The Madness Of King James

The town hall in Sineu has been given the green light by the Council of Mallorca's heritage commission to locate a statue of King Jaume II (James II) in a place in the town in which it wasn't previously located. In May 2011 the statue was put up in the church square. Soon after, it was removed. The new location, according to a town hall technical report, "permits a view ... of the image of the king ... which does not impair views of any specific buildings and their historical and aesthetic values or interfere with special environmental values". Which is a longwinded way of explaining and admitting that the previous siting had impaired such views and interfered with such values.

The day after the statue was inaugurated, the Council let it be known that it considered the decision of the town hall to locate it where it was to be "very serious". The town hall had not been given permission by the Council for the siting of the statue, which violated regulations regarding the town's status as being in the "cultural interest" and in particular the church of Santa Maria. The town hall went ahead anyway, in full cognisance of the fact that it did not have permission.

The story of the statue might appear to have only been an example of how competing bureaucracies in Mallorca (the Council and the town hall in this instance) can go mad, pull in opposite directions and do things which contravene some arcane regulation or other. There was, however, very much more to it.

Jaume II plays a significant part in Sineu's history, as it was during his reign that the conversion of what had been the palace of the Emir Mobaxir into the Palace of the Kings of Mallorca was undertaken. On this count, plus the fact that it was Jaume II who had granted Sineu the status of a "royal village" in 1300, there should be little debate as to the merit of there being a statue to him. There was debate, however. And it was more than just debate. It had nothing to do with where the statue was sited or with whether there was permission or not; it had everything to do with conflicting attitudes towards Jaume II, and on 29 May 2011 these attitudes spilled over into a physical conflict.

At the ceremony, members of the anti-Catalanist Círculo Balear, who hadn't been invited but went anyway, unveiled a flag with three red bars. This was, if you like, a red-bar-too-few rag to the bull of Mallorcan nationalist sentiment; the official Mallorcan flag has four red bars in accordance with the original flag of Aragon and so King Jaume I. Insults flew, there was some jostling, and the police had to intervene. The Partido Popular, which had won five seats at the previous week's municipal election and was on the point of resuming its leadership of the town hall, initially attached blame for the incidents to "radical Catalanists" but then backtracked somewhat by also criticising the members of the Círculo Balear.

So, what had all this been about? Jaume II, for certain Mallorcan nationalists, is not revered in the way that Jaume I is. Despite having been crowned the first true king of Mallorca, Jaume II does not compare with the old man because it wasn't he who conquered the island and who introduced Catalan culture. Moreover, Jaume II was none too fastidious when it came to flags. He had different versions, one with three red bars (as flown by the Círculo Balear) and even one with only two bars. As such, therefore, he was betraying the legacy of the original flag, the "senyera". The left-wing nationalist Sineu Independent party was indignant about there being a statue at all: Jaume II did not represent Sineu, it said.

Nevertheless, there is the peculiarity that it was a nationalist party, the Unió Mallorquina when it was in charge of the Council of Mallorca, which established Mallorca Day on the anniversary of Jaume II's coronation in 1276. The conflict in Sineu in 2011 was styled as one between "nationalistas" and "españolistas", the latter personified by the anti-Catalanist Círculo Balear. Yet, the very fact that a nationalist party might have felt it appropriate for Jaume II to be the pretext for a Mallorca Day confuses an argument about the very origins of this nationalism.

Much as history is important and much as events of the thirteenth century moulded Mallorcan culture and heritage, the conflict in Sineu revealed just how mired current-day society can be in this antiquity. Should it really matter that much? To some it obviously does, but to others it seems crazy to constantly relive a long-ago past. And so what will happen when the statue is placed in its new location? More of the same probably. Madness.

Round And Round In Circles: Catalan arguments

When a member of a government senses that his time is about up, he might well be inclined to engage in a spot of political sabotage. He might want to take the ship down for all to be lost at sea, including the captain on the bridge. Is this what he has in mind? Has the increasingly anonymous Bosch become venomous Bosch?

