No Particular Place - The Unió Mallorquina's internal strife

Politically, the English "ite" is a Spanish "ista". For Blairite or Thatcherite, read, within the warring ranks of the nationalist party in Mallorca, "Nadalistas" or "Munaristas" or indeed "istas" of no particular name. The no-particular-istas have won the battle if not necessarily the war, that of the heart and soul of the Unió Mallorquina party. They have got their man - Josep Melià - who has been confirmed as the new president of the party; the fourth in less than four years, following Mother Munar and two Micks, Nadal and Flaquer, all three of them implicated in corruption cases. Melià has hardly won a ringing endorsement; the vote in his favour was close. He has, as has his rival, one of the former tourism ministers Buils, made the right sort of noises regarding a new phase and stability for the party, but it is unlikely to be anything of the sort. The UM is ripping itself apart on the rocks of internecine strife and the fall-out from the corruption charges.

There is an ideological battle being waged within the UM, one that goes back to the succession process when Mother moved over to become speaker of parliament. It is one of Palma-ism versus the regions, one of right versus centre, one of old ways versus new and one of support for discredited politicians versus those not implicated by scandal. One has, of course, to be fair. No-one has been found guilty, but mud sticks, and the right of the party, identifiable with Nadal and Munar, is setting itself up for discredit by association by maintaining support for Nadal and Munar and for a political mindset that the "new way" wishes to sweep away.

It is never as simple as it might seem, given that the party's Palma-ism garners its own support in the regions, but the northern UM faction - that of former Alcúdia mayor Ferrer and his successor and of Pollensa's mayor Cerdà - represents a more modern form of Mallorcan nationalism, one of the centre and liberalism, that failed to win support when Munar stepped down, but that has now come to the fore. Ferrer, it should be recalled, was Nadal's opponent in the Munar succession fight. Nadal, a Palma councillor, had Munar's backing, as did Buils in the latest vote.

The "Diario" journalist Matías Vallés savaged Nadal and Munar in the paper yesterday. He described Nadal as "ineffable" and compared Munar to Gloria Swanson, hankering for a time when justice was "voiceless" in Mallorca and presiding over her own political funeral. Both have been charged with egoism by their opponents of the new way. It is hard to fathom quite how they can have been seen to have been taking active roles in the latest leadership election, given the ongoing cases against them. It is hard also to fathom the thinking of their supporters, who might be better advised to create some clear blue water. But there is always "innocent until proven guilty" as well as there are enduring motivations of power struggles that any political party is subject to.

Does the fighting have any real relevance though? The UM, though well represented at mayoral level across the island, only finds itself in the governmental spotlight because of the need for coalition. It does have a role to play, therefore. As tourism minister, Ferrer, it might be said, holds the second most important post in the regional government, after the president. But set against the two big parties - the PSOE and Partido Popular (which, some in the UM idiotically claim, have conspired to bring about the corruption charges) - the UM is something of a sideshow. The party has never truly succeeded in making itself a force, partly because it is has not always been clear what it stands for. There is more than a slight sense that it is a sort of flag of convenience for politicians disinclined to ally with the two main parties, especially with the PP which occupies similar political territory in certain respects; a flag of convenience that might be the springboard to satisfy political ambition that might otherwise not be available in a bigger party.

It is the striving for some clarity that is the political debate within the party, one overshadowed by the corruption cases, and the "big thing" informing this debate is to try and shape the UM in the mould of the CiU or PNV, i.e. the centrist and liberal nationalist parties in Catalonia and the Basque country. It is this, perhaps more than anything, that the no-particular-istas want to achieve. Though neither of these parties is militant, they do, nevertheless, herald from regions with a long history of nationalist sentiment; indeed the two regions most clearly associated with historical opposition to a unified Spain. This is not, for one moment, to suggest anything sinister, but it is to suggest that the UM may be willing upon itself a more assertive nationalist posture, albeit one moderated with the humanist tendencies of, for example, the PNV. But unlike Catalonia and the Basque country, there is not and never has been anything of a true nationalist desire in Mallorca. Despite the rise of Catalanism, Mallorca remains an essentially conservative and passive society. Moreover, when I asked Alcúdia's new mayor about "nationalism", he was quick to point out that it wasn't some kind of Little Mallorquínism. The ambition, though, to be something akin to the PNV is almost certainly far-fetched. The PNV is not only the second oldest political party in Spain, it has also been the dominant force in Basque politics.

In seeking a "new way", the UM appears to be embarking on the local road to Damascus in attempting a definition, but one of an abstract political ideology of questionable relevance to the majority of Mallorcans. Far more important is that it distances itself from its recent and current travails, those being played out in the courts in Palma, and ensures that it is not tainted by the Nadalista and Munarista associations. In this respect, it has taken the first step.


QUIZ
Yesterday: The Jam's second album ("This Is The Modern World") and their third single ("The Modern World"), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzSJY5AbEZo. Today: "no particular place to go"; who?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.