The Catalan Thing

Well, it wasn't in truth the best of weeks for the Catalan thing. Francina and the Earth Mother Patricia, who is apparently still the health minister, decided that all this business with insisting on nurses imported from Andalusia being word perfect in Catalan might not just be wholly sensible. It wasn't good for Catalan, and it also wasn't good for Francina and the deconstructing pact. Més, as might have been expected, were hopping mad, though for appearance's sakes they weren't mounting the press conferences and firing off volleys of rebuke.

Francina, doubtless not wishing to appear to have taken over the education ministry despite having done so, despatched Pilar, the minister in charge of Francina's ministry, i.e. the presidency, to have a word with the press. We are working on getting the broadest social and political consensus, she waffled, noting that there wasn't enough of the C-word. The unions were not for consenting.

Not reticent like Més were the Obra Cultural Balear. Unaware that there was not consensus within society, as Pilar had attempted to explain, the OCB announced that "any measure" will be taken to ensure that the bedside manner is pursued with nary a syllable of Castellano being uttered. Any measure, they suggested, will include the mobilisation of civil society, that part of it which presumably does consent.

Meanwhile, Biel Company, the nominal leader of the PP, opined that Francina was more Catalanist than the Catalans because of her health service Catalan imposition. Which was rather odd, given that Francina had just withdrawn the imposition. Still, Biel observed that Francina had taken fright in having done so, as there would otherwise be demonstrations she couldn't afford, and he wasn't referring to the OCB.

Attempting to keep the Catalan thing afloat was the education minister. Marti March, for whom one newspaper headline suggested that education policy was being designed for his own personal glory, had come up with yet another new plan for education (these new plans surface every three to four years). Marti's plan, it would appear, will relegate English and foreign language teaching into virtual non-existence if schools choose to do so. Meanwhile, Catalan will be given pre-eminence. So basically, Marti was going back to the future circa 2008, and was thus paving the way for a new government to reverse his plan.

Educationalists, some of them, were as outraged about this as the OCB were with Catalan being given the health heave-ho. One teachers association, PLIS, which has the motto "educación, por favor", demanded that the government stops plissing all over education and does something sensible for once. Which of course it won't.

Striding confidently into all this Catalan carry-on came the leader of Ciudadanos, Xavier Pericay. Buoyed by the fact that his party could see its parliamentary representation leap to the princely sum of seven seats as opposed to the currently modest two, Xavier has been carrying a torch for what his political critics (i.e. Més) refer to as the "new Bauzaism". In other words, if Xavier and the C's end up in a coalition with the PP, there will be a revival of J.R.'s anti-Catalanism in schools. Therefore, there will be a new educational plan. And so it will go on and on and on.

Marti, meanwhile, had disappeared so far up a tortuous explanation littered with levels of language ability and pedagogical whatever, that he totally failed to remember to mention the C-word. Will there be the broadest social and political consensus for what may end up being almost exclusively Catalan teaching? He didn't let on. This despite the fact that he had been hauled up in front of the press alongside Pilar. Broadest consensus (or something of a charade to demonstrate it) for one thing, but not for another: it all rather depends on what the government is seeking consensus for.

Unhealthy Obsessions

Governing the Balearics isn't that complicated. A glance at the ministries will show that government by and large conforms to requirements that you would expect. Excluded from these ministries are, for instance, any need for defence or foreign affairs. These are not matters for a regional government, unless perhaps that government is Catalonia's.

Government is basically about internal issues, and the greatest of these - as determined by the size of the budgets - are health and education. Of the 5,000 million euros overall budget for 2018, these two areas account for slightly more than half the total. Health has 1,584 million; education 935 million. The president has let it be known that the latter of these will be up to the 1,000 million mark by the end of the current administration.

Health and education in terms of their delivery shouldn't be complicated. There's no denying that there are complexities with management, but the principles are straightforward. The government, any government, is charged with making people better, caring for them, teaching them, developing them. Straightforward.

Maybe it is this simplicity of principle which turns the straightforward into the complicated. There is something of an old belief from management thinking that problems are needed in order to justify management's existence. Problems are thus created. Out of smooth operations can chaos be manufactured. If there weren't problems, there would be no solutions or search for solutions. There would be no triumphalism among those deemed to have done the solving; probably the ones who generated the problems in the first place.

Business management, generally speaking, is not subject to ideologies. Different theories, different practices, different ways of doing things; yes, but these are not ideological. Likewise, managing important government departments can be open to these alternative approaches. They should be. Being open to something different for the better can only be positive. But ideologies intrude. Politics ensure that they do, and it is these politics which make matters complicated.

The Balearic health service is by and large an admirable institution. At a basic level, for example getting a doctor's appointment, it is a piece of cake; at least in my experience. Request one and the chances are you'll be seen the next day. There is agonising over waiting lists and waiting times for consultations with specialists and for operations, but these lists and times are mostly acceptable, and the government is working to reduce them. All in all, the health service is something that the Balearics can be proud of. So why try and complicate matters?

It is important when dealing with a person's health that there is proper communication, but is the insistence on Catalan for health workers solely a matter of communication? How many native Mallorcans can't speak two languages? It is of course valuable and useful for health staff to speak Catalan. This shouldn't be in doubt, but why is there such an obsession with it? There's just the one reason. Ideology. And it can threaten to undermine what is otherwise a very fine service.

President Armengol is insisting that there won't be a failure to cover all posts in the health service because of language. In other words, she is accepting that non-Catalan speakers have to be recruited. If they weren't, then the health service would be undermined. Yet there are those who make the insistence. What, therefore, is more important? Making people better, caring for them, or what language they use?

This unhealthy obsession with linguistic ideology is even more evident in education. We know this all too well, given the experiences of recent years and the crazy insistences that have been made and disguised as educational betterment, when they are nothing of the sort. Hand in hand with the language now come the allegations of political indoctrination related to independence and the influence of agitator groups, some members of which are themselves teachers.

Around 2,500 million euros and these most important of government areas become hugely expensive budget playthings. As a consequence, ministerial time, civil servant time, service management time, doctor time, teacher time is devoted to non-core issues. In education there is nothing more core than improving performance standards, and yet all that effort is expended on incessant ideological shifts and goalpost-moving: continuous complication rather than continuous improvement.

These obsessions manifest themselves in other ways. In Palma, where the administration mirrors that of the government, there are key issues facing the city, such as its services, its housing, its infrastructure. And yet time, effort and column inches are instead devoted to non-essential matters. The Feixina monument is an example. An overwhelming majority of public opinion is said to be against its demolition, but the town hall (and the Council of Mallorca) plough on regardless.

Administrations are thus diverted from what really matters, wrapped up in the self-importance and self-imposition of their obsessions, leaving those who require their attention (the public) bewildered by these manoeuvres of political justification.

Educating Mallorca: It's Not Just Language

The Balearic government is the first regional authority in Spain to lodge a challenge to the implementation of provisions under Madrid's law for the improvement of the quality of education (Lomce). Specifically for aspects as they apply at secondary and Baccalaureate levels, the regional education minister, Martí March, has described the curriculum as "highly elitist, segregating and taking us back to Franco's times".

One of the main objections that March has is to the introduction of external testing. While not opposed to tests as such, he fears that they will undermine and marginalise a greater emphasis on continuous assessment and thus be sole determinants of a pupil's progress. He isn't the only education minister to query the use of testing. For example in Castile and Leon, where the government is run by the Partido Popular, its minister has voiced concerns.

March believes that Lomce and its tests do not answer the needs of current-day society, and he may well be right in believing this, but the problem he has is in convincing society in the Balearics that he has a better solution to the problems that exist in the islands' system of public education. If he has, he might begin by establishing what the "needs" actually are.

Education, fundamental though it is, is an issue which is usually too dry to attract a great deal of public attention. Debates over curriculum can seem too removed. When educational affairs become more explosive, as happened with the trilingual teaching rumpus and the subsequent teachers' strike, they come firmly into the public domain. Otherwise, parents and society in general issue a collective sigh that expresses their ennui with the issue and with politicians endlessly kicking it around.

So even when March alludes to "needs", a constant enough word in any politician's lexicon, the reaction is firmly in neutral. No one much listens because no one is much interested. What might these needs be? Good education? Better education? As a teacher might request - define and discuss. And more to the point, seek to quantify. Increased percentages for this or that. Defined higher numbers going to university. Defined lower numbers dropping out. Defined higher numbers attaining higher scores in languages, maths and science. Target-setting, in other words, and performance measures - pupils, teachers and schools - plus testing. Where have we heard all that before?