Rafael of that name is being lined up for a shuffle. His is the only significant name that attaches itself to one of the Bauzá cabinet chairs that is to be played musically. When all else fails, and all else has more or less failed, a shuffling of the pack, a game of musical chairs, a sideways move or a demotion can be spun as the failing leader being dynamic. Taking action. Bosch, he who has been unable to see the eponymous wood of his name from the trees, is to be the fallguy. Probably.

Alas, poor Bosch, we knew him. We knew him from the start. I never know which way round they go but he was the nice one out of Mutt and Jeff. The unpleasant one was any of the others. This was why he was given the task of being the Balearic Government's spokesperson. Nice Mr. B. The trouble for Mr. B, and this was because we knew him, or we suspected we did, was that he might not have been totally on-message. If only in private.

The shuffle hasn't been announced but the bets are all but off. Someone else will take over at education and try and make sense of the wood of the government's language policy when it is obscured by so many trees that bend in the wind of all the wind-baggery of Mallorca's language politics, a wind-baggery that has become an invitation to a private party that no one else shows any great interest in wanting to gatecrash. The left moan about an undermining of Catalan and want to crash right through the government's language politics, but the Partido Popular and fellow travellers on the right, aka the Círculo Balear, further aka Jorge Campos, engage in their own exclusive arguments about what is Catalan and what isn't. Which is why the increasingly anonymous Bosch looks as though he might have gone venomous.

We knew him, Bosch that is, because we suspected he wasn't fully on board the good ship Bauzá when it came to the politics of language. And now, even if he weren't being prepared to walk the plank and dive into the waters near Cabrera, stripped of the prospect of champagne and lobster as when he resurfaced from an alleged underwater educational video shoot paid for with public money, the akas of the fellow-travelling right are calling for his dismissal. Campos has called Bosch a "Catalanist", which is pretty dirty talk among those on the Mallorcan right. Campos should beware. He knows all about denuncias for using insults. Enough of them have been hurled at him, to which he has responded by running off and dobbing on the insulters to Mr. Plod.

Bosch has gone Catalanist and has gravely undermined Bauzá's authority, says Campos. Really? How can authority be gravely undermined when it already has been? Whatever. Bosch has said that the Balearic language doesn't exist. And this, in the fields of Campos land, makes Bosch a Catalanist. Oh, you venomous Bosch, you know that the president is a man for the Balearic language. Or languages. Those that come from Catalan. And that he is no man for Catalan. And if you didn't know, well Campos is always there to remind you and so now also is the president of the Partido Popular in Mallorca (who isn't the same as the president of the government), Jeroni Salom. He has said that the Catalan of the Balearics will be protected. And it will be done so in some school textbooks. Otherwise, in fifty years time (he doesn't explain why fifty years), no one will remember to use "nin" in Mallorca or "batle" or "arena". If he says so. I didn't think "arena" was a specifically Balearic word, but then what do I know?

Salom has added that if these modalities of language on the island aren't protected, then the language will become that of Barcelona, and that is not the language of the Balearics. Well no, but, but ... . Question please, question please. Isn't the regional government wanting to try and stamp out the language of Barcelona anyway? Isn't this what the language politics have been about? Isn't this what the now anonymous Bosch was meant to have been overseeing. Ah yes, Bosch. Nope, I don't think he ever was on-message.

He hasn't become the venomous Bosch. He might have good cause to, if it looks as though he is being politically hung out to dry, but perhaps he just despairs of the circularity of the arguments over Catalan among Mallorca's Círculo right.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Ozzy Osborne And The Missing Horns

Start the year as you mean to go on. Or finish the year as you have been doing during the year. And the year before. I feel really sorry for the Osborne bull. What's it ever done to anyone? It stands in a field, minding its own business, and what does it get for its trouble? Some berk goes and paints it or commits other atrocities on its noble presence. Now the statue has had its horns lopped off. A kind soul will probably make sure it gets the horns back, just like someone made sure it got its tackle back when it went AWOL, but restoration can't compensate for the distress. Leave it alone.

