The Present Day Remains Of Gabriel Alomar

August is the month when Mallorca seems to fall asleep. It takes itself off to a beach and dozes under a somnolent sun. It shades itself on terraces and falls drowsy listening to the gentle rustle of bougainvillea; the breezes, desperately sought, lessen the soporific heat. It wakes from another night of fiesta revelry and decides to turn over, willing a re-energising for yet more nighttime partying to come.

August isn't always like this. It wasn't, for example, in 1936. The heat of high summer was the hell of war. A victim of that conflict was Gabriel Alomar Villalonga. He wasn't a victim through death but, like many others, through exile.

Alomar was born in Palma in 1873. He grew up in Mallorca but was to leave the island and move to Barcelona. He was to become a journalist, a writer, a politician and a diplomat. Mallorca couldn't satisfy his views. It was a conservative land. It is less so now. In Barcelona he was able to join the movement for Catalan nationalism, one that nowadays has ambitions for enveloping Mallorca and the Balearics in a mythical territory - the Catalan Lands. Enduring conservatism of the island, diminished to a degree, today supplies only modest incentive for such ambitions.

Before the war, Alomar became the ambassador to Italy for the Second Republic: Italy, a country gripped by fascism. Alomar would have witnessed at first hand something of what was to overwhelm Mallorca and Spain. When the war broke out, Alomar was back in Spain and in Madrid, for the time being still the seat of government for the Republicans. He signed up to the manifesto of adherence by Mallorcan intellectuals to the culture of Catalonia and to the broader manifesto of Catalans in favour of the Republic. In 1937 he went to Cairo as the commercial attache. It was to prove to be a fortuitous appointment, though he was to die in Cairo on the seventh of August 1941 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery.

His name was largely forgotten, but it was to be remembered as the nascent revival of Catalan culture in Mallorca took its first tentative steps under Franco: the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB) came into being in 1962. Alomar had been one of the standard bearers of Catalan Republicanism, and when the Franco regime ended, his name was well and truly revived.

Thirty-six years after his death, his remains were brought to Mallorca. They arrived in 1977 on an August day that coincided with when he had died. Around one hundred people gathered in silence at the airport. The cask was covered in the Catalan flag, and the mayor, Paulí Buchens, handed it to Alomar's son, Victor. He said that the burial of the remains in the cemetery of Palma should be a simple act not to be exploited by any particular political group. "My father is heritage of the history and people of the islands."

As tourists flew into Mallorca in that August forty summers ago, they would have had no knowledge of this ceremony or of Alomar. Tourism followed a path quite separate from the recent history of the island. Tourism wasn't totally divorced from the island's culture, but the culture it was served was mainly that as it had long been: the trips to Valldemossa and such like. Tourism was also on its branch line of development, one distinct from the environment. Forty summers on, and there is vastly greater awareness of all these, and the awareness that was to be fostered for tourism and tourists owes a great deal to what happened in that summer. Alomar's remains were just one aspect.

In June of 1977 the first elections of the democratic era were held. Against this background there was a whiff of revolution. In July of that year, as an example, the magazine of the federation of revolutionary communist youth groups was demanding that its voice be heard and was advocating advances in sexuality and ecology. A group calling itself "Denúncia i Control Contra la Destrucció Ecològica" was formed. The environmentalists GOB were to the fore in the occupation of the island of Dragonera, protesting at proposed development. Police confronted some 500 Dragonera protesters in Palma's Plaça Espanya. Rubber bullets were fired.

It was a summer that marked a watershed. Environmental awareness was raised to a level that it had never been, but there was also the confirmation of the presence of the counter-establishment, which today finds expression through at least some of the island's politicians. Gabriel Alomar's remains were symbolic. No one political party did claim them. But at the meeting on 6 August that was held to organise the return of the remains, the parties were joined by various groups - the OCB, GOB, the Congress of Catalan Culture. A cask of remains was a symbol of the future, and in a sleepy August in 2017 it is also a symbol of the present.

* Photo of Gabriel Alomar from Wikipedia.

The Execution Of Antoni Ques

The dates 23 and 24 February hold a great deal of significance in Spanish and Mallorcan history. At national level they were the days in 1981 when the coup attempt was launched and when it was quashed. The choice of 23 February didn't in itself hold any particular importance other than the fact that it was the day when there was to be a vote in Congress to seek confirmation of Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo as prime minister. Against a background of political crisis, kidnapping, murder, torture and the re-emergence of the far right (expressed in a section of the media), Antonio Tejero, a Guardia Civil lieutenant colonel, and Jaime Milans del Bosch y Ussía, an army lieutenant general, headed the coup attempt. It failed and although there was to be another coup plot in October the following year - one which was kept quiet and was a vain effort to prevent Felipe González and the PSOE socialists from forming the government - the events of February 1981 solidified the movement towards democracy.

The abortive coup of 1981 did nevertheless highlight the ongoing tensions in Spain, ones that have never truly gone away. If 1981 was a manifestation of the clash between democracy in its multiple guises and the former authoritarianism, nowadays the rift is - as it has so long been in Spain - between the crown and the republic.

In the Civil War, the crown, as far as the Nationalists were concerned, was symbolic rather than being a prime institution to defend and restore. In no small part this was because of the historical division in the nature of the monarchy that occurred in the nineteenth century. For much of that era, Spain was in turmoil because of the competing claims on the monarchy that had arisen at the end of the reign of Ferdinand VII in 1833. One of these claims, that of the Carlists, was for a deeply conservative and a Catholic Spain. Franco's Nationalism was in a sense an extension of the Carlists without a monarchical figurehead.

