Jaume The Kingmaker

The maths are simple, give or take a plus or minus here and there. The latest poll suggests that a coalition of the right/centre-right could come into power after the 2019 election. This poll doesn't show any great movement from one last summer. It merely confirms the fact that the only party making a notable gain in the opinion polls is one of those on the loosely defined centre-right - Ciudadanos. It further verifies that PSOE and the Partido Popular are stuck in neutral and that Podemos and Més are in reverse.

If nothing else, the poll reveals that the "new politics" are very much alive. The pattern in the past with PSOE-led governments has been for the PP to come along and trounce them. There's no chance of that happening in 2019, and the PP know it. The party's spokesperson, Marga Prohens, has alluded to the fact that the PP will need a pact in order to form a government.

Unless there is some form of political earthquake between now and May next year, it is clear that there will be a coalition of one form or another. Polls, as we know, are not always accurate, but as the latest shows little movement compared with the previous, it is probably a fair reflection of wider voter sentiment.

A conclusion that the right/centre-right would automatically make an alliance, assuming they together reach the thirty seat majority threshold, is too simplistic. There are issues which bind them and those which do not. El Pi, forecast to increase by one its seats in parliament (from the current three to four), is already being cast in the role of kingmaker. Potentially, El Pi could go either way.

One of the principal differences between the PP, the C's and El Pi is the Catalan question, in particular the language and culture. El Pi was formed in a circuitous fashion. It is the amalgamation of the Convergencia, which was the remnant of the defunct and discredited Unió Mallorquina, and the Lliga Regionalista. This latter party was formed by Jaume Font, now the president of El Pi, after he left the PP. A reason for him having done so was that he was under investigation by a court (the case was later closed). The PP ethics, newly introduced by José Ramón Bauzá, barred election candidacy to anyone being investigated. Font disagreed with this, but he also disagreed with Bauzá's increasingly anti-Catalan stance prior to the 2011 election.

The PP, under new leader Biel Company, have moderated their views. The party has returned to what it once was in the Balearics: accepting of Catalan and also of regionalism. In this regard, the PP aren't distant from El Pi, which also clings to the sort of soft-nationalism that Maria Munar advocated with the UM. There is more of an issue with the C's.

One has to assume that the gains made by the C's (six or seven seats, according to the poll, compared with the current two) owe at least something to the party's stance on Catalonia and to educational matters in the Balearics. The leader of the C's, Xavier Pericay, has been a constant critic of Catalanism in education and of alleged political indoctrination (in favour of Catalan independence and republicanism) in schools. The PP might be prepared to swallow this, but El Pi might not.

For the parties of the government pact, the poll indicates a best-case scenario of them just crossing the finishing line. They would need the one seat of Gent per Formentera (pretty much assured) in order to get to the thirty majority, but this hardly represents a ringing endorsement of the government. Més and Podemos have both slipped, by a combined six seats at most in the poll. Both have their internal issues and both, so it would seem, are being penalised for a radicalism, the counterpoint to which is the rise of the C's.

PSOE, says the poll, might gain one seat and be bumped up to fifteen, but as with the PP, it is a party that finds itself suffering because of the new politics and the past errors. PSOE would be most unlikely to wish to abandon the so-called "progressive" politics enshrined in its agreements with Més and Podemos, but one still feels that it only has these agreements because it has no other choice.

If the pact parties failed to gain a majority, might El Pi be persuaded to ally with them? One can't rule anything out, but it would be hard to see how such an alliance could ever work. To take but one example, there are holiday rentals. El Pi sees things very differently.

As things stand, it is just possible that the election will lead to a minority government. El Pi would be the kingmaker. All the parties need to be nice to Jaume Font.

The High Summer High Jinks Of Cabrera

You know how it is. You're a member of an everyday European royal family and you're swanning around on your modest yacht. You're admiring the turquoise, crystal-clear waters of the marine reserve national park of Cabrera. You look admiringly at the velvety white sands of the small archipelago's beaches. But you know that you can't go and "privatise" these beaches by installing some handsome tents and loungers because some oik from Terraferida will be lurking in the undergrowth with a smartphone.

So, you continue on your untroubled way. What about a picnic on board? A little light lobster washed down with some Moët Chandon, for example? Very agreeable. Your man servant is preparing the dish and chilling the champagne, and then what goes and happens? The Guardia Civil happens, that's what. The force's marine service roars up to your yacht, takes one look and apologises. "Sorry, your Majesty. We mistook you for being Algerian. You haven't by any chance seen any illegals, have you?" "They went that-a-way."

