Eddie's Back

Don't say I didn't warn you, but I did. And now there's confirmation. Little and Large are on the comeback trail, Large if not Little, though the latter will doubtless be in the background, doing the manoeuvring, his hand firmly up, erm, Large's jacket.

We had all wondered, feared even, what had happened to the former tourism minister amidst the debacle of the Partido Popular's Maytime meltdown. What had become of Jaime Martínez and his larder? Was Jaime slowly withering away, adopting a belatedly austerity-sympathetic frame to match that of his successor, the ascetic Barceló on his diet of a weekly sopa mallorquín served from one of Xelo Huertas's soup kitchens by royal appointment? Not a bit of it. There he had been all this time, storing prime Mallorcan charcuterie to give him energy for the winter campaign to become PP leader.

The re-emergence of Eddie Large had been predicted, though not quite in this manner. No one had seriously considered him to be a contender, but in bruiser Brando style that is what he wants to be, ably assisted by Syd Little, the man who didn't win the leadership before, Carlos Delgado. Jaime's push for the leadership is that of Syd's in all but name. If he can't be leader himself, and the party made it perfectly clear in 2010 that it didn't want him and so landed itself with Bauzá instead, then get Eddie installed.

Jaime, though, just doesn't cut the dash. Throughout his tenure as Syd's successor at tourism, he would be seen, hovering in the background while Bauzá was taking centre-stage, like a bodyguard who had been plucked from the night-job as a Magalluf bouncer. However, as flag-bearer for the PP righter than centre-right (centre-right, we must of course say), Jaime's prepared to take to the hustings and to launch an assault on the party's regionalist tendency and one that would be amenable to the current government symbolically removing the Catalan flag from the yoke of prohibitive legislation, which it is due to do this coming week by repealing the Law of Symbols.

This regionalist tendency, expected to be led into leadership battle by ex-minister Biel Company, says that Eddie has not complied with party rules for putting himself forward, whatever these rules might be. Regardless of this, he is getting onboard the campaign HGV and heading to the regional congress to be held some time after Rajoy has lost the general election and at which he will probably suffer the same fate as Syd did in 2010: a sound stuffing. The regionalists voted for Bauzá because he wasn't Delgado. Or so they thought. They were wrong, but this time round they won't make the same mistake again and they'll make sure they get their man, and it won't be Jaime.

Someone who won't be putting himself forward for election is hero of the people, Judge Dredd. José Castro, scourge of Matas and Urdangarin, has politely declined an offer from Podemos to be on the list for the general election and so have the opportunity of becoming a member of Congress bearing the cross of the Church of Iglesias. Had Castro agreed - and one feels that the approach was a fanciful publicity stunt by the Spartists - he might have found himself lining up with candidates from Més. However, Biel and his chums have opted not to form an electoral pact with the Podemistas. And quite right, too. If the first one hundred days of government have taught Biel anything, it is that trying to deal with Podemos is as tangled and venomous as grappling with a pit of vipers. It's one thing putting up with this locally, quite another transporting the inherent conflicts to Madrid as well.

Meanwhile, Mariano has given the nation an early Christmas present, the opportunity to eject him from office five days before the festivities. Christmas will be coming a little earlier this year, though given its proximity and in order to guarantee more interest than might actually be the case, did Mariano not consider combining the election with the El Gordo lottery? Conceivably, he would stand greater chance of winning if he left the election to the random choice of numbered balls.

Martínez Clarifies ... Or Does He?

Balearics tourism minister, Jaime Martínez, who has succeeded in elevating obfuscation to new heights in tourism legislation - a significant feat, it should be said, given the opacity with which this legislation has traditionally been drafted - was answering questions earlier this week which were supposedly going to clarify some of the less clear aspects of the latest round of Jaime tourism legislation. Specifically, there was the issue of holiday lets, about which Jaime admitted that there might just be a little lack of clarity, though it might be noted that he had been told in pretty much no uncertain terms by the sensible people at the Chamber of Commerce that he needed to make things clearer, while, or so I understand, there are those within his own ministry who are far from impressed by his leadership and who have also urged him to create greater transparency.

