The Job-Swapping Mayors Of Mallorca

Mayors in Mallorca job share. Or rather, they job swap. Top-dog musical chairs is a game played out at many a town hall, and it's all thanks to proportional representation and the consequent need for coalition. It does depend, however. Some mayors are secure in their four-year tenure, courtesy of their parties' majorities. Others, whose parties don't have majorities, are not obliged to enter into job-swapping contracts. They form settled coalitions or pacts. They may be perceived, even by other parties, as being the right man or woman to see out the four years.

The job swaps occur because pacts aren't settled. Parties insist on having some mayoral action. Negotiations for forming administrations after municipal elections can depend for their success on agreement to hand over the mayoral wand mid-term. Good consensual democratic stuff, it is really the only way that there can ever be something resembling continuity and control. Without such an arrangement, administrations would never get off the ground. And if they did, they would soon fall back to earth because of the untenable nature of minority government.

The continuity, though, has the inherent potential to be discontinuous. This seems obvious if there is a switch from a mayor representing a particular ideology to one with a different political perspective. The right can hand over to the left, or vice versa. In Arta, there is an example of the former. The El Pi mayor, Tolo Gili, has given way to PSOE's Manolo Galán.

But there may well be continuity. If the agreements for the four years were firm, if the personalities are right, if opposition parties don't cause problems, then even a move from right to left doesn't automatically mean a different course after two years. A further factor is the nature of the municipality. Smaller ones have smaller town halls in terms of councillors and structures. They can function in a more coherent fashion because of their scale, while the self-interests of parties in maintaining their positions of ruling power prevent them from disrupting the concord.

Palma town hall highlights the potential for discontinuity more than others. Its size makes it unique. It functions more like its own government than a mere town hall. The three-way pact of PSOE, Més and Podemos has been exposed as shaky, and the knowledge that there is to be a mayoral job swap has partly contributed to this. For two years, José Hila of PSOE has been a mayor on his way out, while Antoni Noguera of Més has been the mayor-in-waiting: he now only has another month to wait.

In a similar way to the Balearic government, Palma has departments which are controlled by the different parties. There may on the face of it be accord, consensus and so on, but the reality is something else. The conflicts this party control of portfolios causes are no better demonstrated than with new bylaws for terraces and illegal street selling. PSOE have clashed with Podemos. The impending change of mayor only complicates the situation.

There is additional complication because of Noguera's implication with the Més contracts' affair. The opposition Partido Popular, in any event keen to do anything possible to disrupt the pact, has made overtures to PSOE to keep Noguera out. Although an agreement exists, when it comes to the moment for the handover, there still has to be a vote of councillors to elect the new mayor. The PP won't succeed in its attempt because Hila and PSOE would be crucified by supporters were there to be such a volte-face.

The Palma case also raises questions as to the roles of outgoing and incoming mayors over the first two years of an administration. Noguera, with his responsibility for the model of the city, positioned himself as a virtual mayor. There is nothing more important for a mayor than the vision he has for a municipality. So, Noguera has spent two years preparing for the job. Hila will take over this model of the city portfolio. Will his vision be the same and how well might he take being told by Noguera that it will be?

Alaro is clearly a much smaller town hall, but in Guillem Balboa there is a situation similar to Noguera. The opposition Junts per Alaro has openly accused Balboa of having spent the time leading up to taking over as mayor next month in dedicating himself more to being the future mayor than being the councillor for urban planning. Oppositions do of course make such observations. Balboa refutes the claim, but is it so surprising that he might have been?

Job-swapping mayors good for democracy? Possibly they are, so long as there is continuity. That can of course all disappear because of new elections, but in the meantime, consider Llucmajor. They're on to their second mayor, and there's a third yet to come.

What Former Mayors Do Next

What does a mayor do when he or she is no longer mayor? Much depends on why the tenure finishes. In more extreme cases, a mayor ends up in jail, if particular naughtiness has been engaged in: Andratx with Eugenio Hidalgo is an example. A mayor may also move up the political food chain, either by design or by accident.

José Ramón Bauzá used his Marratxi mayoral credentials to launch himself on a largely unsuspecting Partido Popular and Balearic society and become the islands' president. Alternatively, the mayor's job is retained while pursuing higher things. Astonishing though it may seem, but Maria Munar was mayor of Costitx all the time she was minister for education and then president of the Council of Mallorca. It's safe to assume that she is not planning a return to Costitx town hall.

Miquel Ferrer, an Alcudia mayor for some years, was an accidental beneficiary of promotion. While Munar's Unió Mallorquina was crumbling under the mounting mountain of corruption evidence, he resigned as mayor in order to become tourism minister. It was almost a case of last man standing, i.e. a senior figure in the party who wasn't banged up or en route to being so. Alas for Miquel his ministerial tenure was brief, and he hasn't been seen in town hall circles ever since he and the remaining members of the UM were ejected from the Antich "pact" of government.

Otherwise, unless because of retirement or the offer of something better, a mayor ceases to be mayor because of election defeat. Does this mark the moment to move onto other things? Sometimes but certainly not always. The ranks of town halls' councillors are littered with ex-mayors, biding their time for the next election and their return to once more wield the mayoral wand: the PP's Rafel Torres in Inca is a case in point. There are, therefore, former mayors in a state of constant rotation and on the comeback trail. One election comes along, out they go; the next one, and in they step again.

But there is a further reason why a mayor is no longer, and this is the consequence of the "pact". It doesn't happen in all instances by any means. There are plenty of town hall coalitions at present which don't envisage any mid-term mayoral change, but there are some. Where Santa Margalida is concerned, for example, the handing-over has already occurred, a mere eighteen months into the four-year period. More logically it takes place after two years, which is what will happen in Palma.

José Hila will step down in June. After he does, what will he do? One would assume that he will remain a councillor and become one of the array of deputy mayors. But it isn't as simple as that. Whether he stays or whether he goes (and going would be because staying would represent something of a humiliation), does one anticipate his spending the remaining two years plotting his comeback as mayor in 2019? Almost certainly yes, but Palma doesn't operate like mostly any other municipality. There are higher authorities who have their input, say and decisions when it comes to candidates for mayor.

Palma is its own mini-government. This status is why the position of mayor is of such critical importance to the political parties. Prior to the last election there were all the machinations to ensure that Mateu Isern was unable to stand again for the PP. And with the next election some two years or so away, the jockeying for positions are already beginning, with PSOE manoeuvring towards the starter's tape.

In an apparent reversal of promotion upwards (to government), it is understood that President Armengol has her man lined up to be candidate - the employment, trade and industry minister Iago Negueruela. This wouldn't of course be like a demotion because of Palma's mini-government pretensions. It would be a plum job. But why Negueruela?

In addition to being from good (Galician) socialist stock, he has been something of a safe pair of hands at the ministry, capable of announcing a load of statistics and initiatives to combat labour fraud. He wasn't actually elected as one of the 59 parliamentary deputies, but a background in employment inspection was what landed him the appointment. None of this, though, is a good reason for him to be mayor. However, Armengol is determined to have her man for the simple reason that Hila wasn't her choice last time and there are still gaping wounds among PSOE in Palma because of the infighting that was the prelude to Hila's election.

Whether Negueruela, a "foreigner", would be the one to unite factions seems unlikely, so when it finally comes to the choice of candidates for 2019, Hila will have lined himself up for another go and for a comeback. The battle for Palma has already begun.