With this, the Guardia takes off in hot pursuit of north Africans in far less modest crafts. Hundreds of them, all milling around Cabrera in the forlorn expectation of hitching a ride to Palma. If you're going to land illegally, Cabrera is really the last place to choose. You might continue on your way to Colonia Sant Jordi on your little boat, but you might be forced to fork out an arm and a leg for the eco-friendly vessel that normally does the crossing. And that'll blow a massive hole in the budget for eventually getting the train, having also taken the ferry, and heading for Marseille (other French destinations are possible).

Following this brief disturbance, you return to your tranquil navigation only to then get a message on your Twitter feed. It's from Vince Vidal, he of the regional environment ministry. To your horror, Vince has issued a decree: "The days of Moët and lobster in Cabrera have passed." Nervously, you look around at other modest yachts and wonder if the Terraferida/GOB oiks have commandeered one of them and are aiming long lenses in search of Moët and lobster evidence.

Once more, though, you are able to relax. Vince is aiming his ban at the Partido Popular. Given his Mésite eco-nationalist credentials, you should of course have realised that it was the PP incurring his wrath. And Vince, let's be clear (one assumes) is not a champagne and lobster man: more frito (an abundance thereof, which should of course be referred to as frit rather than frito) and a crate of Saint Mick.

And what exactly have the PP done to awaken Vince from a hard-earned, high-summer slumber? Well, to be honest, the PP haven't really done anything. But a bloke called Joan Pocoví has. Not being intimate with the minutiae of Mallorcan politics and business, you request your man servant to consult Google. It turns out that this Joan fellow once paid for PP politicos to indulge themselves in Moët and lobster in Cabrera. And one of those politicos is the now leader of the PP in the Balearics, Biel Company, who was Vince's predecessor as environment minister; he held this post when enjoying the bubbly.

Joan and Biel, it would seem, are mates. Joan, moreover, is on the Hacienda's radar in respect of the PP's dodgy, so-called B accounts. Vince has been informed that this Joan sort had apparently co-opted a worker with the environment ministry's Ibanat agency to give him a ride to Cabrera. Which was the sort of thing that Biel had also once done when carrying the cool boxes with the champers and the lobster. Vince was incandescent: "We will take decisive measures: we will start by punishing the worker who messes up the good work of Ibanat."

You, being a liberal type of royal and a generally good egg, think that this sounds a tad over the top. But no, Vince is determined to expunge the memory of the Moët days and insists that he will not tolerate this type of behaviour.

Later on, you learn that Biel believes that there have been half truths. "I am not used to commenting on half truths," he states, despite the photographic evidence of Joan arriving at Cabrera. The PP, you further discover, have gone into full-on social media mode. Their "artillery" is taking aim of Vince, who responds by forgetting his normal Catalan and giving a boost to trilingual teaching. In English, he says: "Keep Calm and Love Your Company."

What can this mean, you wonder, especially as you are pretty handy when it comes to the old Anglo. You're unsure, as is mostly everyone else. And despite Vince's fury and the PP artillery, no one much pays this latest champagne moment a great deal of attention. It is high summer after all. Silly season and all that, as well as being a time to take to the water: royal families, PP benefactors and Algerians. "No, they went that-a-way."

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.

Waiting For TIL Mark Two

When the Partido Popular gets round to publishing its manifesto for the 2019 regional election, there will be more than just passing interest in what it has to say about education. Readers will be vastly more attentive than they were in 2011. Those readers who never read the 2011 manifesto.

Biel Company should beat José Ramón Bauzá and be elected as the party's president later this month. He will then be the party's candidate for the Balearic presidency. Bauzá, a fallen figure in search of some purpose greater than having been sidelined, condemned to a place in the Senate and widely ignored, is most unlikely to win. Stranger things have happened of course, but a Bauzá victory would be most strange.

Even before the party gathers for the congress at which the party's leadership will be decided, the issue which came to haunt the Bauzá administration is being given a thorough airing. This is mainly because it is Bauzá who is doing the airing. He said recently that "we (although it's not clear who we are) have been working with experts to find an appropriate and effective way to apply trilingual teaching (TIL)".