People should of course listen and should of course be interested, and not only parents. And of these parents, in Mallorca there are significant numbers who are foreign. Not all can afford private schooling, so the kids go to the public schools and into a public education system that has constantly underperformed. It does perform in other regions of Spain, but the Balearics is one of the worst.

Might there be mitigating circumstances for the repeatedly low attainment in core skills and subjects, and might one of them be the foreign pupil quotient? The Balearics as a whole has the highest foreign population percentage among all the Spanish regions. It also has the highest percentage of foreign pupils, albeit this is not evenly distributed. According to data for 2012, foreign pupils accounted for 11.9% of the primary school population but 18.7% at secondary level, which is where international comparisons are made that indicate the underperformance in key areas.

But what these figures don't reveal is how many of these pupils are Spanish (and/or Catalan) speakers or the age at which they entered the local education system. (The greatest numbers of foreign pupils across the country are of Moroccan and Romanian origin.) Intuitively one has to accept that the age of entrance and native language may prove disadvantageous (and that almost seven per cent difference between primary and secondary might be considered to be very revealing). However, even allowing for this there is now information from the Balearic government itself which reveals failings in key areas, one of them being language.

The government's own institute for education system quality assessment reports that four out of ten 13-year-olds fail to reach required levels in both Catalan and Castellano. Moreover, this situation has been getting worse. For maths, the figure climbs to almost 60%. Such underachievement cannot possibly be explained by a foreign-pupil population.

The inabilities when it comes to the two official languages should be very concerning for March and his ministry. In other regions with two languages, such as the Basque Country where educational performance is vastly superior, there aren't weaknesses.

It might be tempting to consider government policies on language and the way they change to be at the heart of Balearic underperformance, but even these cannot provide a full explanation. The question, therefore, is what does. March can attack Lomce and may be right in doing so, but that, as was also the case with the trilingual teaching row, shouldn't divert attention from an underlying malaise, its identification and remedy. Those are the needs.

The Tramuntana And Institutional Failure

Theodore Pratt, the American journalist (long passed away), is one of my favourite Mallorcan anti-heroes. Little of or about Mallorca was spared from the vitriol he unleashed in what became an infamous article which appeared in "The American Mercury" in 1933. By contrast with what he had to say of other subjects, the Tramuntana mountains emerged relatively unscathed. Well, he did say that they were dramatic, even if he then went on to describe them as bare, grey and mostly inaccessible. They were evidence, according to Ted, of Mallorca's physical characteristics: not exceptional in his opinion.

Pratt was, it should be said, pretty even-handed. His jaundiced view of Mallorca was reserved for more or less everything. He couldn't have been accused of being biased in favour of certain aspects at the expense of others. He was, though, not unique in offering criticism of what was otherwise acquiring the title of the paradise island and which had, by the time he wrote, been dubbed the island of calm for some twenty years: and that description was from the painter Rusiñol, who was to capture what he perceived as a very different Tramuntana.

George Sand, almost one hundred years before Pratt, had launched insults directed at the locals (and some other subjects) which were at a comparative level of abuse. Unlike Pratt, she wasn't run off the island; she and Chopin left of their own accord. But also unlike Ted, she didn't engage in criticisms of the mountains; she was rather taken by the landscape.

One mentions these differing perspectives of the mountains - each of them by foreigners (Rusiñol was from Catalonia) - as they can seem to sum up what might be considered to be a certain ambivalence towards the Tramuntana by the residents of Mallorca: an ambivalence which appears to be reflected at institutional levels on the island.

This ambivalence might equally be defined as indifference or, in the estimation of historian Angel Morillas, as "low self-esteem" held by the people of Mallorca when it comes to the Tramuntana. Morillas is Unesco's representative in Spain. He is also a member of Unesco's council of monuments and sites, the one which awarded the Tramuntana World Heritage Site status five years ago. He had been closely associated with the award in the advance of its being granted. In September 2008, for example, he had attended a conference in Pollensa which addressed the processing of the award nomination. At that conference were representatives of various schools from Pollensa, Alcudia and elsewhere.

The presence of those people from Mallorca's education sector now appears pertinent, with a question - just as pertinent - being how much the island's schools do to inform and educate the young generation about the mountains and the very patrimony - that of dry stone formations - which was to prove to be key to the awarding of World Heritage status.

Morillas attended another conference at the weekend. It was in Selva and was organised as a way of celebrating the fifth anniversary. During his presentation he referred to the lack of self-esteem, a rather curious way of putting it, one thinks: it might be better explained as the mountains not being held in high esteem by the islanders. Morillas argued that there was a lack of knowledge of the "gem" that is the Tramuntana range. He called, therefore, for greater input by schools and levelled criticism at the University of the Balearic Islands. What does the university do for the mountains? Not very much was his answer to his own question.

As curious as styling the attitude as one of lack of self-esteem is the fact that Morillas should feel it necessary to highlight it. One would have the impression, given the amount that was written and said about the mountains at the time of the heritage award and has been since, that there is an island-wide attitude of high regard. Clearly not. Morillas will know better than I, and I am not about to disagree with him.

It is an unfortunate fact that in the years since the award was granted, there seems to have been an incoherent approach to promotion of the mountains as well as maintenance of their prized assets - the dry stone paths, walls, terraces and other structures. The fault lies at an institutional level, and not only with, if Morillas is right (and who's to argue with him?), the university.

There are of course any number of people and sources who inform and who heap praise on the mountains. Many of them are foreigners who write, paint and provide blogs and websites. The Pratt view of the mountains is certainly not the prevailing one. But then it often does seem to fall to others, and not the island's institutions, to act as promoters of Mallorca - mountains, beaches, villages and the rest. The institutional failure to promote is not discriminatory.

Photo: the templete at Son Marroig (Deia), one of the Tramuntana's iconic spots.

The Less Than Grand Pact For Education

Last Saturday, in the hall of Palma's Conservatory and with the accompaniment of a primary school choir, a pact was signed. This was a pact - a grand one at that - which Francina Armengol had been saying was required even before she came to form a different pact, one that she heads as president. It is a grand pact for education in the Balearics. One so grand that the following are not part of it: the Partido Popular, Ciudadanos, Podemos, the STEI-i and CCOO unions and the Plataforma Crida (the ones who have a habit of wearing the green t-shirts in support of quality, lay and Catalan education in the Balearics). At the actual signing, the PP did put in an appearance, not because they support the document that was being signed but because they wanted it to be known that they were willing to show some support for what they will doubtless have a great deal to say when the pact document turns up for parliamentary discussion.

The principal signatories to the grand pact were, therefore, the two parties of government - Francina's PSOE and Més. The principal speakers were President Armengol, Vice-President Barceló and the education minister, Martí March. Which doesn't sound as though the pact is all that grand. However, there were also representatives of Illes per un Pacte. Yes, another pact but one that has been absolutely fundamental in arriving at the pact. For three years, Illes per un Pacte, led by educationalists, has been been involving some eighty different organisations in attempting to draft a document that will pave the way for stability in Balearic education: a system that will not be liable to constant political upheaval. It managed to bring in bodies as diverse as the Assemblea de Docents (the most awkward of the awkward teaching squads), the Chamber of Commerce, the university and the federation of parents' associations. It is its document that was being signed and it is its document that will now form the basis for legislation to hopefully achieve the seemingly unachievable: once-and-for-all consensus as to the model of Balearic education.

The context for all this, if it needs restating, can be defined as the seven years from 2008 to 2015, a period during which the Castellano language was booted into the long grass of educational instruction, was left there as an endangered species and then revived on the back of the calamitous trilingual teaching project. Two governments with very differing ideologies had conspired in attempting to make the standard of Balearic public education worse than it was by their linguistic tunnel visions.

But as there is now a government similar in hue to that of 2008, why should there be any belief that history isn't simply repeating itself? Catalanism has arguably never had it so good as it currently does. However, there are those - notably the representatives from Illes per un Pacte - who are placing the emphasis where it should be and where it should have been for years: on addressing what is one of the highest rates of pupil failure in Spain. The emphasis is education in the round and not squabbling over the number of hours dedicated to teaching in which language.

