Presidential Stubbornness: The hunger strike

Whatever one makes of Jaume Sastre's hunger strike over the Balearic Government's education and language policy, there can be no doubting his strength of conviction. People don't go without food for a month for nothing and so put their well-being and lives at risk.

There is an irony in the Sastre cause, and it comes in the form of some of those who support him. An activist for Catalan Lands independence, Sastre's political philosophy is, in this regard, the total opposite to that of some of them, such as those from the Partido Popular. But take this radical philosophy out of the equation and what one has, or so it would appear, is broad backing across the political spectrum for what he has gone on hunger strike to defend - Catalan and its role in education.

President Bauzá is being called upon to negotiate in order to put an end to the conflict that still engulfs education in the Balearics. Among those who have been doing the calling are Cristòfol Soler, who for a time in the 1990s was a PP president of the Balearics, and Jaume Cladera, the islands' first tourism minister under the PP's president Gabriel Cañellas, someone else who has been less than impressed with the current president's stance. Soler has made a point of supporting Sastre from the start of his hunger strike. The two men would differ completely on the issue of independence, but on language they are as one.

Though not vocal in being critical of Bauzá, Soler has clearly disagreed with him pretty much through the whole of his legislature. The differences lie not just with language but also with the philosophy of regionalism. Soler's PP of the 1980s and 1990s was firmly pro-regionalism and firmly pro-Catalan; Bauzá's PP appears indifferent to regionalism while having made little attempt to disguise its hostility towards Catalan.

Can one style this as a clash between the old and new guards in the PP? Up to a point perhaps, but there are plenty within the new guard of the current PP whose sympathies match those of Soler. Some have spoken out, though none has been as vocal as Antoni Pastor was. The mayor of Manacor, booted out of the party, may just possibly be the presidential candidate next year for the El Pi regionalist-nationalist party, having said that he will not carry on as mayor. That would provide a fascinating and hugely entertaining battle with Bauzá were the two of them to both be presidential candidates.

Increasingly, one has to ask whether Bauzá will indeed be a candidate. Is he in fact a liability? If he were to steer away from the controversies which he generates and focus the narrative on the core issues of the economy and employment, he might well be considered worthy of being given another go. But he doesn't allow there to be such a focus. His stubbornness might be applauded by some, but it can also be nuanced as the digging of an ever deeper hole. The public, generally speaking, don't back him over language or over education.

Having been let off the incompatibility hook by the Balearics High Court, Bauzá, rather than engage in some triumphalism at this victory, should take the opportunity to be magnanimous. He said after the PP's rotten performance in the European elections that the party had to be more "humble". He needs to take the lead, therefore. It was reasonable enough to criticise the opposition for having hounded him over a matter - the alleged incompatibility - that had been blown out of proportion, but it was not reasonable, in the context of newly discovered humility, to appear triumphalist. Magnanimity is called for, and it can include a willingness to embrace the concerns of Soler and others.

Bauzá has said he won't negotiate because there is someone who will, namely the education minister Joana Camps. Unfortunately, no one takes her seriously. It is not she who has sought the conflict or who drives it. Everyone knows who has and does. And this refusal to negotiate has now assumed a more serious dimension. It has been suggested that the conflict is now a humanitarian one, the consequence of Sastre's hunger strike.

It is a conflict which also has the power to go deeper, to be enduring and to create future problems. Lost in all of the arguments, lost in the hunger strike, lost in Bauzá's stubbornness is what the schoolchildren of the Balearics think. Try putting yourselves in their position and in conditions of their impressionability. They see a teacher willing to perhaps commit suicide over a point of linguistic principle. Tell me that this doesn't influence their future views and I'm afraid I wouldn't believe you.

Who Is Jaume Sastre?

The story is a simple one but also an heroic one. It is the story of a man willing to defend his language and the quality of education of his language by depriving himself of food and undertaking a hunger strike, which is now almost three weeks long. It is a story which lends itself to a simplicity of reporting, to the heroism of this gesture, because the heroism and the self-inflicted suffering are the stuff of good stories. Yet behind every story there is another story. Behind the gesture of one man, there are questions, and one of them is - who is Jaume Sastre?

