The Real Carlos Delgado?

So, after all the talk, the new tourism minister for the Balearics is indeed a professional. A professional politician. Regardless of whatever agreement Carlos Delgado and José Ramón Bauzá are meant to have cooked up at the time of the Partido Popular leadership election in 2010, for Delgado not to have been named as tourism minister would have raised serious questions as to unity within the PP; the unity of the party's right-wing that is.

Bauzá could not have afforded not to have appointed Delgado to tourism. But despite the politicking behind the appointment, Bauzá may well have chosen wisely, even though one suspects his hands were tied.

The good thing about Delgado is that you know what you are getting. He has been clear and honest enough about his ambitions and his attitudes. Some of his pronouncements on matters unrelated to tourism have caused disquiet, most obviously the language thing, but on tourism his instincts seem entirely appropriate and forward-thinking.

The surprise has been, therefore, why there was opposition to his appointment. This surfaced in March when he spoke about his ambition to be tourism minister, and it came from hoteliers. The fear then was that Delgado would clash with the hoteliers, though it was never made clear as to quite why, which led to a conclusion that it was largely personal.

The appointment made, the hoteliers, in the form of the Mallorcan hotel federation, have now come out and said that they look upon the appointment very positively. But the federation always says this. It had plenty of opportunity to do so while the tourism ministry door was revolving during the Antich administration; whether it believed what it was saying or not. It's known as being diplomatic.

One of Mallorca's leading hoteliers, Gabriel Escarrer, the president of Meliá Hotels International, has issued a glowing assessment of Delgado. The right noises are being made, therefore, but behind them you wonder as to the degree to which they are designed to influence Delgado. He has a reputation of being his own man, and there is one issue, barely mentioned in despatches at present, that the good free-marketer Delgado will have to contend with - that of the confusion surrounding the holiday-let industry and the hoteliers' hostility towards it.

This aside, most of what Delgado has said and is saying should be music to the ears of the hoteliers and others in the tourism industry. Creating theme parks, allowing for condohotels, reducing IVA; they are all positive. But his market liberalism has not played well with everyone. His declaration that he will make the general tourism law more flexible in order to permit concerts at hotels is a clear shot across the bows of Acotur, the tourist business association, and others that have opposed the Mallorca Rocks hotel in Magalluf, and a pop also at the association's hounding of Calvia town hall for having granted the hotel licences for the concerts.

The controversy that has surrounded Mallorca Rocks is symbolic of what Delgado represents. Market conservatism is not a concept he adheres to. Acotur has brought criticism upon itself by opposing innovation and new business; it has cast itself as being reactionary and the defender of the status quo. If Delgado can break the shackles of such conservatism and vested interests, then he could well prove to be the tourism minister that Mallorca has been crying out for.

Much is being made of the fact that Delgado, as former mayor of Calvia, is the right man for the job because he has been mayor of a municipality with such a strong tourism economy. The argument doesn't necessarily follow. When Miguel Ferrer, the then mayor of Alcúdia, became tourism minister, the same thing was said. This smacked of a rationalisation for an appointment that owed more to Buggins's turn than to credentials for the job. Delgado is different in that he has been intimately involved with Calvia's tourism in a way that Ferrer wasn't in Alcúdia, but what actually has he done? PSOE, for instance, suggests that tourism initiatives in the town have been non-existent.

And this is the worry with Delgado. For all his instincts, for all his pronouncements, for all his challenge to forces of market illiberalism and for all his new best friends among the hoteliers, does his publicity outweigh the reality? We are about to find out.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.