Republicanism and liberalism took root during Ferdinand's reign, especially because of the king's betrayal of the 1812 Liberal Constitution and of those who had sought his restoration and the removal of Bonaparte and the French. While the monarchists were to spend years fighting among themselves and inspiring the Carlist Wars, Republicanism and liberalism bubbled beneath the surface and began to become the breeding ground for an altogether different force in Spain - the middle-class business bourgeoisie.

All this context is important in understanding what was to happen over the years that led up to the Civil War and indeed to events during it. The bourgeoisie, some of it anyway, embraced Republicanism less because of being fiercely anti-monarchist but more because of obstacles presented by the aristocracy. By the time of the Civil War, Republican businessmen represented a movement far removed from other elements which attached themselves to the Republican cause, such as communists and anarchists. They were essentially moderates, defending their business interests.

In Alcudia, 23 and 24 February are significant for very different reasons. The first date relates to the miracle of Sant Crist, which occurred in the sixteenth century. The second date marks the day eighty years ago when an Alcudia businessman - Antoni Maria Ques Ventayol - was executed along with the Republican mayors of Palma and Inca, Emili Darder and Antoni Mateu Ferrer.

There was a ceremony at the weekend to mark the eightieth anniversary. Darder is the best known of those who was executed, but in Alcudia Ques is still remembered: there was a presentation last week in his honour. Ques was far from having been the only businessman who was given a death sentence. Llorenç Roses, Darder's brother-in-law, who was the driving force behind the creation of Palmanova, was another. He had joined the Esquerra Republicana Balear (the Balearic Republican Left), another member of which was Antoni Ques.

The evidence presented against Ques, apart from his membership of this party, was that he was supposedly part of the "Lenin Plan" to impose a Moscow-type dictatorship in Mallorca. A witness, who was later sent to a mental institution, claimed that Ques had amassed over two hundred weapons that were to be used for a massacre. It was a total fiction. The weapons were never found.

Ques was a millionaire. He had known Joan March for many years. He was a shareholder in March's Trasmediterránea shipping company and had established an Palma office in 1915 close to where March had his offices. Yes, he was a Republican but he enjoyed a high social status. A communist he most definitely was not. Unlike March, who had after all founded the Liberal Party in Mallorca but who was astute (or corrupt) enough to know how to shift affiliations, Ques adhered to principles for what he saw as a better political system for business. That was why he was executed.

Ques was remembered at the ceremony at the weekend, a symbol of the tensions that are now some two hundred years old.

* Image is of the poster for the presentation in Alcudia.


Index for February 2017

Adults-only - 1 February 2017
Balearic parliament shenanigans - 5 February 2017, 12 February 2017
Balearics Day - 27 February 2017
Balti Picornell - 9 February 2017
Council of Mallorca - 24 February 2017
Flights increase in Palma - 25 February 2016
Greyhound racing - 19 February 2017
Holiday rentals - 3 February 2017
Mallorca's folk tales - 6 February 2017
Mallorca land - 13 February 2017
Nóos trial verdicts - 21 February 2017, 26 February 2017
Palma urban forest - 17 February 2017
Partido Popular division in the Balearics - 16 February 2017
Picudo rojo and xylella fastidiosa - 8 February 2017
Podemos division - 15 February 2017
Pollensa Sant Antoni cock - 22 February 2017
Puerto Pollensa bus station - 20 February 2017
Quality v. quantity: tourism - 2 February 2017
Republicanism: execution of Antoni Ques - 28 February 2017
Ryanair and lower Spanish airport taxes - 11 February 2017
Saint Valentine's Day - 14 February 2017
Tour operator-hotel relationships - 23 February 2017
Tourist bus services - 18 February 2017
Tourist tax - 4 February 2017
Valtonyc - 10 February 2017
Working conditions in tourism - 7 February 2017

Forty Years Later: Franco and protest

1975 is a year that will never be forgotten in Spain's history. In Mallorca, as elsewhere in the country, they knew that the end was coming. Among them was a group of idealists, many of them anarchists, who convened in secret in Palma, dreaming of a utopian society that would see a move to communal agrarian living. On walls were posters of Che Guevara. Talk was also of sex, religion and politics, of debating the meaning of the film released in 1973, "The Spirit of the Beehive", with its metaphor of disintegration started by the war. There was talk also of direct action, an invoking of a different spirit, the students' uprising in Paris some years before.

In February there was a protest in Palma. In March the offices of the "Diario de Mallorca" were bombed by fascists: a court was to fine four people 2,000 pesetas the following month. There was a further illegal march on 1 May in the capital. At the end of June, there was a declaration of a democratic "board" for the Balearics. On 17 July there was another protest: over four thousand people demonstrated against the development of the project to create the Parc de la Mar. In September, the head of the Movimiento in the Balearics was replaced. Certain mayors were to resign shortly afterwards. On 25 October a demonstration of "commitment" in Madrid featured in news broadcasts. On the balcony were General Franco and King Juan Carlos. On 20 November, Franco died.

1975 was a year of jockeying for position. The mayors who resigned did so as they objected to the imposition of a more hardline head of the Movimiento Nacional, which was effectively the totalitarian mechanism through which Franco governed. More moderate mayors knew what was coming, as everyone else did. Or sensed at any rate.

The fortieth anniversary of the death of Franco will be ignored. Officially anyway. But within Spain, within Mallorca, there beat the hearts of some who retain a commitment to the Falange, to fascism, to Franco. 20 November this year may well pass without incident and with little comment. Or it may not.

