A Circle Of Apathy: Mallorca's democracy

The Economy Circle is an organisation that through literal translation sounds slightly odd. In its original it is Cercle d'Economia de Mallorca, but in English it gives the impression of a group of prudent housewives swapping household tips while knitting. A different translation can be The Economy Society, which comes across as being careful with the pennies, but the society bit is rather more to the point as the circle or the society, which is made up of high-powered businesspeople and professionals, gets its teeth, from time to time, into matters of importance to local society. In the past, it has had its say on education, advocating regular assessment of teachers, greater autonomy in head teacher decision-making and improvements in the standard of English. It has also spoken about how a dependence on tourism will mean that the Balearics will be the last of the Spanish regions to get out of crisis.

It comes out with a great deal of common sense but it has now come out with a report that, while it might not surprise anyone, should shock Mallorca's politicians to their very cores. This is a report into the quality of democracy in the Balearics and its findings make for grim reading.

180 experts have considered fifty factors to do with local democracy and only eight of these factors warrant getting a pass mark. The worst aspects are an indictment of this democracy: the party system, government administration, political consensus, the transparency and examples of and set by political parties. But it is not only the politicians who get it in the neck, the report concludes by observing that a culture of democracy is lacking and that there is general apathy within civil society.

One could always argue that society's apathy is a product of a political system in which there is little trust. The same argument is made in the UK. But there is a different context in Mallorca. Apathy was something that Franco used to play on. He thought that the Spanish people were too thick to really understand democracy and he also believed that apathy legitimised his rule because the people weren't all that bothered.

It could indeed be that this old apathy prevails rather than it being a new one brought about the current political system. This might sound contradictory when one considers some of the more strident voices in Mallorca, but then are these only the voices of minorities, loud ones admittedly but of relative unimportance?

I'm not so sure that they are unimportant. The combination of a poor political system, in the view of the Economy Circle, economic crisis and increasing radicalism within younger sectors of society, provoked by those with a more radical agenda and by a government that seems intent on driving wedges into local society, is potentially pretty lethal. It is exacerbated by a fact that shouldn't be overlooked, which is that democracy is still only quite young (some thirty years or so). Is it strong enough to withstand tensions, therefore, when even politicians and political parties don't appear to really understand what it means?

The answer is probably yes, but it is a system of democracy that has yet to grow up and to shake off its obvious excesses, as evidenced by the corruption cases and by a party system which owes as much to personal loyalties, networks and indeed nepotism as it does to ideology.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.