Was this an admission that the TIL he introduced was not appropriate and effective? Not that he has said as much, and nor will he ever do that. He admits to having made mistakes but has not specified what these were. There are many who will happily identify mistakes, the biggest of which was TIL.

Company is not ruling out TIL. He believes that it could be introduced by consensus, but only if there is an avoidance of ideological issues: maximum consensus without any imposition. He has stopped short of condemning Bauzá, but there's no disguising the reading between the lines. There were things that the last PP government did which made its defeat at the 2015 election all the more likely, and TIL was most definitely one of them.

Regardless of who is elected as leader, the 2019 election manifesto is certain to be more specific about trilingual teaching than the 2011 manifesto was. And that manifesto could not have been any less specific. It didn't mention TIL. What came to antagonise so many - and I include myself - was the blatant untruth that the electorate had voted for TIL because it was there in the manifesto. This untruth was then repeated by those who didn't bother to check. The "democratic will" card was played when in fact there was no card available: TIL as an election pledge was to become a fabrication.

The reference made by Company to imposition says it all. TIL was imposed - or imposition was attempted - as a thinly disguised means of downgrading Catalan. Once the "free selection" of teaching languages by parents - Catalan or Castellano - proved to be a failure, Bauzá introduced TIL. English was the patsy for an initiative that from the outset demonstrated education policy subnormality. That's because it wasn't used for educational purposes; only political ones. Had it been only for early primary and infant levels, then there would have been some sense. But this wasn't the case.

Bauzá now says that experts are assisting with a "new formula" for TIL. Where were those experts when he was president? Were they ever presented? Were they ever named? One person who was close to being an expert was Bauzá's "professor", his first education minister, Rafael Bosch. He had a background in education. When he came to appreciate the difficulties with TIL, he was ousted, branded a "Catalanist" and replaced by the inexperienced Joana Maria Camps, under whom the policy degenerated into protest and farce.

It was seemingly Bauzá who offered himself as the expert. Off he and Bosch went to Switzerland to see how multi-language education operates. As Switzerland is in any event a multi-language society, it was not representative of what he was seeking. But there was a question about his policy that was never truly raised and so given a satisfactory answer. Why was teaching in a foreign language felt to be so important?

Having a third language from the start of a pupil's education cycle should have benefits - one can see that - but what of countries where there are high levels and standards of English, where it isn't a teaching language per se: the likes of the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden? While there are instances of its use, it is more a case of it being integrated into school life and, especially in the Netherlands and Sweden, everyday life.

There is therefore a considerable societal difference in the Balearics, and it is this which needs addressing. Introducing English at a very early age may well assist, but doing so would require overcoming obstacles, not least some of the teaching community. Imposition isn't the way. If Bauzá is really a good educationalist, then he should have learned that lesson.

The Vogue For Bloodletting

Given all the shenanigans involving what one tires of being told are "anti-austerity newcomers" Podemos, it has been easy to overlook that pro-austerity oldsters, the Partido Popular, are lurking in the murky political undergrowth ready to pounce on the next unsuspecting electorate - in the Balearics, that is.

Away from the islands, and in the safety of The Land That Time Forgot, the PP's national hierarchy lumbers on, a giant staggering through a forest of political half-light, never turning the torches on the corpses that are strewn across its path or are buried in a court's archives. Seemingly immune to the convulsions and eruptions everywhere else, there is a serenity for the PP, capable as they are of closeting themselves within the contentment of another electoral job done (if only just) and of pulling down the shutters to avoid the inward glares into their Jurassic lair.

The PP were forgotten at the weekend. This was not how Pablo Iglesias had intended it. The Podemos knockout to decide a winner was duly timed to coincide with the PP who were gathering only a short distance away. But because everyone was interested only in the left and even more left hooks being delivered by Errejón and Iglesias, no one took any notice of the PP. Podemos were a show, a spectacular, a political prime-time reality broadcast played out in the real-time of up-to-the second voting intentions. Time had indeed forgotten the PP. Their dullness in this post-modern political world of citizen online councils, speakers with piercings and a long mane of hair tied up in a sort of bun, and election brochures stolen from Ikea is the very thing which sustains them. They seem otherworldly, of another and former time.

Iglesias had hoped that having the two congresses at the same time would enable the citizens to draw comparisons. If the citizens did do this, then the comparison would have been between a tetchy bunch of upstart Herberts and the grim familiarity of Mariano Rajoy. In a world of convulsions there is something to be said for a leader who sports a tie, is attended to by a barber with a certain degree of frequency and can at least attempt to converse with Trump.

