Saturation, Sustainability And Stability: Mallorca's Tourism 2016

It was the 3S year. Not sun, sea and sand (substitute sex for the latter if you prefer) but saturation, sustainability and stability. Mallorca had stability by the safety and security load, plus - more or less - political stability. Geopolitics, a word that was being rammed down our throats, were at play in creating the opposite in different parts of the Med: the instability of others was Mallorca's good fortune. Until, that is, it came to saturation. Tourist numbers were greater than ever. And they were everywhere. Clogging up beaches, clogging up town centres (well, one, i.e. Palma, but only now and then), clogging up the port in Palma on account of the leviathans of the sea colliding on the same days, clogging up roads with the thousands more hire cars that had been diverted from Turkish ports, clogging up private apartments and firing off messages of gratitude to Airbnb. Bloody tourists.

It may have only been a couple of cranks who sprayed their messages on walls of Palma's old town, but their sentiments were far more widely held. Regardless of whether politicians attempted to either downplay or make hay with the slogans, the publicity had won. Saturation and its negative effects were here to stay. Or for at least as long as geopolitics are active in the eastern Mediterranean and northern Africa.

It wasn't as if we hadn't been here before. Few mentioned the fact that there had been similar murmurings of discontent at the turn of the millennium, despite Mallorca experiencing something of a crisis because of competition from destinations then unaffected by geopolitics. The response had been a campaign for sustainability - yes, they've been talking about it for that long - and a new tax. The ecotax was introduced in 2002 and then un-introduced eighteen months later. Politics, not of a geo nature but of a typically Balearic style, saw to it that the ecotax was ejected with force and catapulted into the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean, never to darken a hotel reception again. Until 1 July, 2016.

While former tourism minister Celesti Alomar had believed (hoped) that the ecotax would lead to a cut in tourist numbers, the current minister, Biel Barceló, didn't seem to suggest that the new tourist tax was a means of limiting numbers. Not to begin with anyway. Although he remained somewhat equivocal on the tax and limits relationship, others were not for equivocating. Podemos and fellow travellers in Barceló's Més party were all for putting it up in 2017 in order to keep the numbers down. Més and numerous members of Podemos signed up to the campaign "Sense límits no hi ha futur".

The politics of the tourist tax were in themselves curious. Més in their former solo guise as the PSM had been against the ecotax in 2002 (believe it or not, they had feared it would harm tourist numbers). It had been PSOE - Alomar especially - who had been the evangelists and advocates. Although PSOE in their current form have never admitted that they would have rather the tourist tax had been given a wide berth, they were badgered into it by Més and Podemos.

And once it was on the parliamentary agenda, it caused all sorts of disagreement, not least with regard to how the revenue was to be spent. There was, for example, the notion (proposed by Toni Reus of Més) of some of the revenue going towards old folks' homes. The scrapping was such that an unidentified member of Podemos entertainingly remarked that during one particularly heated discussion "we were screaming like we were kids in primary school".

Paramount, though, was our old friend sustainability, so much so that the tax was officially dubbed the sustainable tourism tax. It duly arrived in time for the high season, and fears that outraged tourists might be dragged off to the cells for refusing to part with payment were to prove to have been unfounded.

It is perhaps instructive to look back at quotes that I used in reviewing the 2015 tourism year. The president of the Mallorca Hoteliers Federation, the ubiquitous Inma Benito, had called it a bad measure that "will cause the loss of millions in 2016". Hans Müller of Thomas Cook believed that it "could suddenly cost us everything that has been gained over the past four years". As things turned out, the hoteliers and the tour operators were grateful for the geopolitics as far as Mallorca was concerned; tour operators otherwise experienced losses, especially in Turkey.

With limits and saturation very much on the agenda, Barceló introduced the draft for the holiday rentals legislation. This will be one of the big issues for 2017, and it will be a contentious issue as well. The divvying up of the 43,000 places according to nine zones in Mallorca, to say nothing of the other three islands, will be a wonder to behold, while the lawyers will already be champing at the bit. On all-inclusives, if the tourism ministry is true to its word and gets tough with offer that is not registered, then good on the ministry.

