So-So: Whither PSOE?

Among the many strange aspects of Mallorca's politics, one of the stranger is the sheer anonymity of the party now exiting stage left. PSOE in Mallorca has been largely synonymous with Francesc Antich, especially during its period of government just finished. In its previous administration, it had more recognisable characters, such as Joan Mesquida, now the national secretary-general for tourism, and Celestí Alomar, the then tourism minister and now head of the Balearics division of the Costas authority, but they became recognisable largely because it was they who were responsible for the aborted and hated eco-tax.

In the past four years, however, barely anyone else from PSOE has come to the public's attention. Carles Manera, the finance minister, was largely unknown; Joana Barceló only grabbed the headlines when she was landed with the poisoned chalice of tourism. Greater publicity attached itself to members of the government who weren't in PSOE, and usually attached itself to them for the wrong reasons.

Antich is now off to Madrid. The next local leader of PSOE may be Francina Armengol, given a stuffing by the Partido Popular at the elections for the Council of Mallorca. Apart from her, well who is there?

Perhaps it is to PSOE's credit that no one knows who their leading lights are. It has been hard not to know about politicians from other parties engaged in dubious practices or internecine strife, the latter most evident within the PP. But it can also be seen as a failure of the party to really promote itself. The column inches devoted to the PP and to its various characters is disproportionately high compared with those dedicated to PSOE. And it isn't simply because the PP's in-fighting makes it far more interesting than PSOE.

One reason why the PP won the elections so easily and why it, and its politicians, are more in the public eye comes down to the fact that it has a more effective party machine. Its organisation is better.

When one talks about party organisation, one issue that crops up is that of funding. The lion's share of funding comes out of the public purse, and the larger the party and the greater its representation the more money it gets. Like Real Madrid and Barcelona scooping most of television's football money, the rich get richer and the smaller parties and teams lose out.

Given public funding, PSOE and the PP should theoretically be on roughly similar footings, but there is also the matter of other sources of funding. Measures have been taken to make this funding more transparent, but the 2009 report by the Council of Europe into the transparency of funding in Spain revealed ongoing disquiet as to quite how transparent it is, with municipalities particularly coming under its microscope.

Linked to the issue of funding is one of the sociology of political parties in Mallorca. And it is here that the PP knocks PSOE into a cocked hat. Historically, albeit that the history has not even yet reached thirty years, Mallorca is a PP stronghold, a reflection of an innate conservatism among Mallorcans but also of the strength of networks. The PP has been the vehicle through which to get on, to enjoy the spoils in a way that PSOE has never offered.

Ideology plays only a small part in local politics and where it has appeared to, it has been more a thin veneer over the desire for power and for tapping into the Mallorcan networks. The Unió Mallorquina was a classic example. On the face of it, it only differed from the PP insofar as it had a nationalist agenda, but it was one that was understated. It was never a radical party, because radicalism doesn't generally fit with the Mallorcan mindset. Its ideology was secondary to its existence for existence's sake.

For PSOE, the challenges are several. It needs to improve its organisation, to become more visible, to portray greater personality. And it needs to define what it stands for. But here it really faces a problem. As with other parties ostensibly of the left which try to occupy the centre or even veer off towards the right, it can create an ideological confusion. On issues other than the economy, what is PSOE in Mallorca? Is it regionalist, and thus the opposite of the PP? Is it Catalanist? Ditto. What is it? But if ideology doesn't really count for much in Mallorca, the party faces a starker question - whither PSOE?


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