Index for January 2017

Airport policy - 11 January 2017
Associations: too many - 12 January 2017
Big Data and tourism - 27 January 2017
CIA files, Joan March and Nazis - 30 January 2017
Culture, tourist tax and top stories from 2016 - 1 January 2017
Floods, drought and olive ebola - 29 January 2017
GOB and tourism - 10 January 2017
Goigs and Sant Antoni - 14 January 2017
Holiday rentals - 6 January 2017, 16 January 2017, 21 January 2017, 25 January 2017
Hotels and virtual reality - 18 January 2017
Illustrious sons and daughters - 2 January 2017
Mariano Rajoy - 3 January 2017
Mayors and their comebacks - 31 January 2017
Ministers and travel - 26 January 2017
Musical theatre - 22 January 2017
News and repetitious messages - 20 January 2017
Podemos tensions - 8 January 2017, 15 January 2017, 17 January 2017, 23 January 2017
Sant Antoni and tourism - 5 January 2017
Sant Julià - 7 January 2017
Sant Sebastià - 24 January 2017
Satire: demons and Kings - 9 January 2017
Tourism promotion - 13 January 2017
Tourismphobia - 19 January 2017
Tourist tax - 4 January 2017, 28 January 2017

Mayors Who May Not Be Mayors

Here's a conundrum. Why is it that mayors may not be mayors? Is it because they are not allowed to be? How can that be, if they are already mayors? The question's illogical. Ah but, what if mayors may not be mayors because, despite appearances which indicate that they are, in reality they aren't? Does that clarify things? Tell you what, let's have an example.

It is the Partido Popular's Marga Duran who has let the cat out of the bag. She isn't a mayor, though she would have liked to have been. She lost out in Palma because the three-way alliance (?) between PSOE, Més and the Podemos Palma branch (Som Palma) blocked her way. As such, it might be expected that she would be less than glowing in her praise of the mayor who denied her the opportunity. So is it all sour grapes? One rather suspects that it isn't. In fact, one pretty much knows that it isn't. The cat left the bag long ago and has been been stroked benignly and smilingly ever since. By whom? By a mayor who may not be a mayor. José Hila, the mayor of Palma.

There's the title right enough, but otherwise ... ? Marga confirmed, if confirmation were required, the reality. In essence, Hila performs an honorary role. He appears when it is necessary for him to appear, smiles nicely, tells everyone that there's consensus and dialogue and then disappears to his honorary office. He may appear to be the mayor but he isn't. In Marga's damning words, he carries no authority. Instead, his town hall is governed by three factions, one of them his own - PSOE - from which some mutterings have emanated regarding his effectiveness. They have not been expressed loudly but they rumble lowly nevertheless in the seventeenth-century corridors of the old town hall.

Which is a bit of a shame. Hila seems to be a perfectly pleasant and decent bloke. One might disagree with some of his politics, but what's there to dislike? Smartly turned out, a ready smile, always there to offer supportive words. Perfect. But if all he's doing is performing an honorary function, then you would hope for all of this.

Is it really his fault? Up to a point it is. He was after all party to the three-party alliance of which he and PSOE are a part. The question mark following alliance above indicates that this alliance (aka pact) is not all that it may appear or wish to appear. Hila is thus a hostage to the misfortunes of PSOE in needing to establish pacts. Without them, they wouldn't be setting foot in the corridors of power, be they those of the town hall, regional government or the Council of Mallorca.

PSOE can generally only operate in alliance. It's been like this for some time in Mallorca, but until recently the dice were loaded in its favour. Since the elections last year, the dice have rolled differently. Where PSOE ostensibly lead, there are powers behind the thrones. Leaders, e.g. Hila, are therefore relegated to honorary roles. Grace and favour, bestowed on them by those who wield the real power, not because those others gained more votes but because without them PSOE would be nowhere.

President Armengol is similarly a hostage to misfortune. Her honorary function isn't, however, quite as tenuous as Hila's (not yet anyway). The mayor was only ever half a mayor anyway. Under the deal with Més and Som Palma, he'll be stepping aside next year. By August 2017 he will no longer be mayor. He's already, therefore, on his way out, though it is questionable whether he's ever been in. He will be succeeded by Antoni Noguera of Més. So sure was he of the prize that awaits him, that he was given (or more likely gave himself) the grand responsibility for the "model of the city". Blimey, it doesn't get more mayoral (in-waiting or already in practice) than that. He has the whole city in his hands. Unlike Hila.

Pacts, coalitions, alliances - call them what you like - can only work if there genuinely is consensus and not a stream of consciousness which seeks to confirm that there is. What one gets is what one has in Palma and the regional government. (The Council of Mallorca is rather different and that's largely due to Miquel Ensenyat.) Marga Duran is correct in referring to the "three governments" in Palma, the three parties each with their own domains, pursuing their own agendas. Oh, they'll say otherwise, and not just Hila, but is anyone really convinced?

Armengol, meanwhile, appears so in thrall to the model she presides over that she is wishing it on Pedro Sánchez, PSOE nationally and therefore Spain. But it is for appearance. She would hardly say anything else, given that she was taken hostage by Més and Podemos. Presidents as well as mayors may not be presidents.

Politics Of The Fiesta Programme

"Not possible, it is fiesta." That was 29 June out of the equation. "Thursday not possible, it's fiesta." So it is. I had been seeking an appointment with the mayor. As it turns out, on account of my insistence and the pressing nature of the need to make the appointment, it is possible for tomorrow. Initially it hadn't seemed to be: new mayors do have very busy schedules; one can accept that.

These busy schedules do have to take into account fiestas. Town halls, mayors have many responsibilities but none more defines the function of a town hall than the organisation of its fiestas and its participation. And this does of course entail being shut on certain fiesta days.

Sant Pere is the fiesta for the port of Alcudia. The town has its own fiesta - Sant Jaume in July. But then the town hall is a town hall for the whole of Alcúdia. It has its days off even if these days off don't, strictly speaking, apply to others in the whole of the municipality. Sant Pere one can understand, but Mare de Déu de la Victoria as well? In fact it is perhaps even more understandable. The hermitage at La Victoria, the camp-over of the night of 1 July, the fiestas for the Mare de Déu up the mountain above Alcúdia are hardcore tradition: more so even than Pere and Jaume. Few visitors attend; they are fiestas for the people of Alcúdia. For the town hall and for the mayor there is a very well-defined role in these fiestas. On Thursday next week, as is the case each year, the mayor will lead the ball de bot folk dance before there are showers of sweets and hazelnuts. The town hall does of course need to be shut on that day, even if the ball de bot isn't until half past four. There again, the traditional arrival of dignitaries, accompanied by the band of music is at half eleven in the morning. "Thursday not possible, it's fiesta."

The arrangements for La Victoria are the same each year: exactly the same. From the climb and the whistling to the hermitage of the evening of 1 July through the fritters and mistela wine, the folk dance, the offer of camomile and the paella, they never vary. Yet there is always the programme; it is tagged on to the one produced for Sant Pere, even if it is an exact repeat of years gone by.

Fiesta programmes are themselves matters of great town hall importance. So much so that they can often not be released until late, much to the annoyance of those who would rather like to know, more in advance, what will be going on: La Victoria doesn't alter, but Sant Pere, some of it, does. There has been an added reason this year for any tardiness in the programme publication - and it will have applied to other municipalities as well - and that is the mayor's introduction and mayor's photo with the introduction. Woe betide any printer who accidentally uses the photo of the ex-mayor.

These mayoral intros, replete with the correct photo, can be rather like a football manager's programme notes, and with the arrival of a new administration they are even more so than usual. The new mayor hopes that the people will have confidence in the town hall's ability to organise fiestas and cultural acts and, after the fiestas are over, will also have confidence in the town hall to deal with their concerns. The town hall is at the disposal of the people of Alcúdia. "Molts anys. Bones festes de Sant Pere."

