The First Hundred Days

Because of the drawn-out process after elections, one is never entirely sure when a new Balearic government takes office. As José Bauzá was officially "acclaimed" as president on 18 June, then this is as good a date as any. The flexibility of the true timing of the taking of office does, though, make it difficult to agree on when the first one hundred days of office have been achieved. If 18 June it is, then 26 September marks the one-hundredth day.

The fascination with the first hundred days of a presidency or a government can be traced back to Franklin D. Roosevelt and to the laws he introduced to tackle the Depression which formed the basis of the "New Deal". Ever since, it has been a benchmark period against which to judge new governments.

Generally, there isn't great urgency to act swiftly. However, things are currently not entirely dissimilar to what Roosevelt had to confront in the early 1930s. It would be idiotic, for all manner of reasons, to compare Bauzá with Roosevelt, but he came into the presidency needing to move quickly. But what, if anything, has he achieved since taking command?

Primarily, he has succeeded unsurprisingly in alienating the unions, the Catalanists, the teachers, the broadcasters and the town halls. He has also succeeded in putting the fear of God up everyone by constantly referring to the legacy left behind by the last administration, i.e. he has seemingly picked huge numbers out of the air and labelled them as debt. He may of course be right, but there is more than just a suspicion that it is expedient for him to be over-egging things.

The remnants of the former PSOE administration, namely Francina Armengol, the ex-president of the Council of Mallorca, and one PSOE-ite who hasn't jumped ship since the elections, have been berating Bauzá for doing a lot of talking and very little by way of initiating. This isn't entirely true, as he has been going around with his new toy, the presidential hatchet, and taking it to the likes of TV Mallorca, the town halls' funds and the unions' worker representatives. Slashing and cutting things isn't, however, the same as initiating things.

The little that has been positive has been coming out of the tourism ministry. One says positive, but behind the talk of hotel conversions, theme parks and some polo fields (for the all-important polo tourism), there is one thing missing: money, or government money at any rate.

When Carlos Delgado assumed the post of tourism minister, he said that the day of the grant was over. He has been saying this again. Private money is what will support the positive talk. And what positivity there is. Next year's tourism season, aided by a flexible new tourism law, will herald a total turnaround of the economies of Mallorca and the islands. Or so says the minister.

Unfortunately, it won't, as he went on to add that it will be three years before the new era of Balearics tourism starts. This also assumes that the various projects which are meant to be in the pipeline come to fruition. The necessary investment, largely by the main hotel chains, may indeed be forthcoming, but these chains are also investing elsewhere, in countries where there may be richer pickings and fewer obstacles to growth.

Even if this tourism positivity were to be realised and were there to be these new projects, what about the rest of Mallorca, other than hotel complexes (or indeed polo fields)? The town halls, starved of cash as it is, have now been told they won't be getting the 16 million euros from the so-called local co-operation fund. Brand new complexes but a crumbling infrastructure doesn't sound so positive.

Still, at least the tourism ministry is able to point to some action rather than the chop-chop of the cuts' axe. But even its action is slow.

The new tourism law may, by the end of this year, be able to start its process of getting parliamentary approval. It depends on how negotiations have gone with various interested parties in the tourism sector. So, it may or may not be that after around 200 days the law gets somewhere near to the statute books.

Roosevelt was able to push through fifteen major law changes within his first 100 days. In Mallorca it would be unthinkable to get fifteen changes passed within 100 weeks. The process is interminable. Bauzá can't really be blamed for this; it's a system he's lumbered with. His first 100 days may have achieved little, but it couldn't have achieved much more.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.