This might be the hope but there is a long way to go in genuinely arriving at a grand pact that might legitimately be said to be consensual and which will be, as education minister March observed, without "rhetorical declarations, empty words and simple slogans" and will be based on "scientific facts" and basic points for educational improvement.

Until there is full disclosure of what this grand pact does actually entail, the propagandists are filling their boots in giving their interpretations. One has it that this pact is something born out of extreme left ideology that wouldn't have been out of place in Pol Pot's intellectual genocide in Cambodia. This, one fancies, is something of an exaggeration. Indeed, the leftist orientation of the pact has been queried by Podemos. One of the reasons it has not signed up is that it does not see a total rejection of the despised LOMCE, the national government's school curriculum for, supposedly, quality in education. Inherent to this, and crucially for Podemos, are LOMCE's non-secular aspects, as with the insistence on religious education. Podemos is squarely in the Crida green t-shirt camp: lay education and only lay education.

And inevitably, and much as Illes per un Pacte might not have been stressing this, there is the language issue. The pact, it is being suggested, will simply revert to the immersion in Catalan that was brought about in 2008. While schools will be given powers to decide on the use of language (which could include English if they want to), Catalan will have preferential treatment. Which is possibly how it should be. But a grand pact on education? Dream on.

Tit For Tat: Education and language

And so we come full circle. More or less. Tit for tat. Education and language, two sides of a coin that has only one face. We are back to 2008. Year zero for much of the legacy of the Antich government: education, language, land plans, decrees for wetlands. Schools, teachers, the civil service and public sector workers, property and infrastructure developments with their implications of investment and employment or not. All of them in a constant state of turmoil and of the violently shifting sands of Balearic politics. Here comes a big wave to wash everything away. Now comes another wave to wash it back into place.

The Partido Popular is not wholly wrong when it suggests that the current government seems hell bent on repealing anything and everything that the Bauzá regime introduced. But it ignores the fact that it had acted similarly in dismantling the Antich legacy. There is an additional tone to this latest revisionism, however: the sheer hostility directed at Bauzá personally and all that he represented. It's not pleasant. Nel Martí, a Més-ite, has compared Bauzá to Felipe V and so to the vindictiveness and repression of the first Bourbon king, with Catalan and Greater Catalonia (not that it was referred to as such in 1715) on the end of a cannon ball and of prohibition. They simply cannot let the past be. History always intrudes. Here is a land constantly re-fighting wars.

PLIS is an association of teachers. The acronym stands for, in English, teachers free of social engineering. It has taken the government to task over its educational reforms. There is a whole list of criticisms. They range from renewed bureaucratisation of school management, to the role of unions in selecting school directors to the totally free training of teachers to be done in the workplace and paid for out of everyone's taxes. Then there is the most recognisable cog in this social engineering wheel. The language.

Bauzá's trilingual teaching (TIL) project was an unmitigated disaster, one that could have been foreseen. Had it been a project predicated on education, it might not have been. But it was not. It was a naked, undisguised means of subverting Catalan, the first attempt at doing so - the free selection of teaching language by parents - having proved to be as much of a disaster as to what was to follow.

No less an institution than the Council of Europe has been having its say. In its report on the charter for regional and minority languages, it has issued its own broadside. It condemns TIL because there weren't teachers qualified to implement it. It insists that Catalan should be respected in teaching at all levels - from infant to secondary. It concludes, however, that during the school year 2011-2012, the first full year over which Bauzá presided, the balance (slightly in favour of Catalan against Castellano) was about right. It was to be the engineered and deeply flawed introduction of English that was to disrupt this. Or would have done, had it ever been implemented in something even approximating a coherent fashion.

The Bauzá critics refer to the "obsession" that the last government had with Catalan. Yet it is an accusation that could equally apply now; only in reverse. To what extent there will be a reversion to the edicts of 2008 which effectively made Castellano a minority language remain to be seen. But in different spheres - schools and the public sector - there is little equivocation. The clock has been turned back eight years. Tit for tat. Catalan becomes once more a pre-requisite for public-sector employment. It's as you were.

Xavier Pericay, the leader of Ciudadanos in the Balearics, must feel lonely. He can snuggle up to the PP, but he fights an all but lone battle. Anti-nationalist, as the C's are, he brings his own scholarly interest in languages to the parliament chamber. Languages do not have rights, only those who speak languages. It's not an argument destined to find favour with the government (or with the regionalist-nationalist El Pi). Languages are all. One in particular. The rights lie with vocabulary, grammar, dialect, the ancient divergence within the Romance languages and so with cultural heritage aka baggage. The social engineering decrees that this must be so.

Nothing, or very little, remains of TIL. It was unceremoniously (and correctly) hurled with great force into the deepest of seas surrounding the Balearics, a faint echo vaguely detectable amidst the fading sonar tests for oil. This echo is in the form of free choice by schools. If they wish to use a third language for teaching, then they can. The PP says this will produce first and second division schools. It probably won't. There'll be one division. First or second depends entirely upon your perspective.

Meanwhile, someone, somewhere is genuinely concerning him or herself with education. He or she is not a politician.

Island Hopping: Joana Camps

We would have had every good reason to have believed that we would have never heard of her again. Former minister, Joana Maria Camps, the second of the three in charge of education under José Ramón Bauzá, was relieved of her duties in September 2014. She had been minister for some eighteen months, during which time the islands' education system went from bad to worse and occasionally descended into farce, with Joana sometimes the cause.

During the time that she was minister, some started to note that she was heading off to Menorca - her home island - not infrequently. Among those doing the noting was the Assemblea de Docents, the teachers' assembly, for whom Joana was public enemy number two after Bauzá.

The Joana affair has, on two occasions, been considered by a court. On both occasions the matter was "archived", which typically means that no more is ever heard of it. However, the court in Palma has re-opened the case, and next month Joana will be obliged to explain herself. The Assemblea is pointing to the fact that Joana went to Menorca 32 times between May and December 2013 and that her stays often coincided with a weekend and lasted for more than a day. A contrast is being made with two visits that were made to Ibiza with travel there and back on the same day and one to Brussels that also involved same-day travel. In addition, there is the fact that Joana received 22,000 euros per annum compensation for needing to base herself in Mallorca.

The court has taken note of four specific trips that were apparently made: three days for a meeting with the mayor of Sant Lluís; six days for trophy-giving for the Almirante Ferragut regatta; five days for the Rocío pilgrimage; five days for the presentation of a magazine for the Sant Joan fiestas in Ciutadella. It should be noted that, in addition to having been education minister, she did also have responsibility for culture, but while this dual portfolio may offer some justification, the court would appear to believe that there is something a tad fishy which is worthy of further examination.

Joana has come out fighting, saying that she has nothing to hide and that there was no misuse of public funds. She is also drawing a comparison with a minister in the Antich government, Joana Barceló, who is also from Menorca and who was in charge of employment before adding the tourism brief in early 2010. Joana says that the other Joana made 46 trips to Menorca - 38 of them at weekends - between February and December 2010 and a further 28 in the five months of 2011 prior to the regional election.

Whether two wrongs - if it is deemed wrongs have been committed - make a right isn't really the issue. But it might be said that there is an issue regarding appointments of ministers (or indeed others) from those in the other islands. While it is only just that these are shared around, it is important that they are made for the right reasons and go to the right people. Joana, as was regularly pointed out, had no specific background that qualified her to be education minister. For an austerity-minded government, was an annual compensation for being based in Mallorca justified, when there were surely others who might have been better qualified for the post? Hers was an appointment to guarantee a following of the party (Bauzá) line on trilingual teaching, the previous and far better qualified incumbent, Rafael Bosch, having been less minded to give the policy his wholehearted support. 

The handing-out of appointments does have an element of a quota system to it in order that the other islands are represented in government. Hence, the current cabinet has Marc Pons and Esperança Camps (no relation) from Menorca and Joan Boned from Ibiza. As Boned is transport minister, it might be said that his wish for a 30 euro flat-rate inter-island flight tariff makes sense as it will save on the cost of any travel he has to make with his home island.

It is right that there is all-island representation (though Formentera tends not to get a look in), but then it is also right that travel does not give rise to certain suspicions. With Joana, it is possible that these would not have arisen or not gone as far as the courts, were it not for the Assemblea having it in for her. Is there vindictiveness? Possibly there is. But there again, it isn't altogether surprising that those suspicions were aroused, given the number of trips.

Ministers getting around the other islands should (and does) form part of what they do. A problem for Joana perhaps is less the trips she made to Menorca but the ones she didn't make to Ibiza.

