Part Of The Union: Mallorca's mancomunidades

A "man community". Depending on your perspective, a man community would either sound distinctly ominous or something close to heaven. However, a man community, in a Mallorcan style, isn't anything to do with men. "Mancomunidad" (substitute the d's with t's to arrive at the Catalan alternative) means a union - and no sniggering in the back rows at the prospect of men engaged in union. The verb "mancomunar" means to unite, to be jointly responsible for or to pool, as in resources.

Pooling of resources is theoretically one essential ingredient of Mallorca's mancomunidades. There are six such unions, of which two, those for south Mallorca (Felanitx and Santanyí) and for the Migjorn region (Campos and Ses Salines), form one, which does rather beg a question as to why there need to be two of them. Anyway, the six (or five) of these unions are now indeed five, or four, as one of them, that for the north, has been disbanded.

The Mancomunidad Nord comprised six municipalities - Alcúdia, Pollensa, Muro, Sa Pobla, Santa Margalida and Artà. Or rather, it had, since 2009, comprised five, as Muro had decided a couple of years back to leave the union, which was somewhat unfortunate as the headquarters were in Muro: in the municipal building in Playa de Muro to be precise.

For fifteen years, this northern union had stumbled along, a coming-together of the uncertain, as there was no great certainty as to what its real purpose was. It did one or two things, like arrange for it to have a director and to devise the odd cycle route, but otherwise, it did very little. In theory such unions sound like common sense, but in the case of the one in the north there was a problem posed by an imbalance between the wealthier and less wealthy towns and between their economies.

Take a look at the six and this imbalance should become clear enough. Sa Pobla, for example, isn't a tourist town, while the others all are, but are so to varying degrees. Artà has comparatively little tourism, and while Muro and Santa Margalida have good amounts of it, neither is as wealthy as Alcúdia or Pollensa. The latter two towns really had no need for a union, and if it were a case of helping out others, it was a bit like Germany giving aid to Spain.

Competing agendas, the consequence of competing needs, meant that the union was never likely to work. But this said, each town has its own internal competing needs, and it is the job of town hall administrations to balance these. In the same way, had there been a will to do so, it might have been possible to arrive at a balance between the needs of the six towns.

Had there been a will, what should the union have been doing? Given the experiences of other unions on the island, the main activities might have involved the sharing of responsibilities for social services or for refuse collection. But was an absence of a will down to more than just imbalances between the towns? A logical outcome of towns working together and of pooling resources would be, as many have argued, that there should be a rationalisation of local authorities. A merger, in other words, or anathema in another word.

Of the different unions, two seem to be pretty active. These are the mancomunidades for Raiguer and for Pla, neither of them with tourist resorts and both of them, in the island's interior, with fairly similar needs. They have, for instance, worked together on matters such as water supply.

Though Inca and Marratxí, of the bigger towns in Mallorca, are members of a mancomunidad (both are part of the one for Raiguer), there are notable absentees: Manacor, Calvia and Llucmajor, each self-sufficient you would assume and each with a tourism economy.

What the different unions suggest is that for the most part towns which have significant tourist industries are among the "haves" of Mallorca or don't derive any great benefit from linking up with neighbours. They also suggest that where there are common interests, such as with the interior towns, the unions can probably work. But even here, one wonders if towns such as Inca would tend to dominate. And this, in addition to rivalries that would arise out of identity with individual towns, makes it questionable whether any rationalisation through merger of town halls could ever be made to work.

There is much to be said for more formal arrangements and for local authority amalgamations, but the experiences with the mancomunidades don't inspire confidence as they have been so uneven and so imbalanced. And there are other examples of union of which much the same could be said.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.