What's In A Community?

"Comunidad" or "comunitat", if this is your co-official language preference, has the same meaning as the English "community". The words have each followed the same linguistic path from Latin "communitas" with divergences such as the Old French "comuneté". In terms of human society, it is one of the most powerful words and concepts to have come from Latin. It is the sharing of something in common - a place, a belief, a value, an identity, a government.

When Spain moved into its democratic, post-Franco era, it placed community at the centre of this democratic renewal. Regions, such as the Balearics, officially became communities. In English, because it aids better understanding, it is convenient to refer to the Balearics as a region. A community, in wider social terms, is more understandable in being applied, say, to the British or German communities in Mallorca or to all sorts of other communities. They are on the internet, there is a farming or banking community, a gay community.

All of them are defined by having something in common, as is a political community. But English can stumble somewhat in acknowledging community as an actual political entity. Hence, why region is a convenience. Not, however, that it is inaccurate. The Balearics is still a region, just as Catalonia or Andalusia are. But they are more than this. They are communities. Their official political denomination is "comunidad autónoma" - autonomous community - and their constitutions are enshrined in their statutes of autonomy.

The Balearic parliament has been engaged in a debate into the "state of the community". Linguistically, a trick might be said to be being played here. State has its dual meanings of condition and "nation". A debate into the state of the nation that is the community, that of the Balearics.

To what extent is there a Balearic community? Is the term a form of artifice, a kind of deception to portray the sharing of things in common? A political expedient, therefore, to engineer a sense of common identity? There is undoubtedly greater power in conveying cohesion through community, a greater sense of purpose than merely being an anonymous, if autonomous, "region". But how real is it?

Historically, if one goes back far enough, there was no community. Primitive societies would not necessarily have allowed it anyway, but in the Balearic archipelago there was separate development and evolution. Ibiza entered the Classical World far earlier than either Mallorca or Menorca. Its Carthage association saw to that. Much later, Ibiza was to express its separateness through the identity of architecture, transported to Mallorca only by degree, such as to Cala d'Or.

At the time of the Catalan conquest, Ibiza and Formentera submitted to the Catalan aristocracy in the form of the Bishop of Tarragona six years after the assault on Mallorca by Jaume I. Menorca and its Muslim community accepted the sovereignty of Aragonese nobles two years after the Mallorca takeover. The island wasn't to definitively be "Catalanised" for a further fifty or more years. The events that created a Catalan society in the Balearics are revered mostly in Mallorca. 1229 and all that do not carry the same weight elsewhere.

In far more contemporary times, Menorca held out as a Republican stronghold during the Civil War. In the years immediately before the war, Ibiza and Menorca had great reservations about tentative moves to establish autonomous government for the Balearics during the time of the Second Republic. Both feared that it was a move to give Mallorca dominance.

When mass tourism arrived, the mass mostly descended on Mallorca. Balearisation, the development of the coasts, was predominantly a Mallorcan phenomenon. The magnet for tourism society was Mallorca. It became a global byword in ways that neither Ibiza nor Menorca did. Ibiza experienced its own curious evolution, that of hippy colonies.

While there are common linguistic connections, there are also differences. These are most evident in Menorca, the legacy of British and French influences. Likewise, these occupiers bequeathed architectural styles, at variance with those, say, of Ibiza.

The president of the Council of Mallorca, Miquel Ensenyat, speaking on the occasion of Mallorca Day, referred to the original institutions of autonomy - the islands' councils (with the exception of Formentera, which wasn't to get one until much later). These councils came before the formation of the autonomous community and so the founding of regional government. Ensenyat stressed the importance of the councils in responding to the idiosyncratic needs of the islands.

With that one word, idiosyncratic, Ensenyat spoke volumes. Something peculiar to the individual islands. Specific differences, be they cultural, economic or political.

When surveys are undertaken of identity, they reveal overwhelming identity with the specific islands rather than with the Balearics: this sense of belonging is greater away from Mallorca. So is there genuinely a "community"? Maybe Nel Marti (Més per Menorca) summed it up during parliament's debate: the complete absence of mention of "his" island.

Working For Mallorca's Place Names

In Jonathan Meades' short story "Filthy English", the semi-autobiographical protagonist is cast as being a lexicographer by profession: that's someone who, broadly speaking, compiles dictionaries. Meades doesn't explore how his character earns a living - that isn't the point of the story - but a living he does make. But being a lexicographer, one would assume, offers only comparatively limited prospects of earning huge salaries or indeed of being presented with a vast array of job opportunities. How many dictionaries can there be?

Meades' lexicographer might also have been described as an etymologist - a student of the origin of words. Both professions exist within a range of studies, each of them with several degrees of obsessiveness and all related to words. Others include the philologist - the student of languages -  and the toponymist, he or she who studies place names. None might seem to offer great career prospects, yet, and I have remarked on this in the past, Mallorca appears to be awash with all of them. There are, for example, politicians who present themselves as philologists - the leader of Ciudadanos in the Balearics, Xavier Pericay, is one of them. For Pericay, this earnest background has a political significance. A Catalan speaker, he is nonetheless from the supposedly right-wing school of political thought which argues that there is room in society for more than one language: Castellano, for instance.

Obsessive or not, there is a fascination. How did a word come to be as it is? What's the background to such and such a place name? In the case of the latter - toponymy - the Balearic government has sought to provide some gainful employment (possibly) to a commission of toponymy. The department for linguistic policy has reactivated this commission, it having been moribund for four years.

And what, you may ask, will this commission do, all twenty members of it? Its brief, according to the department, will be to establish a working plan with the aim of completing the official toponymy of the islands, replete with geo-referenced nomenclatures, and so of contributing to the knowledge, correction and recovery of place names. In Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera, all this is apparently at an advanced stage but it is not in Mallorca.

Why, though, are they bothering? What is the purpose of this obsessing with place names? Does it have any practical outcome or is it merely an academic exercise? Well, in terms of practicality, there may well be applications. And for this one should consider the four years of moribundity. To what do these four years refer? The last government.

When the Bauzá regime came into power, one of its more idiotic ideas was to harmonise place names. This meant using one interpretation of these names, a Castilian interpretation. Hence, and at its most extreme, this might have led to road signs, say for example for Pollença with a cedilla, being changed to Pollensa. This could have been a practical outcome that would of course have been wholly impractical. How much would it have cost for starters?

Mercifully, they saw sense and the whole proposal was quietly dropped. But what was also dropped was any official consideration of place names. And why? The presupposition is that the absolutely correct use of names has an overwhelmingly Catalan element, a fact that the Bauzá language policy would have been less than keen on. Better, therefore, just to ignore the whole issue.

A clue to why we now have a toponymy commission once more lies with the department that has reintroduced it. Linguistic policy resides within the weirdly concocted (by Més) ministry for participation, transparency and culture. Place names, toponymy need to be politically correct according to a Mallorcan and Balearic nationalist narrative.

So this may all seem - and is - a political development, but in language terms there really isn't or shouldn't be anything wrong with it. Catalan influence is clearly fundamental and it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise, but Mallorcan and Balearic place names are a great deal richer than one language alone: the various strands that combined to form Catalan, Arabic, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Iberian, Mallorquín and other island derivatives, French, English in the case of Menorca, and indeed Castellano, they all play a part.

This study of place names is, therefore, an exercise in detailing the various cultural influences on the islands. As such, it is a worthwhile undertaking. And it is one that is set against a broader background, that of Spain. To give an idea of how widely the investigation of place names in the country as a whole is, one only needs to be aware of the conferences that are held by the specialised commission for geographic names: the last one was in Valladolid in April 2015.

Names are a Spanish obsession not just a Mallorcan one. And after all, as there are so many toponymists, etymologists and whatever knocking around, you have to give them something to do.

Taking Family Tourism For Granted

Family tourism. The bedrock of Mallorca's tourism over decades. A market for which the sale was simple. Cheap, very cheap destination. Hotels of sufficient standard, assuming they had in fact been built. Sun, water and adventure for the kids. Bars with ten peseta shots for mum and dad and some dabbling with "foreign" food. So sophisticated.

In the days when holidays came in standard packages, there was no tourism market more standardised than the family market. One size fitted all. Families were families: 2.4 and all that, lifted from some standardised middle to lower middle class estate in middle England or the middles of other European countries - a few countries at any rate.

Somewhere along the line, between the 1960s and the present day, the standard family split into various branch lines. But even allowing for the changing nature of family units, the products had remained largely unaltered. Until, that is, hotels and tour operators realised that branding, theming, internet were as applicable to families as to other tourism markets. Mallorca has a pirates village and will have more. Mallorca has Katmandu. Mallorca has Vivas with their ships and an increasing abundance of watery themes involving models of animals and more ships. Mallorca still has Flintstones, positively Stone Age now in terms of theming but a remarkably enduring theme nevertheless. A bedrock of Mallorca's tourism: Bedrock in Palmanova.

