This Is Not Galicia: Politicians' holidays

Mariano Rajoy has suddenly come out as a man of the people: cycling people and people of Galicia at any rate. Despite being on holiday, the prime minister found time to send a telegram to Alejandro Valverde to congratulate the Spanish cyclist on having come third in the Tour de France. Which was very nice of him, but ... . But isn't there something wrong with this? He sent a what? A telegram? Such a thing surely no longer exists. Does it? Perhaps parts of Galicia have been preserved in a manner that a fellow Galician - Franco - would have approved. None of this internet carry-on. Keep the communications infrastructure as it was. In the dark ages.

It is doubly strange because Mariano has recently taken to having selfies done. One fancies that it is not he holding the selfie-stick, but there he has been, grinning inanely for the mobile, surrounded by the likes of the Nuevas Generaciones: Young Conservatives in other words. The Mariano grin, rarely produced in public, does have an unfortunately and inherently inane quality to it. He can't help it, as it is a grin of which he is not entirely certain. Mariano is not comfortable within his own facial muscles.

So, though he has embraced the technology of the modern age, he sticks stubbornly to an ancient one - the telegram. Maybe it's prime ministerial protocol. Or maybe Alejandro had blocked him on Facebook.

But to come back to the holiday, yes, even the prime minister of Spain can find time for a holiday, and in this new age of making Mariano appear vaguely human, there he was, doing what many a human does. He was taking a dip. Not that this was a dip in the sea at a resort (do they have such things in Galicia?), it was in a river: the Umia in a place called Meis. Yes, that's Meis and not Més. Mariano had gone for a refreshing cool down with friends. Locals, it is said, were surprised to find they were sharing their river with the premier. The rest of the country was just surprised. Mariano doesn't do things like that. Or hadn't until the PR people suggested it might work in his electoral favour.

The Spanish political class is, for the most part, a bunch of stiffs, an affliction recognised by the Spanish themselves. When Dave came to Mallorca with the kids and was building sandcastles on the beach in Puerto Pollensa, the Spanish media looked on with amazement. A Spanish political leader wouldn't do such a thing. There is of course a danger with allowing a politician to vacate his comfort zone - or discomfort zone in Mariano's case - and to be seen enjoying a vacation in such a frivolous manner, i.e. a gentle breaststroke in a river. Caption writers can have field days if you are not careful. Hence, Mariano "swimming against the tide" of unpopularity (and I've checked, the Umia is tidal).

Nevertheless, this is the new age: of communications technology and for appearing to be in touch. Therefore, we have also recently had the president of the Balearics, Francina Armengol, laughing and prancing with the demon of the Algaida cossier folk dancers. Careful. careful. "Francina runs with the devil", and the face of Podemos's Alberto Jarabo will be Photoshopped onto the demon's mask by a miscreant media type.

Francina hadn't, according to a recent interview, decided where she would be going on holiday. If she does have a holiday, then it will be somewhere in Mallorca, she said. What are the chances, do you suppose, of this somewhere being the likes of Magalluf? Nil, one would think. There are respectable resorts for the political class, such as Puerto Pollensa with its Cameron seal of approval, but even its comparative tranquility would pose a problem. Let's be honest, there are simply too many damn tourists knocking around, littering the beaches and occupying the terraces. No, if it's Mallorca, then it will be a discreet pueblo in the interior where riotousness will be confined to the noise of a piper and the jumping of the little hops of the ball de bot.

And there Francina might bump into her political chums. The resorts are not for Biel, the tourism minister, or for Alberto either. The touristic new age requires promotion of all things heritage and environmental, but is there not something contradictory with the attitudes of the new left in Mallorca? It would seemingly happily see working men and women banished from the island in favour of the quality class (whatever that is). But wherever in the alternative touristic Mallorca of gastronomy routes and ethnology the island's now-of-the-people political leaders choose for their vacationing, one thing will be missing. Mallorca has no rivers. Of course not. This is not Galicia. This is sun and beach. Sea. The people's politicians would do well to remember this.