There is other stuff about thanking the fishermen of the port and being honoured to express the significance of the celebration of the port's patron saint, but then it goes on to speak of Alcúdia not being able to live without the sea and its role in tourism, the primary sector of the local economy. As much as it is a greeting for the fiestas it is also a political statement. Is this appropriate? Should the greeting not simply confine itself to the fiestas themselves and to their tradition and cultural significance? Perhaps, but the fiesta programme is a prime source of town hall communication. The fiestas themselves are the most visible manifestation of town hall involvement in the lives of local people; they are the town hall's face, and the face of the mayor and his or her message is a key opportunity to communicate.

It is perhaps for this reason, as much as providing information about the schedule of events, that so much attention (and money) can be lavished on fiesta programmes. They can seem to be an unnecessary expenditure, especially if the schedule never alters, but they are a statement. Produce a rotten one and it can appear as if the town hall doesn't care.

The Long March Of Miquel March

In September 1990 the Dalai Lama came to Mallorca. A principal reason for him having done so was to attend the closing of an exhibition of Tibetan art in Pollensa. He donated the Buddhist Kalachakra mandala that is now to be seen in the town's museum. When he had arrived at Palma airport, one of the dignitaries who was there to greet him was Martí March, the then mayor of Pollensa. Twenty-five years on, there is another March who is mayor of the town. He is one of Martí March's three sons: Miquel Àngel March.

There is something vaguely spiritual, other-worldly about March the son, as though he doesn't quite belong in the world of politics. But that world has been turned upside down over the past weeks. He's not a Podemos man, but he is a GOB man: for one score years he was its face. In 1988, two years before the the Dalai Lama's visit, he became the spokesperson for the environmentalists. Those who once might not have belonged in politics now do belong. Local politics - some local politics - is unrecognisable compared with what it was.

The Catalan section of "El País" ran a profile of March recently. It was like a paean, an expression or hymn of thanksgiving rooted in Greek mythology, littered with references such as to the "mythical" beach of Es Trenc (a battleground for GOB), to melancholic walks, to the playing of the flute and the drum alongside the piping xeremiers, to living in the mountains. Another world to the typical one of local politics.

GOB was once challenged - by a Partido Popular politician whose name I cannot now recall - to either put up or shut up. The allusion was to GOB's influence. If it was so determined to direct political thinking, then it should become its own party. It didn't but its former spokesperson is now a political leader. He had been approached previously but had declined offers to enter mainstream politics (insofar as there now is a mainstream). As an independent and a well-known figure in Pollensa, he was brought into the Junts Avançam fold along with PSOE, Més and the Republican Left. There was a chance to change things, he noted before the election. Change will doubtless come.

But you cannot have been GOB's leader for twenty years or have been subject to assaults from the right-wing press and not have developed a hard-nosed edge. Even the lyricism of the "El País" article recognised this. It mentioned issues that had already occurred to me: those to do with Formentor, i.e. the definition of planning, the expansion of the hotel, the Alfonso Cortina chalet. Planning - urban or rural - is a March forte. Combine this with environmentalism and plenty of attention will now be turned to the landscapes of Pollensa, to developments or not-developments. With the support of Més and that of the Alternativa (not part of the administration but a willing ally), the long march of March to the mayoral throne in Pollensa will culminate with more than just seeking, once and for all, to gain open access for the marchers to the Castell del Rei - across land owned by a different March family, the banking one. 

There will be faults to cross on the Pollensa landscapes along the way. One has already and inevitably opened up: the semi-pedestrianisation scheme for Puerto Pollensa. Tomeu Cifre's "stellar" project was not realised during his mayoral lifetime and it will now be redefined. This is not surprising. It was GOB who put one of the final spanners in the constantly delayed works by citing an urban plan of the early 1990s that the pedestrianisation had to be total, not semi. The coastal road, however (or if) it is pedestrianised, passes by the Ullal area. The project for a five-star hotel will now surely be allowed to finally drown under the negligible water content of a wetland long since mostly dried up. But here is another fault to tackle.

The Junts were handed the Pollensa administration courtesy of the Unió Mollera Pollencina, the Puerto Pollensa party. This is a party minus an ideology but defensive of business interests. There is a revealing entry on its Facebook page about luxury hotels, a link to an item in "Ultima Hora". The comment says: "Very little of this tourism is coming to our town. The lack of five-star hotels is a deficit in our hotel offer. This is a challenge for our new administration". Challenge indeed. The UMP wants new hotels. The call from business for there to be new hotels has been sounded for several years.

There will be battles aplenty. Over the Pollensa festival, for example, and the apparent lack of consultation surrounding its programme for this year and the continued appointment (by Tomeu Cifre) of Joan Valent as director. The Alternativa has kicked up a fuss over this. It will be renewed. But will there continue to be one battle for Miquel March? He is a regular Moor on behalf of the Moors versus Christians. The march has just begun.

The Day Of The Wand

Garrick Ollivander knew a thing or two about wands. "The wand chooses the wizard ... it's not always clear why," he informed the young wizard. For those of you who may have been living an hermitic existence for the past several years or have become one of those foreigners who has gone so native that the only tales you will consider are those in Mallorquín of Antoni Maria Alcover (in which case you won't be reading this anyway), let me tell you who Garrick was - Harry Potter's wand supplier. Garrick was right. It most certainly isn't clear why a wand ends up with who it does.

Yesterday was the day of the wand. Some might call it a baton, a rod, a staff or just a pointy stick. But the mayoral "vara" (which is really a rod and is the official term) is in fact a "varita" (a wand) for the very simple reason that it has magically ended up with a mayor and no one is entirely sure how or indeed why. Some wavers of the wand are doing so without having secured municipal administrations which guarantee them majority support, but they were handed the wand thanks to the ceremonies of investiture: solemn occasions when parties with no intention of entering into an administration nonetheless willingly permit the wand-waver to ascend to the mayoral throne.

The chaotic post-election bargaining that has gone on between the various parties in the villages and towns has now at least come to an end. But it is only the beginning. How on earth are some of these municipalities going to operate when there are coalitions comprising such disparate philosophies as there are and, in certain instances, cannot depend upon majorities to effect local legislation? It is easy to perhaps blame Podemos for all this mayhem, but other parties have been similarly puerile. The only one to emerge with real credit is Més. Its leader Biel Barceló was in effect telling PSOE and Podemos to behave themselves and to allow a three-way coalition for the regional government. Més has not imposed the sort of conditions that other parties have for coalitions. It has been almost statesmanlike amidst squabbling akin to the playground.

You do at least have to hand it to Podemos. They said they wouldn't accept PSOE as leaders of administrations, and they have more or less stuck to their guns. But, is this really what people voted for? For a party to decline places in administrations because of differences it might have? If you vote for a party, do you not do so on the pretext that you want it to be in government? Podemos - "We Can" - is more like "Well, we could, if it wasn't for them".

In Palma, however, the Soms of Podemos have indeed said they can. And will. It took some doing, and once more Més, in the form of Antoni Noguera, were the diplomats who got everyone to see sense, but the compromise will see the wand metaphorically split in half. Two years of a PSOE mayor, two years for a Més mayor, and the Soms' bloke will be the administration's spokesperson for the duration.

Trying to make sense of how these administrations are formed is about as difficult as understanding the election system which gives rise to them. Eoin Morgan, England's one-day cricket captain, said on Friday that he didn't understand how Duckworth-Lewis works. The same can be said of the electoral and post-electoral system here: it is a Duckworth-Lewis of arcane obscurity. While there is so much desire in this new age of participatory politics for transparency perhaps it could start with making the election system a touch more transparent - as in being even vaguely understandable. This all said, it has allowed for its moments of schadenfreude; none more so delicious than in Calvia. What was it the Partido Popular's José Manuel Ruiz was predicting before the election? A landslide? The only slide has been that of his party. Out of the town hall. Duckworth-Lewis has rained on his parade and all the pre-election barbecues etc. designed to attract support that wasn't there. Bye, bye.