The cosiness of the PP's gathering was such that controversy was a distant cousin, one for the sentencing of "caso Gürtel" and for the machinations across the sea in the Balearics. And it is here in the Balearics that the national hierarchy would much prefer that a son, who at one time - now long ago - had been looked upon with benevolent, austere goodwill, would quietly disappear. But the hierarchy is not alone in having been confounded, nay startled by the sheer persistence of he who refuses to lie down - José Ramón Bauzá.

We did all rather chortle when Bauzá made it known that he was intending to attempt to once more become president of the party. There is still some chortling, but as the time moves nearer for a regional congress at least a year overdue, there is Bauzá, steadfast in his belief that he can return as the re-conquering hero of the Balearic PP. Never mind that he did his best, and mainly succeeded, in delivering a sharp instrument into the heart of Balearic society and much of his own party; he seems convinced that all that will be forgiven.

The show that the Balearic PP are planning will be bloodletting on a scale that is biblical in its abundance compared with the streams that washed across the feet of Errejón and Iglesias in Madrid last weekend. The long-time favourite to become the party's new president, Biel Company, should win in the kind of canter suited to a man with his agricultural leanings. But Bauzá has pulled two agrarians out of the hat who are his latest cheerleaders. One says that Bauzá was the best president that the Balearics has had. Both are one-time friends of Company but they no longer share company.

Company was once a friend of Bauzá's, too. It was Bauzá who made him environment and agriculture minister, but it was Company who helped to deliver the knife. Hauling in agrarians is Bauzá's way of showing he's every bit a man of conservative, farming sod as Company is. 

Bauzá was aghast to see that Company had surrounded himself with members of the hierarchy at the PP congress in Madrid. Here was affirmation of what Madrid hopes for and which the temporary leader of the PP in the Balearics, Miquel Vidal, also hopes for - a single candidate who can pull the factions together. There is little chance, not while Bauzá continues along a path that may result in a humiliation greater than the defeat of the PP he presided over two years ago.

The Playground Of The Balearic Parliament

It doesn't get much better, does it. Aspiring parliamentary headmaster, Vicenç Thomas, took the throne that he covets, if only temporarily, and started to read the register. "Huertas?" "Seijas?" "Has anyone seen Huertas or Seijas?" "They're behind Més," blurted Jarabo. "Huertas, Seijas, why are you behind Més?" "We are of the left," they responded as one. "You may well be, but you were told to go and sit on the naughty chairs behind the PP. So I ask again - why are you behind Més?" "This deputy's going nowhere," insisted Seijas. "Look, I shall ask you only once more to go and sit behind the PP. If you don't, then I'll call security and they will physically move you." "It'll take a small army of security to do that," scoffed Jarabo. "Please, Jarabo, I expect better from you. There will be no weightist or fattist jokes in this chamber. Huertas, Seijas, why are you still there?"

And with that Xe-Lo and Montse arose and plodded off to the one and nines of the public gallery. Rarely, if ever, have the public been privileged to have a former speaker and friend come among them. And the public gallery is to where they will return until such a time as they are granted their wish to be among Mésites, if only in the rear. When might this be? Hell will probably have frozen over or perhaps the arrival of a new headmaster (not Vicenç) will enable a more conciliatory approach. This is unlikely, though, if Jarabo gets his way. Balti is the only man (or woman) for the job, it now seems. And if the Mésites and PSOE turn him down, then Jarabo and Podemos will break the pact. So there. Yah-boo!

They don't want Balti because he's a metalworker, insisted Jarabo. Which isn't strictly accurate as he's a full-time parliamentary deputy. He once was, though. But this isn't of course the reason why PSOEMés don't want him. It's pretty obvious why not. He looks like the one-time bass guitarist with The Allman Brothers Band. That's why. Get a haircut, Balti, and you'll be ushered in no problem.

Once the Xe-Lo/Montse panto was dispensed with, it was the turn of the PP to put on a display. As one they stood up and marched out of the chamber. Normally, in Congress anyway, it's Podemos who are the ones for the walking in response to jibes (typically of a Venezuelan nature) being launched from the PP. The insults were on the other foot (or mouth) in parliament.