For all its centrality to the tourism industry, the family tourism market had tended to be overlooked. It had remained a comparatively simple market to sell to. It hadn't required massive amounts of innovation. It was solid, dependable and, in purely marketing terms, unexciting. Various things happened: recession, heightened sophistication, greater demands, ease of cost comparisons, children guiding the purchasing decision. The family was back in marketing vogue after years when the tourism industry had focused its efforts and demographic segmentation on ever more defined niches, pandered to and pampered by the all-powerful nature of The Brand.

For Mallorca, a redefinition of family tourism created themes and gave the all-inclusive hotel a quantum leap. Long since cheap as chips and faced with competitor destinations that had managed to combine higher standards of hotel offer with cheapness, the all-inclusive provided Mallorca with a new front line in the family tourism battle.

All this did, however, was to reinforce what had long been known. Once Mallorca ceased to be the cheap destination of the earlier years of mass tourism, it was appreciated that family tourism wasn't terribly profitable. In general terms, it still isn't. But given its size, it is not a market that can be ignored: hence, the greater attention now paid to theming and branding. There again, how big is big?

In November last year, there was a further recognition of the revival of industry interest in the family market when the first international congress for family tourism was held at Port Aventura, the Tarragona holiday world with its multiple themes of a variety and scale unimaginable in Mallorca. Representing the Balearics was the tourism minister, Biel Barceló. He made the observation that the family market accounts for 25% of the whole Balearic tourism market. It sounds on the low side, but one trusts that the minister has his statistics correct.

Barceló also noted that the family market poses something of a handicap. It does nothing to address seasonality, and for an obvious reason: schooling. He then added that it is, however, a market that is very loyal. Families have been coming to the Balearics, he said, for more than fifteen years.

Official announcements from local authorities, be they government or municipal, constantly refer to family tourism as a virtuous market. Calvia is always harping on about it, for example. And yet here is a market which accounts for at least a quarter of all tourism that doesn't fit with another constant mantra - the desire to address seasonality, for which we have all the various niches that are promoted (cycling, food, birdwatching and so on). Strategically, therefore, it isn't given the level of emphasis that other markets are, while that loyalty is going to be sorely tested by the tourist tax. Precisely because the family market is less profitable than others, owing to it having a generally lower spending power, precisely because nowadays any destination is only as important as its security and convenience but is otherwise chosen on price, the tax threatens that very loyalty.

The point is that family tourism has always been taken for granted. The industry has identified that it no longer can be. Therefore, it invests in themes and branding. The government, however, does take it for granted. It doesn't promote to it, it is a market of value only in summer, and the government is going to tax it. The gap between how officialdom talks about family tourism and how officialdom treats it is great.

The Conde Affair: Business corruption

The Panama papers continue to supply sensational reading. Spain's society - politics, royalty, business, the arts, sports - is implicated. The names provide a who's who of the county's VIP establishment: Jóse Manuel Soria, the acting industry, energy and tourism minister; Pilar de Borbón, the King's aunt; Oleguer Pujol, son of Jordi, the former president of Catalonia; Francisco and Juan José Franco, great grandsons of the dictator; Pedro Almodóvar, film director; Lionel Messi, footballer.

Last week, when the leak was becoming a tidal wave, someone was invited onto Spanish television to discuss tax havens. He said that demagogues claim that anyone with a company registered in a tax haven is a "common criminal". There is a great deal of ignorance, he went on. These companies are audited and their taxes are paid. It was "outrageous" to condemn someone just for having a company in countries with tax advantages superior to others. He also suggested that it was "ridiculous" that Spain did not have its own tax haven. He ventured that it could be the Canaries.

A few days later, the person who had said all this was arrested. He is Mario Conde, businessman, politician and an ex-con who now - if perhaps only temporarily - finds himself once more behind bars. Conde is not cited in the Panama papers, but his arrest, coinciding as it does with the leaks, has merely served to crank up the level of outrage. Conde might believe that it is outrageous to attack those who seek advantages in tax havens, but it is far from only demagogues who have been drawing their conclusions. The outrage is great, its timing possibly crucial. The whiff of another type of corruption could yet influence the interminable goings-on with forming a new government or a second election.

Spain's society, given its love affair with football, would probably be unmoved by mention of Messi, who has after all already had his brushes with the tax man. Members of the arts world might likewise be looked upon sympathetically. Politicians and businesspeople, however, are different. And into the roll of business dishonour that there already is comes Conde. Again.

In 1997, he was originally sentenced to six years in prison. In 2001, he was sentenced to fourteen years. The following year, the Supreme Court upped this to twenty years. He went to jail but was released in 2008.

At the heart of this was the so-called "caso Banesto". This erupted in 1993. It was to do with a web of corporate corruption at the bank. Its president was Mario Conde. The actual amount that Conde and others were said to have embezzled from Banesto varies according to reports, but the figure of 26 million euros (its equivalent in pesetas at the time) is common. And his arrest centres on an anti-corruption prosecution investigation that he had been involved in repatriating to Spain more than 13 million euros.

This amount, so it is claimed, had been coming back to Spain from overseas accounts, in particular ones in Switzerland and London, in small amounts - some 3,000 euros at a time - since 1999. Seemingly, it was a very much larger sum, 600,000 euros, that alerted interest. This was a transfer from Switzerland to La Caixa Bank in 2014. It was the bank itself which, in effect, blew the whistle as it had queried the legitimacy of the transfer. A judge at the Spanish High Court, Santiago Pedraz, is now investigating a total of 15 people, including various Conde family members.

Conde always protested his innocence over the Banesto affair. It even found its way to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. There again, Conde had a record of having influential friends. They included, at the time when the Bank of Spain had to intervene with Banesto, the prime minister, Felipe González, and leader of the opposition, José María Aznar. There was also Adolfo Suárez, the man who led Spain's transition to democracy.

Judge Pedraz and the prosecution service are looking into the network of 40 companies that the Conde family had established. It is this web of businesses, plus the offshore element, that has echoes not just of the Panama papers but also the Nóos affair.

Conde is one in that roll of business dishonour. Others include Rodrigo Rato, ex-minister, ex-IMF, ex-banker; Gerardo Díaz Ferrán, ex-president of the Spanish equivalent of the CBI, co-founder of the giant Grupo Marsans; Ángel de Cabo, Díaz Ferrán's Mr. Fix-It, who headed what now seems the mysterious acquisition of the Hotetur chain (Alcudia's Bellevue and all). There are others. 

The Conde affair, this Conde Nasty, just makes the stench more malodorous. It fans the flames of the fire that Podemos, among others, has started, one that has engulfed a society previously only too willingly apathetic in shrugging a collective shoulder and saying that's Spain. There's outrage all right.

Tit For Tat: Education and language

And so we come full circle. More or less. Tit for tat. Education and language, two sides of a coin that has only one face. We are back to 2008. Year zero for much of the legacy of the Antich government: education, language, land plans, decrees for wetlands. Schools, teachers, the civil service and public sector workers, property and infrastructure developments with their implications of investment and employment or not. All of them in a constant state of turmoil and of the violently shifting sands of Balearic politics. Here comes a big wave to wash everything away. Now comes another wave to wash it back into place.

The Partido Popular is not wholly wrong when it suggests that the current government seems hell bent on repealing anything and everything that the Bauzá regime introduced. But it ignores the fact that it had acted similarly in dismantling the Antich legacy. There is an additional tone to this latest revisionism, however: the sheer hostility directed at Bauzá personally and all that he represented. It's not pleasant. Nel Martí, a Més-ite, has compared Bauzá to Felipe V and so to the vindictiveness and repression of the first Bourbon king, with Catalan and Greater Catalonia (not that it was referred to as such in 1715) on the end of a cannon ball and of prohibition. They simply cannot let the past be. History always intrudes. Here is a land constantly re-fighting wars.

PLIS is an association of teachers. The acronym stands for, in English, teachers free of social engineering. It has taken the government to task over its educational reforms. There is a whole list of criticisms. They range from renewed bureaucratisation of school management, to the role of unions in selecting school directors to the totally free training of teachers to be done in the workplace and paid for out of everyone's taxes. Then there is the most recognisable cog in this social engineering wheel. The language.

Bauzá's trilingual teaching (TIL) project was an unmitigated disaster, one that could have been foreseen. Had it been a project predicated on education, it might not have been. But it was not. It was a naked, undisguised means of subverting Catalan, the first attempt at doing so - the free selection of teaching language by parents - having proved to be as much of a disaster as to what was to follow.

No less an institution than the Council of Europe has been having its say. In its report on the charter for regional and minority languages, it has issued its own broadside. It condemns TIL because there weren't teachers qualified to implement it. It insists that Catalan should be respected in teaching at all levels - from infant to secondary. It concludes, however, that during the school year 2011-2012, the first full year over which Bauzá presided, the balance (slightly in favour of Catalan against Castellano) was about right. It was to be the engineered and deeply flawed introduction of English that was to disrupt this. Or would have done, had it ever been implemented in something even approximating a coherent fashion.