There again, Ruiz may be able to get his own back. Calvia is a good example of the wand-waver only - as yet - having a majority in order to confirm the bestowing of the wand. Alfonso Rodríguez can admire his newly acquired varita, but if the Yes Maybes of Sí Se Puede and the open ones of the Open Left decide to say maybe not and close the door, then he could be stuffed. Unlikely, as a formal coalition may yet emerge, but Calvia goes to show how uncertain the post-electoral scene is.

The House That Eugenio Built

They sent the bulldozers in during the second week of November 2010. The wrecking and tidying-up crews worked efficiently and effectively. Where a chalet had stood became once more a plot of land in an area of special countryside protection: pastoral equilibrium was re-established. The chalet, over seventy square metres in size, should not have been built. The only licence for building had been for the renovation of a farm shed.

Who is to say that had the chalet not been demolished that it would not now be subject to "regularisation"? Many a property on Mallorca's rural land was granted an amnesty last year under the regional government's Ley de Suelo. The futures of some of these buildings would have been documented and stored in the pending trays of town halls or other authorities, some stamped in red with a threatening "denuncia", awaiting transmission to the courts. Their executions had been stayed at their death rows among bucolic greenery until one day came the pardon. Pay a suitable retribution and all will be forgiven. The bulldozers sighed. There was no work for them.

But the chalet I mention never had a chance. It had to be removed and to be levelled. It had to be restored as a place of natural habitat. There is no X to mark the spot of where it was. You wouldn't know it had ever been there. This was ground-zero chalet. There were strong political as well as legal reasons why all physical memory of it should have been expunged. This had been the chalet that Eugenio had built. 

Eugenio Hidalgo, the one-time and now disgraced and imprisoned mayor of Andratx, was one of the unlucky ones. Unlucky because, though he engaged in widespread planning abuses and got sent to prison as a result, he might well have believed that, abuse or not, the chalet would eventually be given official reprieve or become sufficiently well established in terms of the years it had been built that it would no longer be the target for the bulldozers. After all, wasn't this how such things worked in Mallorca?

Had the chalet been anyone else's, it might well have been reprieved. But it wasn't anyone else's. It was Eugenio's. A further pound of flesh was required in addition to the jail sentence. It became ground-zero chalet in a revenge attack. The demolition was symbolic restitution for the destruction of public confidence through the chain reaction of what Eugenio hadn't bargained for: the actions of anti-corruption prosecutors newly emboldened and supported by the national attorney-general. Matas, Munar, Ordinas, Nadal, Buils, many more have been burned by the firestorm that the prosecutors unleashed. And it was one whose source can be localised to protected land in Andratx. Ground zero.

Llorenç Suau is a mayoral descendant of Eugenio's. The current mayor of Andratx, he won't be re-standing. In October last year, Llorenç and two former mayors, Isabel Alemany and Francesc Femenias, were indicted to declare "in quality" by a Palma court looking into supposed irregularities surrounding the licence for developing car parking in Sant Elm, which just so happens to be the property of the Alemany family. Though not accused, Suau has opted against re-election as he supports the stance of his party, the PP, on not having candidates caught up in legal proceedings. He reckons, though, that whereas the presumption of innocence is a right for all citizens, it doesn't apply to politicians. There is now a presumption of guilt. And, sadly and generally speaking, he is right; sadly because it shouldn't be so and generally speaking because, notwithstanding attempts to clean up local politics, the public wants to believe in political crookedness.

For Llorenç, the problem is that there is someone whose guilt was proven. Eugenio's. Hidalgo is the cross that Andratx mayors have to bear. Llorenç knows this. Innocent or not innocent, the public smell urban planning indiscretions - real or not real - as acutely as they detect the burning of forest land. Their senses have been heightened by the Hidalgo-fallout and Tramuntana firestorms.

Elsewhere, and even with rules laid down by the PP regarding candidates, mayors are not as prepared as Llorenç to sacrifice themselves. Tomeu Cifre in Pollensa is one. Local rather than general party rules appear to apply to him. He has not been charged with any criminal offence, thus he can re-stand and, it should be noted, court documentation in respect of one accusation against him appears not to have been forthcoming from his accuser.

But perhaps mud sticks, regardless. Eugenio didn't build a house of corruption for mayors; it was there before him. What he did build, though, was an enduring edifice of perception, proven in and reinforced by the courts, that will not shift from public sight. Innocence, guilt. Who would be a mayor?

Magalluf: From mamading to marketing to Manu

According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), the definition of marketing (approved July 2013) is "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large". Given that the association was formed in 1937, it appears to have taken it an inordinately long time to arrive at a definition as to why it exists, but be that as it may.

There was a marketing operation in Magalluf last week. Where?, I hear you ask. Not heard of that place before. Consequently, a marketing operation would be useful to grow a spot of awareness of the place. But no, we have of course all heard of Magalluf. Over and over and over and over ... . This was a different type of marketing operation. One, so some claimed last week, conducted by the Guardia Civil, but one, by implication, that was at the behest of someone or some other authority removed from the Guardia. A marketing consultant perhaps.

The operation (not formally named Operación Marketing) involved the rounding-up of a bunch of alleged ne'er-do-wells who had been engaged in a spot of drug dealing. Well, quite probably rather more than a spot. How, therefore, was this a marketing operation? Extrapolating from the AMA's definition, one might suppose that what was being inferred was that a set of institutions (Guardia and/or others) communicated an offering of ne'er-do-wells who were of value (because of their arrest) to the rest of us in society. Is this what was meant?

Of course, what one presumed was being suggested was that it was an operation to show that something was being done in Magalluf or that it was an operation to divert attention from things that have been done - like the arrest of three local police officers. It was all nonsense. The operation has been planned for a goodly amount of time and had nothing to do with other local difficulties. If there was any justification for the charge of a marketing operation, then it was that the full glare of publicity that was thrown on to the arrests. But publicity, as any good marketing person can tell you, is but one part of the marketing mix. People need to get their terminology right. And even if there was a sizable amount of publicity, what was so wrong? Drug dealers? Get rid of them.



What a sad evening it was. With the sound of the ghosts of Catalan invaders of yore wooing in the heavenly skies above Santa Ponsa, Manu signalled the end of his own conquest of Calvia town hall. To absolutely no one's surprise, he announced he wouldn't be running as mayor again. Cheers versus tears? Hmm. It was his fourth discourse to commemorate the fiestas of Rei En Jaume. "The number four represents the square ... the four elements and the realisation of ideas," he discoursed. Which was pretty deep stuff to be honest. Earth, water, air, fire. We had not previously been aware that Manu had been applying Aristotelian philosophy to his period in office. "It is time to be as objective as possible when providing the profit and loss account," he mixed metaphored in moving from the ancient Greeks to 101 accounting.

Manu did not avoid THAT subject, the one to do with the three local police officers - you might have heard about it. He could not ignore the seriousness of such an event, he went on, which was in keeping with his learning from the Greeks. The old boy Aristotle had after all invoked the four elements in his treatise "On Generation and Corruption", which is also known as "On Coming to Be and Passing Away". This alternative title seems rather apt. On coming to be mayor and passing away from being mayor. Manu's long goodbye has begun.

As he knows his marketing, Manu wove this into his accountancy theme by alluding to the successes. Which is what you would have expected. The trouble is that no politician is remembered for the positives, such as getting the street cleaners to run on time. They are remembered for the other stuff.

Likability: Isern versus Bauzá

Palma is a big city. 407,648 inhabitants, according to 2012 figures, getting on for half the population of the island and over a third of the total Balearics population. It is Spain's eighth largest city, but its bigness is magnified because of the smallness of the rest of the population and so confers on it a status that is disproportionately large for its size. And a way this status reveals itself is through the public administration of the city - it is a virtual government within a government.

