town hall to make the place look pretty. It is the tour operators and hoteliers who should be attracting the tourists. Hallelujah. When all the talk is made about local authorities doing this and doing that in order to promote to tourists, the obvious point is overlooked; that it is not the local authorities that really matter, but the tour operators. Cifre should be given the job as tourism minister.

Puerto Pollensa has its own party, the Unió Mollera Pollencina, and it naturally enough has its own mayoral candidate. Nadal Moragues deplored the pathetic image of the port and called for the Moll to have its own budget and responsibilities. It’s not the first time the suggestion has been made, but the rumblings of potential UDI are growing louder.

The new chico on the block, the virtual unknown, mini-Cerdà of the Convergència Whatever They’re Called Nowadays said that he would give out his mobile number so that citizens could call him. It sounds like a dangerous thing to do, but as no one knows who he is, he’ll probably be ok. And I’m not telling you his name, just in case. He won’t win anyway. Surely he can’t? Not AC – after Cerdà.

Such openness had already been trumped by Pepe Garcia. His Alternativa could just as easily be called the Transparencia. So clear and clean is Pepe, you can see right through him. Which is not meant to sound as it does. He’s a thoroughly decent bloke, and he has published his full financial and earnings situation as a way of demonstrating his transparency.

And that was about it. The candidates for the self-styled worst town hall in Mallorca will wait a few days to discover their fate. Oh, but there was one I’ve not mentioned. Malena Estrany of La Lliga. She is the best-looking of the lot. But given the vast numbers standing for office, she, as with all the others, cannot be said to be sitting pretty. The job’s vacant, and the race is wide open.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The New Orthodoxy: Tourism

Today marks the first day of official campaigning for the local Mallorcan elections. Underwhelmed by the news? You’re forgiven.

Around and about, the candidates for mayor and for higher office have already been having their say. And what they have had to say is all very similar. When it comes to one topic in particular. Tourism.

From the hinterland and from the coastal regions, candidates for mayoral office have been reaching for the little red book of tourism orthodoxy, mugging up on the subject as though they were heading off to a pub quiz night rather than to meetings with electorates desperate to hear something original.

In Sineu, something needs to be done about increasing tourism potential. Historic routes and itineraries, they say, as they also say cycling tourism, gastronomy and culture. In Ses Salines, they say there should be sustainable cycling tourism, more tourism promotion and complements to just sun and beach. In Capdepera, they want alternatives – gastronomy and sports tourism. In Alcúdia, there must be more promotion of culture and gastronomy.

You can be forgiven for being underwhelmed by the election campaign having started, as you can also be forgiven for despairing of any grain of new thinking.

It is not just the mayoral candidates (and one imagines the lack of wisdom is the same in whichever municipality you care to name), it is also those with their eyes on the regional doors of power. Jaume Font, he of La Lliga, wants to get rid of up to 35,000 obsolete hotel places. And why does he want to do this? Because this old hotel stock is responsible for low prices.

Font wants to modernise the hotels, but his idea is not in the least bit original. The Mallorcan hotel federation has been banging on about it for ages, so long as some arrangements can be found whereby the hotels can guarantee a good earner for themselves by either changing hotels’ status or upgrading them. Whisper it quietly, but behind Font’s idea lurks the “quality tourist”. Modernise the hotels and, bingo, suddenly Mallorca is awash with millions of tourists brandishing American Express Platinums.

The poverty of thought suggests what is widely believed to be the case; that, when it comes to tourism, they really haven’t got a clue. This isn’t entirely true. They do have a clue, but they look for it in that little red book of orthodoxy. You will enjoy our gastronomy, you will ride a bicycle, you will take photos of some old ruin.

This orthodoxy is now being complemented by a different one. Tourism needs to be run by professionals, those who know about the industry. What an extraordinary idea. There is just one problem. Unless I am very much mistaken, you get mayors and councillors at town hall level and presidents and ministers at regional governmental level who require electing. If any of them happen to be professionals in whatever sphere, then this is a bonus.