Jarabo described a "mafioso relationship" between the PP and Palma police. Illegal trafficking in and possession of weapons, obstruction of justice, trafficking influence, malfeasance, coercion, bribery, threats, extortion, falsehood, insider dealing, crimes against public health, offences against the environment. And there, among the PP ranks, was the alleged "boss" of this network - Alvaro Gijón. Off marched the PP, two of them returning only for formality's sake, while there were heated discussions to a) get them all to go back and b) get Jarabo to apologise, which he didn't.

Vicenç, if he had seriously felt that the parliamentary presidential malarkey was worth it, would have been having second thoughts. Best let Balti handle things in future, Vicenç. Things can only get more ridiculous.

Xe-Lo Likes Mick

Xe-Lo and her new best friend, Mick Vidal of the PP, were all smiles. Together they had placed an obstacle in the path of the coup attempt. Xe-Lo was not for leaving, other than to walk out of parliament with Mick, if not quite in hand in hand but with her reaching for a fag, as she had so unflatteringly been seen to do when her and Mick's courtship was starting a few weeks ago.

It turned out that parliament's lawyer had produced a document requiring Xe-Lo's instant dismissal. Xe-Lo hadn't seen this and nor had Mick. Right, they said, we're off, and they were, leaving the self-proclaimed Father of the House, PSOE's Vicenç Thomas, to do some explaining. Vicenç, first vice-president of parliament (there always have to be at least two VPs for pretty much anything), had taken over the meeting because Xe-Lo, reasonably enough, said she couldn't chair it given that her job was on the line. Out came the document, one with which Vicenç had believed that the blow could be struck. Alas no, where Vicenç was concerned. At least for now. He rather fancies Xe-Lo's job, allegedly.

What were the PP playing at, the "pact" demanded to know. It was obvious what they were playing at - causing mischief. Pact-ites railed against PP irresponsibility, while the PP were rolling around the floor with laughter. The greatest institutional crisis in the history of the Balearic parliament, the pact said, and the PP were to blame. Which wasn't strictly accurate. The crisis has all been of Podemos's making.

The crisis is such that a not unreasonable question was there to be asked about this document. Who had instructed the lawyer? As Xe-Lo was (still is) president, does she not get involved in such a matter? There again, she was unlikely to go all turkey and Christmas and tell the lawyer to order her dismissal.

Given that no one has a clue what's going on at present, the race to be Xe-Lo's successor was shunted into the background. And Podemos discovered, to their horror, that one of the runners and riders - the preferred one on account of her being a member of the sisterhood - was herself being shunted into the parliament presidential sidings. Marta Maicas had been cited by a judge in respect of Montse Seijas's "denuncia" for the digital signature falsification business. If not Marta, that leaves Podemos with only the Balti man, Picornell, as a front runner.

Neither Marta nor Balti curry a great deal of favour with certain pact-ites (especially PSOE). They are looked upon as being, well, too "shouty". Parliament and Podemos may live to regret the Xe-Lo crisis, given that all parties believed she was in fact rather good at her job, when not, for instance, being on holiday in Rome. PSOE would like the Father of the House to be officially anointed as daddy. And Vicenç wouldn't say no. The greater crisis would then ensue. Podemos would lose their one real hold on power not just in the Balearics but in any Spanish region. The pact would be subject to even greater pressure than it already is.

Meanwhile, the Podemos sisterhood credentials were in fact taking a further hammering. In addition to the alleged "blackmailing" of Carmen Azpelicueta - "be a good girl, and we'll look for a job for you" - it now seems that when a woman was being interviewed for a post as an adviser at the Council of Mallorca, she was asked if she has plans to get pregnant. That is a question that cannot be asked.

Rajoy: Close But No Cigar?

Mariano Rajoy will have been puffing on his New Year's havana with a degree of contentment. Back where he clearly believes he belongs - in perpetuity it can seem - the occupant of the Moncloa can blow calm smoke rings with the satisfaction of knowing that for all the trials of last year (and not just those to do with political uncertainty), no rival is hovering to dispossess him, while the poll rating continues to edge further upwards.

There was, however, an unwelcome piece of news to disturb him over Christmas. He received a phone call from Tony's little friend (the Tony being Blair and the friendship dating back to the Iraq War). The permanently jet-black-haired José María Aznar phoned Rajoy to tell him that he was relinquishing his post as honorary president of the Partido Popular. He will now only be like any other member of the party. Not that he can ever be that; he remains in the PP undergrowth, a diminutively towering presence, prepared at any moment to spring out and spray dye in casting doubts on the Rajoy way forward.