In London, the mayor of Palma, José Hila, has been beaming for the cameras. José always beams, albeit he was beaming less when confronted with the need to deal with the police corruption affair. Away in London, he was removed from the incidents in the Feixina park. At an event that was organised to voice opposition to the likely demolition of the monument, built to commemorate the loss of life on the Nationalists' warship, the "Baleares", during the Civil War, there were scuffles. The organisers were the "ultra-conservative" Hazte Oír, the opposition came from the Memòria de Mallorca: one against demolition, the other in favour. It was the brandishing of a Republican flag which really inflamed things, though the waving of a Falange flag might also not have been a wise idea. Both sides condemned the incidents and each other.

Hila's administration is determined to demolish the monument. The rhetoric that has come from the town hall, not from Hila as such, has been strident. There will be no further discussion on the matter. The monument will go some time in the new year. The National Police may be needed.

The monument has inflamed passions which arguably could have been left unmoved. Was there a groundswell of opinion agitating for the monument's destruction? No, but the town hall has decreed it should go anyway. The association which promotes the preservation of cultural heritage in urban areas, Arca, has been blamed for stirring the pot. It says the monument should stay: not for political reasons, purely because it is a symbol of heritage as opposed to a symbol of Francoism.

But Arca shouldn't be blamed. The association has merely voiced an opinion, as have many others. These opinions would probably not have been uttered, however, had the town hall just let sleeping dogs lie. It has chosen not to. The various political parties are all having their say. El Pi suggests that perhaps it's for the best if the monument does go. That way, there will not be grounds for future incidents such as the ones on Sunday when a wreath was laid to those who lost their lives on the "Baleares". Possibly so, but passions are such that the National Police will surely have to be on stand-by when the day comes. 20 November might also be another flashpoint.

If you look back to what happened forty years ago, what was the protest about the Parc de la Mar all about? Essentially, it was one against a project that was a symbol of a Francoist town hall. The administration couldn't have been anything other than Francoist. That is how things were, but Francoist it was. Who now protests that the Parc de la Mar is a symbol of Francoism?

Masonry In Mallorca And Spain

In the mid-1990s, Ramon Viñals i Soler, a businessman and politician from Barcelona, was charged with the task of reviving masonry in the Balearics. Twenty years on from the death of Franco, masonry was still very much in the doldrums on the islands, and this despite the fact that it had briefly thrived in the years leading up to the Civil War. Whether it can be said that Viñals was successful is open to question. In March 2010, Mallorca was turned into the capital of Spanish masonry. The Grand Lodge of Spain made the Hotel Meliá Victoria in Palma its centre for the gathering to elect the new Grand Master; there was also voting in other parts of Spain. Some 300 votes were cast at the hotel, of which 253 were by members from the Balearics, which was a healthy proportion of the total number of masons - 400. However, fifteen years on from the start of the revival campaign, the number didn't really appear to have represented a great success.

At this year's assembly of the Grand Lodge in Madrid, Oscar de Alfonso Ortega was re-elected as Grand Master. He had one opponent: Ramon Viñals i Soler. 592 votes were cast. Alfonso secured 92% of the vote, an overwhelming majority which might have seemed odd.

Alfonso had been a surprise winner in 2010, dislodging (so to speak) the "official" candidate, José Carretero. It was said that his victory owed a great deal to support from British masons, of whom it was reckoned that they comprised roughly 50% of the voters. By the time of this year's vote, however, Alfonso's British support was believed to be in decline, while he had also lost favour among Spanish masons. This was because a Jesuit scholar had been invited to a masonic meeting and had been given an award by Alfonso; the Jesuits had once been to the fore in the persecution of masons. Alfonso had also publicly defended a drug-dealer who had been on a British list of the top ten most most-wanted criminals. Yet, when it came to the election, he came romping home.

So, how might this victory be explained? Viñals was and is, after all, a veteran mason, but his politics and his associations might well have let him down. His political career has been defined by his socialism and his republicanism. He is a supporter of Catalonian independence, but his interests stretch beyond Spain. To the Sudan, for instance. He has been a "goodwill ambassador" in Europe for Omar al-Bashir, the president of the Sudan, for whom there is an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.

Whatever the reasons for Alfonso's stunning re-election, it would seem that the upper echelons of the Grand Lodge have been tainted with controversy in the recent past, and, perhaps as a sign of a fierce rejection of Viñals, Alfonso's re-election led to a strong statement of loyalty to the King, the Crown and the Constitution being issued. Yet, despite Viñals' republican views, this political affiliation was responsible for what was the only short era when masonry assumed a position of some importance in the Balearics and in Spain.

The origins of the islands' masonry can be found in Menorca, the consequence of British influence on the island. As a movement it first surfaced in the 1830s, came to Mallorca briefly, disappeared, returned, entered a period of crisis in the late nineteenth century when it all but disappeared again, only for it to resurface during the Second Republic of the five years before the Civil War: over 80% of Republican deputies at the Cortes parliament were masons.

On 15 September 1936, so only weeks after the start of the war, freemasonry "and other clandestine activities" were declared illegal by Franco's Nationalist rebels. By 1938 there was a "Special Tribunal for the Repression of Masonry and Communism". With their deeply conservative Catholicism, the Nationalists and the Falange took their lead from the Church, which had been railing against masonry for decades. How many masons were executed or murdered is impossible to say. A list of 80,000 so-called masons was drawn up by Father Tusquets, the mason-witchfinder-general. There were in truth only around 5.000 masons in Spain at the time.