Whenever some group or other has a political, cultural or gender beef, it heads off in the middle of the night and gives the bull a good dose of Dulux, drapes flags over it, cuts bits off and then glories in the publicity for about as long as it takes for everyone to forget (about a day, if that) or for some other group to come along and subject the bull to further propagandist indignity. The latest lot is a bunch called Arran, the name given to the youth organisation that has succeeded the Maulets. Arran, Maulets, it's the same and it's bloody angry that Catalonia and the Catalan Lands don't have independence. So angry, it has gone and de-horned the Osborne bull.

Arran timed its attack on Ozzy to coincide with the annual demo in Palma that doesn't celebrate Mallorca day. Arran, and others, would prefer that it did celebrate Mallorca day, but as it was decided some years ago that Mallorca day would be the anniversary of the creation of the Kingdom of Mallorca and not when Jaume I invaded, 31 December isn't Mallorca day. I hope that's cleared that up. Nevertheless, or probably because, there is, every year, this demo, which occasionally gets out of hand. It seems to have passed off without too much incident this year, but probably only because more radical elements were off in the Mallorcan countryside vandalising the statue of a bull.

Arran had staged a grand demo as part of a "platform" that comprised most of the usual Catalanist suspects. Its poster for the demo made it clear that it wasn't only about independence. It was also about socialism and feminism and possibly some other isms that there wasn't space for on the poster. I'm sorry but what has feminism got to do with independence? Indeed, what has socialism got to do with it? It's not as though Artur Mas is a card-carrying Trot or even vaguely red.

Anyway, everyone might well simply forget about the business with the bull were it not for our good friends, the Círculo Balear. For a load of Catalan independentists, be they Arran or Maulet or whoever, to mess around with the bull, protected for its artistic and heritage status (Spanish, that is), is like a red rag to a bull where the Círculo are concerned, and they, or at least their founder and restored president Jorge Campos, have had many a run-in with the Maulets in the past. And these run-ins typically end up with a "denuncia", something in which the Círculo specialises where the Maulets are concerned. The bull is no different. The Círculo has fired off a denuncia to the Guardia. It is all, I'm sorry to have to say, rather predictable. Naughty independentist boys get up to some mischief and no good, and outraged defender of all things Castellano and Spanish, Sr. Campos, drags the law in, and they, the law, must be getting pretty brassed off with being dragged into such puerility - by both sides. I don't know about the Guardia, but personally I wish a plague on both houses; they are as bad as each other.

One does wonder, given the regularity of the vandalism that the bull has to endure, whether it might not get some form of protection. It is pretty vulnerable, stuck in a field on its own, but the field might give a clue as to the security the bull could get. How about half a dozen proper bulls? All of them extremely bloody angry themselves, so that when some angry Arrans or Maulets or whoever other lunatic decides to go on a spot of nocturnal decorating, the miscreants might get rather more than they bargained for. Not a docile, inanimate animal, but some distinctly animate animals with horns that are definitely not for tampering with. Olé.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Day Today (Or Another Day)

Here's today's quiz question for you? When is Mallorca Day?

Does today's date give you a clue? Well, yes it does, but there again it doesn't. Mallorca Day is today, according to some, but it is also and officially, 12 September. Confused? You've every right to be, as the great debate as to which day should be Mallorca Day is bound up in the mists of time and in the arguments of claimants to both dates.

12 September, in case you are wondering, celebrates the day, in 1276, when King Jaume II took the oath of the granting of the privilege of the Kingdom of Mallorca. If there is to be a Mallorca Day at all, and there has been only since 1997 when the Council of Mallorca decided that 12 September it was to be, this seems a reasonable enough excuse. You might think so, but others would disagree.

Forty-seven years before the oath, Jaume II's father, Jaume I, the Aragon king who came to the rescue of Mallorca, landed at Santa Ponsa on 31 December on his mission (successful, as it was to prove) to drive the forces of Islam from the island. Mallorca Day, therefore, is not 12 September but unofficially 31 December.

