All this reverence for and grafting on of human sensibility to something as unremarkable as a pine tree is difficult to understand, but don't let's underestimate poets' capacity to anthropomorphize and to simply get carried away. However, it's not as if Costa i Llobera's sentiments are shared by everyone.
A couple of years ago, researchers at Palma's university called for there to be an educative process to correct erroneous views and misapprehensions regarding pine trees. The reason for their doing so was that they had discovered that many a local hated pine trees, a position quite the opposite therefore to Costa i Llobera's.
What exactly was the cause of this hatred? Well, for a kick-off there was the fact that it is pine trees which catch fire, not that this is really a pine tree's fault (pines are not capable of spontaneous combustion), but given their volume and density, when one goes up so do hundreds more. Other causes were: the processionary caterpillar; preventing other flora from growing; being dirty, as in covering streets and clogging up drains whenever it blows or rains; provoking allergies; and for being foreign - the Aleppo pine is native but so it is to other parts of the Mediterranean.
This lengthy charge sheet against the pine tree does not seem to have been acknowledged by Proposta per les Illes, the name of the merged La Lliga Regionalista and Convergència per les Illes parties. As no one will attempt getting their mouths around this preposterous proposal of a name, the party will also be known as El Pi. The pine party. In overlooking the hatred of the pine, they have instead embraced Costa i Llobera's love. The pine - symbolic, iconic, poetic - the perfect symbol of unity for a Balearics political party; I guess this is the thinking anyway.
Having adopted the pine as its name, the party has felt compelled to adopt a logo as well. A pine it could be, but it could also be a singing stick insect carrying some nuts. Or boulders. The four splashes of red against a yellow background (all very Catalan of course) denote the four islands apparently. El Pi is a party for the whole of the Balearics, it being more than a merger of La Lliga and the Convergència; the Unió Menorquina and Es Nou Partit d'Eivissa have also muscled in on the act.
The pine party's mission in life will be as a party that is "autonomist", "of the centre" and of a "Balearic and integrationist vocation". I'm not sure that a political party can have a vocation as such, so perhaps there is something lost in translation, but whatever its vocation, the party has made it clear that it is a party for Balearics people and no one else. Not the Brits anyway.
The problem with El Pi is its pronunciation. It may mean the pine, but for the Brits it will mean something very different. There are three options: the pea, the pee or LP. Of the three, I quite like the idea of a political party calling itself the pea. The pee wouldn't work at all - political party taking the pee and all that - while LP is too much of the past. The party needs to convey a contemporary image, one of the moment. Old vinyl wouldn't do at all, so it's why the party has adopted an image so rooted in the past - Costa i Llobera's tree.
The image is also essentially introspective and insular. This may be appropriate for an "autonomist" party with a "Balearic and integrationist vocation" but it conveys no sense of being forward or outward-looking. Moreover, it is just plain daft to name a party after a bloody tree. How seriously can it be taken? The official name, Proposta per les Illes (Proposal for the islands), isn't much of a name either, but it does at least have a touch of gravitas.
Still, if tree it had to be, one thing going for the pine is that it isn't under immediate threat of extinction. The palm, one species of which is in the process of being killed off by a rotten beetle but also representative of the Balearics, would have been a bad omen for a new party. Not that the pine is a good omen.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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