The regime left its legacy, and masonry remained dormant until Viñals sought to revive it. The number of masons in the Balearics may be low, but then there are reckoned to be fewer than 7,000 masons in Spain as a whole; England is said to have a quarter of a million. But maybe its popularity will grow. The Grand Lodge doesn't admit women, but the Symbolic Grand Lodge does; the Sapere Aude ("dare to know") lodge was established in Palma in February. Traditions hold though. Even Viñals, a more liberal mason, is against women joining the Grand Lodge.

Abdication And Uncertainty

Over the course of almost forty years, Spain has been defined by three acts. They have each involved the one person. Juan Carlos I de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicillias. Three dates - 22 November 1975, 24 February 1981, 2 June 2014 - mark the timeline of an extraordinary man: his proclamation following the death of Franco; his televised order that stopped the coup attempt; his abdication.

"The Crown, the symbol of the country's permanence and unity, cannot tolerate in any way the actions or attitudes of people who forcibly seek to disrupt the democratic process."

With these words, and others, King Juan Carlos stopped the coup dead in its tracks. Democracy, the monarchical democracy, was assured. Juan Carlos received the gratitude of a nation. He was its hero.

Juan Carlos has been, for many years since 1981, the glue that has bound Spain together. He has done so because of the enduring gratitude of the people and because of his own popularity. His abdication, attributed to his declining health, is a sorry end. His health cannot hide the reasons for that popularity having declined. The elephant-hunting trip to Botswana might have been overlooked. The wretched Urdangarin could not be and cannot be overlooked. Corruption had crept as far as the gates of the Palacio de la Zarzuela. Whatever the King's knowledge of the Urdangarin affair, he was damaged. Princess Cristina's court appearance, lauded as indicating an openness to democratic legal processes, nonetheless caused further damage.

The dynamics that have conspired to bring about the abdication are, however, less important than what follows. Crown Prince Felipe will become monarch. Only the second of the democratic era. His is an onerous task. The King's abdication marks a potential watershed. The glue that bound the nation together may have been losing its strength, but now there will be questions as to whether it will be so weakened that things fall apart.

Spain cannot rid itself of its past. The nation will know about the monarchy before Franco, about the frequent instability, about the exile of Alfonso XIII in April 1931. He never formally abdicated, but he had in all but the deed, and he was then accused of high treason. Alfonso's fate was sealed by the establishment of the Republic. Just one of the questions that will now be asked is whether Spain wishes to head back in the direction of Republicanism.

These are very different times to the 1930s, but there can be little escaping the fact that the monarchy is (more was now) popular purely because of Juan Carlos. As his popularity has waned, so the relevance of the monarchy has been placed more in the spotlight. There are other factors.

Look again at the words Juan Carlos spoke in 1981. "The symbol of the country's permanence and unity." Catalonia knows otherwise. Is it coincidence that Mariano Rajoy had, just prior to the abdication announcement, indicated that he might be open to a Constitutional change that would in effect grant Catalonia greater autonomy? Such a shift in attitude might raise again the spectre of a threat from the military of the type Zapatero confronted when he was being amenable to Catalonian demands.

Times are different, but memories are awfully long, those of both the Republican left and the far right. The Francoists have never forgiven Juan Carlos for his apparent betrayal of the Franco legacy. This is just one attitude that Felipe will now face. His really is an onerous task. He has to convince a sceptical public while manoeuevring through the minefields and traps of Spain's politics - its left, right, Republicanism, independence and nationalism.

That Felipe has cut an increasingly impressive figure, not least on the international stage, typified by his assured presentation on behalf of Madrid's Olympic bid, is to his credit. He has stepped out of the enormous shadow cast by his father. He has the appearance of modernity and the companionship of the commoner divorcee Letizia. But their marriage is prone to rumours, and Letizia has not always enjoyed a supportive press. 

Despite this, is there reason to believe that the monarchy is threatened? It is most unlikely, certainly while the two main political parties have anything to say on the matter. But the politics are less certain than they were, as was witnessed at the European elections. Podemos, in responding to the news of the abdication, said on its Facebook page yesterday: "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."

Believing that the results influenced the abdication decision seem pretty far-fetched, but such a belief is indicative of the uncertainty that the abdication creates. Will 2 June go down as a truly momentous day in Spain's history or just the final act of a great man?

The Man Who Made Palmanova

Over the past few days I have been devoting time - a fair amount of it - to writing features for the summer supplement to be published by the "Majorca Daily Bulletin" next month. One of these features deals with the founding of Palmanova, a place that didn't exist, or not by that name at any rate, until the 1930s. You will have to wait for the supplement to come out to find out about Palmanova, but in the meantime, there is a story to be told about the person who was responsible for its creation.

I knew the name but I didn't really know a great deal about Llorenç Roses Bermejo until I started to dig into Palmanova's history. His should perhaps be a story of triumph, that of the man who built a tourist resort, but it isn't. It is one of tragedy. This is something of that story and its gut-wrenching conclusion.

Llorenç wasn't from Calvia. He was from Sóller, though he had in fact been born in Puerto Rico in 1895. His Mallorcan father had been mayor of Arecibo on that island. In 1898, United States forces having invaded Puerto Rico, the island was ceded by Spain to the US under the Treaty of Paris. The family returned to Sóller a year later, and Llorenç was himself to go on to become a mayor - that of Sóller, albeit for a brief period in 1931. Otherwise, Llorenç was something of a property developer, which was how he came to be involved with Palmanova.

