Communication Breakdown: Balearic Government

The government of José Ramón Bauzá has many failings, but its greatest is arguably its inability to communicate effectively. In this it only has itself to blame, while by its own design it has allowed communication in a more general sense - media, the man and woman in the street, social networks - to be dominated by the battles it has sought.

If only. If only Bauzá had not bulldozed headlong into the great wall of Catalan, he might now be looking at higher poll ratings and looking forward to receiving the mandate which would allow him to realise his ambition for a second term - to complete what he says he has started. Instead, he chose his battles and he will die by the sword he has waved. If only he had not revised history by insisting there was a mandate for trilingual teaching when there was not. His constant reference to a manifesto which set this out, but which did not, has merely added to the discontent that TIL has aroused; he has constantly taken people for fools, those who have bothered to read the manifesto, that is. If only he had approached TIL in a consensual evolutionary fashion. If only he had not torn down the symbols and marked himself out as the enemy of Catalan through a conversion to the philosophies of Carlos Delgado and the Circulo Balear's Jorge Campos.

But this confrontation was wholly expected. Members of the Partido Popular now claim that Bauzá became someone they hadn't selected as leader in 2010 (rather than Delgado). This may be so, but his conversion was indecently swift. In December 2010, five months ahead of the regional elections, I wrote about Bauzá's intention to revise language law and of the divisions this had already created within the PP. Immediately after the election, I said that the good week the PP had enjoyed because of the election results might not look so good "when the divisions that exist within the PP in Mallorca re-surface". Not if. When. If leading lights within the PP had their concerns about the language policy, as many will now intimate, they failed to get it toned down, assuming they even tried.

Several months ahead of the last election, Manacor's mayor, Antoni Pastor (then still in the PP), was already at loggerheads with Bauzá over language and attitudes towards regionalism. When he spoke recently of the "hate" that has been brought to Mallorcan society by the Bauzá government, he was overdoing it, but there is no questioning the division that has been created; division which could have been predicted and indeed was.

Has the inability to communicate effectively been intentional? It seems perverse to believe that it has, but the Bauzá regime appears to have been content to allow the controversies to take centre stage. Perhaps the political ego of wishing to appear tough, even at the expense of social and indeed party harmony, has barged common sense out of the way along with communication that is more positive.

Bauzá inherited a difficult economic situation, and he is now able to say that the Balearics will enjoy two per cent growth in 2015. If only. If only the communication had been more effective, more sympathetic, less confrontational, people might now listen and believe that he has done well. Instead, an announcement of predicted growth sounds more like triumphalism and propaganda neatly timed with the months ebbing away before the election. Yet, he and the government can take credit for the improvement. It has had its luck, such as with the Arab Spring that benefited tourism, but it has also sought to enable growth. The tourism law, while by no means perfect, the farming law, the fishing law, an emphasis on technologies; they have all been examples of policies with investment, greater productivity and growth in mind.

Bauzá now boasts that his has been a reforming government, the most reforming government among the regions of Spain. There has been welcome reform and, even allowing for the mess created by the language policy, this also needed some reform because the bias towards Catalan had gone way too far under Antich. Nevertheless, there will be those who will call it reactionary and not reforming, just as there will be those who will point out that economic growth can increase inequalities, and a report last week highlighted just this.

Boasts about reform will cut little ice with the electorate. Economic good news should do, and it was the economy above all else which was the reason for Bauzá being in government. He should have stuck to the economy knitting and communicated the changes needed to right the economy in a more understanding way. But he hasn't, and so he only has himself to blame for the divisions and ruptures that have been caused and for inadequate communication that has merely intensified them.