Who says so? Primarily, it is various Catalanists, independentists and left-wingers who say so, and you can chuck in some historians, who may or may not be one or all of these things, as well. Were you minded to go searching for information about Mallorca Day on the internet, you would find a website called diadademallorca.cat, which might suggest that it was the official site for the day, except of course it isn't. The domain suffix of "cat" gives the game away, as it is one used predominantly for sites dedicated to Catalan culture and language.

The website does in fact add a bit more confusion to the debate, as 30 December comes into the equation too, so much so that yesterday there was the "traditional demonstration of the Day of Mallorca" in Palma, one of a series of events that start in the middle of December all in aid of the "fiesta of the standard" (which is in fact today) and the parading of Jaume I's Royal Standard.

These events, in different towns across Mallorca, are all run by the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB), the most prominent of the organisations on the island that defends and promotes Catalan culture and language. It is not alone, though, in wishing to change the date of Mallorca Day. The PSM Mallorcan socialists, together with their allies in the general left-wing Bloc, have proposed that Palma town hall adopts 31 December as the official date and gets the Council of Mallorca to make the change.

There is, in the PSM's stance, a touch of good old nationalist rival politics at play. The PSM, nationalists with a left persuasion, take issue with the "imposition" of 12 September back in 1997 by the Council of Mallorca whose then president was Maria Antònia Munar, she of the now defunct nationalists with a right persuasion, the Unió Mallorquina.

This might all seem like a pedantic argument, but historical correctness does have a habit of generating dogmatic attitudes, and such dogma can sometimes become unpleasant.

Last year the object of this unpleasantness was the headquarters building of the OCB anti-Christ, the Círculo Balear, the dogmatically anti-Catalan organisation. It was daubed with graffiti and, true to form, it has been again. What particularly riled Catalanist elements was the decision to the Círculo to take part in the Standard celebration on 31 December, a day very much of Catalanist expression. There was also violence at the 30 December demonstration; four "independentists" who were arrested last year had vowed to return this year.

A question worth asking is whether there is a genuine ground swell of nationalism and desire for independence that the argument over Mallorca Day, the demonstration and the graffiti might suggest. Or is it confined to a vocal but active minority (and there were a mere 1500 demonstrators yesterday evening)? One is inclined to believe that it is the latter, but this year's alternative Mallorca Day has to be considered in the context of moves by the Partido Popular government to promote Castilian over Catalan, moves that don't find universal support and not even within the party itself.

Despite the dogma, there is a very good reason why, assuming there should be a Mallorca Day at all, 31 December should be the date. 1229 was in effect when Mallorca's history began, in the sense that its current-day culture started to be shaped. Prior to then, and most significantly, there was no Catalan language. It took the conquest by an Aragonese king to supplant what was then a version of Latin. 1229 and all that asks questions of current-day attitudes on the right. To deny its significance is historically incorrect, but to accept its significance is to undermine arguments against Catalan.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.


Index for December 2011

Almond growing, decline in Mallorca's - 6 December 2011
Artisans and authenticity - 9 December 2011
BAFMAs: Mallorcan achievement awards - 15 December 2011
Bars and restaurants to offer other services - 23 December 2011
Campanet, town hall problems in - 5 December 2011
Can Domenech and Can Llobera - 20 December 2011
Castilian and Catalan for town and street names - 29 December 2011
Christmas diary, Leonora Madd's Mallorcan - 25 December 2011, 26 December 2011
Christmas spending - 14 December 2011
Cruise ships and environment - 7 December 2011
Fascinating people in Mallorca - 4 December 2011
French tourism and promotional messages - 17 December 2011
Holiday lets: government gets tough - 3 December 2011
Hotels, modernisation and internet - 11 December 2011
Mallorca Day arguments - 31 December 2011
Mancomunidades, Mallorca's - 30 December 2011
Microsoft and film tourism - 10 December 2011
Oil exploration off the Balearics - 16 December 2011
President Bauzá and party differences - 2 December 2011
PSOE and PP divisions and challenges - 18 December 2011
Rural tourism - 27 December 2011
Sand on beaches, loss of - 28 December 2011
Thomas Cook and African risks - 19 December 2011
Thomson's holiday advert - 1 December 2011
Tourism law reform - 8 December 2011, 13 December 2011
Tourism minister and secretary, new national - 24 December 2011
Tourist tax - 22 December 2011
Trinidad, Mallorca and - 21 December 2011
TV Mallorca, fairs and musicians - 12 December 2011

