I'll Be Watching You

Watch out! I'm watching you. I'm watching you in a bar. I'll be coming but you won't know me. I'll be sitting there, watching. I am the eyes of the government, the tax office, the social security, employment. I'll be in your bar.

The tax office, along with the other departments, is stepping up its efforts. "An aggressive plan" against the black economy, the absence of papers or the papers not quite right. More inspections. Checking on those claiming dole, but receiving a wage. Checking on everything, including the importing of goods from Asia and elsewhere.

When the money's tight, the government does what it can to ensure its revenue stream. Quite reasonably so. But when money's tight, the propensity for rule-bending increases. It is the vicious circle of crisis.

The checks are not out of the ordinary. They happen all the time. Just that they're going to be increased. That "aggressive plan". Watching and waiting.

The watching happens in different ways. There's the watching on the internet. For some time, websites with accommodation to rent have been paid particular attention to, especially websites of British origin. The tourism ministry has netted some apartments in Calvia. The fines can be as high as 30,000 euros. The ministry's inspectors paid a visit to one apartment, all perfectly well turned out, cleaned, with the use of pool and garden. 4,500 euros to rent. Except it wasn't quite legal. Others offer even more, such as transfer to and from the airport. Who's doing the transferring?

This watching of websites and of accommodation intensified a couple of years ago. The checking of apartments and villas for quality, safety and tax was not new, just that the level of effort increased and the technology was made greater use of. You wondered whether it would have much effect. It would appear that it has. There is the vicious circle of renting, though. The hoops and obstacles of trying to be legit, only to come up against the impossible barriers. Not everyone wants to do it improperly. But not everyone can do it properly. So the watching continues and becomes more intense.

There's the watching on the roads. The director-general of Tráfico was in Palma not so long ago. More controls are planned. More promotion of the risks of speed and of being distracted, but more potential for revenue, you would have to imagine. Again, not unreasonably though. And then there is also the automated watching. The new radars. They're not watching. Not yet. More investment is needed to make them work.

They need to step up the controls, not just to stop speed, drink-driving and "distractions" (playing with mobiles, sat-navs etc.) but also to compensate for the loss of revenue during what was something of a work-to-rule by traffic police last summer. The number of fines fell by 15% along with a reduction in the number of vehicles that were stopped, albeit, however, that during the first half of last year as a whole the number of drivers caught for drink-driving went up by a staggering 114%.

Watching employees, watching the number of chairs on terraces, watching the needle on a music limiter, watching the PRs, watching the space occupied by sunbeds on a beach. Now watching the smokers. Maybe there are even detectives watching the detectives.

All this watching has its value. Calvia, when setting its budget for this year, placed an amount on what it anticipates coining in through fines. Maybe local authorities all do this, wherever they are. Maybe it is a part of "good" public financial management. I confess it had never occurred to me that local government or any other government income might actually take into account what comes in by way of fines.

Revenue from fines, you might think, would simply be the jam on the other revenue. The bonus. It would seem not. But by formalising the outcomes of all the watching, giving it a number in the accounts, it is as though it institutionalises wrong-doing. The expectation is to break the law. Human nature being what it is, then maybe this is a pragmatic approach. Yet it is a system which appears set up for social failure as it undermines the psychological contract of reciprocity between authority and citizen, the latter afforded the role of the unscrupulous, whoever the citizen might be.

And all the while, the citizen does his or her own watching. That of the politicians and others in positions of authority or in positions within businesses with close connections to these authority figures doing their own fiddling.

The whole world's watching. Each other. In Mallorca, at any rate.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.