So, what did we get? Jaime said that there wouldn't be any of this business about properties having been built before 1960 or getting permission from neighbours, which was something we already knew, as Madrid had told him he couldn't make such legal provisions. He then went on to explain that there will be a softening of the law, accepting that there are concerns with how holiday apartments can be marketed through websites and other media. He was making reference to the prohibition on the use of terms such as "holiday" or "vacation", and appeared to suggest that such terms will now be allowed. But was he only referring to properties rented out under the Tenancy Act or was he referring to a broader scope for allowing owners to rent out without running the risk of being fined? It was probably the former, but as Jaime Land is one of confusion, we are still unsure. One thing he did suggest would happen would be that future regulation would include a list of "channels" which would be prohibited in order to remove any doubts. Which meant? Hard to say for the moment, but you never know, there may come a time when the legislation is all crystal clear, though you wouldn't bet on it.

Tourism Planning And Improvisation

In the summer I was fortunate enough to spend time with Jimmy Weinstein and his wife Lilli Santon who organise the Travelling School at Sa Pobla's annual international jazz festival. Among the topics we discussed was that of creative thought and how this relates to improvisation. In jazz, improvisation is often key to the performance, as is the releasing of creative energy, but there is a danger with improvisation that you end up with a wholly disjointed result. The art of improvisation is to bring the bursts of creative energy from the different performers back to the underlying theme, the core beats, hooks and melody, the strategy, if you like, of the performance.

Improvisation without the unifying hook which binds everything together takes the improviser along a meandering path that lacks both purpose and a means of judging performance. Move constantly from one point to another and it becomes impossible to make such a judgement as there is no strategy which presents itself for such judgement. The result is chaos, a mess. In jazz you can improvise endlessly and still have a coherent result. Other types of activity lend themselves far less to improvisation, if at all, and give the impression that they have been improvised with nothing to show for this.

The Balearics tourism minister, Jaime Martínez, has boldly announced that there is now no longer any improvisation in the tourism sector. For the first time, everything is planned and thus everything will be good, and this planning and so lack of improvisation is already reaping dividends; the season is getting longer, he has suggested.

Martínez is not wrong when he implies that governmental tourism policy has been made on the hoof and been subject to improvisation. The lack of coherence has been evident for years, ad-hocery combining with the hangover of complacency from the times when the tourism river ran with gold for more than a handful of months and was not dammed by summer and winter competitors panning for Balearics gold. Improvisation has finished, he says, which is no bad thing. But what of its positive bedfellow, creativity? The tourism model according to Jaime is one of plan, plan and plan again; it sounds almost Soviet in its preference for control, the antithesis of creativity or, if you prefer, imagination and innovation.

What Martínez is referring to is the tourism plan (and the tourism law) that he hatched along with his former boss, Carlos Delgado. The ex-minister said that the benefits of the plan would not be realised for a couple of years. These couple of years are now up, and the chief beneficiary of the plan is of course off-season (aka) winter tourism. And my goodness, Delgado was right. The island will be bursting with tourists this winter, the skies will be filled with aircraft, the tills of bars will be ringing merry and plentiful tunes, the unemployed and the fijo discontinuos will be no more as the hotels are open all year round. If only, and only in someone's dreams. Jaime's maybe.

The grand Martínez masterplan (and he was almost certainly responsible for it, because this is the sort of thing he does) is bringing all stakeholders together, is shifting the emphasis from sun and beach to a more diversified model with specialised products and is, more than anything, lengthening the season. Ah yes, lengthening the season. Do I need to say more? Well, only that the non-improvised masterplan will give satisfactory long-term results, says the minister.

