Sunday, April 09, 2017

One Door Closes .... Or Fannying Around

So, Fanny, welcome to the increasingly evaporating Balearic government. Do you know that your surname, Tur, if you were to add an umlaut, means door in German? One door closes (on Ruth Mateu) and another one opens. Yours. Shall we see what's behind the door? Ah yes, culture, sport and participation. But alas, no transparency. Where has it gone? Has it already evaporated? No, it's now residing in the ministry of the presidency, another ministry that no one is quite sure what it actually does.

You will be aware of the fact, Fanny, that you are from Ibiza. This seems a little odd. Not coming from Ibiza, one hastens to add, but because Més in Menorca believed they had the ministry sewn up. The insular balance has shifted. What will Més in Menorca make of Més in Ibiza having usurped the cultural, sporting and participative domain, deprived as it now is of transparency?

Their beef isn't with Més in Ibiza, you'll be relieved to learn. It is with Més in Mallorca. It was they who got rid of Ruth. She didn't resign, she was sacked. She was a scapegoat, a Menorcan one. Have you ever sampled Menorcan goat cheese, Fanny? It might just have turned a touch sour at the moment.

You see, the Menorcan branch is none too pleased. It didn't have any contracts with that Garau chappy. It did not have any electoral gurus. Everything is Mallorca's fault. Nothing to do with Ruth. Still, you are about to find out how things are, and not just Més relations that straddle the Menorca Channel.

Anyway, now that you're getting your feet under the desk, what will you be doing? Culturally, a large in-tray beckons. Doesn't it? As a one-time president of the Ramon Llull Institute, you are well positioned to press the claims for his name to appear over the entrance to Palma airport. Then there is the call for the old boy to be made a saint. What a triumph if both could be secured during what remains of the current legislature, assuming that it limps on until 2019 and Més in Menorca and/or Més in Mallorca and/or Podemos don't bring about its collapse.

But aren't both these issues being driven by the Council of Mallorca, where there is a thriving culture department headed by a vice-president and where there is also an avid fan of Llull's in its president? He was the one who popped off to see the Pope about Llull's sainthood. It wasn't Ruth. Or maybe Esperança before Ruth.

So culturally, and aware that there appears to have been the need for all the fannying around that has deemed it necessary to keep your now three-quarters ministry intact, what precisely does the ministry do? Can there be some transparency, please? Seemingly not. That door has been closed. We can look behind the door, Fanny, but we can't see through it.

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