Flying The Flag

A brand new and large Spanish flag is flying near Can Picafort. It is bigger than a flag of the Balearics and bigger still than a European flag.

The Spanish flag now proudly flutters over the finca of Son Real in Santa Margalida. It probably should always have been there and had pride of place; law suggests that it should have, according to the director of the Balearics Foundation for Sustainable Development, Jorge Campos.

Who is Sr. Campos? He used to be director for climate in the Calvia town hall administration of the now tourism minister Carlos Delgado. As such, he can justifiably lay claim to environmental credentials. However, Campos was also, until recently, the president of the Círculo Balear, which he founded.

The Círculo, in terms of the great Castilian-Catalan argument, is firmly in the Castilian camp. Defender of the language, it is the opposite of the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB), the great defender of Catalan and all things Catalan lands. It has had a number of run-ins with the forces of Catalanism. Its building has been vandalised with graffiti, its presence at new year celebrations in Palma last year sparked off violence, and Sr. Campos has been in court to see members of the Maulets, the Catalan independence radicals, get slapped with fines for having chanted "Nazi", "fascist" and "terrorist" at him.

Campos was appointed to the post of director at the end of July. His was and is a political appointment in that the choice is that of the regional government. But it was an appointment with far greater political baggage. It has been like a red rag to the Catalanist, leftist bull.

The foundation, of which he is now in charge, has not been without its own controversies. Established in 2004 by the former president Jaume Matas, its main function was to oversee the promotion of the "tarjeta verde", the green discount card, which came into being as a way of generating revenue for environmental purposes once the short-lived eco-tax was scrapped.

The green card has been a spectacular flop, not helped by the fact, as revealed by an audit for 2008, that the foundation managed to bring in a mere 13,500 euros from its sales, a shortfall of around 400 grand. Last year, when all hell broke loose regarding corruption cases stemming from the tourism ministry, the foundation was implicated. Questions were being asked as to how, when costs were added to the lack of revenue, losses of over a million euros a year could have mounted up.

The foundation was meant to have been wrapped up, like the two agencies more at the centre of the tourism ministry corruption affair, and brought under the new Balearics Tourism Agency. However, it survives as a separate entity, linked to the new tourism ministry and therefore to Campos's old boss and anti-Catalanist soul mate, Carlos Delgado,

Other than the green card, what actually does the foundation do? It is charged with administering sites such as Son Real, the running of which it took over in July 2008, but the environmental group GOB has not had much that is positive to say for the foundation. It has argued that it should be scrapped and has criticised its operations in the Albufera nature park in Muro. It is likely that, with Campos as its head, GOB would be even more dismissive, as GOB is a fellow-traveller on the Catalanist left with the OCB. The Círculo Balear, for its part, has lumped both GOB and the OCB in with the Maulets, claiming that the Maulets have received the "adherence" of these two groups (and others) which have the "appearance of democracy".

And so we come back to the Spanish flag at Son Real. What might seem a relatively inconsequential issue is anything but. It was Campos who gave the instruction for the flag to be raised.

The environment is a political issue, but now it is being even more politicised within the context of the whole Castilian-Catalan argument. And just to reinforce this, between the time of his appointment and his stepping down from the Círculo three weeks later, Campos managed to cram in a meeting with President Bauzá to discuss language and cultural matters.