The Bauzá critics refer to the "obsession" that the last government had with Catalan. Yet it is an accusation that could equally apply now; only in reverse. To what extent there will be a reversion to the edicts of 2008 which effectively made Castellano a minority language remain to be seen. But in different spheres - schools and the public sector - there is little equivocation. The clock has been turned back eight years. Tit for tat. Catalan becomes once more a pre-requisite for public-sector employment. It's as you were.

Xavier Pericay, the leader of Ciudadanos in the Balearics, must feel lonely. He can snuggle up to the PP, but he fights an all but lone battle. Anti-nationalist, as the C's are, he brings his own scholarly interest in languages to the parliament chamber. Languages do not have rights, only those who speak languages. It's not an argument destined to find favour with the government (or with the regionalist-nationalist El Pi). Languages are all. One in particular. The rights lie with vocabulary, grammar, dialect, the ancient divergence within the Romance languages and so with cultural heritage aka baggage. The social engineering decrees that this must be so.

Nothing, or very little, remains of TIL. It was unceremoniously (and correctly) hurled with great force into the deepest of seas surrounding the Balearics, a faint echo vaguely detectable amidst the fading sonar tests for oil. This echo is in the form of free choice by schools. If they wish to use a third language for teaching, then they can. The PP says this will produce first and second division schools. It probably won't. There'll be one division. First or second depends entirely upon your perspective.

Meanwhile, someone, somewhere is genuinely concerning him or herself with education. He or she is not a politician.

The Myth Of Utopia

Five hundred years ago, a book was published, the title of which, combined with a general misunderstanding as to what the book was about, was to enter common language usage. This was Thomas More's "Utopia". It was a book that was to become - if this can be said of the sixteenth century - a bestseller. Originally in Latin, it had seemingly been intended for the high-bred and high-educated. While Classical Latin was enduring and was to endure, by the time More wrote it, the various Vulgar Latin common speech spin-offs had long been transformed via the process that was to bring about modern Romance languages, such as Spanish and Catalan, or had simply been displaced, as was the case with, initially, Old English. In order to reach a wider public, translations were required: Classical Latin was, by then, an obscure language for the common people of western Europe.

There are all manner of interpretations of More's work and there are also competing ideas as to why he wrote it. The story is that it came about through a meeting with a Portuguese sailor to whom he was introduced after mass at Antwerp Cathedral in 1515. Or at least, it was this sailor who was to allow More to locate the island of Utopia in the New World. Crucially, though, More was friendly with various Renaissance Humanists. That they could converse and share ideas had everything to do with their knowledge of a common language: Latin.

"Utopia" was, in a sense, a pan-western European venture and a kind of manifesto. It wasn't necessarily seeking to establish a different form of society but it provided - to use current parlance - a form of roadmap towards that society. Competing theories suggest that it was intended as more of a satire, thus rendering its vision unworkable and unrealistic; even sympathisers were inclined to believe it was all rather simplistic.

A curiosity of More's work was that it should have come from him at all. The tolerance of "religions" as they existed in "Utopia" was at variance with his own alleged persecution of Protestants (something else that has long been debated). He himself of course incurred Henry VIII's wrath by not supporting the separation from the Catholic church and was executed.

"Utopia" was to subsequently be seen as something of a blueprint for Communism on account of the generally egalitarian society it envisaged, but its importance in this regard can be overstated. Karl Marx and others were to also view the work as simplistic. But its central thesis was predicated on the need for an ordered society, which is where the great misunderstandings have occurred. In current-day usage, Utopia has become a euphemism for paradise, a vision of idyllic island life in which everyone co-exists in harmony. More appeared to have been advocating some form of social engineering as opposed to a paradise. He didn't, for instance, bar slavery.

In essence, two distinct branch lines of Utopia were to form: one political, the other more spiritual. In Mallorca, there were those in the last century who craved their own pieces of Utopia. Adan Diehl, the founder of the Hotel Formentor, was one. Josep Costa i Ferrer, the driving force behind Cala d'Or, was another. Both from an artistic/literary background, they shared visions of havens of educated good taste, ones littered with those from the arts fraternity. Diehl's vision was a total disaster, one that left him financially ruined. Don Pep's was to be altogether more pragmatic.

Diehl had returned to Argentina by the time the Civil War had started. Whatever Utopia he or Don Pep had desired was shattered; the collision of Fascism and Communism (with anarchy included in the Spanish version) well and truly did for their more heady ideas of a Utopia. There was, however, some kind of notion of a Utopia in both Fascism and Communism. The problem with both was that social engineering to attain this state was based on hatreds, intolerances and authoritarianism. There had been a necessary system of authority in More's vision, but it was one that was to be taken to its absolute extreme.

To come to the current day, it might be argued that political change in Spain is about a wish to establish a new type of Utopia. With Podemos (and others) there is an unmistakable undertone of quasi-Communism. It can be easy to, therefore, dismiss this based on precedent. Crucially, however, this contemporary vision is one in which political power is inherently limited and is subordinate to the democratic will of the citizenry. It is an enticing vision but one for which there is no precedent and is also one that inevitably leads to conclusions of all power eventually corrupting the self-proclaimed incorruptible.

More's vision was unworkable. Other visions have likewise been proved to be unworkable. Utopia, in every sense, especially politically, is a myth.

Talk Of Consensus Is Cheap

Konrad Adenauer, the father of post-Nazi democracy in Germany and one of the creators of that country's system of consensus politics, stood for re-election as Chancellor for his conservative Christian Democratic Union in 1957 under the slogan "no experiments". Any experiment that the (West) German people might have contemplated would have been to return the only other party of any note - the socialist Social Democratic Party (SDP).

Comparing democratic Germany with democratic Spain is to compare chalk and cheese. The former, once it had emerged from the privations of the post-war period, established enduring economic and social success that was based on a generally well-ordered and well-cared-for society, industrial power, its social market economy and moderate, two-party politics, the latter of which was to prove to be the bedrock for the consensus that remains to this day. Spain, post-Franco, has enjoyed little of the same, and economic crisis brought home the fallibility of a nation without such attributes and inspired the political crisis of disruption to two-party politics that was produced by December's general election.

Mariano Rajoy, Spain's conservative equivalent of Adenauer's current-day heiress, Angela Merkel, warned against experiments before the election. He didn't have PSOE and its moderate socialism in mind. He was talking about Podemos. The experiment may yet not be realised in that Podemos might fail in its objectives to be at the government table, but one experiment that has been realised has been the shattering of two-party politics.

This altered state has been styled as a breakdown in some long-established pattern. It does of course depend on how one defines a "long time", but Spain's two-party system is only some 25 years old: as old, that is, as the Partido Popular, which was founded in 1989 out of the wreckage of the Alianza Popular and its associations with Francoism. Germany's two-party system is much older, as also is Britain's and that of the USA.

Far from being an engrained, seemingly immutable state of two-party affairs, it could just as well be argued that the past 25 years have represented the type of experiment that Rajoy, for one, would be incapable of conceding. Spain has given the norm of others a go and questioned its appropriateness for a country for which instability had long been the norm. The election represents, therefore, a return to the state's state of flux, appended to which is the flux of the wannabe state of Catalonia, the great question Spain has singularly failed to reconcile for three hundred years.

The great irony, however, is that into this latest outbreak of chaos steps the political newspeak that chants consensus from every available soapbox or press release. Driven by reconstructed scholars of the works of, among others, Karl Marx, consensus is now to be the state to which the powers of the state - political parties both old (or oldish in the case of the PP) and new - are supposed to aspire. But let's ask questions. Do we suppose that, had there not been the necessity, Francina Armengol and PSOE would have gone anywhere near a pact with Podemos? It's safe to say that we can suppose that they wouldn't have. She, Armengol, can spout consensus for all she's worth, but it is being foisted upon her. It is a consensus of colliding forces and, as such, is not achievable. Only the rhetoric can claim its existence, the practice proving that it is a delusion to believe it does actually exist or indeed can exist.

And like Armengol, will PSOE's Pedro Sánchez, assuming he can survive a leadership contest, seriously wish to have Podemos as bed mates? He too can talk of consensus, but more likely would be the convenience of the three-way alliance with the PP and Ciudadanos (C's), something that would not be consensus but a means of making damn sure Podemos doesn't get anywhere near government. Advised to form an alliance of the left by Armengol - and she would hardly say anything else for fear of upsetting her government partners - he has nonetheless been handed slack by the very same Francina in his negotiations. He also has a Podemos get-out-of-jail card, i.e. Catalonia and the referendum, something on which there is at least consensus with Rajoy and the C's Albert Rivera.