There must be a tourism minister who is a professional, so the new orthodoxy demands. Tony Blair may have sidestepped the inconvenience of the democratic system by appointing those who had not actually been elected, but that was Blair for you. José Ramón Bauzá, and we may as well already name him President Bauzá, is unlikely to become a Blairite and install an Alastair Campbell-style tourism minister. Instead, there will be some Tory Boy meets Nice-But-Dim character at tourism after 22 May. Or, be very afraid (if you are the hoteliers who can’t stand him), Carlos Delgado.

The fact is that behind a succession of tourism ministers there have been professionals. But look what happens to them. Mar Guerrero, arguably the best of the lot, resigned as director of the tourism agency because she didn’t want to pull the wool over people’s eyes; in other words, she walked because she wasn’t allowed to do her job properly. Susanna Sciacovelli, another former director, was caught up in the purge of the Unió Mallorquina and went off to Italy to land a plum job with Air Berlin.

The campaign for the elections will be underwhelming, as will be what is said about tourism. But there is someone who doesn’t suffer from the same old orthodoxy. And that’s Delgado. He may be disliked for different reasons, but put him at tourism and wait for it … Mallorca’s politics and tourism would suddenly get a whole lot more interesting. And you know something? It won’t happen.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Pepe And The Banshees: Pollensa

The voice has been one of a one-man banshee howl at nepotism, inefficiency and the opaque. Yet the image, one that may have come across through the media, is quite misplaced. For starters, it is more than one man and indeed woman. It is also no deranged spirit, wailing at the prospect of death in the house; more mild-mannered Clark Kent, but with a legitimate fear of death of a resort and town.

This is Pepe Garcia. He is, his party is the Alternative. For Pollensa. The scourge of Pollensa’s town hall, something of the pin-up boy for those in a municipality who wear Pollensa’s badge of dishonour with a perverse pride. This is the worst town, or worst town hall, in Mallorca. It’s not something to be proud of, but pride has to be sought somehow.

There are doubtless other towns in Mallorca which would wish to lay claim to the worst crown, but none has been as unremitting in its pursuit as Pollensa has, and none has the same highly vocal banshee cries emanating from it, as those which Garcia emits.

What Garcia has achieved, and it is no small achievement, is to strip away and expose what many either know or suspect. He has gone for the throat and no longer is there any illusion that contracts and services have been variously dubious, uncompetitive or the result of nepotism. Gardens, street lighting and cleaning, transport plans. All have been targets and all have been revealed for what they have been. The workings of the town hall are out in the open, much as it, like other town halls, would prefer that they remained inside and closed.

Transparency is one of the Alternative’s demands and one of its election promises. The lack of transparency, which is largely endemic to most town halls, has a collusive basis. When the Alternative pressed for a motion requiring the institution of greater transparency, it was rejected. More than this, it failed to receive support from other opposition parties, such as the Partido Popular, which abstained. Why would other parties not support this? You’d better ask them.

The lack of transparency, the lack of information make a true assessment of what is generally considered to be the parlous state of Pollensa’s finances (a state it shares with other towns) nigh on impossible. The hole in the finances could be considerably deeper than is admitted. It is a hole into which, for example, has been thrown the salaries of not one, not two but six full-time councillors, including one for fiestas. Why does any town need someone working full time on fiestas? The answer is that it doesn’t

The spend on fiestas is something which I have questioned in the past. The amount that goes up in smoke alone is far from insignificant. No one wants to lose the essence of fiestas, but are exercises such as cost-benefit analyses ever performed which might, or might not show what they bring in terms of return?

What has generally happened, with all sorts of spend on all sorts of contracts, services and events is that no one has sought to seriously question them, to seriously dig for answers, except the Alternative. In Pollensa, some of the worst-offending contracts (and not all contracts were ever actually contracts) pre-date even the benighted administration of the current mayor. Yet, prominent town hall figures, of whom some are seeking selection as mayor this time round, raised nary a quibble. It is for this reason that the air of collusion exists, the nod and a wink of that’s how things are done, the acceptance of opacity over transparency.