Why, though, has the foundation escaped the axe when others haven't and when it appears to have made a hash of things since it was formed? It is not solely reliant on government money, that's true, but might it be expedient for the government to maintain it, with Campos as its chief, as an additional counterpoint to the Catalan left? There are more to flags than simply running them up a flag-pole.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Taking To The Streets

The Mallorcans don't really do demos. Not properly anyway. They do lots of them - sheets found in dusty corners of wardrobes brought out for a black daubing, loudhailers and chanting, obligatory photos of the "leaders" - but they don't exactly amount to much. So common are they that no one pays much attention.

Occasionally, however, they do amount to something. Two years ago, there were two separate protests in Palma. Three weeks apart, they were both to do with language. The first was pro-Catalan, the second was pro-Castilian. Neither was that large, and the numbers involved fluctuated greatly according to who issued them. But around 10,000 people for both might have been right.

Despite the second protest arousing taunts of "no to fascism and yes to Catalan", they were peaceful and uneventful. Less peaceful and more eventful have been the end-of-year parades in Palma in celebration of Jaume I's conquest of Mallorca in 1229. Deeply symbolic, the parade on the night of 30 December last year turned nastier than on previous occasions.

The violence that broke out at the Jaume I parade and the protests two years ago were evidence of language differences and of cultural and political differences. They hinted at a society split down the middle, which isn't the case, as the majority is not as bothered as protesters might think. But then majorities rarely are; it is minority voices which shout loudest and cause the most problems.

One of the reasons for the trouble on 30 December was the presence in the parade of the Círculo Balear, a right-wing, pro-Castilian organisation which, in its own words, "defends the liberty and identity of the Balearics in a Spain for all". The Círculo is a counterpoint to the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB), a left-wing, pro-Catalan association. Neither is a political organisation as such, but both have political agendas and both make these agendas clear enough.

The Círculo is back in the news thanks to another outbreak of confrontation, this time, of all places, in Sineu. The setting for this was the inauguration of a statue to another Jaume, number two, the second king of Mallorca. Without going into detail, suffice it to say that the OCB was on hand to dish out the fascist mantra in the Círculo's direction.

Is this no more than just a bunch of activists playing silly buggers? Up to a point yes, but the minority voices are getting louder and you sense that the number of voices are growing; the division in society is beginning to become more apparent.

While the OCB is the mouthpiece for the pro-Catalan left, with the Maulets, a more revolutionary group, on the extreme left, on the right there are all manner of weird and wonderful groups, such as Hazte Oir ("make yourself heard") and the institute of family policy. To these pressure groups, you can add the neo-fascist Movimiento Social Republicano political party and, lurking in the background, the Falange and Opus Dei.

What the groups on the right all have in common (to a greater or lesser extent) is a highly reactionary agenda of Catholicism, anti-liberalism, pro-Castilian and the state of Spain over all else. The spats between the OCB and the Círculo, and indeed the language protests of 2009, are just the tip of a not very pleasant iceberg which lies under the surface ready to sink the Titanic of normally sedate and pacific society.

Within this context, you cannot and should not ignore the Partido Popular. It was voted in because of discontent with the handling of the local economy and in the hope that it will reduce unemployment. All other issues played only a minor part in its victories. But these other issues are far from unimportant. The PP, or some of it at any rate, is not far removed from the same reactionary agenda.

An impression given is that there is greater sympathy for the likes of the OCB than for the Círculo. This may be an impression formed by the Spanish media, but a question is to what extent it is held within Mallorcan society. And the OCB, though it would deny it, appears to have been instrumental in a certain radicalisation of pro-Catalan youth; the annual "Acampallengua" is more than just a gathering of young people in fields to pitch tents and sing some songs in Catalan.

The worry is that a PP-led administration will bring the competing views of an emboldened right and an increasingly radicalised left more to the surface and that, unlike the 2009 protests, things won't be so peaceful. They will be more like the Jaume I violence, and there will be more of it. Then you'll realise that Mallorcans can actually do demos.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.