In Germany, consensus became the political leitmotif for a country saddled with guilt and with a corresponding determination to not forget past evils and so forge a system that could avoid conflict. In Spain, there was no such catharsis. It has required King Felipe to remind politicians of the past but it has also taken the shock of crisis to bring a halt to the satisfactions enjoyed for much of the two-party generation. As those unravelled, so did the bipartite experiment. Talk of consensus replacing it is cheap.

In Search Of Brand Mallorca

Mallorca has some pretty serious brands. To Marriott and Hilton are being added Hyatt and Virgin. What do these have in common? Apart from all being in the hotel business (which will be the case with Virgin), they are all foreign. Moreover, they are global brands. Their recognition takes them around the world.

The strength of a brand doesn't happen by accident. It isn't solely an achievement of clever marketers. There has to be considerable substance for a brand to be imbued with the consumer confidence and trust that stem from this recognition. And this substance is created by doing things well and innovatively: even the comparatively small things. Take Marriott, for example. With its acquisition of Starwood, it is poised to become the world's largest hotel concern. A giant of the travel and tourism industry, I can recall how - many years ago now - Marriott was pioneering the use of what would nowadays be referred to as to the exploitation of Big Data. Its innovation in data capture was such that it created personalised attention. The collection of client preferences was stored and then shaped into what would be presented to the client on his or her next stay.

Such detail, such service is what goes towards the establishment of the attributes that mark a great brand out from others. Too often, or so it can appear, it is the visuals of the brand that are believed to suffice. They do not; it is what lies behind the hotel facades, logos and advertising messages that matter.

Virgin is a very different case. It is a peculiar organisation in that it appears to be a vast conglomerate chewing away at more or less every available sector going. And yet its style has always been essentially decentralised. It is more like a franchise system, unified under a brand name that carries with it values that inspire confidence, rather than one massive and faceless entity. 

To no small extent, the Virgin brand is an abstraction from the attributes assigned to its founder, but it would not have succeeded in the way that it has if these were all that it relied upon, and a clue to that success might be found in one word that Richard Branson has uttered in respect of ambitions for the Son Bunyola hotel: "best".

It might seem simplistic, but an aspiration for being the "best" is what impels businesses to seek and to attain brand superiority. The whole structure is designed with being the best or the best possible. And with this being-the-best come the ultimate aims of branding - customer loyalty and trust as well as profit, recognition and/or market leadership.

For all the success of Mallorca's home-grown, global hotel companies, none of them possess the same brand powers as a Marriott, a Hyatt, a Hilton or a Virgin. Up to a point, this is a question of scale. Meliá, as an example, may be big but it is dwarfed by others. But it, as with other Mallorcan hotel companies, were slow to appreciate the benefits of strong branding. This isn't just me saying so, they've all pretty much admitted as such.

As they play catch-up, and none better than Meliá, what might this mean for Mallorca? Superior brands of ever greater recognition, they should, they will have a rub-off effect on the island. But to what degree might these major hotel chains create a type of de facto brand for Mallorca? One that is cast in their collective image, this collective being a combination of the home-grown, leading hotel chains and the foreign ones, to which other names and brands - from the Middle and Far East - will follow.

Gabriel Escarrer of Meliá has spoken of the need for Mallorca and the Balearics to become an "elite" destination. This is one in which the global, "best" brands will succeed, but is it this process of re-branding that inspires so much resentment among some politicians and, so it would seem, the public at large? When Alberto Jarabo of Podemos opined that the hoteliers act against the best interests of Mallorca, a staggering 80%-plus agreed with him (according to one survey).

The politics of current tourism harbour philosophies opposed to fundamentals of strong branding. For Podemos, "sun and beach" is obsolete, when it is Mallorca's primary brand attribute. The tourist tax does nothing for loyalty developed over decades. Neither of these envisages a strategic vision of Mallorca as "best", only Mallorca as defined by specific political interests. The hoteliers, meanwhile, disconnected from this political process, follow their branding initiatives which ultimately make the island secondary: it is the brand and the loyalty to it which matters and not the destination.

Who will step up and argue for brand Mallorca? Perhaps no one, because while such tensions exist, there can never be a unified brand. Someone should talk to Branson.

Plastic Politics: Mallorca's environment

Last Saturday, hundreds of people took to the streets of Palma to march in favour of the future of the planet and renewable energies and to alert everyone (those who must have been living on a different planet for the past couple of decades) to the threats posed by climate.

The global climate change march, or at least the march in the small part of the globe that is Mallorca, demonstrated that there are hundreds more inclined to concern themselves with the environment than they are with Mallorcan independence. That protest march was on the same day. Barely tens of people were sufficiently moved.

Nonetheless, there was a degree of crossover, even if certain groups concerned with marching on behalf of the climate didn't actually put their names to the independence stroll. The usual suspects displayed their green credentials - GOB, Més, Friends of the Earth, Podemos - and some even wore the green t-shirt of trilingual teaching defiance (hasn't that become somewhat passé?). Still, if you're on a demo for a green issue, then what other colour should you wear?

Climate change attracts its lunatic wings at the polarities of the argument - the Flat Earth deniers and the Armageddonists - but they aside, why is it that this is an issue, in Mallorca at any rate, which appears to interest only the left? There is political mileage, as with Més, in being "eco-nationalists", but the "eco" part is inclined to get lost for the vast majority who are probably generally sympathetic to the cause but who grow fatigued by the constant and largely meaningless narrative of sustainability. Such is the political centrality of this concept that Més have even managed to honour it by introducing a tax in its name. Sustainability is the new political hectoring.

Taking to the streets to warn of the possible end of the world is a noble enough thing to do. If the message gets across, then fine, but it's not as if those who matter aren't aware. They invented sustainability, as an example, around thirty years ago and then made it globally popular at the Rio Summit. Waving banners and wishing to overcome can seem somewhat futile in the face of colossal smokestacks - the whole of China one has the impression - and the avarice of Big Business. It's much the same with paying for a supermarket plastic bag. Why not just ban them? Another futile gesture though because of all the other plastic packaging to be carried home.

In Mallorca, many spent last summer getting into a flap - rightly - about the tons of plastic drifting up from north Africa, where the Algerians have managed to create landfills (not particularly efficient ones at that) right by the coasts. The clean-up efforts were admirable, but they were a shining light of eco-action as opposed to eco-conscience-assuaging and eco-indifference. Mallorca loves a good recycle. Or would do if the populace was inclined to follow instructions. 

At fiesta time, the chances are that you will stumble across recycling workshops. Everywhere has one (or several). Mainly aimed at children, if they fulfil a worthy educational function, then so much the better. But the island's eco-values aren't, despite all the huffing of Més and others, that strong. Yes, everyone bangs on about the environment, but there isn't, as an example, the strict enforcement of recycling as there has been in Germany for a good twenty odd years. Woe betide anyone who falls foul of the Green Gestapo ready at any moment to leap out from behind a container if a householder errs in dropping a miniscule piece of plastic into the paper bin. In Germany, the very name of the recycling enforcement agency was met with a look of dread and fear.

Then there are the renewables. Or should one ask - what renewables? A target of 20% renewable energy by 2020, supposedly a regional pledge made several years ago, will not be met. It will be missed by many percentage points, one fancies. At present, the islands manage to generate roughly a measly 2% from renewables, while a region in the middle of the Spanish land mass - La Rioja - has over 80% renewable energy source. Why is the figure so low in the Balearics? There are many reasons why, but try starting with Endesa and Red Electrica.

Environmental issues demand fully joined-up policy thinking and making. Currently, this has the look of being piecemeal. It's one thing to direct the sustainability dogma at the tourism industry and invent a tax in the process, but it cannot be piece by piece, it has to be whole, if sustainability is actually to mean anything. 

Més (and Podemos) will doubtless steer a course towards such unity of policy, only to find it undone when they lose the next regional election. Environment - right versus left. Why not stick it in the centre, where it belongs.

Gastronomy And Astronomy: IB3

The Mallorca (aka Balearic) public broadcaster, IB3, has a new director-general. He's a man with long(ish) hair, a couple of days' stubble, a moustache and glasses. Worryingly, he reminds me of a university history tutor from many years ago, from a time - the 1970s - when long(ish) hair, a couple of days' stubble (or preferably several months), a moustache and glasses, or combinations thereof, were considered de rigueur among the academics of north Lancashire.

In those days of yore, a further requisite was that academics wore their left-wing credentials on their lapels or in their wallets. Card-carriers of the Communist Party, Socialist Workers' Party or some mad Maoist collective were considered normal. Right-wing academics stood out like a very sore thumbing of the nose in the general direction of Marxism, Trotskyism and various other isms. They were looked upon as cranks, especially by the hairies in the ranks of the students' union.

None of the above, in terms of political affiliation, will apply to Andreu Manresa, the hirsute, bespectacled, latest incumbent of the IB3 hot seat. But as he is a journalist with "El País", the assumption is - probably not a wrong one - that his politics veer towards the left. "El País" is "The Guardian" of the Spanish media: academics of the good old days of unrest on the campuses would purchase their copies of "The Guardian" along with "The Morning Star" from the campus newsagent's and wrap the former inside the latter in order to boost street cred while marching off to the lecture hall.

