On Election Day - 2: The polling station

"Surname." Out come the ID cards, or not as the case may be. The local policeman, organising the queues, confirms who is in the right or wrong line. "Fornes," some chime. Fornes? I'm not voting for Fornes, yet I appear to be in his queue. It is of course a joke, or maybe it isn't. F is part of the A-M line. The policeman, one of the local plod at loggerheads with the mayor, smiles at the joke. He'll be tired of it later in the day no doubt. He's extremely efficient, ushering with a gentle shove the oldsters who would tarry to enquire after someone's hip operation as they are exiting the polling station.

I am in a quandary. Who actually do I vote for? I haven't got my envelopes, so disappear behind a curtain as though I'm meant to undress and get into one of those hospital gowns that they've forgotten to make with a back. I go into default mode. PSOE. The habit of a lifetime. It won't make a scrap of difference, but I do anyway.

A pink voting slip, a blue voting slip; will you vote for me one day? One day maybe. If there is iniquity in the voting system, it is that you don't actually get the opportunity not to vote directly for Count Dracula of the PP. As for the Council of Mallorca, why would you anyway? It's a pointless institution.

The Fornes gag is, though, revealing. Why are the locals voting? Yes, they'll vote for the regional parliament, but it is the mayor that interests them more. This is really why they are here.

The two queues, A-M and N-Z (not many Z's you'd imagine) are unevenly distributed. There is not so much a quiet mumbling and muttering as a general and loud chit-chat about the length of the A-M queue. Why the unevenness, I wonder? All heavily loaded in favour of Cifres, I conclude. The name-checking against the lists of the electorate must be a thankless task for the party faithful who have been assigned the task. The name is called out, and ... It could be any one of hundreds. It's a problem when everyone in Mallorca has the same name.

You begin to appreciate why there are all the various surnames. No one would have a clue who they were without them. And we go through the surname routine when it's my turn. No, it's one surname and two Christian names. One of the chaps moving the white, pink and blue sheets back and forth on the ballot boxes to permit the depositing of the envelopes seems to find this quite amusing. Not as amusing as I find the fact that Mallorcans and Spaniards have that many names they could individually be a football team.

Once the deed is done, I do some more wondering. It has taken around 45 minutes to get to the ballot box. It's a pleasant, sunny day. There are other things one could be doing. I've voted, but what for? And I am meant to be one of those who is quite well-informed. I know well enough the issues as they affect Muro, but by the same token I don't know them. And you feel like an outsider, which, in truth, is what you are, intruding on someone's party to which they have reluctantly invited you.

The social gathering of the polling station, entire families swelling the numbers in the queues, the very ancient being wheeled in and being greeted from all quarters, the yap of impenetrable, rural Mallorquín with its sound of a mouth full of potatoes being consumed by a startled cat; these all add to a feeling of being distant, of not really knowing the issues. Because how can you when you are not a part of the networks, the families, the old ties?

There is very little reaching-out. Muro, like so many places in Mallorca, is a closed community. And the local elections reflect this. Fornes, for whom I've not voted, contradicts the traditional ruralism of the town. A modern man who did a modern job with a modern company, a representative of a town's transformation, but one that remains somehow hidden because of the distance between the town itself and the resort of Playa de Muro. But he, for all his modernity, is still a son of this old world.

As I leave the polling station and turn the corner, there is Martí Fornes. He is dressed casually but smartly. His wife, or a woman I take to be his wife, is darkish blonde with some bling. She is rummaging in her handbag. Fornes has stopped to talk to someone. An old farmer-type character on a moped with a box of vegetables strapped to the back. In this one scene, you see everything you need to see.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.