The Touristic Nuclear Option

So, they're really going to do it. The PM(P) has taken the nuclear option. The M People - BB Barceló with Més - have pressed the button; the P part (PSOE) is wishing it had chosen to get into bed with the Partido Popular; the (P) element, i.e. Podemos, is consulting its support base via Twitter and/or demanding that the tourist tax returns Mallorca to a virgin state circa 1915. But, while the sun still shines, Mallorca will not be plunged into nuclear winter. Or not until that volcano in Iceland goes off ten times larger than it did last time.

The Tax should from now on only ever be written with the upper-case to denote the reverence in which it should be held, a reverence and pomposity revealed at its legalistic unveiling: the Law on the Sustainable Tourism Tax. Here is a maybe-maybe not government, the PM(P), flailing around in desperately attempting to convince everyone that it is pursuing its objectives with consensus and dialogue (when really they're at each other's throats), grabbing "sustainable" from the politico-touristic thesaurus and thus allowing The Tax to mean whatever it wants it to mean. Which is of course the case.

Principally, however, The Tax is, as we all know, required to balance the books. CC, Catalina Cladera (finance), will doubtless have informed BB that he needs to get his skates on if she is not to be made to look a CC - complete chump - having included 50 million in next year's budget only to discover that The Tax will not come into effect until all touristic life has decamped to the Canaries for the winter, where it will not pay a tax. It'll be from the first of May, Biel, or else ...

BB has the onerous task of not just extracting consensus from sources where consensus will not exist - the hoteliers and pretty much the entire Balearic business conglomerate - but also from the providers of the booty, the 13.5 million tourists of whom Francina is convinced that they are so in love with the Balearics that they will hand over The Tax with an ecstatic look of euphoria. "Praise the Lord Biel for saving our paradise."

So difficult is BB's task that he is, one understands, to take the unusual step of writing an open letter to the British touristic collective that will be nailed to the heads of everyone attending London's World Travel Market. The mind boggles. The very fact that he needs (someone else needs, who one trusts is familiar with the English language) to compile such propaganda should tell him something. What are we letting ourselves in for? Faced with a hostile press, ABTA, array of tour operators and Joe Soap tourist, BB's time in London will be one spent with a hard hat or buried in a bunker to avoid having to answer questions. He should give serious consideration to co-opting his predecessor, Jaime "Eddie Large" Martínez, and taking him along as bodyguard. No one messes with Eddie. Not, that is, unless they want to be eaten by him.

And what might this letter say? We already have an inkling, as BB has been using the P-word in the context of justifying The Tax. "Dear lovely, lovely tourist, we know you will want to preserve your island Paradise, its velvety white sands and its forested Alpine mountains with their works of civilisations over the centuries. We want to build consensus and dialogue with you, as you are our friends, joining us in a consensual mission of sustainability. Love you loads, Biel."

Far better, surely, would be a video, BB staring misty-eyed towards the seas off the Tramuntana to a musical accompaniment of Maria del Mar Bonet wailing Costa i Llobera's "El Pi de Formentor" in the background. Bygone imagery would certainly be what Dave Spart and The Boot Girl from Podemos would be hankering after, with all signs of the hotel industry airbrushed from the landscapes. Ideally, there would be no sign of any tourists either. Bloody tourists, coming over here, clogging up our beaches. Marga Prohens may have had a point with the nuisance jibe.