And behind all this, there exists something else. The local system. Garcia has a problem, in the unlikely event that he were to wish to break into the tight-knit network of contracts being granted. He is not from Pollensa. It makes his voice independent, but all the more liable to be harangued as the shrill cry of an outsider.

One can’t speak for every town or village in Mallorca, but the case of Pollensa surely has echoes elsewhere. They are those which reverberate with the same accusations, largely substantiated, that have come from Pollensa. Those of nepotism and a lack of transparency, which, in turn, lead to inefficiencies, exacerbated by systems of inadequate control.

All the main parties will do their schmoozing, all will offer their words which are ultimately vacuous. Some, and some mayoral candidates and others in different towns of Mallorca, may be genuine. But you can look at Pollensa and wonder.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Going Swimmingly: Mallorca’s pools

What is it with swimming-pools? Not swimming-pools and the mercifully only occasional outbreak of cryptosporidium or swimming-pools of all-inclusives and the legends that are the stories of defecatory deposits which are left in them. No, not these, but swimming-pools of the local authority variety.

The Rebecca Adlington gold award, were there such a thing, would long ago have been claimed by Puerto Pollensa’s indoor pool for its services to public amusement. See that roof. It’s on the wrong way round. Well, it isn’t now, but it once was. A splendidly pre-fabricated upside down cake. How about someone paying the electricity bill? Not we, said the pool’s operators, Algaillasport. Endesa were none too amused. Not that we should really care what Endesa think, but when they’re owed 20 grand or so, we know what they are going to think. Finally, an agreement was brokered with the town hall, and the pool did not close once more, as it has been prone to since it first opened.

Joining Puerto Pollensa on the winner’s rostrum and clutching its own medal, we now have Alcúdia’s swimming-pool. For five years since it opened, relationships between the operator, Gesport Balear, and the town hall haven’t always gone swimmingly. Now, they’ve got a bad case of cramp in the deep end and are foundering. And why? It’ll be electricity again, or the cost of heating the pool to be more accurate. We’re switching off the boiler, say Gesport, unless we get some 300 grand. The town hall isn’t prepared to play water polo and has taken its ball home. No heating, no swimming, unless you’re mad.

Oh that the two northern rival towns were isolated examples of the curious swimming-pool management art of Mallorca, but they are not. Santa Margalida, just down the bay from Alcúdia, has been doing its best to claim the gold medal. Keeping itself closed for a couple of years and then still managing to leak itself. Not to be outdone, Inca came roaring along in the final stretch with its over-budget of 600,000 euros, a vigorous butterfly of profligacy to beat off the more sedate breaststroke of Alcúdia’s lost thousands.

When the plunge was taken to improve the island’s health and build proper swimming-pools in various of Mallorca’s municipalities, there would appear to have been less than sufficient attention paid to how they would actually operate. All very good it may be in theory, but the idea of contracting-out has hardly been a great success; indeed it has been about as unsuccessful as some of the actual building.

And how successful have the pools been in terms of their usage? Doubtless, there are statistics to prove that they have been, as there always are statistics, but they’ve tried hard for them to not be. Alcúdia again …

Not long after it opened, a local British woman, who speaks perfectly serviceable Spanish, went along to the pool and asked for a list of services and prices. It was in Catalan. Did they not have a list in Castilian? She received short shrift for having the temerity to suggest that they might. How long had she been living here and why couldn’t she speak Catalan? Yep, you can use the swimming-pool, so long as you pass a language test.

I once suggested to the pool’s director that they could do with letting more people know of its existence. Publicity perhaps. For tourists maybe. I think I was speaking a different language. It was Spanish admittedly. But then when there is publicity, it is of a singularly strange variety. When Puerto Pollensa’s pool announced its re-opening, now that the roof was as a roof should be, i.e. the right way round, there was a poster of splashy-happy kiddies. Nothing wrong in attracting children to the pool, but as it was a summery outdoor scene and the indoor pool was re-opening in March, the message didn’t quite fit. Nor did it with the fact that the municipal pools are, oddly enough, meant for swimming and not cavorting around on giant rubber ducks.