1930s Mallorca was a time when a form of tourism infrastructure was being developed, but it was being done so against the background of the Second Republic, gathering turmoil and eventually the Civil War, which brought that infrastructure development to a halt. For some who were involved in that development, it was largely a case of putting on hold their plans until circumstances were more favourable. For Llorenç, however, there was to be no such opportunity.

His brother-in-law was Emili Darder, the mayor of Palma and one of the leading figures in the Republican movement in Mallorca. Llorenç was also a Republican and he joined the Esquerra Republicana Balear (the Balearic Republican Left) when two other parties merged to form it in 1934. It might have seemed odd that businesspeople would support a left-wing party but actually it wasn't so odd. Another member of the party was Antoni Ques Ventayol, an Alcúdia-born businessman who was a shareholder in the Trasmediterránea shipping company, which had been founded by Joan March (later Franco's banker). Ques had also been a member of the Liberal Party in Mallorca, of which March was the leader.

Left-wing or not, for elements of the business class - the bourgeoisie - Republicanism presented an alternative to royalist, aristocratic and conservative dominance. The aristocrats of Mallorca, the principal landowners, were under some pressure by the 1920s. Though a dictator came along, i.e. Primo de Rivera (himself an aristocrat), economic circumstances were not great. Aristocratic landowners faced financial problems, exacerbated by the Great Depression, and then, from 1931, the awful reality of Republicanism.

The reason why Llorenç came to create Palmanova was that he had bought land from an aristocratic family. Selling to a member of the bourgeoisie, even if it were through necessity, represented a loss of face. There were many among the aristocracy who came to resent the wealthy middle-class, and only partly because some of it had Republican sympathies.

After the Civil War broke out in July of 1936, Llorenç was arrested. On the first of October he was sentenced to thirty years' imprisonment, accused, it would seem, of having done no more than voice his opposition to the declaration of a state of war in the Balearics by the Nationalist military commander, Manuel Goded, on 19 July. But there was more to come. He was interrogated further and he began to realise what would happen. On 19 November he was executed.

There is ample evidence which indicates that the Civil War created an environment for revenge. Llorenç was a Republican but he was also a member of the bourgeois middle-class. His trial was a farce. Accusations were made which lacked consistency and which couldn't be justified. He was a victim of bloody reprisal against his class.

Before he was executed, Llorenç wrote a final letter to his wife Dolores. I reproduce some of it:

"Forgive me for what I have made you suffer... Look after my father well. Love him so much and comfort him for the loss of his son... Enjoy everything you can in life. Make life wonderful for the children and for father. I love you and I will die thinking of you and our children. Ask dad to forgive me and my children to forgive my enemies... Teach the children, take care of dad and live long for the children and to pray for your husband... Goodbye my darling wife... My last kiss and goodbye... Llorenç, October 1936."

* Footnote:
Emili Darder and Antoni Ques Ventayol were both executed by firing-squad on 24 February, 1937.
Manuel Goded, having issued the declaration of state of war in the Balearics, flew to Barcelona by seaplane in order to foment insurgency against the Popular Front government. He was arrested on the same day (19 July) and was shot by firing-squad on 12 August.

Spring Backward: Mallorca's tragic spring of 1936

Spring. In one regard, there is no such thing as a Mallorcan spring. In tourism terms, there is winter and there is summer, two seasons determined not by equinoxes or solstices but by employment contracts and by flight and tour operator programmes. "The season" is typically taken (officially even) as starting on 1 May, more or less halfway through spring, but it marks the start of summer, just as 1 November - and the appropriate connotations of the day of the dead - signals the start of winter.

Spring. It has so many meanings. Renewal, rebirth, advance. Even the aide- mémoire for instruction as to which way the clocks are changed hints at advance: spring forward, though it is possible to also spring backward. Advance, renewal and rebirth, they are words of optimism, and the word "spring" has been attached to optimistic movements, those of hoped-for renewal and advance, yet which have proved that optimism can soon be lost. Spring backward. Spring is renewal. It is also revolution. Prague Spring, Arab Spring, the Spring of Nations, the latter a reference to the revolutions of 1848 which swept across Europe, only for them to collapse a year later.

Mallorca has had its own "Spring". It wasn't an optimistic spring, it was the "primavera trágica". 1936. With tragedy evident across Spain, Mallorca was caught up in the prelude to the coup in July and the Civil War. Getting a handle on how this tragic spring played out in Mallorca helps to give a better appreciation of just what Mallorca was like in 1936, because there is often an erroneous view of the island in the mid-1930s - one which suggests an indifference towards politics as a whole and so, therefore, to the politics of the mainland.

In the spring of 1936, working the land dominated the island's economic landscape, but agriculture was not as dominant as it had been even thirty years before, when some 70% of the economy was tied to the land. Urbanisation was such that 30% of the population lived in Palma alone, while industrial development, including tourism, had made significant inroads into a predominantly agrarian economy. Far from being populated by ignorant and apathetic peasants, Mallorca had a wealthy and educated middle-class and a network of workers' organisations. In other words, the island, though still mainly rural, possessed enough ingredients for modern attitudes and beliefs to take hold, which, at that time, included Republicanism.

Mallorca was then, as it still is, a conservative place. Though the cause of Republicanism on the island had been advanced considerably by 1936, it was a minority movement. Electorally, Calvia and Palma were exceptions rather than the rule in the February municipal elections of that year in returning Republicans (for the national election, no Republican was returned). An innate conservatism, perhaps because of the traditional agrarianism, perhaps because of insularity, held sway.

