Do Me A Favour: Spas, corruption and society

One of the features of quality and service improvements to Mallorca's hotels has been the introduction of spas - beauty salons, jacuzzis, wellness sessions, all that sort of carry-on. Demand for spas has come from tour operators who see them as important in upgrading the standard of hotels. Provision for their additional creation was covered by the virtually zero-rate interest finance offered by the regional government as a way of assisting hotel upgrades during the crisis and by the so-called "decreto Nadal" which cut out some bureaucratic procedures in order to facilitate renovation and development work at hotels. The reclassification of hotels that is to take place within the next few years will take account of spas.

All good stuff, but as usual there is a rather different story to be told. Note that "decreto". Who was the Nadal in question? Miguel. The former tourism minister and the "chosen one" by his predecessor as leader of the Unió Mallorquina, the matriarchal Mother Maria, Munar of that ilk. Nadal and Mother have since fallen out, their lovey-dovey photos regularly reproduced in order to stress the irony of the breakdown in their relationship, Nadal trying for all he's worth to avoid taking the rap for corruption allegations that have come his and Mother's way.

Building spas was fair enough, but who do you think was instrumental in a process for the spas - the number of which could be expected to increase - to be accredited and given quality ratings?

Maria Antònia Munar, never a hair out of place, always looking a million dollars, but don't let's ask where the dollars might have come from. As befits a one-time president of the Council of Mallorca and speaker of the regional parliament, she did of course need to look a million dollars.

Mother Munar had a personal beautician, and it was thanks to Munar that the beautician, Marisol Carrasco, along with two partners, managed to secure the contract, worth around a hundred thousand euros, to audit and certify hotel spas. The process of awarding the contract was rigged. There were three companies invited to tender for the award of the contract from the Inestur agency within the tourism ministry. However, all three belonged to the same group of people - those who won the contract.

Two former tourism ministers and key men in the UM, Francesc Buils and his successor, the aforementioned Nadal, were also keys to the process as it unravelled. Buils, himself implicated in scandal, had to have his arm twisted in order to set the process in motion. By whom? Yep, Mother. Nadal was the one who signed off on the invoices to Carrasco's company once the auditing work had commenced last year. A fourth UM politician, Antoni Oliver, is also tied up in this deal. Oliver is the former director of Inestur and was a mate of one of Carrasco's partners, one Josep Lluís Capllonch who owns a cosmetics firm in Pollensa. The role of Oliver in Pollensa's own politics has been subject to questions raised by opposition groups in the town.

The story of the spas - and all this information is, by the way, in the public domain - tells you much about how the "system" works in Mallorca. Personal favours allied to political ones. All that seems to be missing in this instance is familial nepotism. It is a system that stinks in such a rotten way that not even the aromas from a spa could get rid of the stench. And in Mother you have, or had, someone who treated her party as her own personal fiefdom, with the wretched Buils, Nadal and others her subservient Mark Antonys.

Nothing in the UM appeared to happen without Mother's bidding or approval. The election of her successor, Nadal, was a case in point. She let the chosen one have his scrapes with his rivals, Ferrer and Grimalt, let him throw his toys out of the pram and then stepped in to give them a telling-off and to approve him as leader, an outcome that had never been in question. The UM, in particular the party's mechanism in Palma, was as close as you could get to familial nepotism without there actually being blood ties. But it was a metaphor for a society in which deference - matriarchal or patriarchal - persists, and which goes a long way in explaining the "system".

Back in March, I wrote about the emergence of all the scandal that had engulfed Munar and the UM. Then I said that rather than there being concerns as to an electoral system that facilitates coalition (wrongly being singled out as a breeding ground for corruption), the "corruption scandals should be informing a debate as to what brings them about"; that it is society (Mallorcan) that "begets the politics of the island, not the other way round". In other words, it is societal collusion or at least societal mores and the way in which society operates which breed political corruption.

The other day there was a debate, one that featured leading figures from the university. A professor of law said that "so long as there is no ethical or moral transformation in society, the law will solve nothing". I suppose I feel vindicated in what I had said in March.

The spa story is a relatively minor matter when compared to some of the other charges that have been emerging, but is significant in that it highlights what many suspect, which is that little or nothing happens - be it spas or whatever - without someone benefiting in a way that they shouldn't. The spas should be places of health, but even they have been tainted by disease.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.