Manresa, for anyone who attended Santa Ponsa's Moors and Christians' festivities in September, may well be familiar. He delivered the "pregón" for the Rei en Jaume fiesta, alluding to Calvia not as a village or as a town but as a "constellation", "a galaxy on Earth", with idiosyncrasies and contrasts - from the mega yachts of Portals to mega nights out in Maga. (Actually, he didn't say the latter about Magalluf; I've made that up.) If memory serves, he also had things to say about aubergines and almonds. And so, with all this in mind, what does the new DG have in store for IB3? A lot of cookery shows probably. Gastronomy and astronomy. The cuisine constellation.

One thing that is fairly evident is that the ruling junta in the Balearics is fairly pleased with their man - I'm sorry, pleased with the man; slip of the possessive pronoun. Broadcasting neutrality and all that, the leader of Podemos, Alberto Jarabo, has spoken in glowing terms of Manresa's experience and independence. He will, he says, "dignify" the public broadcaster, thus implying that it hasn't always been dignified, and in this regard he isn't totally inaccurate. Prestige will return, adds Jarabo, to the "profession of journalism".

Political lack of neutrality appears to have played a part in the roles of previous DGs, even if they have denied this. Jarabo believes that Manresa will not be subject to the pressures that others have experienced. His independence will out. But the very fact that Podemos (and PSOE and Més) are pleased with themselves and pleased at the appointment suggests that the other lots will be less so. And this is indeed the case. The PP, while recognising his professionalism, are somewhat miffed at the fact that they weren't asked about the appointment. Ciudadanos is the only party to specifically draw into question his independence, observing that his journalistic career has been under one particular "political colour": it's that old "El País"-"Guardian" thing.

It has been said of Podemos in the Balearics that one thing above all that it has craved is IB3. If this is indeed so, then one has to ask why. But though in apparent rapture at the appointment, it doesn't follow that Manresa will be at the beck and call of Podemos or indeed of the two government parties. One can hope that this is the case, as the broadcaster does need to be de-politicised. Jarabo implies that there won't be pressures. He should stick to his words then.

Within all of this, though, one has to also ask: does anyone really care about the appointment other than politicians? Of subjects that concern the local population, included among whom are foreign residents, I would guess that the DG of IB3 is fairly low on the list. Yet, the appointment and the fuss regarding the now ex-DG have commanded a great deal of media attention. Perhaps it's all a case of the media talking about itself and to itself. More than anything, the general public are only interested in there being a decent broadcaster, one that is paid for by their taxes. Which is how it should be anywhere. Leave the DG to get on with his job. And if that means gastronomy and astronomy, then so be it.

Mallorca's Identity Conundrum

It is, when you think about it, a bit odd. There you are, stuck on an island some 250 kilometres off the Spanish mainland to which your owners (the Spanish) paid scant regard for several centuries. And yet there you are, nevertheless, a part of Spain. It is the lot of islands that they tend to belong to someone, albeit that the Maltese have eventually made a pretty decent fist of not being.

A distinction needs to be made between Spain the state and Spain the mainland. Not that Spain, as such, existed when the Catalans and Aragonese arrived in the thirteenth century. It was the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon to Isabel of Castile - more than two hundred years after the conquest - that sowed the seeds of a unified Spain. But even this union didn't dispense with Ferdinand's Crown, that of Aragon. It was to be roughly 250 more years before the Crown was dismantled together with Mallorca's part within it. Three hundred years ago marked the moment when Mallorca became definitively a part of the Spanish nation and a centralised one at that.

But prior to the enactment of the Nueva Planta decree and subsequently, Mallorca was largely ignored. Yes, it had some trading significance as well as some strategic military importance, but to all intents and purposes it was a colony, one remote from the Spanish state and mainland. It had its Viceroy, its Governor and then its Captain-General. But here, fundamentally, was an island which owed nothing to the more ancient history of Spain or indeed Catalonia. In the cultural mix of Spain, one forged from invasion and migration, Mallorca and the Balearics were the missing link (as were the Canaries). The islands and the islanders were never of the Visigoth stock which determined the course of the development of the Iberian peninsula. Not that is, until a branch line of Visigoth inter-mingled descendants came and took it over in 1229.

Colonialism, both Catalan and Spanish, implanted culture, but even now the arguments rage as to what this culture actually is or should be, and so extend to the seemingly endless quest to understand the identity (linguistic and otherwise) of the island and of the islanders. Within this debate, there is the vital factor of what happened some sixty years ago. For so long a sort of afterthought appendage to the rest of Spain, Mallorca suddenly assumed a position of critical importance. It wasn't to be the nation's bread basket so much as the nation's principal foreign-exchange agency. Tourism, ultimately, was all about money, and only some of it was for Mallorca.

The new colonisation wasn't solely that by tourists or by foreigners buying up what were then cheap-as-chips properties. It was one of enormous labour migration. In the 1950s, before the boom started, migration contributed roughly 7% of population growth. By 1970 this had risen to almost 30%, a great deal of it coming from parts of Spain without the old Aragonese connection: Andalusia, most notably.

The population of Mallorca in 1960 was just over 360,000. It has since grown by over 500,000, and within this increase is the detectable influence of the mainland. Which are the most popular surnames in Mallorca? Well, they're not ones of specifically Catalan origin. They are García, Martínez.

While many migrants will, so to speak, have gone native, is it the change in demographics of the past sixty years which helps to explain the results of the latest study of Mallorcan and Balearic identity? The annual Gadeso research is a significant sociological survey and it consistently shows that Mallorcans consider themselves as much Spanish as they do citizens of the Balearics. What it also shows is that a majority (63%) identify more with Mallorca than with the Balearics. This isn't particularly surprising, but what might be considered to be surprising is the almost total absence of sentiment towards Catalonia. A mere two per cent of Mallorcans identify with the "Catalan Lands".

The Council of Mallorca president, Miquel Ensenyat, has some justification in referring to the "colonial" nature of the financing arrangement between Mallorca and the Balearics and the state. The islands are disadvantaged, and one can argue that the colonisation from the 1960s has consistently been more to the advantage of the state than to the islands. Yet despite this, and despite what the likes of Ensenyat ultimately avow - a form of Mallorcan independence within a Catalan Lands nationalism - the popular sentiment for this, as shown by Gadeso, simply doesn't exist.

This is political sentiment, so a similar survey of cultural sentiment might well show a very different result in terms of Catalan identity, but it is nonetheless rather odd that those centuries of Spanish neglect should now appear to show a firm connection with Spain and almost none with the lands that introduced that original cultural identity.

Breaking The Rhythm Of Summer

Well, where did that go? Summer. I know, I know, there are three weeks until the equinox but September cannot disguise its name. It is a synonym for an ending, for a hastening descent towards the real end: September and summer, slip sliding away.

The natural rhythm of summer and so also its September conclusion has been disrupted. Once upon a time, in an English sense, September was a month of the Gillette final, misty morns, the occasional summer of an Indian variety and the start of the autumn TV series, timed to climax with the family glued to the box at Christmas. Now even "X Factor" starts in August, thus maximising the potential for the latest victorious product of the Cowell factory to ratchet up ever more million-plus sales in the pre-Christmas chart race. 

Oh for the days of yore when a dewy Lord's would stage the season's final, played by cricketers knackered from having shoehorned into August roughly eight three-day matches, four one-dayers and the occasional festival match against the tourists. What do we have now? England's one-day captain, Eoin Morgan, takes the whole of August off, having managed a less than impressive three-ball duck in his last match on 1 August. 'Twas never thus.

All the while of course, footballing hegemony has edged closer to 365 days a year. Even without there being matches, there is the transfer window and the consequent opportunities for 24-hour sports news to blather on about the likelihood of an Armenian centre-back making his way to Burnley. (All other sorts of options are available.) With the Premier League reversing in Cowell-like stealth fashion to an ever earlier start, this does bring joy to the Brit bars of old Mallorca: one more weekend of nectar, an amber one, the tills overflowing with the revenues of Fosters or Saint Mick.

The bars, however, like Septembers and not just because of the football. August, the main summer month, does not necessarily bring forth foaming rivers of gold: too many damn families not out on the lash, assuming they have been let out of their all-inclusive internment camps, that is. Whatever movements there are, sporting or otherwise, in the UK or other main markets have generally small disruptive impact on tourism. It is as it has been for many a year, August giving way to the September prospect of greater spend per head of tourist population.

Yet in a different sense - Mallorca's political summer - there is disruption. Massive disruption. For one particular observer, let's say myself, there is much to be said for Eoin Morgan's desire to recharge energy levels through an August lay-off. Chance would be a fine thing. Through the enervating heat and increasing humidity of August, there has been no time to rest, to recharge, to recuperate. The politicians have denied themselves adequate periods of lounging on a beach, away from the machinations of politicking. They have been too damn noisy. They have, as a consequence, demanded too much attention.