Despite this conservatism, two minority influences were to enter the equation. Over the course of the spring, Communist membership doubled. Though there was a significant Communist protest march in Palma, the Communists were not the main instigators of the violence that was to break out. Its primary cause were the pockets of the Falange who had arrived on the island in 1934. The Falange, a curious mix of its own republicanism, arch-Catholicism but also modernism, barely even registered in the 1936 elections. It had secured only around 200 votes across the Balearics; conservative, right-wing Mallorca was not about to embrace it. In March, the national government proscribed it. This, as much as anything else, was the signal for the outbreak of the tragic spring. Though the press attempted to portray Mallorca as being peaceful, it couldn't ignore acts of violence from Palma to Campanet to Porreres. A reason why some commentators and historians refer to Mallorca's "primavera trágica" is because it unleashed the violence it did on an island unused to such turmoil, largely because of the Falange. Clandestine though it became, it could count on as many members as the Communists; more in fact. In June, less than two weeks before spring became summer, a Falange bomb went off at the Casa del Pueblo in Palma.

A tragic spring might seem like an odd way to introduce a Mallorcan spring, but not really. The circumstances of the Civil War and of its prelude hold a fascination, if not necessarily for the best of reasons. And around the island there are places which have a perhaps surprising and certainly unwanted connection with events leading up to the Civil War and with the rise of the Falange. Sant Martí de Lanzell in Vilafranca de Bonany, one of the most important and oldest "possession" country estates in Mallorca, Vallgornera Vell in Llucmajor, Son Vivot in Inca, now an agrotourism rural hotel; these were, from March 1936, locations for pockets of the Falange to prepare for armed intervention. Spring backward.

* I am indebted to an article by David Ginard i Féron for information here. http://www.historica.cat/?p=6155

MALLORCA TODAY - Pollensa to debate becoming a Republic

Because of the "shameful actions of the Spanish royal family" (not my words), the Esquerra Republicana in Pollensa plans to bring a motion at the council meeting on Thursday to raise the possibility of Pollensa declaring itself a Republic.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

300 Years Of Memory: Regionalism and Republicanism

There have been two anniversaries over the past few days, one of them a commemoration of an act 300 years ago, the other rather nearer to the present day, but both of them have significance for present-day Spain and can, in certain respects, be linked.

On 11 April 1713 the Treaty of Utrecht was signed. It brought to an end the War of the Spanish Succession and, while the treaty in theory created a unified Spanish state, it in fact laid the foundations for many of the problems that the Spanish state has endured ever since and still does. Under the treaty, the grandson of Louis XIV of France, Philip, the Duke of Anjou, was recognised as the King of Spain. He became King Philip V, the first Bourbon king and so the creator of the ancestral line to the current king, and it was he who was responsible for the so-called Nuevas Plantas, the decrees by which the old charters, institutions and privileges enjoyed by Catalan-speaking territories were removed.

One of the institutions that was done away with was one that had in effect been in abeyance since before the end of the fourteenth century, namely the Kingdom of Mallorca. This had come under the Crown of Aragon, and it was this "crown" which comprised various Catalan-speaking areas - Aragon itself, Valencia, the Balearic Islands and, most importantly of all, Catalonia. One says most importantly of all, because this is how it has turned out. The suppression of Catalonia's rights and privileges by Philip V lies at the heart of current Catalonian claims for independence. All the Aragon crown lands came under the rule of laws from Castile, and these laws included those to do with the use of language (Castellano and not Catalan). They were issued as retribution for Catalan opposition to Philip during the War. The Treaty of Utrecht explains a great deal about present-day tensions.

It also explains tensions on an international level. One at any rate. Under the treaty Gibraltar was ceded to Britain. Gibraltar's strategic importance (far greater than that of Menorca, which was also ceded to the British) explains why the Spanish have always wanted it back. It had been captured by a combined British and Dutch force in 1704. Utrecht defined it as British and as a British possession in perpetuity.

The more recent of the two anniversaries occurred on 14 April. This marked 82 years since the formation of the Second Republic when another Bourbon king, Alfonso XIII, was forced into exile. The Republic was to end in total disaster. It failed for all sorts of reasons, not least because it became the context for factional violence led by anarchists and communists. Yet, had it not become a potential puppet for the Soviet Union, had it not been the pretext for Franco's uprising, where might Spain be now?

It wouldn't be a monarchy, that's for sure. But it would have had many more years of settled democracy. The Republic favoured freedom of speech, ruined under Franco. It favoured freedom of association, which arguably meant that unionism, once democracy was re-established, was to be more fervent than it might otherwise have been and which arguably has also meant that political parties suffer from a certain immaturity that they might not have, had they been allowed to flourish from the 1930s. It also favoured regional autonomy, which was not to become a reality for almost fifty years. And this of course is the main link with Philip V and the Treaty of Utrecht.

82 years do not mark a notable anniversary, but in recent years the remembrance of 14 April has grown stronger across Spain and Mallorca; Pollensa is one of the towns on the island with the strongest Republican sentiment. And various events of very much more recent history have done little to douse the revival of Republicanism.

A year or so ago I would have said that the monarchy was still very much the glue that held Spain together and that Republicanism was just an old ideal of a minority on the left. A lot has happened over the past year, though, to make me wonder. The Catalans seem determined to press ahead with their referendum, one that, were independence to be claimed, would rip up the provisions made by the original Bourbon king. And the current king has his well-publicised problems, those largely not of his making but of his son-in-law.