2016 will otherwise be remembered for the collapse of Low Cost Holidays and so for the job losses. It was a case study of crap cash-flow management allied to inadequate regulatory control in the Balearics: the tourism ministry was left to squirm and cite European bonds as its fallback position for holidaymakers whose holidays were costing them double. There were also the losses that Vueling was consistently making: it kept on having to cancel flights. The airports authority Aena hasn't explained if the record numbers at Palma airport took account of the cancellations.

And what of losses in 2017? Brexit had no impact this year, and in truth there had been little justification for thinking that it would have. We're told that bookings from the UK are buoyant for next year, the bigger fear being lower spend. But as no one believes tourist spending statistics anyway, how will we able to tell?

So we look forward to the new year, one during which we will revisit - time and time again - the same themes. 2017 will be 3S year Mark II.

Is Instability The Norm For Balearic Government?

Jaume Matas, much though he has become reviled, was not an unpopular president of the Balearics. He was also a president whose second administration between 2003 and 2007 was marked by its stability. He enjoyed having a parliamentary majority, and his cabinet remained virtually unaltered throughout the whole administration. There were only two changes - to the agriculture and fisheries and work and training portfolios. Whatever instability the administration had came after it had finished: ex-ministers implicated in wrongdoing or now banged up.

The administration that succeeded Matas's was that of the "pact". Francesc Antich of PSOE headed a hotch-potch coalition government that relied on the support of the Unió Mallorquina (UM) and the Bloc (what is more or less now the Més grouping of PSM Mallorcan socialists, greens and what have you). This unholy mish-mash seemed destined to be anything but stable, and as things turned out it was highly unstable, but not because they couldn't all work together. The reason for the instability was the UM faction and it caused there to be four tourism ministers during the administration. The first, Francesc Buils, resigned because of a squabble within his own party and not the government. The second, Miguel Nadal, had to go when he was implicated in corruption investigations. The third, Miguel Ferrer, was in the post for barely a month when the investigations became so intense that Antich booted the UM out of the coalition. Ferrer was cast adrift as was Miguel Grimalt at environment.

If you look back at the different administrations since the first regional government was formed in 1983, you will find that the first two administrations were very stable. The third was less so, and the reason why was a clash between the PP and UM coalition partners and the president, Cañellas, and Maria Munar in particular. Munar was dismissed, but the administration carried on in reasonable shape despite this crisis. The government of 1995 to 1999 was peculiar in that Cañellas, implicated in the Sóller Tunnel case, was forced to resign after only a month. His successor, Cristófol Soler, was president for less than a year, and had to go because he was a bit too Catalanist for others in what was a PP majority government. Apart from this internal wrangle, it was a stable enough administration under Matas. The first Antich pact, 1999-2003, had its squabbles but it remained calm enough. The occupiers of portfolios such as tourism, education, health, finance, environment did not change.

So, as you consider the seven administrations before the current one, the picture is one that might be thought normal. Reshuffles or changes are common practice in governments anywhere. There have been some clear cases of abnormality in the Balearics, most obviously because of the UM during 2007 and 2011, but the overall pattern cannot be said to be one of a history of instability; it has been the opposite for the most part.

But then we come to the current administration. Bauzá, like Matas, has had a parliamentary majority, but unlike Matas he has failed spectacularly in using this majority and maintaining stability. Because of events last week, this is an administration which can boast having thus far had (and there are still some months for this disaster area of a government to go) three health ministers, three education ministers, two tourism ministers, two finance ministers, three public administration ministers. Are there any more? Possibly, but we've lost track.

This is an administration of such dysfunction that serious questions have to be asked as to why; indeed questions are being asked within the PP as well as by others. How is that Bauzá has presided over such a calamitous administration when he had the same electoral benefits as Matas?

There is no one reason alone, but when one looks for reasons they all point to one thing, or rather one person: José Ramón Bauzá. Everyone surely accepts that he faced a mountain to climb because of the economy which he inherited, but it has been in other areas that the instability has arisen and the discontent allowed to fester. Above all else, Bauzá became something that the PP didn't think it had selected. Bauzá was not Carlos Delgado, which was why he became leader. He was not an anti-regionalist, anti-Catalanist, aloof fanatic. Or so the party thought. And as his administration has lurched from crisis to crisis, he has wanted to be puppet-master, installing the likes of Joana Camps, and thus making the crisis ever worse. Thank God he has had the sense to appoint Nuria Riera to education, a diplomatic and sympathetic face who might just save him. But it won't save him from what will be his legacy: the most unstable of all the Balearic governments.