Politics Are Easy With Eyes Closed

Pat Metheny may just be the greatest guitarist in the world. He may even be the world's greatest musician, which would be an accolade that would be impossible to substantiate, so let's just say that as a musician he's pretty damn good and that he's been damn good for over thirty years, as it was back in the late 1970s that the German ECM label released the first album by the Pat Metheny Group. It featured the ten-minute "San Lorenzo", a track, for a jazz outfit, of quite stunning and beauteous melody.

Metheny came to the attention of the wider music public in the mid-1980s thanks to David Bowie doing the vocals for "This Is Not America", which was taken from the soundtrack of the film "The Falcon and the Snowman". At the time, this was the fifth film that Metheny had written the music for. He has since scored many other films and he has just won a Goya, the Spanish equivalent of an Oscar, for the soundtrack to "Vivir es fácil con los ojos cerrados" ("Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed"), the story of Antonio, a teacher, who drives to Almeria in the hope of meeting John Lennon, who was there filming "How I Won The War". The title of the film, some of you might have realised, comes from a Lennon Beatles song - "Strawberry Fields Forever".

In winning the Goya, Metheny beat off the Mallorcan composer Joan Valent, a name that may well be familiar; he is the director of the Pollensa Festival. Among his many other works and achievements, Valent also wrote - believe it or not - the official hymn (or anthem, if you prefer) of the Balearic Government. This isn't a hymn as such - it is a rather jolly instrumental/orchestral piece that features traditional instruments - and it is something of a curiosity. It is curious in that, whereas mostly all regions of Spain have official hymns, the Balearics does not, but it does have a hymn for its government. (Mallorca, by the way, has its hymn, "La Balanguera", but that's something different.)

Valent's governmental hymn was commissioned by the previous PSOE-led administration of Francesc Antich. It was a piece of music, said Antich, which reinforced messages of cohesion in the Balearics and among the islands' citizens. It cost 12,000 euros and came with an accompanying video. The hymn was to be used on official government occasions, while the video version was to be used for promotion at international travel fairs. The question is, whatever happened to it?

Politics intrude into music and culture when it suits politicians for there to be intrusion or, alternatively, avoidance. Try finding any current reference to Valent's hymn and you will probably draw as much of a blank as I have. I conclude, though I could be wrong, that it has been quietly dropped. It was far too regional for a government that at times appears indifferent to the very region it governs. It was also a work that was commissioned by the other lot.

The Goya gala at which Valent (for "Las brujas de Zugarramundi", entitled "Witching and Bitching" for the international audience) didn't win his award was the occasion for a rare old bitch-in between politicians and the film industry. It might not have been had the national minister for culture (and also education) José Ignacio Wert put in an appearance, but he didn't. It was a snub to the industry and showed a lack of respect on Wert's behalf, said members of the Spanish cinema luverati. There again, Wert, had he turned up, would probably have thought that he might have to endure some bitching in his general direction. His education bill would have been just one source. A bill for which he has no responsibility, the abortion one, would have been another. As it was, this was a source of on-stage complaint and was one reason why the former president of the Community of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre, reckoned that the Goyas had been turned into a gala against the Partido Popular: a witch-hunt amongst the bitching, or something like that.

Wert actually had a prior engagement. It was in London. He was meeting Vince Cable, who is Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. It hasn't escaped the attention of many commentators that Cable and Wert have portfolios which do not coincide. Why, therefore, was Wert meeting him? Something to do with reforming Spanish universities apparently. He did also meet people from the LSE and Cambridge, but the fact that the visit was organised as late as 29 January has led to suspicions that Wert was finding a reason to give the Goyas a miss and so to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the film industry. Politics, it might be said, are easy with eyes closed.

Happy Festival, War Is Over

"The festival aims to be an essential cultural crossroads of the Mallorcan summer, one that is open to the people, to the residents of Pollensa or to the numerous visitors, so that this is not a closed programme of cultural activities but one with the involvement of local people and visitors that bestows on Pollensa the cultural benefits of hosting a festival of this type."

This, and I accept it may not be the best of translations, is the text from the introduction of the press dossier for this year's Pollensa Festival. The "crossroads" is a literal translation, but it could have a double meaning. The festival is very much at a crossroads, potentially about to take a wrong turning and ending up in a blind alley of politicking, recrimination and indifference.

The announcement of this year's programme has hardly been given the fanfare that last year's was. Then, everyone was friends. The town hall was extraordinarily grateful to the director, Joan Valent, for all his valiant efforts in putting on a new multi-disciplinary festival despite the best efforts of the regional government's tourism ministry to undermine it by withdrawing its financial support. Last year, the mayor and his second-in-command, Malena Estrany, sat side by side, shoulder to shoulder with Valent and others. How things can change in a year.