In Spain you can never forget certain anniversaries. They are ingrained in the national psyche. And while they remain so ingrained, they can always be more than just remembered.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Back To A 1930s Future

The world of showbiz is inhabited by those who consider themselves well positioned to make pronouncements on matters far removed from the stage, the cinema or the rock-concert stadium. How many showbiz celebrities can you think of who have adhered to the corruption of the maxim of all the world being a stage and it being one from which they intend to pontificate, often repeatedly? Jane Fonda, Bono, George Clooney, the list is very much longer than these three alone.

Spain has its own celebrity activists. You may not have heard of them, but they are there nevertheless, and one of them is a leading actor called Willy Toledo. If Willy were British, his thoughts would be the target for ridicule by the "Telegraph" or "Daily Mail". Leftist loony, in other words.

Willy Toledo took part recently in an act of solidarity in the city of Gijón organised by something known as the platform against repression and for liberties. He fulminated against the actions of the current national government, one that, he claims, has converted Spain into a "pre-fascist country, if not already fascist".

The fascist narrative is overplayed in Spain. It is the consequence of historical memory in people's lifetimes, a narrative that is nuanced and moulded by this recent memory. It is one that the country cannot break out of. It lives in a fascistic past/present because the counter-narrative, that of a European, democratic, monarchical, free market but ideally egalitarian and clean society and politics, has struggled to consign it once and for all to the cesspit of history.

Toledo supports this fascist groove thing by styling the government as ultranationalist-Catholic, a descriptive picture of government that is suffused with dark colours on a Francoist canvas. It is more than a slight exaggeration. If Spain were either already fascist or pre-fascist, I think we might be more aware of the fact.

Toledo has also mused on the question of the monarchy. He is far from alone in wondering what will happen when the King dies or becomes too infirm to rule; the monarch's health is a subject to which an increasing amount of attention is being paid. Toledo is pretty clear in believing that the King's passing would mean the end of the monarchy. In continuing the historical narrative, he argues that the country should be preparing itself for the reinstatement of "that of which we were robbed", namely the Republic.

So there you have it. In Willy world, Spain is locked in a perpetual battle between a socialist-worker Republicanism and über-Nationalism, with the monarchy somewhere between the two, as, lest we forget, Franco was quite content for the monarchy to be sidelined.

Nevertheless, there are anxieties about the monarchy, and they come from elements of both left and right who have no desire to pursue a return to Republicanism and who are equally disquieted by an overtly nationalist agenda, one that embraces two competing forms of nationalism, one in a neo-Francoist fashion and the other, the nationalist separatism of the Catalans and the Basques. This is the broad centre of both politics and society which doesn't wish to keep re-living the 1930s and wants the European, democratic and, yes, monarchical model to prevail.

The trouble is that the 1930s won't go away. For all that Spain has achieved some sort of democratic modernity, the strains are evident. The position of the monarchy is just one, and it is a position that has deteriorated and may deteriorate further now that the previously dismissed could actually happen, namely Princess Cristina, the wife of the commoner Urdangarin and the King's daughter, being indicted on corruption allegations. Democracy doesn't demand monarchy, but in Spain, a virtuous and benign monarchy helps.

And then there is the economy. The journalist Javier González has made the point that Spain's unemployment is equivalent to the combined populations of its four largest cities - Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Sevilla. It is a point that is designed for effect, but the effect is striking, and it becomes even more so given the context in which González has written and for which newspaper he writes - "El Mundo". Right-wing, it, or González at any rate, invokes the same period of history as Toledo in further invoking the Great Depression and what came next in Europe. We are back to the same fascistic narrative.

One cannot and should not neglect the past. One learns from the past. But in Spain, there are some who want that past to reappear and others who have convinced themselves that it will reappear. This is a country stuck in the time warp of its collective memory. God help us.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Elephants Never Forget: Annus horribilis

The British royal family never actually apologised for its mishandling of events after Diana's death, but it was shamed into displaying contrition, its misjudgment and its treatment of Blair's "people's princess" laid bare by the words of Diana's brother that cut like ice through the aisles of Westminster Abbey and by the applause which followed them.

1997, though it might well have been, was not The Queen's annus horribilis. This had occurred five years earlier. But 1997 caused the royal family's popularity to sink to its lowest point, all because of protocol and an inability to say sorry.

Royalty doesn't, as a rule, issue apologies. It's why Juan Carlos's apology, in the midst of what is turning out to be, like The Queen, a second annus horribilis in five years, is so unusual. Annus horribilis número uno was marked, among other things, by the separation of the Infanta Elena and the Duke of Lugo. The son of their union, Felipe, provides a link to annus horribilis número dos (AH II); it was he who accidentally took a gun to his foot the other day.

Another embarrassment in 2007 was the publication of the now infamous cartoon in the magazine "El Jueves", which satirised the Crown-Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia. The "El Jueves" cartoon is significant in the context of AH II. It resulted in a trial and fines, the reason being that disrespect had been shown to members of the royal family. AH II is eclipsing AH I in that the gloves are gradually coming off; a press that has been largely cowed by the constraint that it, like "El Jueves", could be accused of disrespect is starting to assert itself. AH I was the year of the scurrilous subversive press; AH II is the year of the mainstream.

The main reason for the Spanish press becoming more assertive in matters of the royal family is Iñaki Urdangarin, the Duke of Palma and The King's son-in-law. It helps that he is a commoner, one supposes, but his affairs, his actions and his appearance in a Palma court have led the press to declare pretty much open season. And not just the press. The people have spoken as well, having chanted, during Republican celebrations last weekend, "Urdangarin, go and work in Burger King". (I'm not entirely sure why they chanted this, but be that as it may.)

