Forty-Five Minutes Is A Long Time In Politics

So, though she wasn't officially yet president, Francina Armengol made her first presidential speech on Monday. Marga Prohens, for the Partido Popular, condemned it for having been, among other things, "short". It was around 45 minutes long. How long would Marga have liked? An hour, two hours, a whole day? Isn't there something about presentations, that an audience pays attention for the first fifteen minutes or so and then falls asleep until it sounds as though things are winding up, at which point the audience is wide awake again and desperately hoping that the end is indeed nigh? Forty-five minutes sound like around thirty minutes too many, especially when the whole thing could be done by sending round a circular with bullet points and skipping the whole speech bit. Tourist tax, yes. Repealing TIL trilingual teaching, yes. Building massive great retail warehouses all over the Tramuntana, no.

There again, there was a need for some nuance, i.e. some justification for Francina's Damascene conversion to many of the ways of Més and Podemos. Equivocal she had previously been on the tourist tax. Preferable it had been had the horse-trading not given Més and Biel Barceló the gift horse of tourism. As this is the stable where tourism will now reside, one of a rundown old property for which no permission will be forthcoming for conversion to, say, a boutique hotel, Francina was left with little choice but to have joined the eco-nationalists. Tourist tax it will be and it will regenerate the land, make it sustainable and Majorca will be restored to pre-industrial revolution days.

This is of course an exaggeration but my God, talk about lighting the blue touch paper and waiting. Incandescence will greet such incandescence. There will be rage, and even now the travel journalists of "The Sun" and "Bild" will be sharpening their pencils to warn of rip-off Mallorca or such like.

Francina, in the homely fashion that we were exposed to on her having become president of the Council of Mallorca in 2007 when she announced that her door would always be open, went even further this time. So homely is she now that the presidential HQ will be like "home" for the teachers. What does this mean? Will they be able to simply wander into the Consolat de la Mar, help themselves to the contents of the presidential fridge, then stretch out on the sofa and switch the telly on? Well no, but they will be assured of Mother Francina's comforting presence on the sofa while they tell her how to rewrite education legislation.

At least with TIL Francina had come up with this herself. It was PSOE policy and so not one driven by (demanded by) Més or Podemos. So much has been though. Hence, the road to the Damascus of the Consolat de la Mar is littered with transparency (a whole ministry indeed) and with democratic regeneration, part of which, it would appear, is that the islands' councils are going to be made into their own governments. Suddenly, federalism is on everyone's lips, if by everyone one means Pedro Sanchez, the national leader of PSOE, and now his Balearic acolyte. Més may not have taken kindly to Sanchez having the Spanish flag on stage with him with the other week, but they will have taken kindly to the Balearic federalism agenda. Indeed, they probably wrote it. Més have long been advocates of beefed-up island councils, and now they have two of them to run for themselves - Mallorca's and Menorca's.

You would have expected Marga Prohens to have been less than fulsome with her praise of the Armengol speech. There was in fact no praise at all, only criticism. But apart from the speech having been too short, Marga did raise one or two pertinent questions. Like, how are you going to pay to, for instance, guarantee everyone has a minimum income whether in employment or not? Resources are what resources are, she pointed out helpfully. Governments cannot live by tourist taxes alone, she might have added, but then there is all this business with the financing of the Balearics from the state coffers. This is hardcore Més and Podemos territory. Hand over the cash, Madrid, and we'll pay off everyone's mortgage. Or something like that.

So, thus spake Francina, a Zarathustra for the political new age, turning not traditional morality on its head but traditional politics. Strangely though, she said that she was not someone who was forming part of a clamour for change, even if she is about to preside over it. But then, maybe this wasn't so strange. Does she indeed believe in all this? It was a speech worked from the back by Biel Barceló and Alberto Jarabo. How long might it take for the "pact" to unravel? Forty-five minutes?


Index for June 2015

Before and after: how Mallorca changed - 15 June 2015
Bellevue Alcúdia: Spanish students' holidays - 27 June 2015
Calonge - battle in 1715 - 16 June 2015
Canamunt, Canavall and fiesta - 10 June 2015
Corruption and elections - 1 June 2015
Fiesta programmes and politics - 25 June 2015
Fiestas and cultural interest - 19 June 2015
Francina Armengol investiture - 30 June 2015
FIFA, Spanish football and corruption - 4 June 2015
Hotels rush to legalise places - 13 June 2015
Investiture of mayors - 14 June 2015
Lloseta shoes - 7 June 2015
Mallorquín, Catalan and the language argument - 9 June 2015
Manacor: fiesta mule - 11 June 2015
Més and the sofa - 3 June 2015
Miquel Àngel March - 22 June 2015
Musical tradition, Mallorca - 29 June 2015
Partido Popular rebellion against Bauzá - 28 June 2015
Political change and the Church - 17 June 2015
Proportional representation - 24 June 2015
Sa Pobla and the potato - 8 June 2015
Sant Joan, Night of Fire - 23 June 2015
Sant Joan Pelós, Felanitx - 21 June 2015
Sóller tram and uniqueness - 5 June 2015
Toni Catany Foundation - 12 June 2015
Tourism and new administrations in Mallorca - 20 June 2015
Tourism industry and uncertainty - 6 June 2015
Tramuntana mountains and tourism - 18 June 2015
Unknown saints - 26 June 2015