When you preside over a city of such status, your role as mayor is unlike that of any other town in the Balearics. It carries a very much greater responsibility and it brings with it recognition. You are the one mayor in Mallorca who people will have heard of (though there can't be many who now also haven't heard of Manu Onieva). It is a recognition which affords you a certain power if you so wish to exercise this power. You command over 400,000 people. Popular, and you are a force to be reckoned with.

Mateo Isern will not be liked by all, but he has a public profile of likability. Being liked is not a pre-requisite for public office, but it doesn't harm a politician if he or she has a well of goodwill that likability generates. Such likability can be turned to one's advantage, especially if there are others around who are liked less or very little.

Isern's likability factor has been such that it might have been forecast that he would, despite the plummeting likability of his party - the PP - hang on to his role as head of the Palma government within a government. But when there is a government within a government, there comes an additional pressure - that of party wars: in Isern's case, his own party. He will not be mayor come next spring, not because his party wouldn't have received sufficient votes but because his party won't let him. Or rather, the "Rodríguez" faction in Palma in alliance with President Bauzá won't let him.

Isern has been a dead man walking for months. José María Rodríguez, the PP's political chief in Palma, never exactly well-disposed to Isern, has, it would appear, been working with Bauzá on the plan to get rid of Isern since the spring. His alliance with Bauzá seems a little odd. Rodríguez is of the Matas era, someone who was forced to resign as the government delegate for the Balearics - a job he got, one always fancied, with less some fulsome support from Bauzá - when the spectre of corruption surrounded him; he was implicated as part of the investigations into Matas. What swung Bauzá around to the side of the so-called "rodriguistas" in Palma was the massive fallout he had with Isern.

This was partly caused by the spat between the two over where the second casino in Palma should be located. Three months after it, Isern offered to resign. Bauzá wouldn't let him, though the more likely reason for him not going was that Madrid got very agitated about the prospect of a popular mayor walking off the job. The bad blood because of that spat back in November last year has never been cured. Isern has, since then, appeared to be a possible challenger to Bauzá. He has seemed less than enthusiastic about certain government policies - language, for example - and in April he was the star turn at a lunch held in Muro where there was talk of a convention being called to seek drastic changes to the direction of the Bauzá administration. That lunch was probably the tipping-point and what took Bauzá into the arms of the "rodriguistas". Isern's number was going to be up, and a way of ensuring that he didn't decide to stand again as mayor or to make life very difficult for him was to load the "list" of Palma PP candidates with "rodriguistas".

Isern has seemingly enjoyed the support of certain PP prominenti in Madrid, notably María Dolores Cospedal, the party's secretary-general, and there is some thought that Madrid will get involved in the whole affair, especially now as the local PP party machine is intending to use a system of primaries to select the mayoral candidate in Palma, despite Isern saying that the party statutes don't recognise such a system.

Behind all of this affair, one suspects that there is another dynamic. There has been a personality clash and it has been one between a liked and a disliked politician. Bauzá has made so many enemies that he was bound to have become disliked. Maybe he is jealous of Isern's likability, but depriving him of the mayor's job might just backfire on him. When you are head of a government within a government, it is not too big a leap to become head of the government.

First Past The Post: Election of mayors

One of the first acts that Pedro Sánchez, the new leader of PSOE, undertook was to let Mariano Rajoy know that he was far from pleased with an electoral reform which the PP plans to push through in time for the municipal elections next spring. This reform would result in the candidate for mayor whose party polls the most votes being pretty much assured of becoming mayor. It is a reform which is being pushed through without the PP having sought cross-party consensus, which would make it the first reform to electoral laws (since democracy) to have been implemented without agreement. It is also a reform which contradicts what Rajoy said in 2013; that the PP would not use its parliamentary majority to change electoral legislation.

PSOE and other parties are claiming that the PP is doing exactly this and that the use of the parliamentary majority amounts to an abuse. Moreover, it is argued that the reform is all about seeking to ensure that the PP keeps hold of power in municipalities. With support having ebbed away, the PP is accused of manipulating the system in order to try and shore up its municipal positions.

At present, the electoral system does permit the selection of a mayor from a party which doesn't poll the highest. It is a system which might appear odd, but it reflects the nature of proportional representation and it gives rise to the types of coalition administrations which are far from uncommon or to what potentially could seem unjust. To give an example, consider the situation in Alcúdia at the 2011 elections. The PP polled 39.25% of the vote, 16 percentage points more than the second placed Convergencia (as then was). This gave the PP eight councillors, one short of a majority in a council of seventeen. Had Carme Garcia, who turned her back on her PSM Mallorcan socialists party, sided with opposition parties, the PP would not have become the ruling administration and Coloma Terrasa would not have become mayor. Whatever the arguments about Carme Garcia, had the PP and Terrasa been denied by a coalition of other parties, there would have been nothing electorally wrong, but morally there almost certainly would have been. 

The Rajoy reform proposal has yet to really be made clear - it is not due to go to Congress for approval until October - but it can count on the support of the PP in the  Balearics. Its secretary-general, Miquel Vidal, firmly believes that the reform should be effected and that it is one which carries the support of 90% of the electorate. It is not logical, he has said, that a gold medal winner should hand the medal over to the person in third place. The reform will give greater stability, he has suggested. But then, as a good PP man, you would expect him to say this.

What the reform is understood to entail is that a mayor would automatically be elected if his or her party polls 40% of the vote. There is also a stipulation for a lead of seven percentage points over the next party (though this is unclear as it has also been said that it would be five per cent). Reporting is therefore confused. It is being stated as 40% and a seven percentage point lead, when it is surely "or" not "and". This being so, a calculation has been made, based on 2011 results in the Balearics, which suggests that there wouldn't have been any substantial difference had this reformed system applied then. The PP would have gained the same number of mayors. The only advantage would have been that it would not have had to seek support from other parties in certain towns in order for its mayoral candidate to be selected.

In fact, 40% of the vote almost invariably means that a party gains a majority and so doesn't need to seek other parties' support. In this regard, the reform wouldn't make any difference. A seven percentage point lead stipulation might guarantee the selection of a mayor but it would not remove the need for a council to be made up of representatives of different parties. In Pollensa its mayor, Tomeu Cifre, would still have been mayor in 2011, but the PP didn't even manage 25% of the vote. In order to get a majority administration, it would still have had to have indulged in horse-trading with other parties.

And what would happen if there were no 40% and no clear lead? In this instance, apparently, there would be a run-off between the main candidates. Meaning what precisely?

The reform would almost certainly be prejudicial to smaller parties for which aspirations of getting a mayor into power would be dashed. But morally is it wrong to deny a candidate whose party polls the most votes? Perhaps so, but then such is the nature of proportional representation.

The Mayors' Rebellion: Partido Popular in Mallorca

Imagine you were back in 1974 Spain and you were miffed with the government. What options were open to you to express this miffedness? There weren't any. Being miffed was best dealt with by keeping mum. The Generalísimo may have been on his last legs, but fascism still had legs; it didn't do the listening attentively to popular concerns, touchy-feely democracy stuff.

The well-being of democracy in Spain and the Balearics has been the target for a liberal amount of navel-gazing over the past few weeks. The liberally minded have been less than impressed. In the Balearics they have been echoing, albeit in more measured terms, charges of dictatorial and fascistic behaviour. Laughable though such charges are, José Ramón Bauzá has been the target of them. But being called a fascist has sort of stuck; higher courts in the Balearics are ensuring that it will. A final ruling in favour of union leader Lorenzo Bravo, who called Bauzá a fascist, is likely to be made following the application last week by the Supreme Court to confirm a previous court decision in his favour.