Dissatisfaction In The Classroom

I'm starting to think that all the statistical mumbo-jumbo that spews out of press release orifices of government and non-government might actually be of use, if only in that it can give me the hook for an article. Following on from the recent purchasing power revelation (it's down in the Balearics, despite economic recovery), there's another one of a consumer nature. Most of the Barclaycard-IESE (business school) report into consumer spending over the years of crisis was as you would have expected - huge falls in purchases of jewellery, furniture, household goods, for example - but it was the item for the greatest increase in spend which caught the attention. Up by 37% over the period from 2007 to 2014 was what was being forked out for education. It seems an extraordinary rise, especially given that the next highest rise (of 21%) was for utilities, and they were subject to steep increases in certain instances anyway, e.g. electricity, while internet provision would surely have played a part in higher telecommunications spend.

In third place was a 13% increase in health spending. Taken with that on education, a conclusion that might be drawn - and it's probably an accurate one - was that the public was fearful about cuts to public provision of the two sectors that consume far more of regional authorities' budgets than anything else: in the Balearics, health and education account for not far short of 80% of everything the government spends in a year.

But if we take the 13% on health to be a reflection of an increase in private health insurance, then perhaps we could have expected a similar sort of increase in spend on private schooling, but no, the figure was significantly greater.

Not all the 37% would have been on private schooling, as there would have been a fair amount going on training courses and higher education, but a goodly sum would have been going towards schools, and in looking for clues as to why, there are some lurking in the latest survey of opinions regarding education in the Balearics undertaken by the Gadeso research foundation.

Unsurprisingly, the survey reveals that overwhelmingly there are beliefs that education is vital for future job prospects and that education shouldn't be considered an expense but an investment in the future. It depends as ever, however, on who it is doing the investing, and herein, one suspects, lies the rub of that increased educational spending.

There was a perception, a fairly widely held one, that in the Bauzá years of crisis, there was a deliberate but unstated policy to drive parents towards the private sector. Though education spending remained comparatively high, there were cutbacks to education, and on top of these was all the fuss that was to break out over language policy. Allied to this was the far greater and regular attention that media circles were paying to performance of the Balearic public education system. The news was almost invariably less than positive.

The Gadeso survey shows that there is a continuing decline in satisfaction with this system. It also shows that it is believed that the system does not adequately address the needs of the workplace and that there is under-investment.

Put all this lot together, throw in the awareness of the need for a good education, and the greatly increased private spending on education over the years of crisis is understandable.

The survey doesn't particularly lay any blame with problems with the education system on the teachers. There is a concern about teacher motivation, but this can be taken as a consequence of a variety of things: lack of investment, the trilingual teaching (TIL) debacle, cutbacks. In fact, there is support for the teachers and their continuing to put pressure on the government. A majority of those surveyed believe that the decision not to call off the indefinite strike (or the possibility of taking strike action) is right.

But the teachers do need to be taken to task, some of them at any rate, and to be questioned about an ongoing struggle for power between the established unions and the Assemblea de Docents, the teachers' assembly. The unions seem inclined to accept that it is time to call off the strike and to be willing to give the new government a chance: the government is, after all, appointing over 350 additional teachers. The Assemblea isn't willing, and so threatens to kill at birth the government's desire for a grand "pact" to address and seek to solve the problems of the Balearic education system once and for all.

The survey does provide some clues as to why there was that huge increase in private spending on education, but it might also provide clues as to why this spending will continue. Until all parties come together and genuinely do create a pact for improvement, the dissatisfaction and underperformance will continue.

The Abnormality Of Mallorca's Education

You'll no doubt remember the teachers' strike. Especially those of you with school-age children attending state schools in the Balearics. It seems like an age ago that it took place. During an age that has now passed, that of the Bauzá administration and its full-frontal conflict with the teachers, one that was primarily to do with the implementation of trilingual teaching (TIL), a system that no longer exists, the new government having consigned it to the history textbooks with the board rubber of a decree.

The 2013-2014 school year did not start with normality. School years normally do begin with normality. Press reports say so. Each year it is the same. But it wasn't normal in September 2013. The teachers were on strike and remained on strike until October. In the midst of the strike the largest demonstration witnessed in the Balearics took place. A hundred thousand in Palma protesting against Bauzá, against TIL and in defence of Catalan instruction. Though the teachers went back to the classrooms after three weeks, the strike wasn't officially called off. It was indefinite. Remarkably enough, given that there is a new government whose first act was to kill off TIL, the strike is still indefinite.

The education minister, Martí March, cannot understand why the strike hasn't been called off. There is no justification, in his view, for it remaining indefinite, meaning it could be reactivated at any time. What more do the teachers want, now that the devil's work of TIL has been undone? He anticipates the school year starting with normality, but behind the appearance of normality lurks the abnormal.

March is a professorial type, similar to Bauzá's first education minister Rafael Bosch, who was to be a victim of TIL dogmatism in that he wasn't antagonistic towards Catalan to the extent that his boss was. Professorial types might be said to be one step removed from the hurl and the burl and the cuts to the throat of down and dirty politics. They apply proportion and so hope that others will too. But in Mallorca's world of education, there are instead alternative dogmas that compete and are clouded by degrees of impetuousness and emotiveness, to which can be added the need for a "cause".

While the unions are there, fighting the good fight, there is also the unmistakable presence of the Assemblea de Docents, the teachers' assembly, with its green tide of green t-shirts. This was a product of TIL. The assembly's defence of education against Bauzá was firmly based on the defence of Catalan. English was only ever a side issue.

With TIL abandoned, March cannot understand the need for the strike to be maintained. Nor can many others. But he must surely understand that the teachers' assembly, now deprived of the prime reason for it having come into existence, has become a self-perpetuating force in search of other causes. It has become a power in the land, bolstered, it would think, by the belief that the rebellion against TIL, with it at the head of it, was what brought Bauzá down. It shows no sign of wishing to relinquish this power.

The green tide manifested itself before parliament on Wednesday. Podemos issued a declaration against the national education law - LOMCE. It was one of almost Marxist rhetoric that wouldn't have been out of place in the febrile environment of a students' union meeting debating the application of the dialectic to whatever issue happens to be flavour of the month. As such, it was embarrassing. LOMCE may be a lousy law, not least because of its weird insistence on religious education which most Catholics believe to be unnecessary and unwarranted, but it cannot just be ignored. National laws cannot simply be disobeyed.

This, though, is what the assembly wants, as it also wants Bauzá cutbacks to be reversed, and as it further wants a revision of the obscure "decreto de minimos", something which determines quotas of Catalan (and Castellano). March is dragging his heels on all of these is the conclusion that is being made. Hence the strike will not be called off.

But within all of this is the shaky nature of the government. The Podemos declaration was an implication that PSOE, in charge of education, is as anti-democratic and all the rest as the Partido Popular, whose law LOMCE is. The teachers have found easy allies among the ranks of Podemos (and Més to an extent as well). Alberto Jarabo, the Podemos leader, was one of those wearing the green t-shirt.

March, a moderate in a similar way that Bosch was, finds himself in the cross-fire of the government's tensions and of the extremes of Mallorca's educational politics. Just, in truth, as Bosch was also trapped.

The strike will not be called off. Normality has yet to return. When will it?

Chaos And Comedy

If the past few days in Mallorca have been a confusion of pre-electoral jockeying-for-position, then just wait until after today. What chaos may yet await us, unless Bauzá has his "Cameron moment" and sweeps into re-elected power with the sounds of teachers booing and braying in the background.

As things turned out, the strike arranged for the green tide of educational activists was a bit of a damp squib, albeit that the dampness of a squib has to be measured - as always in Mallorcan statistical terms - by a percentage. The Balearics education ministry stated "definitively" that 23.4% of the islands' 11,800 teachers went on strike last week, protesting - inevitably - against the Bauzá regime's educational policies and the introduction of the new national curriculum through LOMCE, the law on the quality of education.

The main thing that the green tide was objecting to, LOMCE-wise, was the test for nine-year-olds. Again, the education ministry was on hand to give some indication as to the "chaos" caused by this test. 6.84% of schools were reported as having "incidents" which prevented the test being taken. The association of primary school heads said that there was "chaos" on account of conflicting instructions that had emanated from the regional education ministry. It, the ministry, was unable for once to place a percentage on the level of its conflicting instruction.

