The Modals Of Voting

Who should I vote for? I guess I take it as a compliment that I would be asked the question. If I give an answer, it is not couched in terms of "should". That implies a command. I would no more tell a foreign resident who he or she "should" vote for than tell him or her that he or she "should" be voting in the first place. Some people are too ready to command something of others. Who am I (or anyone) to issue such a command? If others do vote, they are interested in doing so. If others do not vote, they are not interested in doing so. That is their prerogative. 

I am in a way surprised at the level of interest, but only because it is said that foreign residents fail to heed the "should" modal, or rather the "will" modal. Being asked the question is an indication of this interest. But it isn't the only indication. Local politics, local politicians: in my experience there is an interest. There is a lack as well, but it was and will be ever thus regardless of where a vote might be cast. People's prerogative. There's no should, and in Spain the possibility of "should" - or rather "must" - appearing in the democratic lexicon was dismissed by the fathers of the Constitution. Post-Franco, there were to be no commands. Choice, even if it is abstention or lack of interest: so be it.

But to return to the question and perhaps modify the modal verb. Who might I vote for? You "might" vote for them, or them, or them, but what is that I would be voting for? This is perhaps a reason for not. The unknown. But the unknown is partly a function of lack of interest, of not seeking to know, but then why "should" anyone put him or herself out in pursuit of this knowledge? Each to their own.

In the absence of any other known, there is one: that of equating a political party here to a political party from somewhere else. This creates an assumption. Where someone is from will determine political sympathy or sympathies. It is an assumption which is perhaps made more by foreign residents of fellow foreigners than one made by local politicians. Of the latter, some do make assumptions and some do even try and exploit them for all their worth, provoking torrents of propaganda; well, I can think of one place where it does. This might be dubbed cynical, as in a sudden awareness of a latent electorate ready to propel a politician into office; an awareness that otherwise lies dormant or which is more one of theory than practice. Politicians will do anything to get elected - everyone knows this - and will then promptly offer little by way of thanks: your vote, when you get to the nub of the issue, that's all I'm interested in.

One thing you can't do when voting, unless you happen to be a citizen of Spain, is vote for the regional parliament and so for candidates of the eight parties represented in Mallorca. All you can do is vote in the election in whichever municipality you reside. Palma and its parliamentary and Council of Mallorca elections are not the same as the municipal elections. Sure, there can be the same parties, but for most of Mallorca, the municipalities are their own worlds, away from the pure and naked politics of regional government and the sharp definitions between right and left or points in between.

Political parties, political associations in the towns and villages can be as much social entities as they are actually political. They have supporters because of families, because of mates, because of business, because of favours past or favours future. Where these parties stand locally can be almost incidental to how they present themselves for the regional parliament. There can be and will be philosophies which bind them but they are philosophies manipulable because of local circumstances or just sheer distance from the seat of governmental power in Palma. I give an example from Alcúdia. I once asked the former mayor, Miquel Llompart, how all the corruption of his then party, the Unió Mallorquina (UM), affected things in Alcúdia. It didn't, was his answer. It was a Palma affair. And the fact is that he was right.

I can give another - from Pollensa - and a mass of foreign resident support for the Alternativa, a party with a distinctly left flavour. That bucked the assumption, you would think, and it did so because the Alternativa stood up for things important to a good number of foreign residents.

Right, left, in between, assumptions aren't always right. Who "might" you vote for? Who might genuinely want to work best for the interests of everyone? It's tricky to know, I accept, but assumption, a default assumption based on experience elsewhere, might just not give you the answer.