The Great Survivor Of The PP

While the "list" of Partido Popular candidates for the Calvia municipal election caused a slight rumpus that would, for the most part one suspects, have been lost on the natives, the equivalent in Palma has not gone unremarked upon among a wider citizenry. As was already known, at number one on the list and so the prospective new mayor, is Marga Durán, whose selection last October was greeted with widespread disbelief. As I remarked at the time: "Margalida's stellar political career lacks only one thing - star quality". Described by others as a "neophyte", i.e. a novice, she had become parliamentary president at the end of 2012, having previously set parliament alight with a total of six questions that she had ever asked, "each of them designed to reveal the greater glory of the master" (aka President Bauzá).

Her selection was therefore interpreted as reward for compliant loyalty to José Ramón, but it also bore the hallmark of the real power behind the Palma PP throne, José María Rodríguez, the president of the PP in the city. Rodríguez, just as much as Bauzá, wanted rid of the all-too-independently-minded (and popular) Mateo Isern. And he got what he wanted. The list of council candidates reveals the extent of the purge of Isern. They are pretty much all so-called Rodriguistas.

If anyone in Mallorca's politics can be described as a survivor, then it is Rodríguez. During the time of the first president of the Balearics, Gabriel Cañellas, he was the director of the government agency IFEBAL, which promoted trade fairs and congresses in the Balearics. He became a Palma councillor in 1995 and was a deputy mayor until 2003, when he became the minister of interior in the Matas government. Four years of PSOE administration intervened from 2007, but at the end of 2011 he was back, and this time as the national government's delegate in the Balearics. He wasn't to last very long.

The anti-corruption prosecutor, Pedro Horrach, in investigating one of the many strands of the Palma Arena affair (one that has of course embraced Matas as well as Princess Cristina and her husband), has announced that in 2003 Rodríguez illegally financed the Matas PP electoral campaign. Horrach has established that he handed over 24,000 euros cash (black money) to the owner of the Over Marketing publicity agency that was running the PP promotional campaign. There will be no charge brought against Rodríguez: the statute of limitations doesn't permit it.

In 2006, when he was interior minister, Rodríguez made a telephone call to the mayor of Andratx, Eugenio Hidalgo. He admitted that he made the call. Not long after the call, Hidalgo was arrested. The investigating judge, Alvaro Latorre, sought evidence from, among other sources, Andratx Town Hall security cameras, in order to identify who had been putting documents into rubbish containers. Rodríguez was to flatly deny that he had tipped Hidalgo off. The arrest led to what was called the "caso Andratx", the first ever corruption investigation of its type in Mallorca (into urban planning abuses), and subsequently led to the whole Palma Arena affair.

In July 2012, having been in his post for only six months, Rodríguez resigned as government delegate. He had been forced to because the Guardia Civil was looking into contracts relating to Over Marketing with Judge José Castro interested in allegedly irregular payments made by the PP to the agency.  Rodríguez defended his innocence and considered that his departure was "unjust". He said that his political life had been one guided by the idea of public service and by seeking to improve the lot of the citizen. The prosecutor, Pedro Horrach, has now offered his judgement on this idea of public service.

When Rodríguez was chosen as the government delegate, there was some surprise. It was a choice made with the agreement of President Bauzá and the Rajoy administration, but for Bauzá, it seemed one that he was accepting against his better judgement. He had vowed to have a clean government, but there was that old suspicion about the phone call. And there was also the fact that Rodríguez was close to the Matas regime; so close that he was having lunch with Matas in the weeks leading up to his going into prison. This regime, tainted by corruption, also represented the old guard that Bauzá appeared intent on sweeping away. Yet, Rodríguez survived, if only for a few months. His resignation was an embarrassment, but one suspects that Bauzá was secretly relieved. That Bauzá was to subsequently side with Rodríguez in the purging of Isern owed little to a desire for the return of the old guard: Bauzá wanted rid because of Isern's popularity.

Despite everything, Rodríguez remains, pulling the strings in Palma. He has survived, though whether the PP survives the wishes of the electorate, we will soon find out.