Armengol: The First One Hundred Days

Certain numbers carry significance for the suspicious and the commemoratively inclined. 111 is English cricket's number of suspicion: its Nelson. 666 is the Devil's number or the number of the beast from Chapter 13 - unlucky for some - of the Book of Revelation. 100 isn't associated with superstition or bad luck, but it has acquired a mythical status in politics. The first 100 days. Why the fascination with 100? For a kick-off, it's a nice round number. It is not 111. It's also reasonably short in temporal terms. 666 would be far too long, even if - with many a governmental administration - its beastliness would offer a more insightful analysis of performance.

Judging when 100 days start is a ritual of its own. In Mallorca, thanks to the procrastinatory nature of installing a new government, it isn't immediately obvious which day is day one, or day zero if you prefer. However, with reasonable certainty, we can take 3, as in 3 July, to be the day of commencement, the day when Francina Armengol held her first cabinet meeting and announced that it was Day Zero for the symbols of Bauzáism: out went the Law of Symbols, trashed was trilingualism (TIL).

On this basis, we can assume that 11 October will commemorate the first 100 days of Armengolism, a useful day as it will be a Sunday and so afford newspapers the opportunity to bulk up their weekend copy with First One Hundred Days specials. It is further useful in that the day after is Spain's National Day, the Day of Hispanidad (Spanishness). Travel agents will be especially happy because of the "puente" weekend, but how happy will others be? How much Spanishness might by then have been dispensed with?

There again, travel agents might have reason to be less than happy. Might the first 100 days witness the arrival of the eco-tax, the 666 devil's work of the horned demon of tourism vice-presidency Biel Barceló? He has said that he will work from the outset for a tourist tax.

Surprisingly, a survey - by the Mallorcan research organisation Gadeso - has found that only a slight majority (51%) of businesses in the tourism sector reject the idea of the tourist tax. Admittedly, only 23% actually agree with it, leaving a further 26% undecided, but one might have anticipated there being greater hostility towards it. Barceló might just be able to take some reassurance from the finding.

It is being said that the tourist tax will be the key legislative item for this government. Possibly it will be, though its passage through parliament shouldn't detain deputies too long, unless PSOE get cold feet, in which case the Més pact (and Podemos support) will collapse rapidly. PSOE's feet will stay warm, especially if Barceló is true to the implication of what he says and seeks to establish at least the legislative framework within the first 100 days. Armengol couldn't afford a falling-out so soon.

What else, apart from the tax, will the specials of Sunday, 11 October be obsessing over? There are already clear signs and not just the abandonment of TIL and the Law of Symbols. One has to do with land, a subject which is vitally important to Mallorca yet which tends to be overlooked in favour of the headline-grabbing of controversies such as the eco-tax. So important is that, even more so than education and language, it is subject to constant political revision which creates the legalistic chaos which surrounds rules on land, on its categorisation and on its use.

Armengol has indicated that another piece of Bauzá legislation - the Ley de Suelo (Land Law) - will be repealed in removing the amnesty that was applied by this law to predominantly rural properties that had been illegally built and which were more than eight years old. The law may, for many, have appeared to have been overly generous, but the fact that so many properties were involved (some 20 odd thousand if I remember rightly) did require some form of pragmatic resolution of their status. Now, the likelihood is that in addition to ever more confusion, the courts will come into their own in arbitrating between two opposing pieces of legislation.

This is an example of Mallorca's politics at its absolute worst. Continuity in legislation is rarely sustained, but when it comes to land, the disruptive legislative tendency causes constant uncertainty. Hence, all the endless cases that do indeed end up in courts. And into this mix comes what may be one of the most important changes during the first 100 days, the confirmation of far greater responsibilities for the Council of Mallorca and so its redefinition of the Mallorca Territorial Plan with all the implications this has for tourism, among other things.

Land law, tourist tax, Catalan linguistic immersion. The first one hundred days will be busy days. Just as well that no one's superstitious.