If not the tourism minister Barceló charging around resorts with which he was presumably unfamiliar, then it has been the president and her aide at finance, Cladera, issuing daily bulletins (sic) regarding the parlous state of Balearic finances: all with a target date in mind, that of tomorrow, 2 September. The great meeting with Rajoy at which Armengol will hope but doubtless fail to extract any less parsimony than at present has overshadowed the rare shade of August. The month was one of a carefully crafted propaganda event, laying the groundwork for public opinion when the Rajoy-Armengol summit goes in a direction opposite to that which Armengol might have wanted.

It was a month when there was too much of the politics thing, bolstered by the 24-hour news chatter of the eco-tax: a subject of speculation like the transfer window and no less capable of endless comment. And then there were the appointments, those of senior officials, about which there were disagreements among the partners of government. How could the politicians have relaxed, taken August off when they had eyes constantly trained on what their so-called partners were up to and their potential infidelities? 

With so many of them new to all this, it has not been surprising that they have chosen not to stay silent. Plus, they are of the new age, when a politician needs to be able to demonstrate - transparently - that he or she is earning the crust granted by the citizens' taxes, even if this means getting it wrong. Far better to be seen to be doing and speaking, rather than not doing and keeping mum.

This is not how August should be though. Not in Mallorca. Everything is meant to close down. The rhythm has been disrupted. And now it's September. Oh well, soon be Christmas.

Missing A Beat: Jazz and politicians

In 1991, the town hall in Palma, newly under the control of the Partido Popular following twelve years of PSOE dominance, took a musical decision. It wasn't formally decreed, but there was an unmistakably political angle to the decision. Jazz was for socialists.

This, at any rate, was the implication of the scrapping of the Palma Jazz Festival. It had started ten years before. Over three evenings, starting at 10pm, from 27 to 29 July, 1981, jazz fans were able to go to the auditorium to see performances by the Dexter Gordon Quartet, the Dizzy Gillespie Quartet, the Stan Getz Quartet. Later editions of the festival were to include concerts in the cathedral and by an array of internationally acclaimed artists. The festival had come about largely because of the success of a concert in May, 1981, when the American pianist Keith Jarrett had appeared at the auditorium. In terms of star names from the jazz world of the time, these four - Jarrett, Gordon, Gillespie and Getz - were firmly among the A-List.

It is perhaps fair to say that jazz does, or did anyway, have a bit of a political thing going on. Maybe it was all to do with the roots of the music. Maybe it was the nature of improvisation - the freeing of the mind, its liberalising. Maybe there was also an element of the religious: there is many a jazz musician who from times past and times present has discovered Buddhism, for instance.

But to classify jazz as something "socialist" was of course to deny the music to the many who were anything but socialists. Music, as a general rule, doesn't recognise political ideologies as pre-requisites either for its performance or its appreciation. The decision taken, however, and jazz in Mallorca received a distinct kick to its syncopation. The enormous popularity that it had in the 1980s was to take some time to be recaptured.

A generation on from the somewhat bizarre attitude of the town hall, it hasn't been the PP which has been causing disquiet in jazz circles but the other lot. For reasons hard to fathom, the ministry of education, led by PSOE, had decided to reverse a decision taken in the early spring of last year by the Music Conservatory in Palma. It had informed the education (and culture) ministry that, from the start of the 2015-2016 course, it would be including studies in jazz and modern music for the first time. The ministry didn't appear to have any issue with this. Indeed, a year later, the by then education minister, Nuria Riera, was only too glad to appear in the photos taken at the celebration of International Jazz Day. It had been sponsored by, among others, the conservatory, the government and the Council of Mallorca, and had been organised by the UNESCO delegation in Mallorca.

All, therefore, appeared well set for the conservatory to start courses for piano, double bass, drums, vocals, saxophone and guitar. Exams for entry into the courses had already taken place, with assessments made for, among other things, an ability to improvise. Then came the bombshell. The chair of jazz and modern music was to be removed. The new education ministry said so.

It has primarily been the intervention of UNESCO that has led to the decision being reversed again. The course will start, as had been projected, but its future is not secure. The ministry is apparently undertaking a period of "reflection" regarding the conservatory's programme, and the jazz and modern music part of this won't be the same for the 2016-2017 course, assuming it is a part.

It isn't clear if the ministry was guided by any dislike of jazz as such or rather by a wish to consider the entire educational offer at the conservatory. Nevertheless, initially taking a decision to scrap the jazz and modern music chair gave the perception that the ministry had taken a dislike to jazz. It does perhaps say something for the influence of UNESCO that it can get a decision changed. The ministry accepts that the rights of those who had enrolled on the course need to be respected.

An institutional attitude, even if it is not being stated, which seems at least indifferent to jazz is highly reminiscent of the attitude in 1991, and it comes at a time, as was the case at the start of the 1990s, when jazz has never been more popular. You can't really move in Mallorca without stumbling across one form of jazz or another. The current vogue is swing, inspired perhaps by the celebration of the life of one of the greats of Mallorcan popular music, Bonet de Sant Pere.

Music, in all its varieties, offers a considerable amount to Mallorcan cultural life and to the island's tourism. Politicians need to recognise this and to stop messing around, just as they had with the symphony orchestra.

All-Inclusive: What Are They Going To Regulate?

I once said that I would never write about all-inclusives again. It had all been said. There was nothing more to say. Over a period of what is now some ten years, thousands upon thousands have been the words I have produced. They have been in consideration of law, of markets, of tour operators, of hotels, of government, of customers, of historical development, of the "complementary offer", of the wider economy, of morality and ethics, of service, of quality, of economic crisis, of the futuristic concept of the "super all-inclusive", of the research findings from the university in Palma and from studies in different parts of the globe that have examined the effects of all-inclusive. Nothing more to be said. How foolish I was to presume that.

Politicians, government ones and town hall ones, have suddenly discovered all-inclusive. Where have they been for the past generation? Observers of different types keep discovering all-inclusive and keep saying the same things that have been said year upon year upon year, stretching back to the last millennium. Round and round and round it goes, a carousel of opinion being regurgitated from mouths that were long ago expressing the now hackneyed insights offered.

In the Balearics, Benidorm and the Canaries, politicians and others are hard at it, discovering the political and moral high ground to be gained by alluding to "regulation". At last, it is said. Where were they in the past? Where were they in Mallorca when the then president of the hoteliers federation (circa 2004, I don't recall the exact date) was making it abundantly clear that all-inclusive was the "future"? By then it was already the past as well. The johnny-come-latelys of the all-inclusive intervention industry attribute much of the "blame" to economic crisis, when this merely strengthened the offer rather than created it. Recession of the early 1990s, it might be argued, was when - in European terms, including Mallorcan - the creation occurred (Club Med and all that notwithstanding).

What are they going to regulate? How are they going to regulate? Out of the mouths of politician babes newly and innocently installed in government and town halls comes the regulation word. Regulation with its own regurgitative homophonic quality; they are all-inclusive sick all down the newly acquired bibs of office. Regional government, Calvia, Manacor. What are they going to regulate?

In Alcudia a party which stood at the municipal elections was one that had been largely born out of a desire to regulate all-inclusives. It has support from local bars. Its mayoral candidate was a bar owner. I know him well. He has my sympathy in his aims, but I have never got a satisfactory answer to the question - how? Town halls cannot regulate the type of board that a hotel offers. They have no competence in the matter; only the regional government can. In Benidorm, they have at least had the good sense to say that findings from the study that is to be undertaken into all-inclusive will be forwarded to the Valencia administration.

But there is a world of difference between saying the government can and saying that it will. Such is the harsh reality of modal verbs and of the market. Yes, the market. Remember that?

While the arrival of leftist coalitions has been the springboard for the renewed attention being given to all-inclusives, my guess would be that there are any number of all-inclusive critics who are otherwise firm advocates of market liberalism, a distinctly non-left philosophy: the market economy, the free market, and the adherence to it enshrined in national and European law as well as, in Spain, the Constitution. Is there to now be a pick 'n' mix of statist and market economies? Perhaps there should be. Yet already we have witnessed how the reality intrudes into statism as applied to tourism. Syriza. They were going to do this and that to all-inclusive. They very quickly changed their minds.

There is an article on the Hosteltur website by Antonio Garzón*. He is a regular writer on tourism issues and he also has a strong background in the hotel industry in the Canaries. He might be considered not entirely independent, therefore, but his article is worthy of attention as is the heading to the original article from his blog: "All-Inclusive, Electoral Slogan".

The thrust of his article is that the market decides, which is a simple enough theory. He posits the question - Is regulation of all-inclusive compatible with a market economy? Let me leave it to you to answer this, but in so doing you might take into account legal and market reasons why bans on, limits to, standards for, prices (through the artificiality of tax) demanded of all-inclusives would be devilishly difficult to impose. What are they going to regulate?