But what was this test? Well, part of it required a spot of English. So, there was, for example, a multiple choice question. Fill in the missing word. "Where (blank) you going? I'm going to the park." What an opportunity was missed. When JR and Frankie Armengol went head to head for their debate on local TV, this should have been the question. How good is your trilingualism? José Ramón? "Erm, erm. Where do you going?" Wrong. Frankie? "I refuse to answer this on the grounds that I believe that TIL has produced chaos in the classrooms of the Balearics - at least 63.7% of them, that is." (Her percentage of course having been plucked entirely at random.)

JR might have been helped in getting the answer right had the presenter of the debate been one Miguel Angel Ariza, who caused a storm on his radio show for IB3 by announcing that listeners should vote for the PP. It was "unfortunate", he was to later admit, but insisted that it had been said as part of a "comedy" programme. Vota PP, the party of comedians. Perhaps. Journalist groups were not having his excuse, though. Impartiality, they screamed, those who had not been demonstrating their partiality in the lead-up to the election. A problem for Miguel, in trying to defend his humour, was that, as one example, on his blog of 19 December he wrote that "Bauzá is, has been and will be a good president", going on to praise a reduction in unemployment and greater wealth. Or maybe that had all been in the name of comedy as well.

The Revolving School Gate

Here are some figures for you. In the Balearics for the school year 2012-2013 there were 40,615 children registered with the public education system for infant schooling, 66,123 for primary schools and 40,728 for obligatory secondary schooling. The numbers, by comparison with some other regions of Spain, are not huge. Catalonia, for instance, had over 450,000 primary school children during the same school year, but then Catalonia is a much bigger place and has a much larger total population. The numbers, though, are not really what matters, it is quality of education that does.

The Balearics underperforms in the PISA measures of student assessment - maths, reading comprehension and sciences. PISA, the programme for international student assessment of fifteen-year-olds, consistently ranks the Balearics among the worst-performing regions of Spain along with other regular underachievers at the bottom of the class - Andalusia, Extremadura and Murcia. Not all regions participate in this assessment; the Canaries, for example. But were that region to be included, one wonders if it might not show similar underperformance to that of the Balearics.

A peculiar aspect of this performance is that the Balearics is one of Spain's wealthier regions in terms of contribution to GDP. The implication of comparative affluence should mean, by a typically assigned equation between wealth and education, that performance would be stronger. In poorer regions, such as Andalusia and Extremadura, educational underperformance is perhaps more understandable, but Andalusia (and so the Costa del Sol and other tourism regions) also faces an issue in common with the Balearics - the transitory nature of some of its school student population.

Thus far during the school year 2014-2015, almost 2,400 pupils have been removed from primary schools in the Balearics. It is lower than the figure for the previous school year - 7,000 - but it is still a substantial number. The pupils have abandoned the Balearic public education system because their families have either moved to a different part of Spain or abroad. These include Spanish (Mallorcan) families and those from other countries, who have gone in search of better employment prospects or have simply decided to go back home. At the same time, however, the Balearics is one of only two regions to show a slight increase in total population - workers and their families continue to come to the island for tourism employment or in the hope of a better life.

Before the economic crisis hit, inward population movement was of such a level that the school population rose substantially. This created all manner of difficulties: finding space for the pupils and also being able to deliver an adequate standard of education. Despite the slowdown that crisis brought about, the Balearics still has an inordinately high number of foreign pupils. The national average is 9%. In the Balearics it is 19%. This percentage, though, is regularly shifting in terms of its components. There is, if you like, a constantly revolving school gate of pupils coming in and going out, mostly all of them originally from elsewhere in Spain or from abroad.

The strains and difficulties that this turnover create should not be underestimated. Generally, and although the teaching profession in the Balearics does not seek to use it as an excuse or as meaning that school "failure" is inevitable, researchers at the university in Palma question whether the public education system is capable of compensating for the disadvantages that can be faced by foreign pupils and whether indeed the system is "truly inclusive and promotes educational equality". Though it is not always wise to take anecdotal evidence as proof, I have heard from parents of foreign pupils who imply that their children are not discriminated against by teachers so much as not treated with adequate respect and seriousness and so not granted sufficient attention to their needs. These anecdotes may, though, lend support to what the university researchers are saying. (By way of balance, it should be noted that there are anecdotes which suggest the opposite.)

When one weighs all the factors up, it isn't perhaps surprising that overall educational performance is as low as it is. What isn't revealed by the researchers' studies is the contribution that foreign pupils make to a lowering of general performance (though statistics on repeating might well give a clue), but regardless of this, there are still 81% of pupils who find themselves in a system that underperforms. The shifting school population is surely a factor in this underperformance but only one.

Balearic governments do not help the situation by their movement of linguistic goalposts, but then nor - some of the time - do the teachers. LOMCE, the national law for improving educational qualities, has its many critics, but if its fundamental objective is improvement, why are teachers in the Balearics going on strike on 19 May in opposition to testing that is being introduced for third-grade primary schoolchildren?

The Underfunding Of Balearic Public Services

If a report is issued by a union - the UGT in this instance - you might be inclined to think that any negative findings would be the result of political bias. However, when another report appears simultaneously from a bank or at least a bank's foundation - BBVA's - then you might be inclined to revise your opinion. What both reports highlight is that public services in the Balearics are, by comparison with almost everywhere else in Spain, underfunded - and underfunded by some distance.

Education. This has the lowest funding per head of population of all the regions of Spain. At 793 euros per head, it is a quarter lower than spending by the top-rated region, the Basque Country. Health. The Balearics has the second lowest financing but only by one euro - Valencia is worse off at 1,079 euros. Social services. Second to bottom here as well: less than 61 euros per person.

That the BBVA Foundation, in collaboration with the Valencia Institute of Economic Research, can come up with virtually identical results to those of the union makes these results hard to dispute. They also make for potentially grim reading for the Partido Popular. With the election on its way, disclosure as to such low levels of financing gives opponents plenty of ammunition and the electorate - many of them anyway - cause for concern and for possible reconsideration of voting choice. They reinforce criticism of cuts in public spending by the Bauzá administration and a perception that government policy has been one of pushing the public towards the private sector in both education and health.

If the UGT's report had not got the support it has, the government would have wriggle room, but the BBVA report makes any attempts to argue with the findings less plausible. It will be interesting to see how the PP tries to spin them, though it might prefer to try and ignore them. Other parties, however, won't allow them to, and the fact that two of the sectors - education and health - have been the ones for which there has been ministerial upheaval over the course of the Bauza administration will merely add fuel to their arguments: both ministries have had three ministers in the past four years.

When it comes to health, it can safely be said that the second of these ministers, Antoni Mesquida, resigned because he didn't agree with government policy. This may well have been the reason why the first, Carmen Castro, also left the post. She, though, went under the explanation of "personal reasons", never to be heard from again; Mesquida was not quite so taciturn. The third one, Martí Sansaloni, just did as he was told, though tellingly, he is not on the PP list of candidates for parliamentary deputies on 24 May. Sansaloni was left to defend the chaos that broke out in the health service towards the end of last year when local health centres were unable to meet patient appointments because of lack of doctors and nurses. Sansaloni attributed this to a computer error in not assigning staff to cover for absence and holidays. No one really believed him, and when the finance minister had to dig into the coffers to give the health service some money to see it through to the end of the year, this disbelief was confirmed.

Education policy, as I suspect we are all only too painfully aware, has been dominated by the trilingual teaching (TIL) fiasco. It was one that claimed the first minister, Rafael Bosch, because he wasn't an enthusiastic advocate, and the second, Joana Camps, because she wasn't any good. But TIL has obscured the cuts in spending on a public education service which consistently turns in poor performance results when compared with other Spanish regions. There is, though, a telling factor in these comparative figures, and it is linked to TIL. The Basque Country is the only region of Spain to have a properly established three-language teaching system. Nowhere else has really attempted to have one (a full-on one), except the Balearics over the course of the Bauza administration. Education funding that is 25% greater than that of the Balearics must surely tell a story. In addition to its three-language system of Basque, Castellano and English, the Basque Country is a consistently good education performer, as revealed by the student assessment measures.

Of course, the government may well try and justify the findings by blaming them on the raw-deal financing that the Balearics receives through the redistribution of revenues from the national government, and it may well be justified in doing so. However, perceptions, as always are what count rather than simply quoting numbers, and while there is a perception of cuts as a means of promoting the private sector, such justification will fall on many a deaf ear. These reports are not good news for the PP.