Aznar and Rajoy were once good friends. Wikileaks, though, showed that Aznar was not entirely convinced about Rajoy. This lack of conviction would seem to have lessened still over the years. The phone call would have come as a surprise. They have barely been on speaking terms. The PP hierarchy as a whole was surprised, but for a different reason. Aznar's decision hadn't been expected. But now that it has been delivered, Aznar and his foundation, which formally split from the PP in October, can act independently: a thorn in Rajoy's side, if Aznar so chooses.

Former and defeated leaders in Spain don't do the honourable thing and disappear. Felipe González was hardly a neutral figure in the moves which led to the purging of Pedro Sánchez as PSOE leader. Likewise, Aznar is there, forever lingering and lurking, his discontent with Rajoy seemingly more personal than based on pure politics or policies.

The breach might therefore not augur well for Rajoy, who has discovered - to everyone's lesser surprise than the Aznar manoeuvre - that PSOE is unwilling to give him a clear run with the 2017 budget. In fact, it is placing an enormous obstacle in the way and seems likely to present an amendment to the entire budget. Ultimately, this could mean yet another election.

So Rajoy may instead have been spluttering as he drew on his havana. If PSOE, emboldened despite its enfeebled state by having granted Rajoy licence to stay on as premier, now chooses to exploit this magnanimity and challenge the budget to the point of mortality, it will be a case of close but no cigar for the latest Rajoy project.

However, there is what the public thinks, and it is this which can allow Rajoy his moments of tranquil puffing. The latest poll by Sigma Dos for "El Mundo" shows the PP to still be in the ascendant. The rating, compared with the June election, has increased by 1.8% to 34.8%. It remains a distance away from what it was when Rajoy won in 2011, but the momentum upwards is not being interrupted.

As much as Rajoy can be satisfied with this rise, he can also take note of PSOE's further decline with satisfaction. The poll reveals a 3.3% drop since June: now only 19.4%, and Unidos Podemos, despite seemingly intent on splitting themselves asunder (the Podemos element, that is), have experienced their own increase to 22.5%. The poll's finding therefore makes the words of PSOE's Mario Jiménez sound foolhardy. He has been the one saying that the party will place the budget amendment. He has also said that if Rajoy does choose to call an election, he will "not catch PSOE off-guard". He might not, but PSOE being on-guard holds absolutely no guarantee of an improved electoral performance: quite the contrary in fact.

Then there is the Podemos question. Around the same time as the PP holds its congress next month (Aznar will not be attending), Podemos have theirs. The war between the Iglesias and Errejón factions will probably end in defeat for Errejón. Even if it were the other way (and Iglesias has said he will step down, if this is the result), what will happen? It's possible that nothing will, but the battle lines are entrenched. If Podemos were to split, then the left as a whole in Spain will be split more than it already is. This would only bolster Rajoy further, he - and the PP's poll rating - having gained as a result of the long hiatus before the October investiture; this hiatus having been partly the consequence of the left's inability to arrive at anything approaching consensus.

Aznar is an irritation. The budget issue is more of an aggravation. But even another election would see Rajoy secure. There's no one challenging him.

The Charades Of Congress And Francina

Goodness, what fun that was, and it was only spoiled by them actually approving the investiture of Mariano. There I had been, encouraging them to keep on having failed elections and failed investitures and to see if they could go the entire period of the (notional) legislature, i.e. until 2019, with Mazza doing his acting. Still, there's always the next time, we can but hope.

Had there not been the investiture, the Yuletide would have been a time for dissecting the consequences of another failed election. They were to deprive us of a Christmastime charade, we all having got used to charades during the year. Take, for instance, the one involving Ant and Dec in March. The head boy of PSOE, Pedro Sánchez, and his buddy, the little C of the C's, Albert Rivera, concocted the preposterous notion of putting Pedro up for investiture. There was only the slight matter of 88 votes which prevented this cunning plan from being put into effect.

Ant and Dec went their separate ways. Albert, seeking anyone who would have him and the other C's, tagged along with Super Mariano and eventually succeeded in helping to push Old Greybeard over the finishing line. There was more important support from the turncoats of PSOE, whose Andalusian power base - led by the dominatrix Susana Díaz - purged Pedro and offered their ironically submissive cries of yes to the Mazza investiture. Much though he was (is) objectionable, the Ruffian (Gabriel) of the Catalonian Republicans had a point when he branded the PSOE ranks as traitors to socialism.