* http://www.hosteltur.com/112204_todo-incluido-espana-cinco-dilemas-si-se-quiere-regular.html

Politics Of The Fiesta Programme

"Not possible, it is fiesta." That was 29 June out of the equation. "Thursday not possible, it's fiesta." So it is. I had been seeking an appointment with the mayor. As it turns out, on account of my insistence and the pressing nature of the need to make the appointment, it is possible for tomorrow. Initially it hadn't seemed to be: new mayors do have very busy schedules; one can accept that.

These busy schedules do have to take into account fiestas. Town halls, mayors have many responsibilities but none more defines the function of a town hall than the organisation of its fiestas and its participation. And this does of course entail being shut on certain fiesta days.

Sant Pere is the fiesta for the port of Alcudia. The town has its own fiesta - Sant Jaume in July. But then the town hall is a town hall for the whole of Alcúdia. It has its days off even if these days off don't, strictly speaking, apply to others in the whole of the municipality. Sant Pere one can understand, but Mare de Déu de la Victoria as well? In fact it is perhaps even more understandable. The hermitage at La Victoria, the camp-over of the night of 1 July, the fiestas for the Mare de Déu up the mountain above Alcúdia are hardcore tradition: more so even than Pere and Jaume. Few visitors attend; they are fiestas for the people of Alcúdia. For the town hall and for the mayor there is a very well-defined role in these fiestas. On Thursday next week, as is the case each year, the mayor will lead the ball de bot folk dance before there are showers of sweets and hazelnuts. The town hall does of course need to be shut on that day, even if the ball de bot isn't until half past four. There again, the traditional arrival of dignitaries, accompanied by the band of music is at half eleven in the morning. "Thursday not possible, it's fiesta."

The arrangements for La Victoria are the same each year: exactly the same. From the climb and the whistling to the hermitage of the evening of 1 July through the fritters and mistela wine, the folk dance, the offer of camomile and the paella, they never vary. Yet there is always the programme; it is tagged on to the one produced for Sant Pere, even if it is an exact repeat of years gone by.

Fiesta programmes are themselves matters of great town hall importance. So much so that they can often not be released until late, much to the annoyance of those who would rather like to know, more in advance, what will be going on: La Victoria doesn't alter, but Sant Pere, some of it, does. There has been an added reason this year for any tardiness in the programme publication - and it will have applied to other municipalities as well - and that is the mayor's introduction and mayor's photo with the introduction. Woe betide any printer who accidentally uses the photo of the ex-mayor.

These mayoral intros, replete with the correct photo, can be rather like a football manager's programme notes, and with the arrival of a new administration they are even more so than usual. The new mayor hopes that the people will have confidence in the town hall's ability to organise fiestas and cultural acts and, after the fiestas are over, will also have confidence in the town hall to deal with their concerns. The town hall is at the disposal of the people of Alcúdia. "Molts anys. Bones festes de Sant Pere."

There is other stuff about thanking the fishermen of the port and being honoured to express the significance of the celebration of the port's patron saint, but then it goes on to speak of Alcúdia not being able to live without the sea and its role in tourism, the primary sector of the local economy. As much as it is a greeting for the fiestas it is also a political statement. Is this appropriate? Should the greeting not simply confine itself to the fiestas themselves and to their tradition and cultural significance? Perhaps, but the fiesta programme is a prime source of town hall communication. The fiestas themselves are the most visible manifestation of town hall involvement in the lives of local people; they are the town hall's face, and the face of the mayor and his or her message is a key opportunity to communicate.

It is perhaps for this reason, as much as providing information about the schedule of events, that so much attention (and money) can be lavished on fiesta programmes. They can seem to be an unnecessary expenditure, especially if the schedule never alters, but they are a statement. Produce a rotten one and it can appear as if the town hall doesn't care.

The Never-Ending Argument Of Language

There was this interview. It was with the philologist who is responsible for linguistic use at the IB3 broadcaster. At the conclusion of the interview she says of the Balearic language that it doesn't exist. To speak of a Balearic language is provocative, just as it is when one refers to the Catalan of Mallorca. It is the philological way, but she doesn't like it because, for centuries, we have called it Mallorquín.

In Mallorca, it can appear, there are more philologists than you can shake a dictionary at. These "students" of languages, be they actual students, professors or hobbyists, proliferate to an extent that is hard to comprehend for those of us brought up without an obsession with arguing over languages and their historical significance. Philologist was a word, a profession if you like, that I was well aware of before coming to Mallorca, but never had it occurred to me that there would be a place where the philologist seems as common as the town hall official, and as equally bloody-minded in all likelihood.

And the town halls have their own quasi-philologists, the councillors who are charged with the responsibility for what, through literal translation, is linguistic normalisation but which is better translated as standardisation. Either noun will do, as the whole term is a euphemism for Catalan. Or is it?

The philologist of the interview, Mariantònia Lladó, has a contentious responsibility at IB3. Anything to do with language has the potential to be contentious - which is one reason why there are so many philologists knocking around - and at IB3 it has been just this. It has all had to do with an issue that will, for the great majority of you, seem impenetrable and arcane, but that is because you will not be obsessed with the detail of language, one that is so micro-scrutinised that there are arguments which haggle over the use of the word "the". At IB3, "the" became a politico-philological battle. The Partido Popular, which ruled the broadcaster through its government vice-president Antonio Gomez and then José Manuel Ruiz, who failed so spectacularly in becoming mayor of Calvia, insisted that the Mallorquín "the" should be used and not the Catalan "the". Mariantònia, elsewhere in the interview, reveals her "the" preference, lamenting the fact that, except out in the villages of Mallorca, the "new generations" use the literary "the", i.e. the Catalan one.

For the Bauzá PP, so desirous of distancing itself from anything marked with the stamp of Catalonia, the intervention over "the" at IB3 went to the heart of its linguistic politics, and the very notion of there being a linguistic politics can strike many as being somewhat absurd. But that's because they are not bound up in the ceaseless polemic that can appear to define all politics of Mallorca.

The PP line, and that of Mariantònia (and I hope I'm not misrepresenting her), is to promote the languages of the islands at the expense of Catalan. Yet this can appear to be - in political terms - contradictory. The PP disassociates itself from notions of nationalism - those which are not Spanish nationalist - but it advocates a distinct language, Mallorquín. And what, as far as nationalism is concerned, is more nationalist than a language? But then, it isn't contradictory if it is accepted that there are minority languages/dialects within the framework of the grand nationalism of Spain and it also isn't contradictory if this acceptance is one to cock a snook at the pretensions of Catalan nationalism which involve a geographically broader area than just Catalonia - the mythical Catalan Lands.

Inherent to this line is an argument that the languages of the islands, and each island lays claim to having one, are the products of some form of separate development. Well, quite clearly there has been. When there are 250 plus kilometres of sea that divorce Mallorca from the Catalan heartland as well as a history of Arabic language and Vulgar Latin (and it is this which is the root of the "the" argument), there was bound to have been linguistic modification. But the mother tongue is Catalan (and/or variants that themselves influenced and created Catalan). To refer to the "Catalan of Mallorca" is, however, says Mariantònia, provocative. And in this, for many Mallorcans in my experience, she is right. Mallorcans speak Mallorquín and not Catalan, albeit there are obvious, very strong similarities.

So, one comes back to this business of linguistic normalisation, sometimes determined at town halls by councillors who proudly speak their Mallorquín (and nothing else) but within an ideological framework of Catalan nationalism and with responsibility for the normalisation of Catalan. And ditto the schools, where the argument is over the promotion of Catalan, not of Mallorquín.

Still, this all helps to allow philology to flourish and for there to be never-ending arguments, and the fact is that they will never end.

You Are Not Mallorcan

I am making an assumption that you are not Mallorcan. You may live in Mallorca, you may visit Mallorca, but no, you are not Mallorcan. But not being Mallorcan does not prevent you from having opinions about Mallorca. These are opinions which, predominantly though not necessarily exclusively, will be formed from your own perceptions, from your own backgrounds. Are they Mallorcan?

There is a Facebook social network site called "Mallorquins en perill d'extinció". Translation is not needed. Even a non-Mallorcan can figure out what it means. Its title is exaggerated. Mallorcans are not about to go the way of the dodo. But does peril exist? And if so, when did the threat of extinction start and why?

Twentieth-century history offers some evidence. Francoism contained a threat but it was principally one to undermine Catalanism rather than island cultures. Even in the early years after the Civil War, local languages were receiving official permission. For example, the glosador verse-makers were performing in theatres of the first half of the 1940s. Later, and as a further example, the fiesta of Sant Antoni in Sa Pobla was declared to be in the national touristic interest in 1966. The cult of Sant Antoni was one that had been imported by the Catalan forces of the thirteenth century.