Marching For Education?

A hundred and twenty million steps sounds a good deal more impressive than ten thousand people, but ten thousand there were (organisers' figures) marching on the capital: more a green, slow-moving road block than a green tide - a "marea verde" (or better, "verda"). 

The march of the ten grand started at ten on Saturday morning in Inca. It would appear that it takes eight and a half hours to walk from Inca to Palma's Plaça Major, though it might have been quicker had it gone straight down the motorway. Symbolically, however, this would have been a poor idea. The ten thousand heard that in 2011 they, and indeed the whole of the Balearics, were to have expected "motorways of education". Needless to say, the motorways had not been built. All that had been delivered were cart tracks.

It was a strange metaphor to have offered, but then it had been strange for the Bauzá administration to have apparently been promising motorways of education in the first place. What is a motorway of education exactly? There again, once Bauzá had realised that his government had made a balls-up of so-called free selection of teaching languages (between Catalan and Castellano) and had conjured up the non-manifesto item of trilingual teaching, perhaps the motorway had been being built after all: English on the outside fast lane, Castellano in the middle lane, and Catalan reduced to a crawl on the inside lane.

This motorway madness, though, was ended by the Trafico of schools which had rather bent the figures of numbers of parents who had plumped for the politically incorrect Castellano option in order to scupper free selection and subsequently of the combined forces of unions, teachers' assembly (Assemblea de Docents), parents' associations, school directors and opposition parties. The boys in green were substituted by the green t-shirts of the green tide. Halt! Stop! The fast and middle lanes were exceeding the teaching-hour limits. The inside lane had to be given its priority again.

A month away from the regional parliamentary election, the Assemblea and its fellow slow-moving travellers had given ample warning of their intention to once more voice their discontent with the government's language policies: primarily the one to do with teaching languages. Here was to be a reminder to the electorate of the dictatorship of Bauzá, the authoritarianism of Bauzá and of the cart tracks travelled by those who were instead aspiring to maintain freedom.

Language rights, said Jaume Mateu, the president of all-things-Catalan promoters, the Obra Cultural Balear, had been subjected to "ruthless attacks" from the dictator. After eight and a half hours on the march, the blistered-feet ten thousand needed such a rallying cry. The comedian Miquel Àngel Llonovoy quipped that, as Bauzá loved English so much, they would be saying "goodbye" to him in May (goodbye said in English, you understand). It would have brought the house down had there been a house to have been brought down.

The day before the march, the Mallorcan federation of parents' associations and the Balearics' co-federation of parents' associations had complained to the board which oversees fair play at elections about Bauzá's "totalitarian attitude". The Partido Popular had complained to the same board about a campaign by these associations which it considered was designed to "influence voters". Somehow, one doubts that there will be any influence: minds have long been made up, positions have long been taken in the teaching languages' battle. (By the way, has the Mallorcan federation ever taken any English lessons? Its acronym, FAPA, is, when spoken in English slang terms, somewhat unfortunate.)

When it finally draws to a close, the obituaries for the current Bauzá administration will speak of one issue above all that has dominated. It hasn't been financing of the Balearics by central government, it hasn't been the occasional "collapses" in the health service, it hasn't been oil prospecting, it hasn't been the tourism law designed to meet the desires of the hoteliers, it hasn't even been corruption (and this really is an accusation that Bauzá doesn't deserve), and it most definitely hasn't been the stupidity of Magalluf's "mamading" and the even greater stupidity of the reaction. It has been TIL: trilingual teaching.

Throwing around descriptions such as totalitarian is also pretty stupid, but then, playing fast and loose with legal procedure, being revisionist in terms of manifesto claims, dumping TIL "wets" like ex-education minister Bosch have all played a part in a policy that, at best, has been insensitive. The arguments - for and against - have been chewed over often enough, so there is little point in their being regurgitated. But whatever merits TIL might have had (or indeed might still have) have been obscured by the deliberateness of political posturing by the government and its opponents. Who is marching for a sensible and consensual education system?

Tourism By Default Not By Design

In a former life as a publishing-company owner, and indeed since that former life, I was and have been asked by friends and acquaintances if I could offer some advice to offspring or other relatives regarding "getting into publishing". It wasn't that I was being awkward, but for the career advice-seekers I would start with a question: what do you mean by publishing?

This is a fundamental question. It should be obvious that, as with any industry, publishing is the sum of very many parts, most of them decidedly unglamorous. But it is the glamour which is attractive. Getting into publishing was often a euphemistic phrase one fancies for becoming the features editor of "Vogue".

Tourism as a career is not dissimilar. It has its glamour but beneath this alluring surface is the humdrum: the laws and rules, the processes, the systems, the operations and the human contact.

The teaching of tourism doesn't vary greatly from country to country. Its components are essentially the same wherever it is taught. In Mallorca, an example is a university diploma for "international hostelry management". It has four courses. The first has to do with restaurants and kitchens, hygiene, equipment, level one English and German. The second deals with the "theory" and "practice" of the reception, finance, marketing, labour relations, law, English and German level two. The third goes into issues of quality, the environment, more finance, technology, higher levels of English and German. And finally, there is the fourth: the anthropology of tourism, tourist regions of the world, the history of gastronomy, managerial skills, business communication and culture.

Armed with all this lot, students from the Balearic School of Hostelry went along on Monday to a milk round at which various hotel groups and others were represented. The school's director said that in the last few years these businesses had been paying greater attention to the need for training and for professionals who are ever more specialised. As such, there was something of a giveway in what he said. "In the last few years." What had these businesses been doing before?

The tradition of tourism training in the Balearics is about as old as the tourism boom. The Balearics School of Tourism was founded in 1964. It is now part of the university, as is the hostelry school. Academic tourism education has, therefore, existed for years, but the comment from the hostelry school's director makes one wonder how much it has been valued and indeed how valuable diplomas and degrees are. Not that long ago - in 2011 - there was a fair old debate going on about just these questions. For too many graduates, their training was leading no further than the reception. This, though, was partly the consequence of tourism being the default industry and career in Mallorca and also of a concern that the courses were just not relevant. 

Tourism can of course be taught, and its teaching in Mallorca is due to become more elite and more in line with learning at business schools. The big-four hotel chains and TUI, together with the Esade business school, want to create a post-graduate, executive tourism school on the island. This, though, would be something quite different to the education for someone embarking on a career. Yet, the mere fact that leading tourism companies should want to create their own business school begs a question about the industry's involvement in all forms of tourism education. When the director of the hostelry school suggests that the industry is only now paying greater attention to the need for training, perhaps it is more a case that the industry hasn't considered the training to be relevant to its needs. And he offers a clue about the nature of this training when referring to ever greater specialisation.

Are catch-all diplomas required when what the industry needs are specialists in core areas of tourism to match the realities of Mallorca's tourism, such as marketing, such as customer service, such as cultural understanding? An implication of what the director has said and of the big-four creating their own school is that the industry has been too distant from tourism education. Yet, it is the industry which should be driving this education and moulding it in order to meet the challenges of a hugely competitive global industry.

Tourism as a career has been one by default and the education would appear to have reflected this. It has been training by default rather than by design. Design to adequately address these challenges and to adequately identify the skills and knowledge required and to so adequately identify and develop those capable of delivering these skills. The training should, therefore, become more elite and so should those undertaking the training in the first place. A world-class industry in Mallorca demands world-class training, and it needs to be the world-class tourism businesses which are guaranteeing it.

The Struggle For Balearics Education

Two years of struggle. The very word struggle conjures up images and sentiments of great struggles of the past - workers' rights, women's rights, civil rights - all of them battles with established orders in demanding what was just and fair. But two years struggle in the Balearics? Two years for the rights of what precisely?

At Can Alcover in Palma, an exhibition is being held that celebrates the struggle of Balearics teachers, and in particular the Assemblea de Docents teachers' organisation, against the ramifications of trilingual teaching (TIL). The exhibition was in fact launched in Barcelona to commemorate the first anniversary of the massive anti-TIL demonstration in Palma at the end of September 2013. It has been brought over to Mallorca and it will be on display until 14 February. It shows, among other things, photos of the demo and charts the chronology of the struggle from the time that TIL was approved, through the sackings of two education ministers and the three-week strike, to the various "denuncias", the latest of them being against Isabel Cerdà, the director-general for planning, innovation and professional training at the education ministry, for a supposed abuse of office in respect of the "massive approval of TIL projects".

