Denouement Day For The PP

Today is D-Day. Domingo Day also known in co-official language terms as Diumenge Day. It will also be Denouement Day. Two one-time friends won't end up killing each other, but one will be the loser of a long and complex affair.

At some point today we will know who will be the new leader of the Partido Popular in the Balearics. I'll bet you can hardly wait to find out. And wait there has been. A very long one. Interminable. Well, not quite, as it terminates today, with one of the candidates due to be terminated. Which one? The bookies will be weeping if the long odds outsider J.R. Bauzá romps to victory. Others will be joining them. Catalanists will be wailing their woes and hurriedly reinstalling the garlic over their portals, lest Count Dracula should darken their doors once more.

Joy, though, might be unconfined in certain quarters: let's call them the hoteliers. J.R. has been going down - in all likelihood - with all guns blazing. One of them has been fired at the tourist tax. Were J.R. to a) become PP president (again) and b) Balearic president (again), he has said that the tourist tax will be the first folly of the Psoemespodemos pact to be ejected with great force into the blue waters of the Med.

The spirit of Jaume Matas would thus be restored, Jaume having taken the legislative knife to the little lamented ecotax in 2003. And in eliminating the tourist tax, J.R. would be having his symbolic retaliation against Psoemespodemos. One of its first acts was to consign the law of symbols to the symbolic junk heap of Castile-Catalan rivalry. The Catalan flag could once more flutter without fetter and fear of ferocious reprisals by anti-Catalanist fundamentalists. Would J.R. and his chums do the conga in the way that Psoemespodemos so embarrassingly did, having removed the symbols law from the statute book?

Well, he would have to be president and have some chums. And they, unfortunately for him, are in comparatively limited supply. But those that there are will be with him all the way at Es Moli d'es Comte, which is the finca pile hosting the PP congress. What a shame they couldn't have waited another week. They could have had their congress at a congress centre. More spirit of Matas would thus have been abroad, though given that the Palacio has now become something of a Psoemespodemos gig (hmm, maybe not Podemos), they would probably have decided otherwise.

Es Moli, from what I can make out (thanks to TripAdvisor), could do with all the PP-ists firing off some five-star reviews. It is ranked 1,487 out of 1,776 restaurants in Palma (de Mallorca). "The political debate was somewhat sterile, but we loved the cabbage rolls with sobrassada." Or whatever. Still, perhaps it's an appropriate gaff for the occasion and for the PP's Count Dracula. The mill of the count. Though for J.R. it may prove to be a millstone too far.

And one of the stones that he insists on dragging around with him is multi-language teaching. What more can he add to the list of teaching languages? What about Uzbek? There must be the odd tourist from Uzbekistan in desperate need of understanding why he must pay the tourist tax. Or how about Klingon? Much more of a laugh than English, that's for sure.

Teaching has been just one of the issues that the local Spanish (and Catalan) media has been dissecting in the lead-up to D-Day. There has been virtually no room for anything else, the photos vying for space with the analysis, the quotes, the interviews. And best of the photos was one for the favourite, Biel Company, There was Biel, surrounded by Biel's Babes, the males pushed to the periphery. And when one of the babes is Marga Prohens, one would have to feel that Biel has it in the bag. Who, let's face it, would knowingly vote against Marga.

In somewhat less frivolous fashion, Company has stated that J.R. is not a company man, as in there's no way he'll be giving J.R. a job if (when) he wins the election. Bauzá, attempting to appear all things to all (company) men and women in the party, has hinted that he might do otherwise were he to win. However, that would be unlikely. One of his parting shots last week was to say of Company that he (Bauzá) made him a minister, he (Bauzá) affiliated Company to the party. "Let each one draw his own conclusions about him." And it's true. He did make him a minister. Company wasn't a PP member as such. He became one later.

Denouement Day is thus highly personal. There may be more than one loser. The PP is threatened with being split in half. Or more like into one third and two thirds.

Twits Of Twitter: Partido Popular

If your party suffers a calamitous election defeat, it is to be expected that there will be a period of bloodletting. Calm, rational review rarely follows calamity. Instead, knives are sharpened, bodies are left. From fractiousness come factions, fighting over the bones of a disintegrated entity. Putting the monster back together again takes time. The wounds are too profound for there to be rapid reparatory surgery.

Nevertheless, if Mariano Rajoy and central office had allowed otherwise, the Partido Popular in the Balearics might now be on the path to recovery. Central office did not allow. The regional party would have to wait until the PP nationally was subjected to its own calamitous humiliation. Only then would the Balearics PP be permitted to cleanse itself of the soiling of its factionalism, to definitively wave its dirty underwear for public view, to get it out of the way, to elect a new leader.

