Chickens Coming Home To Roost

Mallorca is alive to the sound of clucking. To the sound of chickens coming home to roost. It wasn't that there was something bad or stupid done in the past, just that the hatching of plans taken some years ago is being exposed as questionable.

The brave new world of post-Franco democracy ushered in a devolved form of government to the newly autonomous regions which in turn decentralised powers to further authorities. In Mallorca this meant the regional government, the Council of Mallorca and the town halls. It was, still is in theory, the very model of ideal government, one of taking democracy to the local level and to ever smaller units of administration.

The brave new world was the rejection of the corrupt, authoritarian centralisation of Franco. It was the introduction of local accountability, of local decision-making. It was idealistic and participative. By filtering democracy downwards into more compact entities, it was a means of combatting corruption. Supposedly.

The brave new world has been only partially successful. But it is still young, relatively immature. Should it be granted time to reach some maturity? Powerful people and institutions are pecking at doubts as to whether it should be.

What the euphoria of the brave new world neglected were practicalities and costs. The structure of government had been questioned even before the crisis took hold; I had on more than one occasion. But the previous murmurs of questioning have become shouts.

To begin with, there is President Zapatero. He has issued a warning to the governments of the autonomous regions that they have to curb their spending and debts. The total regional debt is 105 billion euros. The regions are being seen, as I reported the other day, as perhaps the single greatest risk to Spain's finances.

Zapatero, likable and admirable in many ways, hasn't become a completely headless chicken, but his mantra of "reforms, reforms, reforms" allied to his threats of central intervention if the regions don't tow the line suggest a volte-face in his attitudes to the regions to which, hitherto, he seems to have been only too willing to cede more and more responsibility.

Then there is Zapatero's predecessor, José Maria Aznar, who has alluded to this change of attitude. He has condemned "quick changes of policy" and what he sees as threats to the autonomous model of government enshrined in the brave new world. And this is a Partido Popular politician saying this. Without anyone actually spelling it out in the kind of dramatic way that might suggest a complete abandonment of the autonomous model, the costs of regional government are nonetheless drawing into question the sustainability of the current system.

If one homes in on Mallorca, behind the regional government lurks the Council of Mallorca. What is the point of the Council of Mallorca? It's a question I was asking B.C. (before crisis). Were it smaller, it might be justifiable, but its size, its mirroring of the regional government makes it an expensive level of bureaucracy, the purpose of which seems to be to grant jobs for the boys. Moreover, as is highlighted with the waste-collection scandal, it offers an additional opportunity for misdeeds. This scandal has even exposed the appalling waste that appears to have occurred as a consequence of its involvement with rubbish collection, that of some town halls seemingly having paid twice for the same service.

The budget for the council in 2011 will be 428 million euros. One voice that suggests the council is "very expensive" in addition to it being an "inefficient behemoth" belongs to Maria Salom, the PP's candidate for its presidency. It may sound as though she is one chicken acting like a turkey voting for Christmas, but she has called for an end to the accumulation of functions and overlaps with other institutions. Hallelujah. It may have taken several years, but someone finally seems to get it. She isn't advocating the council's complete dismantling, but she does want it stripped down. And so it should be.

And then you come to the town halls. The Majorcan hotel federation's lady president, Marilén Pol, has said that they should be eliminated - all 53 of them. They cost too much and are unnecessary given the size of population. It's an extreme proposition, but it is one that has been pursued in other cash-strapped countries.

An alternative is merger. There are examples of town halls working together, but there are others which show that it isn't straightforward. The Mancomunitat in the north of Majorca doesn't work at all, so much so that the six town halls involved have more or less agreed not to bother with future meetings. Where there are competing agendas, then it is unlikely that it would work.

Eliminating the town halls is not, I believe, a solution. They perform a social function in terms of local identity as well as adhering to the fundamentally correct principle of local democracy. But they have not succeeded in being the accountable, participative and transparent institutions they should have become, and they, like the Council of Mallorca, perpetuate bureaucratic burdens.

The chickens are coming home to roost because they have woken up to the fact that the structure of government is unwieldy and too expensive. The model is not fundamentally wrong, but it has got out of hand. The Council of Majorca should either go altogether or be pared back in terms of its function. The town halls need reforming, their spends on personnel alone having spiralled since the turn of the century.

Which leaves the regional government. It should stay. For it to not to would represent a shattering of the brave new world and a reversion to something worse - centralisation and Madrid control. And there would be something even more dramatic were the autonomous regions to be undermined. You only have to think of Catalonia and its independence claims to know what this would be. Anarchy.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.