This has not been a struggle against TIL per se. It has been a struggle against the perceived unfairness and unjustness of a teaching regime that has sought to diminish the influence of Catalan. One neglects the past at one's peril, but notwithstanding the discriminations of the past and the potential for them to repeat themselves, styling this all as a struggle of some form of social injustice neglects what has been and remains a political confrontation. Both sides, teachers and government, have denied that they have had political motives, but they most definitely have: the struggle has been a clash between entrenched ideologies with language at their core. The unjustness and unfairness have been those that have plunged the education system into chaos; the victims are those on the receiving end of this system, the schoolchildren and many parents who have not been persuaded by the narrative of the teachers' struggle.   

Who pulled the first political trigger in all this mess is now pretty much irrelevant. The chronology of the struggle is thus also now irrelevant. What should be relevant and what should be the struggle is to come to an accord to create a rich, varied, contemporary public education system for a region of Spain which, linguistic arguments aside, has obstinately underperformed for way too long. Instead, and despite the protestations of government and teachers which insist that they have made paramount the needs of schoolchildren, the education system has been hung out to dry by a conflict which could have been predicted and one in which both sides have been eager participants. A plague on both their houses.

It suits the Assemblea to remind everyone of the struggle because of the next stage in its process. If, as they have threatened, the teachers go ahead with strikes in the lead-up to the regional election, these might easily backfire because of the weariness of parents. The teachers will believe otherwise: that strikes will be an additional force in bringing down the Partido Popular in May.

Strikes or no strikes, this may well happen in any event, and already there are clear indications as to what will transpire if there is a change of government. Francina Armengol of PSOE went on record months ago in saying that she would scrap TIL. On Saturday, at a conference in Palma, she spoke of taking "ambitious measures" in creating a quality public education system through a "social and political pact" that will restore peace to the classrooms. What such a pact might be and what such measures might also be, we are yet to find out, but it was perhaps no coincidence that Armengol should be speaking about such a pact when one has already been formed. Various bodies, such as the Assemblea and the Balearics parents association, have come together in drawing up what they would see forming a new education law, one to be introduced by an alternative government to the PP. While vague about but not dismissive of third language teaching, there would be a return to giving Catalan priority; a minimum 50% of teaching hours in Catalan without specifying what might be the maximum. 

Were this to come to pass, then the struggle would be over, but for how long? The four years it would take for the electorate to decide that it wants to bring the PP back into government? And then where would be? Back no doubt to the same arguments, the same conflict and the same struggle. Or maybe not. If there's one thing that many in the PP have discovered, it is that they sense some unjustness and unfairness in the current government's policies.

Communication Breakdown: Balearic Government

The government of José Ramón Bauzá has many failings, but its greatest is arguably its inability to communicate effectively. In this it only has itself to blame, while by its own design it has allowed communication in a more general sense - media, the man and woman in the street, social networks - to be dominated by the battles it has sought.

If only. If only Bauzá had not bulldozed headlong into the great wall of Catalan, he might now be looking at higher poll ratings and looking forward to receiving the mandate which would allow him to realise his ambition for a second term - to complete what he says he has started. Instead, he chose his battles and he will die by the sword he has waved. If only he had not revised history by insisting there was a mandate for trilingual teaching when there was not. His constant reference to a manifesto which set this out, but which did not, has merely added to the discontent that TIL has aroused; he has constantly taken people for fools, those who have bothered to read the manifesto, that is. If only he had approached TIL in a consensual evolutionary fashion. If only he had not torn down the symbols and marked himself out as the enemy of Catalan through a conversion to the philosophies of Carlos Delgado and the Circulo Balear's Jorge Campos.

But this confrontation was wholly expected. Members of the Partido Popular now claim that Bauzá became someone they hadn't selected as leader in 2010 (rather than Delgado). This may be so, but his conversion was indecently swift. In December 2010, five months ahead of the regional elections, I wrote about Bauzá's intention to revise language law and of the divisions this had already created within the PP. Immediately after the election, I said that the good week the PP had enjoyed because of the election results might not look so good "when the divisions that exist within the PP in Mallorca re-surface". Not if. When. If leading lights within the PP had their concerns about the language policy, as many will now intimate, they failed to get it toned down, assuming they even tried.

Several months ahead of the last election, Manacor's mayor, Antoni Pastor (then still in the PP), was already at loggerheads with Bauzá over language and attitudes towards regionalism. When he spoke recently of the "hate" that has been brought to Mallorcan society by the Bauzá government, he was overdoing it, but there is no questioning the division that has been created; division which could have been predicted and indeed was.

Has the inability to communicate effectively been intentional? It seems perverse to believe that it has, but the Bauzá regime appears to have been content to allow the controversies to take centre stage. Perhaps the political ego of wishing to appear tough, even at the expense of social and indeed party harmony, has barged common sense out of the way along with communication that is more positive.

Bauzá inherited a difficult economic situation, and he is now able to say that the Balearics will enjoy two per cent growth in 2015. If only. If only the communication had been more effective, more sympathetic, less confrontational, people might now listen and believe that he has done well. Instead, an announcement of predicted growth sounds more like triumphalism and propaganda neatly timed with the months ebbing away before the election. Yet, he and the government can take credit for the improvement. It has had its luck, such as with the Arab Spring that benefited tourism, but it has also sought to enable growth. The tourism law, while by no means perfect, the farming law, the fishing law, an emphasis on technologies; they have all been examples of policies with investment, greater productivity and growth in mind.

Bauzá now boasts that his has been a reforming government, the most reforming government among the regions of Spain. There has been welcome reform and, even allowing for the mess created by the language policy, this also needed some reform because the bias towards Catalan had gone way too far under Antich. Nevertheless, there will be those who will call it reactionary and not reforming, just as there will be those who will point out that economic growth can increase inequalities, and a report last week highlighted just this.

Boasts about reform will cut little ice with the electorate. Economic good news should do, and it was the economy above all else which was the reason for Bauzá being in government. He should have stuck to the economy knitting and communicated the changes needed to right the economy in a more understanding way. But he hasn't, and so he only has himself to blame for the divisions and ruptures that have been caused and for inadequate communication that has merely intensified them. 

Of Extraordinary People

Mallorcan and Spanish names can be extraordinarily long, though one would have thought it doubtful that any Spaniard would have been able to match or beat Mallorca's great non-Mallorcan Archduke, the Austrian Louis Salvador Maria Joseph John Baptist Dominic Rainer Ferdinand Charles Zenobius Anthony. So great was the Archduke that they named him twelve times. But Zenobius? Where did that come from? An episode of "Doctor Who"? But the Spaniards don't dabble in long names for nothing, and no one, simply no one can compare with María del Rosario Cayetana Paloma Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Fernanda Teresa Francisca de Paula Lourdes Antonia Josefa Fausta Rita Castor Dorotea Santa Esperanza Fitz-James Stuart, Silva, Falcó y Gurtubay. Try putting that lot on the back of a football shirt.

It would seem that the now ex-Duchess of Alba didn't have some distant cousinly relationship with the Archduke's Habsburg-Lorraine mob, which would have made them about the only dynasty with which she didn't have some form of relationship. Here was someone who acquired titles like other people collect stamps or beer mats. Duchess of Berwick? Don't mind if I do, she might have uttered. But a side-effect of having to support so many names and titles was the strain it placed on her physically. She had been wearing her own death mask of botox and several layers of fast-drying cement for many a year.

When they made the Duchess, they broke the mould, only for her to remould herself later in life. Sadly though, the mould is now truly broken. They just won't make royals as extraordinarily bats as she was.  

Some people are born into extraordinariness and others have it thrust it upon them. Among the latter we now have to include the "team" at the Balearics education ministry, a team so extraordinary that it has undergone Fergie-style reforms over its comparatively short life and has managed to leak political goals with a defence as porous as one made up of a handful of Duchesses of Alba. Team manager, Sir Alex José Ramón Ferguson Bauzá (short name), has informed us that throughout the current legislature his "team" at the ministry has been extraordinary, which is quite a feat as Bauzá rotation has meant that the team crossing the green white line of teacher protests has undergone constant substitutions, transfers and relegations. Or it would be quite a feat if it weren't for the fact that the team has been extraordinarily useless.