That might have been the theory, but as the general election of 20-D increasingly appears to have heralded another election (26-J in all likelihood), the practice has proved to be different. The PP in the Balearics is still in leadership limbo, unable to move on. When might it be allowed to have its regional congress and elect its leader? Who can say?

It is now getting on for a year since José Ramón Bauzá's PP suffered defeat by the fourteen cuts of seats that it lost in the Balearic parliament. No sooner was it dawning on the party that it had just suffered its worst ever election performance than the battle lines were being drawn and the trenches dug. A phony war prior to the election - former PP mayors, such as those of Alaro and Pollensa, had already jumped ship and abandoned the autocratic Bauzá - became total war, and at the head of the rebel troops was the environment and agriculture minister, Biel Company.

At one time it had appeared as if Company was likely to get a clear run at being the party's next leader. But with the special congress delayed and delayed, there has been ample time for the factions - far from simmering down - to become more and more agitated. And among the agitators has been Bauzá. Far from having accepted being exiled to the Senate with his tail between his legs, he has been doing his best to stir things. His charge that the party lacked direction did not go down well, the implication of this having been that it was not going in the direction that he had taken it.

Modern party warfare now plays out on different fields of battle, one of these being social media. And it has been on Twitter and Facebook where the Company and Bauzá factions have been engaged in skirmishes. At the heart of this were messages on both networks from one Pilar Bauzá Díaz. She had, for instance, placed the blame for the loss of PP votes on the former president, while exchanging views with, among others, the former director of Balearic ports and airports, Antonio Deudero (a Bauzá man). She also praised the work of Biel Company - "the best agriculture minister of all time".

It might be noted that José Ramón's full name is Bauzá Díaz. But Pilar of that name was unrelated to him. She was in fact Company's wife. Her fake account was exposed when she, by error, used her own name. So against this background, Company laid into Bauzá at a PP general meeting last week. If he, the former president, was going after him (Company), then he would go after Bauzá. Company was furious at what he saw as a deliberate leaking of these social media exchanges by Bauzá's personal secretary in the Senate to the mainstream media. The only problem being of course that it was all out there in the public domain anyway, and his wife had mistakenly blown her own trolling cover.

The general secretary of the PP, the party's nominal and temporary leader, Miquel Vidal, has sought to draw a line under the affair. No action will be taken, and it's being put down to the fact that people get "angry" from time to time, and that it was all an "internal" matter. Which may be fair enough, but Company, adding that he will neither forgive nor forget the supposed leak, has suffered - one would have to think - a great deal of damage. You would also have to think that he was aware of his wife's fake account (for which he did apologise).

The time that it is taking in getting around to elect a new leader is only making matters worse for the PP, and this twittish use of Twitter highlights the fact. When they do finally get round to an election, the matter will not be ignored. Meanwhile, and as the PP tears itself apart, it's supposed to be the main opposition.

Days Of The Seagull

"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea." Last week was a good week for seagulls. Take, for example, poor old Henry "Blowers" Blofeld, a man who single-handedly has done more for pigeon and seagull life than any other commentator in the history of sport. And what happens? Having been prosaic in his admiration of seagulls at the Swalec in between Joe Root putting Mad Mitch to the sword, he steps out of the stadium and Jonathan Livingston promptly deposits his lunch over him from a great height.

Metaphorically speaking, they were waving their hankies at Palma's dockside to wish José Ramón bon voyage, he having been splattered upon from a less than great height, before they - thankful for his departure - turned their attention to a celebratory sardine barbecue. Bye, bye, Bauzá. Off to Madrid you go. The seagulls followed the trawler with its forlorn traveller but could dine out on no more than the scraps of a political career shredded and cast to the seven seas. Would Eric Cantona play JR in the story of his rise and fall? Doubtful. Eric is a man of social conscience and besides JR never aimed a karate kick at anyone, not even Mateo Isern. The pathos might appeal to Eric though. Sent into exile in the senate where former presidents of the Balearics go to be forgotten: José Ramón and Francesc Antich, politically divided but united in their memories of failure.

The denouement, the final act of airbrushing, save for the seat in the corner of the senate chamber, was the Partido Popular's conference in Madrid. JR had hoped to go there still able to puff his chest out as regional leader, to be able to announce to the party faithful that it had been he who had turned the Balearics into the motor of Spanish economic regeneration. He wasn't allowed to. Yes, he did say this at a forum but not at the main event. PP high command didn't want him anywhere near the stage. They were aware of the pestilence that had left the Balearic PP enervated, rudderless, flapping around like seagulls desperately hunting for a temporary leader on which they could swoop, spying one who would then hurriedly bury himself in the sand. No one seems to want the job, not even the regional secretary-general, Miquel Vidal, to whom high command afforded the honour of centre stage rather than Bauzá.