So much of a fanfare has there been this year that, despite the programme having been issued to the press, Pollensa town hall hasn't (or hadn't by this morning) bothered to mention the festival on its Facebook page. Valent, on his Facebook page, merely gives a link to a newspaper article that explains the line-up.

Valent, who complained of being treated as though he were a thief when the town hall's report was issued which made suggestions of "anomalies" in the accounts for last year, has still managed to put an event together, regardless of all the politicking, in which he has become a part. Why, opposition groups want to know, was his confirmation of director for the next two years made without the post being put out to some form of tender? You wouldn't completely rule out Valent deciding to simply walk away from the festival rather than have to endure all this. Frankly, who could blame him?

The dossier given to the press was notable for what it didn't say. The background to the whole sorry affair that has been the lead-up to this year's festival has assumed far greater significance than the festival itself. But, of course, the dossier makes no mention of it. The festival, which takes war as part of its theme in devoting its literature programme to war and having as one of its concerts Stravinsky's "Soldier's Tale", has a back story of warring, one glossed over in promoting the inclusiveness of the festival - one that is open to the people, so the blurb says.

In the end, suggestions as to some of those who might have been putting in an appearance have come to nothing. There is no Ian McEwan and no Paul Preston. Figures from the world of literature are internationally renowned, we are told, but few if any will strike a chord. The festival may be inclusive, but inclusive of what and for whom? The broadened appeal that the festival had undergone before the crisis and near disaster of last year and this has narrowed. It is multi-disciplinary but it still reeks of exclusiveness rather than inclusiveness.

But does this matter? Not really. Culture comes in different forms, and the most important thing is that culture is allowed to flourish and to present a face of a civilised society. Pollensa's festival has always done this, but unfortunately a face of civilised society has been distorted by the lack of civility which has been shown to its chief benefactor - Valent. Its flourish in the sense of both prosperity and of ornate musicality has been diminished and been made diminuendo by the padlocks on the coffers. Even a benefactor from last year, the Camper Foundation, has decamped, preferring to divert its benefaction to soup kitchens rather than to symphonies. Priorities are thus, one has to conclude, when civilised society cannot help the most needy and struggles to insist that it still exists and does so, apologetically, through the tremulousness of a vibrato.

At times of impoverishment, however, culture and civilised culture in particular is needed more than ever. The Pollensa Festival, for all that it can be criticised, is nevertheless part of a beauteous aesthetic without which there would be greater darkness. Let us just hope that, theme of war or no theme of war, its own local war can be called a halt to.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Body Talk: Valent and the Pollensa Festival

Every picture tells a story. Every photo is loaded with body language. It's handy that it is. Without knowing precisely the verbal language, one relies on the visual language to tell the story.

The chaos surrounding this year's Pollensa Festival appears to be over. For appearance's sake, two of the main protagonists in this chaos were photographed side by side: Joan Valent, the mightily disgruntled director of last year's festival, next to Tomeu Cifre, Pollensa's mayor. Valent seems willing to accept an offer to be director for a further three years, a new report by the town hall seemingly having put an end to all the insinuations of "anomalies" that arose last year under Valent's directorship and which caused Valent, with good reason, to take considerable umbrage at suggestions, albeit they were only implied, that he had acted with less than total propriety.

Since the previous report was issued which raised these anomalies, the festival's organisation has been all but suspended. It appeared to be unlikely that Valent would return to the fold, so angry was he, and the town hall was saying that there would be a public tender for this year's festival management. For two months though, nothing had happened, until Friday.

Various opposition parties, including the two councillors who are no longer associated with any party, issued a joint statement criticising the inaction. It was perhaps curious to find that Malena Estrany, one of these two councillors, had put her name to this statement. It was, after all, she, as the town's councillor for culture, who had publicised the report which had alleged the anomalies.

Mayor Cifre, who has now taken on responsibility for so much in Pollensa that he is virtually running the town on his own (he has had to because he has been running out of councillors who support him), can't, as a consequence, be expected to do everything swiftly. One of the additional responsibilities that he has assumed is that for culture. Delay there may have been in sorting out the mess over the festival, but on the same day as the joint statement was issued, there was also a meeting at which the mess appeared to be sorted out.

But was everyone at the meeting really happy? Take a look at the photo of the meeting, and the body language speaks volumes. Mayor Cifre appears happy enough, but is this a genuinely happy smile or is it a pasted smile? No one else is smiling to the same extent that the mayor is. The mayor is also holding his wrist with one hand. Too much can of course be read into these things, but this can denote a sign of frustration. The mayor's smile looks as though he is trying too hard.

It is Valent and the member of his production team who really give the game away though. Valent is expressionless, his hand to his chin and mouth. Thoughtfulness combined with suppression. He is in the photo under sufferance, one fancies; there to be seen next to the mayor with the fixed smile. And what of the member of his production team? Arms folded, he doesn't look full of the joys of spring, and Friday was a lovely spring day.