We know him as the teacher on hunger strike, the teacher from the secondary school in Llucmajor. He is listed under the Catalan language and literature department. Sastre Font, Jaume, tutor, library co-ordinator. But what more do we know of him? Is it important that we know anything more of him? Or is the heroic, courageous gesture all that matters?

Jaume Sastre has been closely involved with the establishment of two entities. One was formed early last year. It is the Assemblea de Docents de les Illes Balears. It was created as a means of defending schooling in Catalan and of confronting measures to relegate the Catalan language by the Balearic Government and principally, therefore, by José Ramón Bauzá of the Partido Popular. (I have, incidentally, quoted and paraphrased this last sentence from a blog by Martí Gasull i Roig, a founder of the Platform for the Language - Catalan, that is.) He had awarded the Assemblea a "prize". He is one of several who have, including the main defenders and promoters of Catalan in the Balearics, the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB).

The other entity has been very much longer established. It dates back to 1995. It is the Lobby per la Independència, a body which advocates the independence of the Catalan Lands. It states on its website that it is "an organisation created in November 1995 which has as its prime objective the independence of Mallorca and of the whole Catalan nation". This is an extraordinary website, packed full of information. The "menu" items are far too many to list, but they include ones for "fascism", "Bourbons" (i.e. the Spanish royal family), "neo-Nazis", "Spanish inquisition" (which is not the old one but a current one), "Rafatxa Nadal" (Rafa Nadal renamed as Rafa-fascist). On and on and on the list goes. Numerous "fascists" are identified, Air Berlin are Nazis, many a "foraster" (mainland foreigner) is fingered in legal, political and media circles and is typically styled as being, you guessed it, a fascist.

There are also menu items for Pedro J. Ramirez and for "La guerra de piscina". These are related to the remarkable legal battle that Sastre engaged in with the now former editor of "El Mundo". It was all to do with a swimming-pool that had allegedly been built illegally at Ramirez's property in Costa de los Pinos. It was a battle which finally resulted in victory for Sastre when the Balearics High Court ruled last year that the pool was on public land. If some of the sentiments offered on the Lobby's website might seem offensive, then so are those directed at Sastre by Ramirez. "Racist". "Xenophobe." "Fascist." There is a long section devoted to Ramirez's views of Sastre.

Behind the story of the hunger striker, therefore, is another story. The website Fotolog has an entry about Sastre from April 2009. Its headline refers to the "contemporary Mallorcan revolutionary". Is that what Jaume Sastre is? A revolutionary?

The cause of independence for the Catalan Lands is one that has, or appears to have, very little support in Mallorca. If one takes the regular Gadeso surveys of public attitudes and the public's "identity" as indications, then the almost total absence of identity with the Catalan Lands in those surveys would seem to reflect this lack of support. Yet, the policies of the Partido Popular government give the impression of being directed at an enemy within which, at most, exists on the margins of local society.

One has to distinguish between the language issue in teaching and the independence movement. There can be support for Catalan but none for independence. Indeed, the surveys, set against the general parental preference for Catalan, back this up.

The conflict that has consumed education may have started out as a conflict over a system of teaching (itself debatable), but it has ceased to be that. The Assemblea has moved it on, and one of its prime movers was one of the prime movers behind the Lobby for independence. Jaume Sastre. 

Sympathy, yes, because of the way that the PP has gone about the whole wretched language teaching affair. Sympathy, yes, for the defence of Catalan. But is there more to the hunger strike? And another question. What about the students at Llucmajor's school?

