Mister White: Residents' travel discounts

"Fomento". Its literal translation is "promotion", to mean development. English suggests the verb foment, to stir up, as in to stir up trouble or dissent. There is a minister for "fomento", a minister for stirring up brown stuff. It's not totally inaccurate; the Spanish verb "fomentar" can mean the same as the English.

The central government's fomento minister, José Blanco, knows a thing or two about promotion, promoting dissent. Who's behind the possible removal of Balearic residents' travel discounts? Mr. White. The one who, some on the extreme dissent spectrum might hope, is with Mr. Orange as the police arrive. You don't go around implying that Mallorcans are like thieves for taking advantage of discounted flights that you claim are not necessary without expecting some negative response.

Blanco has the misfortune in heralding from about as far as you can get in mainland Spain from Mallorca - Galicia. Cue an outburst of peculiarly Mallorcan xenophobia: Blanco's a Galician, hence he's got it in for Mallorca. It's rubbish, but Blanco's insinuations hardly win him friends.

Just one of the beefs with the proposed elimination of the travel discount is that air travel from Mallorca to other parts of Spain is expensive as it is. Sr. Blanco might reflect on the fact that were he to fancy an overnight break in Barcelona this coming weekend, the cost of a far longer flight by Vueling from A Coruña in his native Galicia would be, proportionally, far cheaper than one to Barcelona from Palma with the same airline: 14 kilometres for every euro from Galicia, as opposed to six per euro from Palma.

On the face of it, the higher prices of air travel don't make much sense when one considers the fact that the Son Sant Joan airport in Palma is the third busiest in Spain. But there's a take on these prices. It comes from Pepa Mari, the tourism councillor at the Council of Ibiza. In an interview with Ibiza-Blog.com last November she said: "It looks as if the 50 per cent residents' discount is preventing the airlines and ferry services from introducing more attractive prices for non-residents. So the system of subsidies needs to be revised."

The interview was in the context of an appraisal of Ibiza's tourism situation at the end of the last summer season, but an implication of what she was saying is that prices are inflated in the knowledge that many travellers, if by no means all, can enjoy a discount. In other words, it is the airlines cashing in on central government's subsidies, not Mallorcans taking unnecessary flights to the mainland.

Another beef with Sr. Blanco and Madrid goes deeper than just the discounts. It has to do with the management of the airport. In January it was being said that "all conditions" had been met which would allow local management of Son Sant Joan. But no time frame has been decided upon to tip the pot of gold the airport generates into local hands and not those, via the airports agency AENA, of central government in the form of the department which effectively acts as the airport's holding company - Sr. Blanco's. Local management has long been an ambition of Mallorca's politicians, and the income it would create might offset a further beef - the apparent under-investment in the islands by Madrid. And which department is responsible for overseeing infrastructure developments?

President Antich is opposed to the removal of the discounts, just as he is in favour of management of the airport and greater funding. He also has an election looming. The discounts row has come at a good time for the president, his local PSOE socialist party having indicated that it is distancing itself from the Zapatero PSOE administration in Madrid. Blanco and his subsidies are a convenient peg on which to hang a manifesto.

Despite his being demonised, Blanco may have a point; it's just that the point he is making is the wrong one. Rather than styling the removal of subsidies as cost-cutting, it should be seen as potentially market-driven and as the abandonment of something of an anachronism. The discounts date back to a law of 1962. Mallorca was very different then, and so was the airline industry.


QUIZ -
Yesterday: A burgling Peter Cook.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.