But this is not 1974. Those anxieties over the rude health of democracy notwithstanding, in 1974 a bunch of stroppy parents in Menorca couldn't have got away with lodging a complaint with a Palma court against Bauzá, education minister Joana Camps and the secretary for education, Guillem Estarellas, which claims abuse of public office and violation of civil rights. This is 2014, and the complaint has been lodged. 

The origins of the complaint are, you won't be surprised to learn, the introduction of trilingual teaching. Whatever misgivings there might be about TIL, taking it to a court and to a possible conclusion that would result in disqualification from public office and fines seems a bit extreme. Or is it? Is it not in fact a manifestation of precisely the concern about the exercise of democracy? That it isn't well practised and that the only resort is the courtroom. Seeking legal redress happens too often for a society which supposedly adheres to democratic principles.

Bauzá might have been better advised to have laughed off Bravo's insult. By himself dragging a matter through the courts, he has highlighted the insult. Honour impugned and all that, but he should have treated Bravo with contempt and moved on rather than taking up arms. But Bauzá has not chosen his battles wisely. It is why the Partido Popular is currently giving a good impression of imploding or disappearing down a vast ravine that has appeared in its ranks. TIL was just one of them; a battle worth undertaking perhaps, but one that was tactically flawed. Taking on the armies of the teachers and the Catalan indignants was one thing; rousing his own side into opposition was quite another. The charge of dictatorial behaviour levelled against him is a nonsense. Without the unquestioning fealty of a rank and file, there can be no dictator.

The divisions that were already evident have become ever more apparent over the past week. The spin doctors sought to assure the party faithful (and anyone else) that Bauzá and Palma's mayor Mateo Isern were the best of mates after all, and they included the PP's parliamentary spokesperson, Nuria Riera: "there are no divisions in the PP," she said lamely. Isern confirmed that there were differences between the two of them, but attributed these to their different styles of doing things and to differing personalities, rather than to differences on policy. He wasn't convincing. And this lack of conviction has been given greater substance by the revelation that Isern offered his immediate resignation as mayor at the end of February, to which Bauzá apparently replied that he could go (as mayor) when he told him he could go.

Isern was something of the star attraction at a lunch in Muro, one that led to the possible organisation of a convention to seek drastic changes in the direction and management of the Bauzá administration. Rebellion. PP mayors are mightily concerned about the elections next year, and their rebelliousness was given greater substance by criticisms of Bauzá by the former president, Gabriel Cañellas. At the lunch the word was that Bauzá could only really rely on his right-hand man, the vice-president Antoni Gómez. And so there was another lunch, this time in Inca, one to which Gómez was sent to head off the rebels. He almost certainly hasn't. What happens now? Will the mayors try to remove Bauzá? Who knows, but one thing's for sure, this would not have been happening to a dictator.

Not Boldly Going: Local administration reform

A law of some significance came into effect on 30 December. It is the national law "of rationalisation and sustainability of local administration", the one by which the number of paid councillors at town halls will be slashed following the next local elections in 2015 and by which mayors of towns (sic) with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants will cease to be full-time.

There are six municipalities in Mallorca which have under 1,000 people. They are Ariany, Banyalbufar, Deià, Escorca, Estellencs and Fornalutx. It isn't completely bad news for prospective mayors of these municipalities as the law, somewhat vaguely, allows for mayors to "exceptionally" be able to be part-time and to receive a remuneration within maximum limits set out in the national budget. Quite what exceptionally means is unclear, but the principle of taking away a full-time salaried post could well mean that no one will wish to bother standing for the post of mayor.

In practice, but it depends on the municipality, there are already mayors in the many towns of Spain with fewer than 1,000 residents who don't take a salary, so the fear that the Mallorca Six will end up minus a mayor from next year is probably exaggerated. Nevertheless, without a full-time job and the possibility of a full-time salary, one does have to wonder why anyone would bother taking on the aggravation that goes with the role. Other than political ambition, the job would hold little appeal.

Though Mallorca has its six tiny municipalities and several others with fewer than 5,000 people, the fragmentation of local administration is nothing like it is in other parts of Spain. 91% of all Spanish municipalities have fewer than 10,000 people. In Mallorca, the percentage is 70%. And when it comes to towns with a population less than 1,000, Mallorca's percentage is just over 10%, compared with a staggering 60% nationally.

The reform that will see mayors of these small places deprived of the automatic right to full-time salaries is being seen as a means of the government seeking rationalisation without actually legislating. In other words, mergers of municipalities will occur because it is no longer tenable to administer the smallest of towns as separate entities. There is also, it might be noted, the legal provision to enforce merger or to just do away with municipalities if they fail to operate in a financially efficient manner.

If merger is what the government wishes, then would it not have been better for it to have been that much bolder and enforced this anyway, rather than leaving it to stealth or inefficiency? It may have wanted to be bolder, but it would have been a very difficult step to have taken. Tampering with local identity in such a way would be more than just a political risk, it would have been political suicide. Or some would believe that it would have been.

As it is, opponents of the local administration reform couch it in terms of a return to the old days of centralised government and a loss of democracy. This is a criticism which isn't justified. Spain is one of very few countries in Western Europe which hasn't undergone some major reform of its local government structure over the past 30 or so years. Along with France and Italy, there has been a stubborn resistance to introducing a system which might be considered more efficient. But if Greece and Portugal can cut the number of municipalities, then why can't Spain?

It has been shown that the very small municipalities incur, in relative terms, higher costs than larger ones, while various studies, including one by the Council of Europe, suggest that the minimum number of inhabitants per municipality which makes sense is anywhere between 5,000 and 8,000. If the upper limit were to be applied to Mallorca's municipalities, then 35 (out of the 53) would disappear; 25 at the lower limit.

There is always the argument that reducing local administration to the smallest possible unit and size is the ideal state for the practice of democracy and for preventing corruption. Whether this ideal can be supported is open to question. The larger the municipality, so the alternative argument goes, the more efficient and the more professional the administration is. Again, there may well be evidence to the contrary. But if financial efficiency is the sole arbiter of municipal size, then there is little argument. There should be a massive cut in the number of municipalities. Persevering with the very small ones may make sense in terms of preserving local identities, but if professionalism is to be a factor, then how can these municipalities truly be professional, especially if its councillors and mayors aren't being paid? The government really should have been bolder.

Small Town Mayor

Has the Spanish Government missed a trick? Economic crisis, we thought, was going to provide the impetus for reforming the bloated state of public administration and local government. Madrid had suggested that it would but it has now performed a volte-face in respect of certain aspects of local government reform.

It is unfair to expect someone to take on the onerous task of being a town's mayor without him or her receiving some remuneration. Even in very small towns, those with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, there is administration to oversee and there are decisions to be made and meetings to be attended. Madrid had been proposing that mayors of such small towns would no longer be paid. It has backtracked, and so towns like Deià and Fornalutx will still compensate the lucky future winners of the mayoral selection process.

It would have been unfair for mayors to have to do their jobs for nothing and it would also have been a risk, if only a potential risk of harmful perception. Mayors, even paid mayors, have been known to take the shilling that they shouldn't. If a mayor is not paid, fertile would be the terrain of dark rumours regarding permissions for this or that. Mayors must be getting something for their trouble would be the perception and the potential accusation, even when there is not the slightest shred of evidence.

It was a bad move on behalf of the government to have even proposed not paying some mayors. But it was a bad move that missed the point and so therefore missed the trick, and this is emphasised by a further U-turn by the government. For towns with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants - and towns of this size almost form a majority in Mallorca - the government was planning on intervening where municipalities were not functioning in a financially efficient manner. By intervention, it meant that it would have scrapped the offending town halls. Now, all it is saying is that town halls can merge their operations if they wish to, which probably means that none will; a mayor of an underperforming town will not come over all turkey-like and vote for his or her job to be done away with and handed to the mayor in the neighbouring village.