* The photo is of Jaume Sastre (left) and the former mayor of Pollensa, Joan Cerdà - one of a series of photos of visitors he has received - posted on 26 May on the blog which is tracking his hunger strike: http://blocs.mesvilaweb.cat/JaumeSastre

* http://www.lobbyperlaindependencia.org/

The Educational Week Of Madness

It was another week of total madness courtesy of the teachers and the education ministry. It did in fact start with sadness. The death last Sunday of Sebastià Serra, the leader of the STEI-i teachers' union, did not herald a period of respectful quietness, albeit that five hundred or so people stood in silence for half an hour on Monday in front of the government's Consulat de Mar HQ. They were being quiet by way of protest rather than by way of remembrance. Their silence, they hoped, would act as a means of finding a solution to the "Great Conflict", that of education.

One had started to think that all the carry-on over trilingual teaching and whatever other grievances the teachers could drag up was dying down. But no. He almost certainly won't die, or one hopes not, but Jaume Sastre, a teacher at Llucmajor's secondary school, has been on hunger strike since 8 May. It has been his way of seeking a solution to the "Great Conflict", whatever it is, because one fears we no longer really know. It certainly hasn't got anything to do with the teaching of English, or doesn't appear to have.

All manner of people and organisations got involved with the "Great Conflict" last week. They ranged from the United Nations to the Mallorcan hoteliers federation to the Balearics College of Lawyers to the Balearics Business Confederation. We haven't heard from Real Mallorca football club yet, but they have had other things to worry about, like getting relegated. Most of these organisations called for dialogue, but what is this dialogue meant to be about? Is it trilingual teaching, Catalan, the law of symbols, what exactly?

The letter to the UN, sent by supporters of Sastre at the Assemblea de Docentes (teachers' assembly), did at least shed some light. His hunger strike is "in defence of public education, of its quality and in Catalan". Ah yes, in Catalan. The regional government, the UN has been informed, has been acting in an "authoritarian and repressive" manner and has been doing so for the past nine months.

With the UN unwittingly dragged into the affair, the "Great Conflict" began to assume crisis proportions of a potentially global scale. Into the fray, therefore, stepped Inma de Benito, newly elevated to the vice-presidency of the Mallorcan hoteliers federation. It, the "Great Conflict", does not offer a good image of the islands to the outside world, she announced, but didn't add any words of advice as to how the conflict might be resolved. Quite why she came to be involved is a mystery, but she might just reflect that mugger-prostitutes on the streets of resorts and total hotelier antagonism to the rental of private holiday accommodation also don't offer the best of images to the outside world.

She did, however, suggest that President Bauzá knows what he has to do. Of course he does. He once said so, as in: "We know what to do and what we do and why we do what we say we are going to do, and we will continue doing what we have to do even though some do not think that we will do what we said we would do." Yes, he really did say this. Donald Rumsfeld would be proud. 

Bauzá's infamous we know what we're doing monologue was hauled out by the Assemblea in one of a series of videos it put out during the week under the general theme of "de-constructing Bauzá". They were intended to reveal his demagoguery, his lies, his "contradictions, dialectical traps and rare oratorical skills". And the president wasn't the only one to be accused of lying. There was, as always, also Joana Camps. She is constantly lying, said an Assemblea spokesperson, noting that the turnout for a strike on Thursday was 15% and not the 0.7% which Joana claimed. Oh yes, there was a strike, and then another one on Friday.

Joana, meantime, found that another battle front had opened up, one that involved her native Menorca. It was a "personal attack", she explained, in saying that a "denuncia" by the Assemblea had no chance of succeeding. The attack had to do with thirty-two trips she had made during eight months as education minister. Of the thirty-two, thirty had been to Menorca.

Sadly also for Joana, the leading member of the parliamentary awkward squad, Manacor's Antoni Pastor, also had a pop at her. The one who is responsible for the application of TIL is the president, he said. "You are a simple, necessary collaborator." The front, the fallguy (woman), the stooge. At least Pastor speaks some sense amidst the madness.

MALLORCA TODAY - Language hunger strike called off

The pensioner who had been on hunger strike as a protest against the Balearic Government's language policies has called off his strike on medical advice. Another pensioner has, however, now also gone on hunger strike.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - Language hunger striker at "point of no return"

Jaume Bonet, the pensioner on hunger strike in protest at the regional government's policy towards Catalan, has been without food for 19 days and is, according to his doctor, at the "point of no return".

