The Council Tack

The Unión Progreso y Democracia (UPyD) party has nicked my idea. It has proposed that the islands' councils, and the Mallorca council in particular, be scrapped. You may know that I had suggested this recently, as I have suggested it before over the years.

I don't suppose for one moment that there are those in the UPyD who are paying any attention to what I have to suggest, but I'll settle for the fact that one party at any rate seems to see the sense in getting rid of the Council of Mallorca and therefore the lack of sense of its being.

There again, the UPyD, new kids on the political block, having been only formed in 2007, doesn't have much to lose by making audacious proposals. Not that it is necessarily that audacious. There are hints that the Partido Popular (PP) might be thinking along similar lines, while the PSOE candidate for national president, Alfredo Rubalcaba, has sort of flagged up the idea as well. The UPyD, though, is the only party to come out and say unequivocally that the Council should go.

The UPyD is a party that you might describe as being a bit like the Liberal Democrats. It is of the centre, and while it is against nationalism, and so distances itself from the PP with its nationalist tendencies, it also believes there is too much decentralisation of government in Spain. This is less an anti-regionalism philosophy and more a practical one.

The momentum towards eliminating the Council and therefore the cost of running it and the duplications it causes is gathering, as also a momentum is growing to cut back or eliminate other forms of provincial government in Spain below that of the autonomous communities (of which the Balearics are one).

What might hold this momentum back is the history of the Council. It is only relatively new, having been formed, along with the councils of the other Balearic islands, after the collapse of the Franco regime and with the introduction of autonomous government in the islands in the early 1980s.

Consequently, the Council is symbolic of the new democratic era in the Balearics and in Spain as a whole. And there is a bit more history to it. Island councils were due to have been formed in the 1930s, but the Civil War got in the way. Prior to this, there had only been a provincial deputation for the Balearics as a whole (which dated back to the first half of the nineteenth century). The fact that the Council's existence was delayed by some fifty years by Franco does give an historical as well as an emotional force that demands that it should stay.

The Council has a whole raft of responsibilities, granted to it under the constitution and statutes relating to the autonomous communities. To take these away completely, and so follow the trend started by the removal of tourism promotion and absorbing them within the regional government, would require a constitutional change. Or at least, one would imagine that it would.

Getting rid of the Council would be fraught with danger because it would be nuanced by parties with strong regional philosophies as turning the clock back to the bad old days and as undermining the authority given to the islands when they were made an autonomous community.

Of these parties, however, only the Mallorcan socialists really count for anything at present. PSOE (nationally if not locally) appears as though it might be adopting a more pragmatic approach which would allow for the Council's dismantling, while the PP locally would probably be prepared to go along with it. The UPyD doesn't really count for much either, but it has at least brought the subject fully out into the open.

The threat to the Council comes mainly because of financial pressures. The discussion as to its future is belated though, which may sound odd as it is an institution barely thirty years old. But its youth tells a different story. The Council was formed in the glow of the new democracy. It is symbolic, there is no question about this, but whether the organisation in that glow of democracy was the right one is the question that now should be asked. And it is being asked.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.