Having a plan, a proper and feasible plan, is perfectly reasonable. Indeed, it is essential, and it had been lacking, but within this plan there has to be the creativity, and it is here where improvisation does actually come back into the equation; not by doing things in an incoherent fashion, but allowing the flow of creative thought in order to make the plan really work in ways that might establish some form of uniqueness or difference. Unfortunately, if you look at what the Balearics are doing by way of attempting to lengthen the season, then you will find that it is what everywhere else is doing. Even somewhere like Andalusia, which benefits from slightly better winter weather and a far larger golf tourism market, has much the same concerns as the Balearics and much the same solutions. Ditto Croatia. Ditto anywhere in the Med with a less-than-satisfactory off-season: culture, gastronomy, cycling, blah, blah, the same old remedies as ever.

Maybe there are no creative solutions to be had, but that's a defeatist attitude, as negative as an attitude which prevails within Balearics tourism ministry circles which views tourism from a Balearics perspective and not from that of the wide world of the tourist. Plan by all means, but some creative improvisation within the plan is just as essential.

The Law According To Martínez

We finally came to understand this week what Jaime Martínez actually does with himself. He spends long days bunkered in an office drawing up incomprehensible laws or decrees or whatever they're called. Architect by background, he was the architect of the 2012 tourism law and the designer of its 2014 offspring, the new law or decree. Only he probably truly understands the "typologies" of properties outlined in the decreto Martínez. Certainly only he can understanding the thinking. Everyone else was baffled, except his supporters at the islands' hotel federations, and everyone took aim at this new law/decree, with the exception of course of the hoteliers.

While Martínez doublespeak stated that there would be more private tourist accommodation, he was the only one who actually believed this to be the case (though his lackeys in the ministry who are under instruction will also believe it to be so). The UPyD party spoke of the "persecution" of holiday homes. "If Bauzá reckons that tourism is our oil, we do not understand why he persecutes it and drowns it in such a manner." The Més grouping wanted the whole decree withdrawn. El Pi blasted the "battle against tourist rentals", condemning the government as "sectarian and irresponsible". PSOE described the typologies as "arbitrary" and believed that the latest legislation could be unconstitutional.

The government was sneaky. To bring out this draft when it did, slap bang in the middle of August, was a disgracefully undisguised act of contempt for a sector that has other things on its mind. That the consultation period may have been extended does not let the government off the hook. It has acted in bad faith.

And there were other elements that raised the hackles of opposition parties and other organisations. There was the matter of competences that were meant to be transferred to the island councils. These have been scaled back. In Minorca they are especially annoyed. In theory, its council could have introduced its own regulations on tourist rentals. Not now it can't.

Then there were all-inclusives. Martínez was clear that there would be no prohibition. It was one of the few aspects of his explanation of the new decree that made sense. He said that all-inclusives were a matter for Europe, and he is right. Any attempt at prohibition would end up in front of the competition commission, and it will never agree to prohibition. The one small crumb of comfort was that all-inclusives would be subject to quality standards. Possibly so, but how effective will the monitoring be and what exactly are these standards? We've been down this path before, and there are still all-inclusives in Mallorca whose standards are simply awful.

That the hoteliers were the one obvious group who firstly found it perfectly acceptable that the decree should be published at the height of the season and with such a short consultation and who secondly considered the decree to be very positive tells us all we really need to know about the motivation behind many of the decree's provisions. One of these, related to secondary activities in hotels, was confirmed and explained in more detail. I believed that when these activities were first spoken of and then included in the 2012 law they could be as controversial or as damaging as all-inclusives. They have yet to really hit home, but they are in evidence. The Ushuaia Beach in Ibiza is an example. Operated by Abel Matutes' Fiesta Group, it is a blueprint of sorts for what will happen with the Matutes hotels in Magalluf, now that Cursach has replaced Mallorca Rocks. One big club inside a hotel complex. The complementary sector, i.e. the non-hotel tourism sector, is going to be clobbered even harder.