The greater threat was that of tourism. Its social impact was enormous, and non-Mallorcans arrived in droves, not just tourists but workers and also purchasers of property. You are the descendants of the 1960s. Indigenous culture was banished from the resorts and replaced with a Spanish standard, but even then there was acceptance of this culture, as with the Sant Antoni declaration.

The threat was, therefore, never total, and in the 1970s the combination of the oil crisis, Franco's death and the emergence of democracy brought about a revision and a revival. Local cultural associations such as Sarau Alcudienc in Alcúdia, the environmentalist group GOB, the activists Terra i Llibertat and the 1977 occupation of the island of Dragonera; these were all products of this revival, as was local politics.

The renaissance was facilitated by the politicians, not hindered. Differences there were, but from both right and left there was an appreciation of local culture and heritage and a strengthening determination to protect it and the environment. Old towns were given heritage orders; natural parks, such as Albufera, were established. But all the while there was the never-ceasing expansion of tourism, the constant construction of more tourism infrastructure and housing, the immigration of workers and residents and its greater enablement thanks to the Maastricht Treaty.

These competing forces didn't, however, bring about noticeable tensions; there were benefits to be accrued from the developments of the 1990s that followed the recession of the early part of that decade and which continued for a time into the new millennium. Concomitant with this was an inevitable consequence of a further explosion in tourism accommodation and indeed tourism itself. The hoteliers, always powerful, acquired ever more power. Even so, an unwritten accord between the competing forces remained. But then something happened, and it wasn't just economic crisis.

Arguably, you can pinpoint the time as that moment in 2008 when the last regional government pushed the cultural pendulum so far towards Catalanism that it was the competing force of Spanishness (and Castellano) that was threatened with extinction. Cultural tension, up till then mostly contained, surfaced. In seeking a correction, the current government has swung the pendulum back in the opposite direction. Latent division within society was no more. Division is no longer hidden or below the surface. Its fight is with extinction.

This cultural dimension is not the only justification for a poster produced by "Mallorquins en perill d'extinció" which is entitled, ironically, "you are Mallorcan if". It is there, nonetheless. You are Mallorcan if you want "our language" eliminated, a reference, one has to presume, to Catalan. Continuing in this ironic vein, you are Mallorcan if you accept the slavery of the hoteliers, the lack of protection of green areas, Europe's waste on the island, the Palacio de Congresos, the cost of water, the cost of travel from the island.

It is clearly a political statement, but not all of it can be disputed. You are Mallorcan if you pay for the most expensive petrol in Spain. This is a fact. You are Mallorcan if you pay more than anyone to the state without something in return. This is also a fact, one to do with the nature of state financing. It is a statement aimed squarely at the Partido Popular nationally and regionally (though not totally, as PSOE is not let off the hook), but in combination it is a declaration of discontent that would have been hard to have imagined even some ten years ago.

You are not Mallorcan, but maybe you are. Only you can decide this.

They Said This In 2014

"A few small incidents." Mariano Rajoy downplaying the level of corruption during a speech in Murcia. The next day there were raids in Murcia and elsewhere as part of Operación Punica, another corruption investigation mostly involving figures from the Partido Popular. "I apologise to all Spaniards in the name of the PP." Mariano Rajoy, the day after the raids. "Spain is not corrupted." Mariano Rajoy, a month later and the day after health minister Ana Mato had resigned, having allegedly profited from crimes supposedly committed by her former husband.

"I will always keep Spain deepest in my heart." King Juan Carlos making his abdication announcement on television on 2 June.

"We said that the results of 25 May would open a cycle of historical political change in our country. We did not imagine that it would start so quickly." Podemos on the abdication.

"Brave son of a bitch, go to Colombia and (graphic description and expletives deleted) friend of yours ...and get shot in the neck and leave us in peace." Jonathan Cabeza, PP councillor for culture in Paredes de Nava, addressing Pablo Iglesias of Podemos via social media. Cabeza resigned.

"A judge can lose impartiality, just as a prosecutor can lose impartiality. This is an inherent human risk. But I do not believe that a judge is more vulnerable than a prosecutor to losing impartiality." Judge José Castro, responding to what he felt was disrespect being shown to him by prosecutor Pedro Horrach with regard to what was then only the possibility of Princess Cristina being placed on trial.

"Horrifying footage." "The Mirror" grossly exaggerating the nature of the mamading video in Magalluf while at the same time joining with other British red-tops in seeking out further horrifying footage.

"We demand that the greed and unscrupulousness of a few businesses, if you can call them that, do not ruin Mallorca's reputation." Gabriel Escarrer Jaume, CEO of Meliá Hotels International, speaking in light of the Magalluf video.

"Magalluf is five hundred metres of shame." President Bauzá referring to Punta Ballena. Mayor Manu Onieva was said to have been livid with this observation.

"The number four represents the square ... the four elements and the realisation of ideas." Manu Onieva in explaining the reasons why he would not be standing again as mayor of Calvia. And no, no one had a clue what he was talking about.

"They hate each other." A PP politician who preferred to remain anonymous, talking about the relationship between Bauzá and Palma's mayor Mateo Isern in April. He was of course right, and the relationship was so sour that Isern lost Bauzá's backing to stand again as mayor.

"Remember the Nazis when they put the Star of David on Jewish shops." PP Balearic parliamentary spokesperson, Mabel Cabrer, reacting to criticisms of the PP's discount card. Her insinuation of Nazi tactics by the opposition led her to have to apologise.

"Totally ignorant." Rafael Perera, president of the Consell Consultiu, the body which can arbitrate on matters of regional government policy. This was a description of President Bauzá and it was contained in a letter Perera sent to Bauzá, the background to which was the implementation of trilingual teaching (TIL).

"Either the ministry doesn't know what it's talking about or it is taking us for fools." The Mallorcan parents' association, taking umbrage at a letter sent from the education ministry to parents waxing lyrical about the virtues of TIL.

"You are doing a great job, despite the difficulties, because we have principles and convictions, and for this I appreciate your effort." President Bauzá to the then education minister Joana Camps. A few days later he sacked her.

"With humility." This was how the PP would work in attracting voters who had deserted the party at the European elections. They were the words of President Bauzá. Three years before, and prior to the regional elections, he had said "we have to be humble". Somewhere along the line this humility had been lost.

"The disappearance of the Council would amount to a mutilation of democracy in the Balearics." The president of the Council of Mallorca, Maria Salom, responding to Bauzá's suggestion that the Council's role should be reduced to a minimum.

"Put your hands up like the ceiling can't hold us." The video to promote Aina Calvo's leadership of PSOE in the Balearics. It was a line from the dance tune by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. What did it mean? No one knew. Aina lost out to Francina Armengol.

"Where is the response of the European family? Where is the pan-European campaign for people to take their holidays in Spain, to buy Spanish products and listen to Spanish music?" Bono at the European People's Party conference in Dublin, calling for greater European support for the Spanish economy. What had the Spanish economy to do with Bono? It was impossible to say, and his words were swiftly forgotten.

Balearics Out Of Step On Holiday Lets

Something significant has happened in the Canary Islands. The regional government headed by Paulino Rivero has announced that it will regulate private holiday accommodation in the islands. The draft legislation will be ready before the end of the year, Rivero's government having given a commitment to this effect to the Canaries association of holiday rentals.

Rivero had signalled his willingness to consider such regulation some time ago. That his administration is now going to turn this willingness into firm legislation does mark a very significant moment for Canaries' tourism. Those islands have typically been as antagonistic towards the private accommodation sector as the Balearics. But even more significant is the fact that the Canaries will join Catalonia, Valencia and Andalusia in either having a system of regulation or being on the point of introducing one. Of the five main sun-and-beach tourism regions of Spain, the Balearics will be the exception to the rule. Other regions of Spain, among them the less sun-and-beach-dependent Basque Country and the not sun-and-beach-dependent-at-all Madrid are also in the process of regulating.

As ever, it is important to point out what regulation means or might mean. It doesn't mean stamping out (this is a commonly made mistake by some commentators who confuse the term regulation with prohibition). It means putting in place specific rules governing the rental of private accommodation for holiday purposes, Catalonia's regulation being the model that other regions are inclined to follow.

With the Balearics out of step with other regions, might there be a change of heart here? Not while the current government is in power. But what might happen following the next regional elections? It's anyone guess at present to try and figure out what sort of hybrid shambles of an administration might emerge, assuming the PP doesn't win (and it looks unlikely that it will, or be in a position to carry on in coalition). But PSOE, at the heart of this probable unholy alliance of Podemos and the left collective of other parties, would be inclined to go down the regulation route. Put it this way, it voiced its support for a relaxation in rules when all the tenancy act furore arose last year.

It's some time off, but the holiday-lets issue could yet prove to be a major political matter come next spring. The hoteliers, for one, will be doing all they can to try and ensure the PP stay in power. But if doesn't, then there's going to be one hell of a fight between the hoteliers and a PSOE-led pact.

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.