The other three in the photo are Joan Mateu, who has no responsibility at the town hall, Martí Roca, who is now the mayor's right-hand man, and David Alonso, who looks after human resources and IT. Why are at least two of them there at all? Four against two. Mob-handed or safety in numbers or a display of contrition? Hard to say. But note also that Valent and his compatriot have no documents in front of them. They were not there to discuss the festival. They were probably not there to discuss anything, unless it was an apology.

The town hall needed Valent back on board. Its organisation was in a total mess without him. He had already gone some way down the line in contacting participants for events that are due to start in four months time. There could be no more delay.

The town hall has made a pig's ear of the Valent affair. A political climate that has suddenly made transparency, or the attempt at transparency, flavour of the month found Valent caught in the headlights. Wrongly caught. He was one of the last people who the town hall could afford to upset, but upset him is exactly what happened.

For the sake of the festival, one hopes that all is forgiven, but the photo suggests that it might not be. Valent will almost certainly resume his position, but the relationship may not be entirely harmonious.

* The photo can be seen with this article: http://ultimahora.es/mallorca/noticia/noticias/cultura/ajuntament-pollen-ofrece-valent-dirigir-festival-tres-anos.html


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Valent inclined to return as Pollensa Festival director

A joint statement that was issued by members of various opposition parties yesterday bemoaning an apparent lack of movement by Pollensa's mayor, Tomeu Cifre, in settling the organisation for this year's Pollensa Festival either did the trick or was not necessary. The mayor met yesterday with the director of last year's event, Joan Valent, in an attempt to smooth the relationship between Valent and the town hall, which had been damaged, seemingly beyond repair, by a report which had indicated certain anomalies in the running of last year's festival, a report and accusations to which Valent took considerable exception. A new report by the town hall's controller has endorsed Valent's appointment for a further three years and Valent is inclined to accept the offer. The fallout between Valent and the town hall had to do with the nature of financing from sponsors through a private association that Valent had set up. An arrangement for this year and for subsequent years will be made under the auspices of town hall representatives in order to avoid any potential conflicts or doubts in the future.

The Bravery Of Joan Valent

Pollensa's festival was able to go ahead last year thanks almost exclusively to the efforts and the contacts of its artistic director, Joan Valent. It was festival-lite as there wasn't any money. Valent is the Catalan word for brave. Joan Valent was brave to have taken on the task of organising the music and cultural festival. Indeed, he was more than that. If one can describe the organisation of a festival as heroic - and to be realistic, one can't - then brave Valent was a hero. So what does he get for his trouble? In his words, humiliation. 

In order to stage the festival, Valent called in favours from his many friends in the arts world, including the British composer and pianist Michael Nyman. He also needed to get substantial financial and sponsorship assistance from the private sector, which he did; from the Camper foundation, for example. However, there was one slight snag with this amassing of private sector funds. They couldn't, for bureaucratic reasons, be paid directly to Pollensa town hall under whose auspices the festival is organised. Instead, this private money went to an association that was set up by Valent expressly for the purpose of receiving the funds. It is this association that is now at the centre of a row that threatens not just Valent's future participation in the festival but possibly also the festival's continuation.

The town hall is going to open up the management of this year's festival, assuming it does happen, to tender. This is in response to "anomalies" that have arisen from the arrangements made for the 2012 festival. These anomalies do not mean any wrongdoing. They relate, so says the town hall's report, to a lack of detailed documentation and a problem with transparency and correct control of funds for public activities caused by the system that was put in place last year.

The trouble is that as soon as the word "anomalies" gets mentioned, it can be interpreted in a way that isn't intended. It is for this reason that Valent feels humiliated.

What is staggering about the whole affair is that Malena Estrany, ostensibly the number two to mayor Tomeu Cifre, despite the total current confusion at the town hall regarding councillor roles, was and maybe still is responsible for both culture and finance. The Pollensa festival clearly brings these two responsibilities together. Yet Sra. Estrany says that last year she and the town hall didn't know about the association until the festival was underway.

This beggars belief. How can the town hall not have known how the funds were being accounted for? If councillors genuinely didn't know, then questions must be raised as to, at minimum, their curiosity. Even if they did know, how else were the funds meant to have been organised, given, as Valent has pointed out, they couldn't go directly to the town hall?

The news of the report regarding the "anomalies" was badly managed. And to make matters worse, and so make Joan Valent even more upset, were remarks about the issuing of free tickets. Too many were given away, it has been alleged. Valent has come back on this one, referring specifically to the ten tickets (rather than the usual four) given to Sir Norman Foster, his family and friends. Foster was the guest of honour at the opening concert, one dedicated to him by Valent. Foster had paid for these people to come to Mallorca and for their stay. Valent, rightly enough, has queried how or why, under such circumstances, he should have refused the six additional free entrances.

