Heaven Or Las Vegas

Three steps to heaven ... First step, the initial gathering of the newly made-up parliament of the Balearics; second step, the debate of investiture; third step, taking possession. On 18 June, José Ramón Bauzá will officially be acclaimed as president.

While the process of transition, both at town hall and regional government levels, will have seemed interminable, Bauzá has been busy drawing up his plans for government and for its organisation. Following a trend established by Antich, certain portfolios will be combined in creating super-ministries.

For Antich, the impulse behind establishing super-ministries - transport with environment, tourism with employment - was twofold. Firstly, it was a cost-cutting exercise; secondly, he simply ran out of ministers, once the old Unió Mallorquina was booted out of government.

The spin behind Bauzá's amalgamations will also be twofold: cost-saving but also greater agility, of which the second will be open to question. There is a third, which is by far the most significant.

Bauzá is envisaging six or seven super-ministries and one stand-alone ministry, tourism. They are likely to be headed by his allies.

There is nothing remarkable about a head of government packing his cabinet with those he can trust to tow the party-line but, in so doing, the broad church of the Partido Popular in the Balearics will be funnelled along one narrow aisle, the pews to one side in particular, the left, forced to kneel in supplication through gritted teeth.

Of the various ministries, keeping tourism by itself shows the importance attached to the ministry. Bauzá should be applauded if this turns out to be the case. But it is still unclear who will be heading it. Carlos Delgado's is the name which refuses to go away; Delgado, the force behind Bauzá's Damascene progress on the road ever more to the right and treated with suspicion by Mallorca's hoteliers who have said they don't want him.

One other ministry, education and culture, could end up in the department of the presidency itself. This, in itself, says a great deal, as also would the absence of ministers among the awkward squad. One of these is Antoni Pastor, the mayor of Manacor.

Pastor, it was thought, might have jumped and joined forces with his former PP ally, Jaume Font, when Font left to form the La Lliga party. For him to have done so would have been political suicide. La Lliga, not unexpectedly, fared badly in the regional government elections; it is contemplating merger with the eclipsed former UM, now the Convergència.

Pastor remains; the most charismatic cheerleader for the local left of the PP. Without him in a position of power, with Delgado in one, and the most important one, and with education and culture under Bauzá's umbrella, everything will become very much clearer. For this will be the nuclear option that could have been anticipated.

While Delgado, despite the hoteliers' mistrust of him, could actually prove to be a very good tourism minister, the mistrust is shared by many within the PP and is indicative of the battles that lie ahead in what is anything but a unified party. But more significant than a Delgado appointment would be the siting of education and culture within the department of the presidency.

For education and culture, substitute the two words with "language" and "anti-Catalanism" and you get a far greater appreciation as to why it would be so significant. It would be a clear declaration of the personal intent of Bauzá (and Delgado) to pursue a social agenda of the sort that helped to alienate Font, Pastor and others.

By packing his cabinet with obedience, Bauzá may be sure of initial victories, but it could well develop a bunker mentality when the worm turns both within his party and the islands in general. The first victory is likely to be economic. Plenty of advance warning is being given - the classic there is no money, blame it all on the lot before line, á la the Tories and á la any party set on deep cuts to expenditure while no one is really looking and no one is inclined to challenge. But it's what comes later that is the scary part. Bauzá and Delgado ensconced in the casino playing a high-risk game of social roulette.

From the heaven of acclamation to the Las Vegas gamble on the cohesion of Mallorcan society.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.


* Been looking for an excuse to do the "Heaven Or Las Vegas" title, so I can do a Cocteaus' thing. This remains utterly brilliant ...