Consequently, JR was not able to join in the celebrations at the great unveiling. When all else fails and it has, except for the bribery of tax cuts, it's time for a new logo. Revival for the PP prior to the general election comes in the form of less seagull than previously. Ever since the party was formed in the late 1980s, it has symbolically soared but dive-bombed like a seagull, floated on the thermals of alternating fortunes. Now, the seagull has been deprived of the tips of its wings next to the word "populares", which is admittedly better than "unpopulares", but experts on such matters consider the new look a "disaster". Apart from anything else, the two colliding Ps are of a typography very similar to the P of Podemos.

The new logo would have been of minimal interest to JR. Madrid had tried to avoid his humiliation and they succeeded only in heaping more on to him. His Carnival is over. Like the sardine of Shrove Tuesday, he has been buried and consigned to the eternity of a Lent in the senate. His political fasting has begun.

In With The New: PSOE

So, farewell, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. You always seemed like a pleasant enough chap. A benign uncle with a hint of the oppressed hidden in your Gulag facial growth. But none of this helped in your turning around your party. As you said of the Euro elections, "the results are bad".

He should have gone after losing the election in 2011. But Spain's political parties can tolerate losers. Perhaps he had hoped that he might emulate Rajoy. A two-time loser but third time lucky, maybe only tolerated because he knew where the bodies were buried. One day they might be exhumed.

PSOE were given such an almighty great kicking in 2011 that a fresh start was demanded. The party flunked it. Faith was retained in Zapatero's faithful old retainer at a time when the party's face needed a clean shave and some reinvigorating moisturiser to rid it of its beardy socialism image. It could have done with a female face. It might now get one.

It's not as if the left in Spain is going mainly down the drain. The Euros proved as much. But PSOE's leftness had been centred and obscured by a Blairite chameleon form that it had adopted. No one quite knows what it stands for or where it is going. At least with Rajoy you know what the PP stands for, even if you might prefer it to sit down or curl up in a corner and put itself to sleep.

The strong performance of the left does, however, have to be placed in some context. Spaniards are good voters when it comes to their own elections. They turn up. Electoral abstemiousness of a Euro kind will be replaced by polling bingeing. The left will probably still perform well but the astonishing success of Podemos is most unlikely to carry through to the national or indeed regional elections. The right-wing press is already sharpening its knives and hunting for the hatchets. Sr. Iglesias will find his ponytail chopped off in his prime moment of seeking to influence prime ministerial selection.

The left vote is fragmented. PSOE have to know where they are amidst the pieces of this fractured jigsaw. Left, centre, right. Where exactly? They need new ideas but above all they need a new image. Austerity may have been the order of the day and the order of Brussels - one with which PSOE would have had to conform - but if there was to have been austerity, far better if it had been delivered to a suffering Spaniard as the fait accompli it was always going to have been by a face less austere than Rubalcaba's or indeed Rajoy's. Brighten up, PSOE; brighten up, Spain.

PSOE's performance at the Euro elections was nothing short of disastrous. The 23% of the vote it achieved was the lowest it had ever attained. The leader of its Euro campaign, Elena Valenciano, recognised that it was very bad. There are only degrees of badness with which PSOE can take any solace. Rubalcaba thought the results were merely bad. The very bad of Sra. Valenciano surely rules her out of the running as a successor to Rubalcaba. No more losers, PSOE. And consequently, perhaps, no Carme Chacón, who lost out to Rubalcaba in the race to succeed Zapatero. At least she has said that there is a need for PSOE to change. Indeed, but change into what?

It may change into an Andalusian model of PSOE socialism, that of the Andalusian president Susana Díaz. Some reports suggest that she is already nailed on, though she has suggested that she will continue in Andalusia. There again, declarations of brazen ambition at times of party mourning might not go down well in PR terms.

If not Sra. Díaz, then possibly Eduardo Madina, PSOE's secretary-general in Congress. I have previously played up his prospects, though a correspondent of mine has taken issue with me. He would be a Zapatero Mark II. Would the party want another Bambi or Bean? Possibly not.

There has been an inevitability that PSOE would find itself needing to find someone to lead it into the next elections in 2015. I had forecast that Rubalcaba would have been gone, and now he has, albeit he will limp on, dead man walking, in aiming weak blows to the PP body in Congress until a PSOE phoenix rises from the ashes of another electoral conflagration.

The inevitability was partly because of the failure to grasp the nettle at the end of 2011. It has also been because the electorate is fed up with a two-party system that stubbornly refuses to make itself transparent and accountable. The PP has to look at itself, too. The Euro elections were nothing to do with Europe. They were to do with Spain. Podemos may get scattered to the winds by the time of the national election, but there are other parties. New image time, PSOE.