Licence To Kill

The inevitable fall-out from the Cala Ratjada hotel tragedy has only begun. It could just turn out to be something of a landmark as the first accusations and counter-accusations indicate the frankly ludicrous nature of how this building work was allowed to proceed. Setting aside, obviously, culpability, here we have a case in which there was no licence, and yet the owners were negotiating for it after the work had begun (there is a suggestion that they had in fact applied for it in August); in which the town hall says that on three occasions it attempted to get the works stopped (the owners refute this); in which, according to neighbours, everyone knew about the works (well of course they would; it would have been pretty difficult for them not to have known); in which the town hall and the local police enabled the closing of the street in order that certain work and rubbish removal could be done; in which the architects' association says that it doubts that the town hall would have denied a licence, admits the work should not have been started without it, but goes on to say that architects accept that this way of working, without the licence, is sometimes done because of the pressures of obtaining licences in order to complete works before the tourist season and that some smaller town halls go along with this.

The above is largely taken in translation from reports in "The Diario". I wouldn't normally take this amount, but it is all highly significant and important to convey, especially the last parts, those relating to the town hall. And it says just about everything you need to know about the ways in which things seem to work here. How on earth, for example, can the town hall and the police (the police, for heaven's sake) permit the closure of a street for work relating to something that did not have a licence? Anyone care to volunteer an answer, because I'm damned if I know. Of course, there may well be some back-covering going on in all of this, but these are the "facts" as they are currently being presented, including that which suggests that, licence or no licence, the work being undertaken was otherwise in order.

Tragedy this has been in that four men have lost their lives, but there is another tragedy at play, and that is the wider implications of the case, which itself is likely to be seen as a monstrous indictment of how the "system" operates here. How many building works go on without licences? But the specifics of the licence are just symptomatic of a wider malaise, one of rule-bending and of an unwritten complicity, not necessarily of a criminal type but one of smoothing the way. It isn't just the bureaucracy that is to blame; it is an acceptance that this is "how it is". It is something that pervades much of Mallorcan society. There is a societal failure as much as there might be an institutional, a legal or a systemic failure. The men who have died might just become martyrs to something way beyond the details of the Son Moll hotel collapse, and which leads to an examination and maybe a righting of this societal failure. It's a societal licence, not just an official document, and look where it's got us. It does not have to be "how it is". It should be how it was and how it will now be in the future. Don't hold your breath.


PUERTO POLLENSA ON ICE
Ever wondered about what would happen with the yard outside the old school by the church square? Maybe you haven't. But if you have, here is the word - maybe. An ice rink. There's more to this than it seems. And is not as daft as it sounds. So I am told.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Bobby McFerrin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjnvSQuv-H4). Today's title - Bond, Motown, easy.

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