Keeping It In The Family

Have you ever been having a chat with a Mallorcan business owner and someone wanders past and causes your chat to be put on hold while the business owner and passer-by engage in embraces and friendly conversation? I have. Several times. And more often than not, the passer-by, when introduced, turns out to be if not a brother, then a cousin, an uncle, a second cousin ... a member of the family, even a fairly remote one.

The family is considered a strength in local society. Its strength, though, is also its weakness. The family breeds its own tyranny, and it is a tyranny that is a Mallorcan and Spanish weakness.

Political and corporate favouritism in Spain is endemic, and this favouritism, be it in the form of employment, contracts or "smoothing" arrangements, owes much to family ties. Everyone knows this to be so and everyone, therefore, indulges in the practice. Even those who complain about it. Yet it is a harmful, destructive practice that causes a reduction in incentive, an inhibition of the talent pool, an absence of meritocracy, an abuse of position, a lack of questioning, scrutiny or correct governance and a fertile source of potential and actual corruption. It also causes there to be what exists, a division within society that is predicated on the knowledge that this society revolves around nepotism, a division which acknowledges what "they" are up to, be they politicians or businesspeople. It can be accepted with the resigned shrug and smile and the expression that "well, this is Spain" but, because of its endemic nature, it isn't resisted but aped, and so a vicious circle of favouritism constantly revolves, no one being capable of breaking the circle. 

The UPyD party, a relative newcomer to the political scene, is attempting to do so. It wants a new type of politics, a new culture within society too, one that is stripped of "amiguismo", favouritism and nepotism. But just look at what it is up against. At the very highest levels of national government family members have senior posts at the ministries of agriculture, food and environment and of industry, energy and tourism; at the Spanish Embassy in Washington; and within the team of the Secretary of State for Commerce. When the party asks for an explanation, what response does it get? These people all have the necessary skills for the jobs and to not employ them because they happen to be related to ministerial or other senior Partido Popular politicians would be discrimination. Orwell would marvel at such doublethink.

Favouritism is ingrained into the local culture. It is an historical phenomenon, one institutionalised by King Philip III. At the time that he did so, at the turn of the seventeenth century, Spain was in decline, and by disregarding the wider interests of Spain and placing his own interests above them, Philip legitimised favouritism and helped to contribute to further decline.

Come nearer to the present day, and favouritism was the basis of the system of the cacique in the late nineteenth century. The cacique political bosses rewarded favourites in what was a total sham of democracy. It is a system that has never truly gone away. Hence why, in 1996, the author Howard Wiarda concluded that Spain had moved only partly to democracy, as this new "democracy" was "still shot through with family favouritism and nepotism" and as practices in both public and private sectors often fell short of being democratic. Hence also the revelation that local banks, at the centre of Spain's economic collapse, were populated at board level by political favourites, family members and cronies.

Families can be problematic for business. Think of two non-Spanish examples: Maxwell and Murdoch. Think of just one Spanish example, one that is quite close to home in some respects to Mallorca: Nueva Rumasa and the offspring of Ruiz-Mateos who are now trying to drop each other in it as they seek to save their respective necks.

The trouble is that families can't be avoided. Idealistic localism in Spanish politics was designed to combat the centralist monster of corruption under Franco, but it has unleashed its own monster. Shove responsibilities so far down the food chain to small communities which are populated by relatives, including remote ones, and what do you get?

Not all families can be tarred with the same brush, of course they can't, but at political level in particular, perceptions are as important as realities. It is no use claiming that family members are up to the task when everyone assumes they have been given the tasks because of who they are. It has got to stop but it is very doubtful that it ever will.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.