It's A Scandal

Here's a strange old thing. A Palma councillor has become embroiled in a scandal whereby he has allegedly used 50 grands' worth of council money as payment for visits to bars and clubs - not any bar or club, these are gay venues. Sounds like a lot of money, you might think, and it is. I suppose it's not too difficult to figure out what some of the money may have been spent on.

The press is lapping it up, so to speak. Had the money gone on the attractions of girlie bars, the scandal would, I suggest, still very much be a scandal, though it might have received more of an "oh, he's a bit of a lad" reaction. Today the front page of "Ultima Hora" has a grainy photo taken by a mobile, which apparently shows Rodrigo de Santos, under a headline bearing the words "orgies" and "drugs". It's all the gift of the Gods for the media. The trousering or rather untrousering of the council's moolah seems almost irrelevant now as gay sex, rent boys and drugs all come to prominence.

There are aspects of Mallorcan life of which I am largely unaware. I knew that there were gay bars in Palma, but that's all I knew; thanks to the reporting I could now tell you where you could go and receive favours in return for cash, either one's own or a town hall's, but I won't. Mallorca, the Mallorca of Alcúdia and Pollensa, does not have a gay scene. The scene, which is low-key compared to Ibiza, is centred on Palma pretty much alone. Apart from something of a gay bit of beach in Playa de Muro, the north is gay-lite. A few years ago, I was told about a lesbian couple who would get a bit too friendly at some apartments in Puerto Alcúdia and in front of the children. The apartments are no longer for holiday rental, and the person who told me, disapprovingly of this, was himself gay. It is not something one could otherwise imagine witnessing on an everyday basis here.

However, Mallorca, and Spain, have a relaxed attitude towards homosexuality, or at least that is how it appears. The new maturity of the country's politics, echoed in the PSOE's recent election win, demonstrates that the populace can accept liberal policies such as those on same-sex marriages. Spain has been dubbed a "Nordic" country in the Mediterranean for this very reason, and this in a country of the macho and the Catholic Church, albeit that the latter has a diminishing influence. The scandal, and the prurience that it inspires, is not a reflection of attitude, it is a reflection of the media knowing a good story when they can sell newspapers. It would be the same in Britain; actually it would probably be a lot more sensationalist. That the councillor may have frequented gay clubs is of course part of the "shock" value of the story. But it should not overlook the fact of pocketing a sizable wedge of public money. What he did with it is, in some ways, beside the point.


QUIZ
Yesterday - The Hollies. Today's title - it was one of those songs that along with which duo revived whose career?

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