See more: Ultima Hora

A Hunger For Language: Catalan

You might have been wondering what Alcúdia town hall was making of all the kerfuffle to do with Catalan, as it had been notably silent on the matter. Actually, you probably weren't wondering, but I was. Are you indifferent to the subject? Does it matter not a jot, or even a jota (as in the Mallorcan dance)?

Alcúdia's apparent reticence to declare was made conspicuous by the public debates on the issue emanating from neighbours Pollensa and the heartland of Catalan in a Mallorcan style, Sa Pobla. It has now shed its silence. The "turncoat" Carme Garcia has put her old Mallorcan socialist duffle coat back on and sided with the Convergència and PSOE in outvoting the Partido Popular and issuing the town's defence of Catalan in matters of its use in the public sector, something that the PP regional government would prefer went away.

Your indifference or attitudes may be determined by the pragmatism argument, i.e. that Castellano, a world language, is of far more use than Catalan, and that it is the predominant language of Spain. It is a not unreasonable argument, but it ignores much, most obviously the cultural aspect of Catalan. Language is culture. Culture is language. The two are indivisible.

Language and culture, you might hope, would be separate from politics, but of course they are not. It is nonsensical to suggest that the language issue in Mallorca is being politicised, as it has long been so, as it has long been politicised in Spain as a whole. The politics of repression have required that Catalan be proscribed, and proscription was imposed not only by Franco.

It was said to me recently that fears were being expressed locally that a new Civil War could engulf Spain. It is an extreme view and one that probably owes much to the actual Civil War and its aftermath residing in the collective, living memory. Less dramatic than the almost total impossibility of a repeat of 1936 are the practicalities of this memory, one of them being attitudes towards Catalan. History can repeat itself, not in exactly the same ways but in similar ways, and this is what underpins the resistance to the regional government's language policy.

Pensioners going on hunger strike to defend the language seems like an over-reaction, but then how can you or I truly appreciate the reasons why? The language is not ours, the culture is not ours, the living memory is one of some foreigners who experienced the Franco era at first hand, but it is one unshared by most. Resort to the pragmatism argument is one of social and psychological distance, of simplification. It is one of a typically pragmatic, unromantic northern European perspective and mentality.

The emergence of the Moviment per la Llengua, driven by current Partido Popular dissenters such as Antoni Pastor, the mayor of Manacor, and ex-PP dissenters who abandoned the party for reasons that included language policy, demonstrates the strength of feeling against the Balearic Government's downgrading of Catalan. But there is a confusion for many of us. A question I have posed before is - which Catalan is being defended?

The government, and certainly President Bauzá, have made it clear that they are in favour of the Catalan languages of the Balearics, the dialects. The Círculo Balear, the organisation that holds up imaginary crosses at the mere mention of the devil of Catalan, has expressed its opposition to the government's recent announcement of a grant (a small one of 50,000 euros) for publishing textbooks which reflect the islands' languages. Is this the act of a government that has no time for Catalan or at least its dialects? Well no, but the defence of Catalan is more abstract than simply the language (or languages).

The Bauzá position is one that is shared by organisations further to the right than the Partido Popular. It is one that respects localism in the form of dialects but that grants supremacy to the national language, i.e. Castellano. But the politics of language and culture are less to do with the language (Catalan) per se; they are more to do with geopolitics. In other words, the ambitions of the anti-Spain: Catalonia.

The Catalan imposition, as it has been styled, is what the regional government is seeking to un-impose. It has been an imposition nuanced as regional imperialism on behalf of Catalonia, with the language in the vanguard, and the advancement of the largely mythical concept of the Catalan lands, which include the Balearics.

Against romanticism, mythology, history and culture, what chance does pragmatism have? It is too simplistic, and if you don't agree, then try talking to a hunger striker.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.