The Ruffian and others among the Wild Left have ended the year in rather poorer shape (and humour) than they started it. Podemos appear to be irretrievably split according to degrees of lunacy. The monster raving wing under Pablo Iglesias is butting heads with the monster raving (sensible) faction led by The Infant, Iñigo Errejón, who visibly grew into adulthood during the year. Such was the divide that Pablo issued a Christmas message in which he apologised if it appeared as if Podemos were going tits up. And he wasn't referring to Rita Maestre, The Infant's "chica", who was let off by a court for having got them out in church.

All eyes will thus be turned towards the pleasant view of Vista Alegre II in February, when the Politburo will call the brotherhood and sisterhood and decide the fate of Podemos. Iglesias has said he'll step down if his "project" loses. The Infant, meanwhile, should beware any metaphorical ice-picks being delivered to his head and subsequent airbrushing from the collective memory of the Podemos collective. Whither Podemos? It's going to be a key issue in 2017.

Someone who will not be taking in the pleasant view will be battling ex-Podemos and soon to be ex-president of the Balearic parliament, Xe-Lo Huertas. It's hard to determine whether she was the victim of bullyboy (and girl) tactics on behalf of fellow travellers (no longer travelling together) or if she was just plain daft. Either way, she will cease to bustle into the speaker's chair, the big question being who will assume her role and be the one to advise the King that spending on his Almudaina reception would be more wisely invested in soup kitchens.

The Podemos local difficulty merely added to the sense of disbelief which surrounds Francina Armengol's government. La Presidenta has spent the whole year drifting around in the fog of her own charade - one of insistence that all is consensus and dialogue and as sweet and friendly as she is. It clearly is not, as was exemplified by the less than merry ding-dong which occurred between the normally jovial Enviro Man Vince Vidal (my personal favourite of the year) and Cati Cladera at finance. It was all about budgets and how much the Mésite ministries (of which Vince's is one) were to get, or not.

Further division is potentially looming, courtesy once more of Podemos. With it being suggested that Alberto Jarabo has lost the local dressing-room, might the terrifying Boot Girl, Laura Camargo, make a bid for officially taking command as opposed to be commanding from the rear (Alberto's that is)?

These rifts were as nought, however, when compared with the PP. Great sport awaits us when and if they finally have their regional congress and if J.R. does end up putting his name into the ring as returning president. The party's bouncer, one-time tourism minister Jaime Martínez, still maintains that it will be he who will be leading the even further to the right faction than the other lot. Biel Company (not as far to the right) remains odds-on, but we should be praying that Bauzá does make a bid. The entertainment will be greater than anything even Podemos can serve up.


Index for December 2016

Arenal tram - 5 December 2016
Constitutional reform - 6 December 2016
Cuba and Mallorca's hoteliers - 1 December 2016
Financing the Balearics - 20 December 2016
Fire service in Mallorca - 11 December 2016
Francina Armengol and second term - 19 December 2016
Holiday rentals and housing legislation - 8 December 2016, 14 December 2016, 18 December 2016
Ideology and political change - 27 December 2016
Insults and offence in 2016 - 28 December 2016
Investiture and other charades - 31 December 2016
Ironman - 16 December 2016
José Ramón Bauzá comeback - 26 December 2016
Mallorca and Airbnb - 3 December 2016
Mallorca Day - 9 December 2016
Matances pig slaughter - 17 December 2016
Odd stuff in 2016 - 29 December 2016
Palma airport name - 15 December 2016
Podemos and dissent - 4 December 2016, 12 December 2016
Real Mallorca - 23 December 2016
Religious tourism - 7 December 2016
Santa Claus - 25 December 2016
Saturation, sustainability and stability - 30 December 2016
Shopping tourism - 2 December 2016
Sibil-la - 24 December 2016
Subbuteo - 13 December 2016
Tourism press - 10 December 2016
Tourism promotion - 22 December 2016
Weather obsession - 21 December 2016

Deluded: José Ramón Bauzá

José Ramón Bauzá believes that the selection of the next full-time president of the Partido Popular in the Balearics will be a run-off between himself and the long-time favourite for the post, Biel Company. The delay in holding a regional congress - its date has still to be decided - has been caused by the national situation. There should have been a congress following the general election in December last year; it was placed on hold because of the inconclusive outcome of that election and the second one in June.