The press will continue to stop short of all-out criticism. Perhaps we should be thankful for this. The total absence of respect shown to the British royal family borders at times on the cruel. Even if you are not a monarchist, and I can't say I am, there should be some decorum. Shouldn't there be?

Indeed, where Juan Carlos is concerned, you could describe me as a staunch supporter. In the past I have described him as "totemic". He is, or certainly has been, the means of binding the country together. 1981 and all that shouldn't be forgotten. But The King's strength is also his weakness. It is one most Spaniards would understand and accept. Without Juan Carlos, whither the monarchy? One could say the same about the British royal family and about The Queen, but a difference is that the British royal family has William. The House of Bourbon doesn't have a William, or a Guillermo as the Spanish press is minded to call him.

It is for the very reason that The King has been held in such high esteem that the hunting trip to Botswana has caused such uproar. The King who quelled the coup and became the people's king has let the people down, and he knows it, hence the apology. The sleepless nights he spoke of having because of mass youth unemployment are now being questioned, and the press has even resorted to non-verbal communications experts to assess the sincerity of the apology; it was sincere.

Of course, if it is indeed the case that The King was the guest of a Saudi businessman who is central to a consortium securing a Spanish contract worth almost seven billion euros to build a high-speed rail link, then one might argue what are a few elephants. This is not how it works, though. First Urdangarin, and now a trip to Botswana that would, in all likelihood, not have come to light had it not been for The King's accident. Together, they give power to the Republican argument, PSOE having weighed in and called for abdication.

The chances are the Botswana incident will blow over. But there is still Urdangarin. The press has its teeth into him and into what further may emerge. AH II could yet be even more horribilis.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Republican Sympathies

On Saturday, commemorations were held that marked the 81st anniversary of the establishment of the Second Republic. Mallorca was not excluded from these celebrations. Porreres staged one of the best attended events. In Pollensa, as has become traditional on the anniversary of the birth of the Republic, the PSM (Mallorcan socialists) offered a floral tribute.

That it is the socialists who arrange the event says much about the political colour of the memories of the Republic and also about hopes of a revival of Republicanism. Like its Nationalist counterpoint, it has lurked in the undergrowth away from the main glare of monarchical democracy since 1975. Republicanism wasn't destroyed in 1939 at the end of the Civil War; it remained, in exile and latterly through the titles or sympathies of minority political parties.

The Second Republic ended in total disaster. Its liberalism was overtaken by violence and extremism. Against a background of depression, it couldn't combat unemployment. Economically and politically it was a failure, but Republicanism has remained an ideological force because of what happened after the Republic fell. It is the "good guy" of the Civil War, despite its own atrocities.

It has remained a force also because of what created the Second Republic. The government of the first dictator, Primo de Rivera, had become untenable as had the position of the Bourbon king, Alfonso XIII, who, on 14 April 1931, was forced into exile. Alfonso was considered a traitor as, in 1923, he had not blocked the coup which led to the establishment of the first dictatorship. An understanding of the Civil War and the Franco era is not complete without an appreciation of the monarch's support for Rivera. In 1923, the king assisted in breaking a system of monarchical democracy that was not to be restored for over 50 years.

Lessons of history and all that, but the past has a habit of turning itself into tradition. And with tradition comes a desire for re-enactment or an expectation that history will repeat itself or a perception that history is repeating itself. The tradition of the Civil War, despite the best attempts of many Spaniards to indulge in mass amnesia and the best attempts of the legal and political system to airbrush it out of existence, remains well rooted.

If not of course actual re-enactment, there is the narrative that nuances the current day in terms of this tradition. Republicanism 2012 in Mallorca, and elsewhere no doubt, rejects, as you would expect it to, the rights of another Bourbon king, Juan Carlos. Anti-monarchy sentiment is not unreasonable, but what is unreasonable is to somehow compare the current king with the treacherous Alfonso. It is not only unreasonable, it fails completely in recalling that it was the current king who turned his back on Francoism. For today's Republicans, however, a Bourbon monarch is a Bourbon monarch, regardless of very different circumstances.

Republicanism 2012 manages also to make some quite extraordinary allusions to Nationalism. The Partido Popular government in the Balearics, in agreeing to the development of a hotel near Es Trenc beach, is somehow engaged in Francoism. Well yes, there was destruction of the coastlines in the Franco era. No one would deny this, but it had nothing to do with Francoism or Nationalism; it had everything to do with turning the dross of a basket-case economy into something approximating gold.

The compulsion to style the current day with the narrative of the past extends to the lobbing of insults. When the head of the UGT union in the Balearics called President Bauzá a fascist, rather than requesting the attorney-general to start proceedings, Bauzá would have been far better off returning his own insult and moving on. Resorting to legal redress institutionalises the narrative and therefore the tradition, proving that Balearics politicians are as trapped in the past as are union leaders.

Right-wing governments both nationally and regionally that are pursuing policies of austerity do not, as is being implied by Republicanism 2012, amount to Nationalism. It is an absurdity to suggest that they do, especially as these policies are a furtherance of those initiated by socialist governments. But this is how the narrative insists that it should be.

In Porreres in 1938, a dreadful Nationalist atrocity was committed. The past should not be forgotten, and it is understandable that the town should be the location for a commemoration of Republicanism, but the narrative is of the past, of a time when, unlike today, the army were the ultimate enforcers and the monarchy the arbiters. The narrative is obsolete, a perverse romance of tradition. It is of the past, and that, God willing, is where it remains.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.