And it wasn't only Norman Foster who was paying for his own travel. Valent himself says that he spent upwards of 30,000 euros of his own money in organising the festival, one which, in the end and despite the private-sector generosity of Camper, Barceló and others, was run on a shoestring.

Prior to the town hall's announcement of the tender for this year's festival and to the release of the critical report, Valent had been making progress in contacting various figures from the arts world to participate in this year's festival. One of these is the British author Ian McEwan. Now, arrangements for this year have been thrown into confusion.

There is one final point to make on this affair. Malena Estrany has been at pains to refer to "transparency" in connection with funding. Yet she is a councillor at a town hall which is consistently accused of a lack of transparency. Her argument smacks of expedience, the result of the current turmoil at the town hall, and perhaps it is one that is intended to deflect questions as to why she wasn't more aware of what was happening last year. 


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Pollensa festival threatened because of "anomalies" report

This blog item from Elena Valles sticks the boot into Pollensa town hall over a report on the Pollensa festival last year which suggests there were "anomalies" regarding its finances. They weren't irregularities, just the way that the financing was organised. The director, Joan Valent, has said he feels humiliated, and Valles suggests there may not be a festival this year.

(I shall be having more to say on this.)

See more: Diario de Mallorca

Symphony For The Absent

How many of you can say you've had a symphony named after you? Very few, I'd wager. To be eponymous in a symphonic way is a fair old honour, rather like having one's appellation attached to a newly discovered sexually transmitted disease or a boson. New symphonies are, I guess, rather less common than bosons (and presumably, there are enough bosons floating around for everyone on the planet to have millions named after them and not just Professor Higgs), but like models of car, symphonies tend to be given numbers rather than names: the 323i Overture, or some such.

Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, is quite a famous chap. There again, so is David Beckham. Unlike Becks though, Norman has given his name to a symphony (or maybe there is a Beckham Symphony, just that I've never heard of it). Not the Norman Symphony but the Foster's Symphony, and it was unveiled, if one can say that a symphony can be unveiled, on the opening night of the Pollensa Festival.

This is all fair enough, and as Norman Foster is well regarded enough in Spanish circles to have been awarded the Prince of Asturias Award, for a Spanish (Mallorcan) composer to have fostered a symphony also seems fair enough. Despite the prestigiousness, it would appear that it was all rather lost on senior politicians in Mallorca. Perhaps they mistook the name of the symphony for a sponsorship deal, though given that the regional government touts for private-sector support from wherever it can, you would have thought that all the political glitterati would have been flocking to Pollensa. Maybe this was why none of them turned up; when they realised it wasn't a symphony in the name of an Australian lager but some builder chap, they realised they had other engagements.

It is pretty poor form, though, that the regional government couldn't send at least one emissary to greet the world-famous architect. So thin on the ground were the politicos that Lord Foster had to make do with Pollensa's mayor and his number two, the lovely Malena. The absence of the island's rulers has not gone unnoticed, and criticism has been forthcoming, as also has criticism for the fact that music critics were shunted into a part of the Sant Domingo cloister where they couldn't see very well.

I could have been one of these music critics in that I could have taken advantage of an open freebie invitation to pitch up at any of the festival's events, but as I am not a music critic (not of the classical genre, at any rate), then this would have been a case of taking freeloading a bit too far. It's just as well. My review would probably have been along the more-enjoyment-from-watching-paint-dry variety line, but then I am a Philistine. What little I have been able to see and hear of the grand occasion is rather illuminating, however. Not the music, but all the empty seats in the front rows. Perhaps they had been reserved for members of the Balearic Government.

The criticism of the non-attendance is valid. Disrespect might be stretching it, but Norman Foster is an important figure, important enough for him to have received the honour from Crown-Prince Felipe. Perhaps the politicos are reserving a trip to the festival if Queen Sofia attends, which she often does, but it wasn't only Lord Foster who was being neglected, it was the composer and the artistic director of the festival, Joan Valent, and Lord Foster's wife, Elena Ochoa, who is a pretty serious name in her own right. Her involvement in the arts, which extends to a gallery in Madrid and to her having founded the Ivory Press and launched the highly regarded "C International Photo Magazine", made her as significant an attendee as her husband, given the broader arts basis of this year's festival.

There was some bad blood between the town hall and the government following last year's funding debacle for the festival, but it had seemed as though things had moved on, and moved on in the right direction with the government's involvement shifting from the tourism ministry to the culture ministry, and the government had been represented at the festival's press launch. It is a bit of a mystery, therefore, why no member of the government was there to greet Lord Foster.

It should have been an occasion on which to at least show some official support for the festival, but no, the government blew it. When Valent composes further symphonies, it is unlikely he will name any after Balearics politicians.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.