Having A Mare: The mayor and the Puerto Pollensa revolution

Who would be mayor of a local town hall? Especially Pollensa.

There must have been a point, many years ago, when Joan Cerdà thought, if only I could be mayor of Pollensa. The people would look up to me. I would represent them all fairly and justly, always seeking to put their wishes into action. At some time in the past, the mayors of Sa Pobla and Santa Margalida probably had similar thoughts. They have ended up, respectively, being lambasted for hiring private detectives to spy on personnel and having their face superimposed onto a mock 500 euro note. Cerdà has ended up - ended up yesterday - holed up inside the municipal building in Puerto Pollensa while a thousand or so demonstrators gathered outside to demand some action by him and by his town hall administration. Even the thickest-skinned mayor must feel some hurt by such intense a protest. I felt sorry for him yesterday. Just as he was instructing the press to leave the office in which he was going to talk to the organisers of the demonstration, I took a photograph of him. He looked straight at the camera. It was a mixture of boiling-point and breaking-point. Who would be mayor of a local town hall?

On the march yesterday, and speaking to some leading lights, there was confirmation of what I have said about the demonstration: that its origins can be traced back to the successful opposition to the pedestrianisation scheme; that tourism economic hard times had been instrumental in provoking it; that there is a real issue in terms of the separation between the town and the resort. In an ideal world, the last of these might be overcome through the creation of - in effect - a separate mayor or at least a port delegate with some real teeth and some real money. Even more than the mayor perhaps, the current delegate - Francisca Ramon - is held in general contempt, and she was treated with huge amounts of it when she tried to address the masses. But she has no real power; it's not totally her fault, even if she may be considered to be little more than a town hall lackey.

The tourism hard times are the fault of neither the mayor nor the delegate, but Cerdà is somehow now being blamed - by implication (that of the deficiencies in the port) - for the tourism downturn. It's unfair, but he has done little to prevent such an impression. "First-class tax but third-class service," was a chant yesterday. The town hall takes - massively - but doesn't give back, and lets the local tourism industry suffer. That, at least, is what the protesters believe.

And the town hall have fanned more flames. Among the protesters were The Hustlers. I had suggested that the apparent music ban might be tagged onto the protest, and so it was. The band, and other musicians, are proposing their own showdown with the mayor. The timing of pursuing the ban was crass, to say the least. The mayor is also facing more pressure - to come today at the plenary session - regarding the Pollensa music festival finances and possible links to the Operación Voltor corruption case. He really couldn't will himself any more grief. But he's got it. Stacks of it. Who would be mayor of a local town hall?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.