I have no desire to see small towns lose their ability to govern themselves, and this is because I favour localism, regardless of the population size of a particular municipality. But this, and I'll admit it, is an idealistic preference. There is a world of difference between local democracy idealism and local democracy pragmatism, and it is primarily one to do with cost; localism reduced to the very local is that much more expensive to operate. 

The government doesn't appear to be backtracking over other elements of its reform, namely the reduction in the number of paid councillors and limits placed on councillor/mayoral remuneration as well as the shifting of responsibilities from towns with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants to provincial authorities (which, in the case of the Balearics, mean the islands' councils). Significant savings will be derived from these measures.

However, vastly more significant savings would be made were the government to be truly bold and undertake a drastic reform of local government. The UPyD party placed an enormous figure on what would be saved were towns in Mallorca with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants to be merged. 18,000 million euros. I have no idea how the party arrives at such a sum, but if it is to believed, it is a figure which, at a stroke, would resolve problems with Mallorcan public finances.

And if it is to believed, then why doesn't the government do it? Perhaps it is more idealistic than it is normally given credit for; it isn't the centralising monster that it has been made out to be. Or perhaps there are other reasons, and the UPyD might well be one of them.

The Partido Popular (and PSOE) both face an enormous crisis of public confidence. While I have doubted the ability of the UPyD and other smaller parties to genuinely challenge Spain's two-party system, there are commentators who now believe that it could happen and that the challenges would come from the centrist UPyD and the leftist IU. The UPyD is populated by an eminently sensible bunch of people, driven by practicalities rather than dogma. It might not do itself many favours by going around suggesting that it would merge most town halls in Mallorca, but it, unlike the PP, wouldn't have a lot to lose by doing so. The PP, on the other hand, would, and especially because it would face mutiny from all those towns that it runs.

All talk of truly drastic local government reform is foundering on the rocks of the "realpolitik" of local government, namely the PP's strength at town hall level. This strength, though, is its weakness. Local government reform requires boldness. And bold is something that the government isn't.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

English Speakers: Mayors and town halls

"Mayor Talks To British Community". This shock-horror headline hasn't appeared, but should have. A mayor going along and talking to a bunch of Brits in a Brit-owned bar. Whatever next?

The mayor in question was Tommy Cifre. Two Tommy Cifres, there are only two Tommy Cifres present among Pollensa town hall's cadre of councillors, but only one can be mayor, and it isn't the one from the Mallorcan socialists. The mayor came, he spoke in a sort of English and conquered those who were concerned about the quality of the tap water.

It's not, however, that you expect him to be perfect in English. Why should he be? Some Mallorcan politicians can apparently do English reasonably well. President Bauzá, or so it has been reported, impressed tour operators and others at a World Travel Market lunch with the "fluency" of his English. One who didn't, it would seem, was the Mallorcan Joan Mesquida, who is only of course the national government's tourism secretary and formerly the tourism minister. You can't have someone able to communicate effectively with representatives from one of Spain's principal tourism markets; that would just be pointless.

But it doesn't matter because there are always interpreters and translators. Mesquida may be able to call on such services, but the town halls can't necessarily. Take Alcúdia, for instance. A while back I received an email asking if I could put into serviceable English the Spanish description of the Roman town. Sure I could, and did, and sent it back with a note asking where I should send my invoice. Not that I seriously anticipated a positive response; and so I was therefore not disappointed to receive no response.

Though Alcúdia town hall now has a superbly scripted English explanation of Pollentia and the monographic museum, is it right that it should get one gratis and as a favour? Seemingly it is, and I hope all the British and English-speaking tourists are grateful. But is it also right that there appears not to be anyone actually employed or contracted (and paid accordingly) who can do English properly? And I do mean properly and not just in a somewhat better than putting a translation through Google fashion.

I don't expect mayors to speak English. It was good of Cifre to give it a reasonable crack, therefore. In many Mallorcan municipalities, ability in English or another main foreign language would be almost completely unnecessary, but in towns such as Alcúdia and Pollensa - especially Pollensa - then I do expect some decent English; not by the mayor but through the systems of communication that exist. Ten per cent of Pollensa's resident population is British; the town has an overwhelmingly British tourism market.

The counter-argument is, of course, that all these Brits should damn well learn the lingo, always assuming we know which lingo is being referred to; and in the now Partido Popular-dominated Pollensa town hall it is still stubbornly Catalan. But dream on; most will never learn the native sufficiently well and certainly not sufficiently well to engage in the political process.

A mayor coming to speak to the British community (and it must be said that it was more than just the Brits) is an aspect of this process. A question about tap water may sound trivial in the scheme of things, but in fact it isn't; town halls do, after all, have legal responsibilities for sanitation.

But more than this, and this is where the whole argument about voting rights for expatriates tends to founder, is the fact that if communication is not understandable, then how can expatriates ever be expected to be anything like fully engaged in the process over and above a small minority that takes an interest regardless of the language? Ahead of the local elections in May, in which expatriates were entitled to vote, where were the communications in relevant languages? Perhaps there were in certain municipalities, but I was unaware of any.

Depending on municipality, Mallorca should display a multi-lingualism that reflects the realities of its population. English and German, probably French and Arabic; these might be considered the essential additional languages. Such reality is coming to be accepted; in Pollensa I know that local parties, and not just Cifre's PP, are keen to engage with the English-speaking population. So they should.

It's easy to dismiss expats as being uninterested in local politics. Many are, but many are not, especially at the local level. For a mayor as engaging as Tommy Cifre to come along and engage the Brits - in English - took some balls. He may have ballsed up his English, but so what? He made the effort.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Town With No Mayor

One day he was still there, the next he was finally gone, whisked away and hurtled into the oblivion of cyberspace. But for eleven days longer than he should have been, Joan Cerdà had remained mayor of Pollensa. According to the town hall's website anyway. The photo of the "batle" (Catalan for mayor) continued to be that of the smiling face of the departed Joan; a photo that had surely been taken before he had become mayor, as he didn't do a great deal of smiling once he was. For over a week, Joan was stubbornly fixed to the website's batle slot next to the lime-green banner declaring "Som Pollença Municipi Turístic". The batle of the som.

It wasn't only myself who, on not infrequent visits to the town hall's website, found it slightly odd to discover that Joan was still lingering. The A party, A for Alternativa but which might better stand for Awkward, also found it strange, and so told the press who duly brought the matter to the world's attention. No sooner made to look a bit silly, the town hall removed the photo.

But where once was Joan is now no batle to be seen. Has no one a photo of Tommy Cifre, not even an old one? He has after all been mayor before. The mayor's spot is now a link to a street map. I clicked on it, just for something to do. I didn't move the map, really I didn't, but zoomed in, zoomed in and zoomed in. And there, in centre frame, once the map was truly legible was Joan Cerdà, the Plaça Joan Cerdà. Spooky.

The town with no mayor is now also, in its virtual internet world, minus any political representatives at all. The political organigram has disappeared as well. Organigram, I ask you. Jobs for the boys and girls. The A party has also made a fuss about it not having been changed. The new administration has been talking a good talk about transparency, but it hasn't got round to posting info as to who now has their feet up on which town hall desk.

You could say that it was just a case of being a tad slow (and by the time you read this the site's missing mayor and organists will probably have been found), but the town halls' websites are intended to be a key means of communicating with towns' citizens. Which is why when you go to them and don't find what you are looking for, they can at best be a bit disappointing, always assuming you can make head or tail of Catalan, which you normally need to, and thereby confirm your disappointment.

Not updating the website is just one little local difficulty that the new administration has to contend with. With Joan no longer in the picture, except having his picture stay on the website, the hope for the good people of Pollensa was that all would suddenly become calm and orderly. They hadn't counted on Tommy Cifre and his number two Malena Estrany being cast in the role of Laurel and Hardy. "That's another fine mess you've got me into, 'Strany."