As though having to justify another 7-0 drubbing at the post-match press conference, Bauzá adopted the Wenger defence. He hadn't seen anything. Certainly nothing to suggest that there had been any problem with applying TIL trilingual teaching. Yep, he really said this on IB3 the other evening. There has been "no problem" with its application. And with this absence of problem made clear, he was able to confirm that he will indeed be seeking an extension to his contract in May. "An eight-year project term is needed to consolidate all the work that has been started", such as consolidating the chaos of TIL or the divisions inflicted on a party, electorate and society, all of whom were under the impression they had appointed someone quite different in 2011. Come spring, and the fans may disappoint José Ramón and thwart his ambitions for eight years of extraordinariness.

Sorry Seems To Be The Easiest Word

Reluctant though I am to use clichéd metaphor, for once I shall. You wait forever for a politician to apologise for something and, blow me, two apologies come along at once. First we had Mariano saying sorry for the albeit few and small instances of corruption committed by members of his otherwise whiter-than-white party, and now we have José Ramón requesting forgiveness from a Balearics public that has been collapsing outside health centres of a collapsing health service because there's no doctor or nurse in the house. Apology or no apology, there was no "chaos" in the health service, said the president, accusing the opposition of having said there was, to which the opposition - in the form of battling Més socialist, Biel Barceló - replied that it wasn't the opposition which had used the c-word but the media; not that it really matters who used it. Let's just say that the health service has endured a period during which it has functioned with less than full efficiency, which may be a way of saying that there has been chaos but isn't quite as headline-grabbing.

Joserra's apology amounted to apportioning blame to the health service's new computer system. Neither he nor the health minister, the boy Martí who first came up with the computer excuse, has said if any heads are rolling for the computer system having taken it upon itself to block temporary appointments. But then, what more should the public expect? It has its apology, so now all is fine. Not that this is how Barceló sees things. The College of Nursing, he informed the president, says that its members are overhwhelmed at work each day and that closure of centres was indeed due to a lack of funding. And joining the fray, we now have the CCOO union reckoning that the whole of the social services on the island are set to go totally belly-up some time in the next few months. If they do, then this will presumably also be due to a computer error.

With all attention having been concentrated on the no-staff-available notices sellotaped to the doors of the island's health centres, everyone has quite forgotten about the schools and which languages the government has said the kids should be taught in this week. Everyone, that is, except for someone with whom you may be less than familiar - Soledad Becerril, the Ombudsman, or rather the Ombudswoman, the Defensora del Pueblo de España.

The fact that Sra. Becerril has held high political office because of her membership of the Partido Popular has not prevented her from demanding information from the PP regional education ministry regarding the implementation of the TIL trilingual teaching system. Indeed, she has been asking for information since February and been getting absolutely nowhere. The ministry, as with any other public authority, is in fact obliged by law to meet requests for information by the Ombudsperson, especially when they are of an urgent nature and have been influenced by court judgements, which is the case with TIL. As the information has not been forthcoming, Sra. Becerril is threatening to denounce the ministry and thus the Balearic Government to the attorney-general on the grounds that it has been "disobedient".

So, maybe education minister, Nuria Riera, will apologise to the Ombudsperson and blame it all on a problem with the computer system. Her ministry's disobedience comes in the same week as another act of disobedience, that of Catalonia's Artur Mas; you see, like apologies, disobediences all come along at the same time. The attorney-general is looking into Artur's disobedience over the rather pointless independence consultation thing which occurred in Catalonia. And what do we do, Artur, when we are in the naughty chair? We say sorry, don't we. Or probably not.

TIL Death Us Do Part

Why is anyone talking about TIL any longer? Has it gone unnoticed that the schools of the island have been thrown back to simpler pre-acronym times, that the senyera is being hung metaphorically if not physically from science blocks and that the youth of Mallorca are rejoicing in the mediaevalist purity of the ancients of Catalanism. Oh my Berenguer, my Llull, my Jaume I of times gone by. TIL is dead, long live the Catalan grammar of Pompeu Fabra. PSOE's Cosme Bonet announced that the TIL decree was a zombie decree. The Walking Dead of a decree. Empty-eyed PP sorts (the few who genuinely support TIL) are vainly insisting that the unworkable trinity of languages is still somehow operable, when more than a hundred schools suggest that it isn't. At the head of the not-quite-yet-dead is José Ramón, and what on earth is happening to him? Where has all that hair come from? Is he going for a mullet or is he, as I had suggested some months ago, aiming for the ponytail look with which to confront the devil of Podemos? Or is he finally morphing into his distant ancestor in Transylvania? Blood sucker turned Mood Hoover, vacuuming all the good mood out of the PP?

Contrast the Bauzá dishevelled look with that of Nuria. Each morning she rises for her appointment with the stylist before taking herself off for a trip around the pueblos or for a meeting with gauche student representatives. Bauzá's Batwoman, who only has a few months to save TIL Gotham City from falling into the hands of the jokers and riddlers of PSOE and Podemos. Her mission (if she should have chosen to have accepted it, which she of course did) is that of the impossible charm offensive. Is she bothered that TIL is a walking dead of a decree? Of course she isn't. That she might even contemplate a tour of the pueblos in order to convert recalcitrant PP mayors to the dogma of TIL sets her well apart from José Ramón. Mayors across the isle are desperately seeking ways of ensuring that he doesn't get within 50 kilometres of their municipalities in pre-election times (difficult given the size of Mallorca, admittedly).

So why don't the mayors just get rid of him? Send in the men in grey suits or even one with a brown suit, his chum Matty Isern. Is it because there is no one to replace him? Not so. Not since Nuria claimed the education throne. A tough job? Not a bit of it. Puts her firmly in the party and public eye. She is, so sources explained last week, "very smart", "extremely ambitious" and seemingly not afraid to put the boot in or to get the knife out. Sounds as though she would be ideal for the backstabbers party. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next leader of the PP. Nuria Riera.

Most Dishonourable Governments: Balearics

Cast your minds back if you will to the so-called green taxes that the Balearic Government had proposed. You will remember that the proposal incurred the wrath, among others, of mighty retailers. These were taxes which had the full approval of the president, José Ramón Bauzá. Mysteriously, though, the economy had recovered sufficiently for them not to be introduced. Someone with an economics background had cocked up. Who was that? Ah yes, the former finance minister, Pep Aguiló. Stitched up like a kipper. He didn't resign, he was sacked as Bauzá sought to save face with natural supporters in bug business. Around the same time, another to be hung out to dry in the increasingly strong sun of Mallorcan spring was Rafael Bosch, the former education minister. He was at least partly honourable. He didn't buy in wholeheartedly to the trilingual teaching scheme. He was too much of a "Catalanist", chirped Jorge Campos of the way-off-to-the-right Circulo Balear and one with the ear of Joserra. Bosch was sacked as well but was given a nice little governmental earner buried away somewhere doing something related to the islands' economy. Off you toddle, Rafael, and keep your mouth shut.

Joana Camps, the education minister, has now resigned. Honourable? Nah, not a bit of it. The honourable thing would have been for her to have never accepted the education portfolio in the first place. As an estate agent, her knowledge of education was as deep as mostly everyone else's. She had once gone to school. (Bosch was more of an education expert.) But you can't blame someone for having ambition even if she was so far out of her depth that it was impossible to see the bottom and that she came to dig for herself a trench as bottomless as the Mariana.

Well, it wasn't all her fault, this business with the High Court declaring procedures to do with the introduction of trilingual teaching (TIL) illegal. Bosch had been minister when the first decree was introduced. So he was, but he wasn't when the Court pronounced procedures to have been illegal last September and he hasn't been while Joana has been failing to defend the indefensible. Dishonour barely does this government justice. Some other words that have been thrown around are "infantile" and "disobedient".

The government simply cannot just go around disobeying the Court or passing further decrees within hours of the Court finding against it, which is exactly what it did last September and thus produced the final straw which broke the teachers' back and sent them out on strike for a month. To carry on believing it can apply TIL while it seeks an appeal from the Supreme Court in Madrid is ridiculous. And who is to say that the matter would stop with the Supreme Court anyway? This is a government which has brought itself into disrepute. It is almost, through its infantile behaviour, allowing the radicals among the teachers to get off scot-free, which they most definitely shouldn't be. And at the head of this dishonourable government is Joserra. He should resign, but he won't. He has placed the very much more credible Nuria Riera in charge of education in the hope that he can save his skin. But his own party is full of those who are lining up against him. Will there be a putsch?