No, if you want fun in water, you can go in the sea or to a waterpark. Leave the municipal pools to the geriatric speedo set with their goggles and their morning’s twenty lengths. Yes, you can have fun at a waterpark, so long as you don’t try and take your own water in, to one particular waterpark at any rate. Enjoy being searched and having your bottle taken off you. I pointed out to the waterpark’s director that the internet was incandescent with rage at the practice, as indeed were real-life tourists in the vicinity. Has it stopped? Will it have stopped this summer? It damn well should have.

Swimming and Mallorca should be somehow synonymous, but they are not because ways are found to prevent this being so. Best perhaps to forget the pools and just head to the sea. But then there are always the jellyfish. Still, no one has to worry about switching the boiler on or getting the roof on the right way.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

A Troubled Bridge Over Water: Porto Cristo

Manacor’s mayor, Antoni Pastor, has bowed to the inevitable. The bridge in Porto Cristo, the “puente del Riuet”, will come a-tumbling down. With its demolition, a chapter will close (though don’t bank on it) that can be traced back to 1968 and the antecedents that led to the bridge’s construction being started in 2003. Pastor, increasingly under personal pressure caused by his being fined for not complying with the order for the town hall to get on with demolishing the bridge, has fought a populist corner to keep something that not everyone in Porto Cristo will be sad to see go.

There have been protests aimed at preventing the bridge’s demolition, and the publicity that these have attracted have deflected attention away from the fact that homeowners were directly affected by waking up one day to find a damn great bridge outside their windows.

These owners have had to endure noise and loss of light. They have had to pay for double glazing to try and shut out noise but have also had to keep windows shut during the summer. They have had to keep lights on all day. They have seen the value of their properties drop by some 90%. They have lived with the permanent fear that an accident might end up with a coach parked in a living-room.

The lawsuits have been many, the compensation has not been that great, the cost of pulling the thing down will run to around 900,000 euros, not much less than what it cost to put it up in the first place.

Manacor town hall, faced with footing the bill, had argued, among other things, that the bridge was not illegal, as has been deemed to be the case by the Balearics Supreme Court. It was built under an agreement between the town hall, the Council of Mallorca and the regional government, and yet it (the town hall) is expected to have to pay for it to come down.

With some justification, the town hall has a right to feel a bit miffed, not just because of the cost but also because of an absence of support from the other authorities, notably the Council of Mallorca. There is some debate as to whether the bridge is or isn’t included in its plan for “carreteras”. In 2009 the then director for the island’s highways announced that it was. In theory, this should have put an end to the whole conflict, but now it would appear that it isn’t included in the plan. The likelihood exists that a new bridge will have to be built.

The saga of the bridge is utter madness. At a combined cost of two million euros, that for building it and then knocking it down, Porto Cristo will not have a bridge, other than an old one that is inadequate for purpose. Until such a time as a new one arises, if it does, there will be congestion, and in the short term there will be chaos as the demolition work will carry on into the tourist season. And if a new bridge is built, it will cost God knows how much and be proceeded by the predictable and lengthy arguments that will themselves attract cost and delay.

What makes the bridge’s demolition all the more absurd and costly is that services – water, sewage, phones and electricity – will all have to be diverted. This alone will amount to a quarter of a million euros. But the absurdity is heightened further when one considers quite why the bridge was built as it was. The result of this was, as should have been obvious, the impact on residences; an impact that led the Supreme Court to order the demolition.

One of the main reasons for the bridge being built was the traffic jams and the difficulties that coaches, heading for the Caves of Drach, had in negotiating the roads. These difficulties will return, making Porto Cristo once more a traffic nightmare in summer.

The homeowners will be pleased and so they should be. The past few years have been intolerable, but in a way, other than just because of the alleviation of traffic problems, the bridge should be allowed to stay. To stay as a monument. A monument to the stupidity that will mean it costs much the same to pull it down as it took to put it up.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.