To be fair, it hasn't been her fault or Cifre's. They couldn't have been expected to have known that Endesa would come along and remove the electricity meter from the public swimming pool in Puerto Pollensa and cut off the supply, even if the recent history of problems with paying Endesa's bills would have made them know that not all was going swimmingly at the public baths.

It is not their fault that they have inherited the ongoing battle of the beaches in Puerto Pollensa and the new company that Cifre has told to get on with complying with its obligations. It is not their fault that if you go to the town hall's website and expect to find information for the Pollensa Music Festival programme (which typically starts in early July), you won't find it because the programme hasn't been sorted out. And it is only the fiftieth anniversary of the festival this year. Its founder, Philip Newman, must be turning in his grave and playing a lament on his violin.

It is not their fault that only slightly less well-established than the music festival is the sailing school of Sail and Surf. Forty years it has been in Puerto Pollensa, and suddenly some jobsworth comes along and finds it has been there all this time. It must stop, said mayor Cifre, who then said it could continue. Something about licences. It always is.

It's just like old times. Old times that are not even yet a fortnight old. Things will get better. Give them some time. Four years, for example. But meantime the A party will continue to make a nuisance of itself, it will continue to bombard my email inbox with photos and circulars to do with what the town hall's not doing correctly, and so life will go on as normal. As normal as it can ever be in a town with no mayor.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Magic Wand

The "vara". Wand, rod, pole. Take your pick. A magic wand. Spare the rod. Poles apart. They all seem somehow appropriate in the aftermath of the game of pass the parcel to see who ends up unwrapping the mayoral wand.

New mayors may hope that they can wave their wands and make all the problems disappear, but the problems are only just beginning, and are mainly those of fractiousness.

The municipalities of Alcúdia, Pollensa and Santa Margalida highlight how fractiousness consumes the operations of town halls. In Alcúdia's case, it will be new; for Pollensa and Santa Margalida, it will be business as usual.

The tensions that will now exist are only partly to do with party politics. They are more personal than this. And no more so than in Santa Margalida where Miguel Cifre has been handed the baton of mayoral office once again, fourteen years after a motion of censure resulted in his being kicked out of office.

Santa Margalida is a town of mutual dislike among its leading political lights. It's why Cifre and his party of change couldn't attract any other party with which to coalesce. He'll run the town hall, if run is the right word, with a minority three short of that which was required. He'll be a lame duck (aptly enough for a town which stages the annual nonsense of the duck throwing), and one despised by the Partido Popular in particular.

Another lame duck is now the second in command at Alcúdia, despite the fact that she abstained from giving any candidate for mayor her support. Carme Garcia's decision to cosy up to the Partido Popular, one that went against the wishes of her party, the Mallorcan socialists, has unleashed a tsunami into what had been a rare oasis of calmness in the politics of local towns.

At every opportunity, at every meeting of the town hall, she can now expect to be hounded, attacked and vilified. And she will have brought it on herself. Photos of the councillors in Alcúdia, taken after the meeting to select Coloma Terrasa as mayor, were very revealing. Terrasa was smiling, wand in hand, ex-mayor Llompart was grinning and PSOE's Pere Malondra was laughing. Garcia looked even more frumpish and put-upon than usual.

Llompart and Malondra further exposed her decision to side with the PP as an act of opportunism. It was rumoured that they would try something, and so they did. Malondra was nominated to be mayor. Had Garcia voted for him, a natural political ally for someone who claims to be of the left, then Malondra would have become mayor. She didn't. The boys of the Convergència and PSOE were laughing at her, and so it will be for four years.

Pollensa doesn't have a lame duck, it has a Tommy Cifre installed as mayor. Two Tommy Cifres, there are only two Tommy Cifres. Thankfully. It's confusing enough with two of them. One Tommy Cifre, there's only one Tommy Cifre in the PP. The new mayor, and not the one Tommy Cifre from the Mallorcan socialists. Cifre, together with the La Lliga lovely, Malena Estrany, will hope to restore some order to Pollensa town hall. They surely can't do any worse than what passed for administration under Joan Cerdà.

Fortunately, both Cifre and Estrany are respected, which was not the case with Cerdà who lost any semblance of respect as a result of the fiasco over the aborted pedestrianisation in Puerto Pollensa. It was this which turned him into a lame duck for much of his period of office. The charge of lack of consultation that was levelled at him (among other charges) is to be addressed by Cifre. He has promised "citizen participation", and a system of monthly meetings with associations across Pollensa is meant to come into being.

The PP-La Lliga coalition, one short of a majority, will be praying it can rely on the support of the one Unió Mollera Pollencina councillor. If not, and despite what respect there might be for Cifre and Estrany, then the fun and games in Pollensa are likely to continue.

But fun and games are what we want. They are what makes Mallorcan politics the theatre of the absurd that it so often is. A stage for illusionists who in every town conjure up a generally misplaced sense of their own importance. They wave their wands on new regimes and in a puff of smoke the old ones disappear. That's magic.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Garcia abstains but Terrasa takes over as Alcúdia mayor

The now former member of the PSM (Mallorcan socialists), Carme Garcia, abstained from voting during the mayoral selection process in Alcúdia yesterday. Combined Convergència and PSOE support for Pere Malondra (PSOE) as mayor could not gain Garcia's vote in order to prevent the Partido Popular's Coloma Terrasa becoming mayor. The PP will govern in minority but can call on Garcia's support. Garcia will be a second-in-command to Terrasa. A heated investiture debate brought forward criticisms of the nature of the PP's "pact". Garcia defended herself by saying that she was not a turncoat as she had not joined another party.

MALLORCA TODAY - Cifre becomes mayor in Pollensa and promises participation

Tomeu Cifre of the Partido Popular was voted in as the new mayor of Pollensa yesterday, the last-minute pulling-out from an alternative pact of leftist groups by the Esquerra meaning that a combination of the PP and La Lliga was able to form a coalition to which it will hope to add the support of Nadal Moragues of the Unió Mollera Pollencina. Cifre has said that citizen participation will improve during his period of mayor.

MALLORCA TODAY - Santa Margalida faces instability

With six councillors, three short of a majority, and the support of no other party, the Suma pel Canvi (PSOE and independents) in Santa Margalida has assumed control of the town hall and Miguel Cifre has become mayor, 14 years after having been removed through a motion of censure. The Partido Popular's ex-mayor, Martí Torres, criticised the selection of Cifre, pointing to the greater support that the PP (and its usual partner, the Can Picafort Unit) got at the election and suggesting that Cifre was not a legitimate mayor.

MALLORCA TODAY - Mayoral day of decision

Today is when all the negotiations have to end and that the make-ups of town halls are agreed, along with who is going to be mayor.

Pollensa: Agreement has been reached between the Partido Popular and La Lliga. Under this, Tomeu Cifre of the PP will become mayor and will also have responsibility for urban planning. Malena Estrany of La Lliga will be a second-in-command with responsibilities for finance and culture. This agreement will still leave the coalition one short of a majority, but it hopes to draw on the support of the councillor for the Unió Mollera Pollencina which has been holding out for special responsibilities to be drawn up for a councillor for Puerto Pollensa.

Alcúdia: Controversy will spill over into today's meeting. It is likely that that the PP will now rule in minority, with Coloma Terrasa as mayor. It is unclear if Carme Garcia, now no longer with the PSM (Mallorcan socialists), will formally align with Terrasa, but she is expected to subsequently lend her vote to Terrasa. The PP needed the extra support to reach a majority of nine. However, it is possible that the Convergència and PSOE, with eight councillors between them, will spring a surprise and vote for Garcia as mayor, which would send everything into chaos. Police are to be drafted in today as there are threats of protests directed at Garcia.