The Soul Of Mallorca: Catalan

To no one's surprise, Antoni Pastor voted against the Balearic Government's changes to the language law which will remove the pre-requisite of speaking Catalan for employment in the public sector. To no one's further surprise, he now finds himself suspended from the Partido Popular and may find himself expelled from the party.

Towing the party line and all that. The reaction of the government and the PP is not so different to that which would obtain in Westminster. Politicians with long and serious faces make pronouncements about the seriousness of going against the wishes of this or that party leadership, political analysts dissect the dissent in terms of "black" Wednesday or Thursday, or whatever day it happens to be for the government, and everyone promptly forgets about it all.

It isn't normal for a Westminster party to expel an MP if he or she votes against it. Not towing the party line can be a career-limiting move but it doesn't normally end totally in tears and the party membership card having to be torn up and tossed into the dustbin of a political career potentially in ruins. In Mallorca, it would seem that it is normal insofar as anything about local politics can be said to be normal, and very little is.

Pastor has voted with his conscience. In a democratic set-up, conscience should be allowed to play a part, but it doesn't unless the "free" vote is applied. On a major policy issue, such as the language, there is no room in the PP's democratic set-up for conscience. You do as you are told, except the leadership knew full well that Pastor wouldn't do as he was told.

Jaume Font, a former ally of Pastor's in the PP and now leader of the breakaway La Lliga, has praised Pastor for his courage, which may well translate as an invitation to come and join him. He might just do that, though one still fancies that he wouldn't. Suspended or not, expelled or not, Pastor still has a great deal of support within the PP rank and file, a point made by one of the party's more important figures, the speaker of the parliament Pere Rotger.

Pastor knows he has this support and as importantly so does the PP party leadership. He is a nuisance, and nuisances to political parties tend to end up in exile, either actually or metaphorically. But he won't be in exile, he will continue to be a parliamentary deputy (as an independent) and mayor of Manacor where he has the support of a majority of other PP councillors. What does the party leadership do about that? Expel the whole of the Manacor branch of the party?

If Pastor is ultimately kicked out of the party, on the face of it this would end any ambitions he might have of becoming its leader. I'm not so sure that it would, though. Pastor's stance is one of a battle over what is the soul of Mallorca. This soul, I used to believe, was one that was largely indifferent and one that would merely shrug its shoulders. It still is but it is far less so than it was, and there are clear examples that the soul of Mallorca is an issue over which many Mallorcans feel strongly. The parents who have rejected overwhelmingly to have their children taught in Castellano instead of Catalan are a case in point.

It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the PP in the Balearics would undergo a volte-face in official attitudes towards Catalan and regionalism. If the next election were to loom with question marks over Bauzá being able to get re-elected, there might just be a reassessment, and it would be one that might see Pastor brought fully back into the fold. One suspects that this is what he may be counting on and would be why he wouldn't join up with Font. There again, the one great advantage Bauzá has is that there is no coherent opposition worthy of the name. PSOE remains in a state of some disarray, while other parties don't really count.

Three years, though, are a long time. Long enough for there to be change and long enough for the battle over Mallorca's soul to leave some bodies. The question is - whose? Bauzá's or Pastor's? And at the same time as the battleground in the islands starts to become littered with the fallen, another front opens - the European Parliament has heard a complaint from teachers' representatives regarding what they call the institutional harassment of Catalan by the Bauzá government.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.