Does The Centre Hold?: Class in the Balearics

The classless society. Remember that? It was John Major's big thing. The classless society was idealistic nonsense, but it reflected what has often been thought to be a British obsession with class.

Why is this meant to be such a British obsession? Because class doesn't exist elsewhere? Well, one place it does exist is the Balearics, though for the purposes of discovering where political sympathies lie, social-class categories aren't defined according to high, medium or low birth. Rather, they are grouped mainly according to employment status, though this will often amount to the same thing as privilege by birth.

The Balearics upper-class is inhabited by those from large businesses with property and capital and who hold senior managerial positions. The lower-class comprises the long-term unemployed, uneducated young people and immigrants without social networks. Between these two polarities are the lower-middle, middle and upper-middle classes. It all sounds pretty familiar.

This social classification comes in handy when researchers wish to go a-researching. And no more so than when the research has to do with politics. The Mallorcan research organisation Gadeso has been doing just this, and what has it discovered?

Would you be surprised to know that among the upper-class 71.4% are centre-right and a mere 1.4% is either left or centre-left? Equally, would you be amazed to learn that of the lower-class a further 1.4% describes itself as right-wing and 4% as left-wing?

I don't know about you, but I am amazed. A lower-class that is defined, by implication and in part, as socially excluded and poor would, you would think, be up for higher levels of extremism. It is perhaps difficult to know where centre becomes centre-left and centre-left becomes left, but the lower-class is pretty much solidly centre to centre-left; sympathetic to the PSOE socialist party, the PSM Mallorcan socialists and others, but not out on the loony fringe.

The lunatics are instead to be found among the upper class and more or less them alone. A lower percentage of the upper-middle class is on the far right (5.7%) than the 9.5% of the upper class and a much lower percentage is centre-right (a mere 30.8%).

The centre dominates, to the extent that 43.1% of the Balearics population considers itself to be of the centre. But isn't there a discrepancy here? How come the Partido Popular are in power?

One thing the PP isn't is of the centre. Despite constant references otherwise, it isn't really centre-right. There are certainly those who would argue that it is the most right-wing party in Europe, though it would be given a good run for its money by the weirdos knocking around a few former Soviet-bloc countries.

The inference, where the most recent elections were concerned, is that the real centre was abandoned. Though it might occasionally come up with its own nutty ideas, PSOE is pretty much that centre. It most certainly isn't the party of its socialist revolutionary origins in the nineteenth century.

Gadeso's findings are significant, though they do, as always with surveys, come with the caveat that surveys aren't necessarily completely accurate. What they suggest is that the PP, far from being the natural party of Balearics government (which history since autonomy in 1983 suggests), is not, and that were PSOE to sharpen up its act, and its organisation is lamentable by comparison with the PP, it could well return to government next time round. Lack of progress on the economy by the PP might lead to this in any event, but the general sympathies of the population indicate an underlying support, were the conditions to be appropriate.

The rejection of more extremist stances among the lower class, be they left or right, is also significant. This suggests that there is no groundswell of fanaticism in the Balearics that might lead to the sort of social disaffection and agitation that rotten economic circumstances can give rise to.

The most significant finding, and the most disturbing, is the one of the rightist sympathies of the upper class, that which holds power through large organisations. To what extent these sympathies coincide with more extremist elements one can only guess at. But one can guess how they might manifest themselves, and not just in terms of handling the economy or industrial relations. Social and religious issues are bound up in this rightism. And if it is the case that extremism on these counts are promulgated by a powerful upper-class, then what otherwise appears to be a moderate, centrist Balearics could cease to be so.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.