The delay has led to Bauzá's attempt to return. Had there been a congress at the start of this year, he wouldn't have been in the frame to be restored as party president and as, he will wish, president of the Balearics.

The temporary leadership of the PP is wanting there to be a single candidate for selection. Acting president Miquel Vidal and others hope that this will lead to party unity, which may be a forlorn hope but would at least paper over the divisions. If there is more than one, especially if Bauzá features, the schisms will be laid bare. There'll be blood on the carpet. Bauzá has made it clear that he isn't looking for rapprochement with Company.

The former environment and agriculture minister ticks a number of boxes where the PP rank and file out in the sticks are concerned. Originally from the rural town of Sant Joan, his background is agriculture; he was brought in as minister by Bauzá, even though he wasn't at the time a PP member. In addition to this appeal to rural parts, Company represents something of the old style of the PP, one more in tune with regional identity and not openly antagonistic towards Catalan.

Bauzá represents the opposite, and his recent announcements show how the divisions in the party are also geographical. He says that he has the backing of the Palma membership. He may well not, but the very fact of him having referred to this just serves to highlight how attitudes differ between the city and the "part forana"; the latter is generally in sympathy with the old style than is the former.

Moreover, there is the figure of José María Rodríguez, who somewhat unexpectedly turned up at a Bauzá gathering. It is understood that he is lending Bauzá support, but he - it shouldn't be forgotten - was ousted from his position as president of the PP organisation in Palma because of corruption allegations. With friends like him and Carlos Delgado, widely disliked within the PP, Bauzá's selection chances would seem lessened.

Were he to be selected, assuming that he does go ahead and present himself, it would be a major shock. Bauzá maintains that he has support in Mallorca, the Balearics and in Madrid among the national leadership, but there is more than a hint of wishful thinking. He has little backing in Madrid, where he has been overlooked for any meaningful contribution in his role as a Balearic senator because there is little faith in him or like. In Mallorca, his status has been summed up by the new mayor of Petra, former health minister Marti Sansaloni: Bauzá has lost all credibility.

Sansaloni, like Company, owed his ministerial role to Bauzá. He was the third health minister in the Bauzá regime, brought in as something of a yes-man but later one of Bauzá's fiercest critics, as was Company. These two were instrumental in ensuring that Bauzá resigned as party leader after the disastrous election in 2015.

That election disaster was in no small part due to the trilingual teaching (TIL) fiasco and to Bauzá's policies regarding Catalan (TIL was one of these policies). Bauzá says that he would reintroduce TIL and once more make Catalan a "merit" for public employment rather than a requisite, which is how the current government views Catalan. He would therefore return to precisely the policies that made him so disliked and so ultimately unelectable.

Of reaction to Bauzá's intentions, it has been notable (among those commenting on websites/social media) that there isn't hostility to the principle of TIL. There needn't have been when Bauzá made it policy. But because it was a political instrument targeted at Catalan - educationally, the implementation sucked big time - the hostility was inevitable. He says that he has learned from his mistakes. Has he? It doesn't sound like it.

A further Bauzá intention has raised considerable opposition. He says that he would do away with the tourist tax. One wouldn't rule out the PP doing so whoever its leader might be, but judging from reaction there is popular support for the tax. Electorally, a pledge to get rid of it might not be wise.

Will he stand as president? He seems determined to. Will he win? He's deluding himself in believing that he will.

Carry On Chemists

One thing you can say about Balearic presidents is that you can't keep a good (sic) chemist away from the Consolat de Mar. The current incumbent, sweet and friendly Frankie Armengol, was preceded by the less sweet and friendly J.R., both of them with form in the farmacia stakes. And in seeking to maintain this chemical lineage, J.R., to everyone's horror, announced he was on the comeback trail. Carry On Chemists, with Jim Dale in the role of J.R. (Well, it couldn't be Sid James or Kenneth Williams.)

J.R., having reactivated himself in his highly implausible attempt at becoming national tourism supremo, had decided that the next best thing was to get his feet under the Consolat desk once more and resume his presidency. There was, however, one minor flaw to this plan, which was what J.R. was in the process of attempting to rectify, i.e. becoming PP president again. It was less a carry on and more the Return of the Living Dead, as Podemos's Alberto Jarabo intimated. Count Dracula's fangs are to be sunk into PP opposition, e.g. the wet and liberal regionalist wing, and even the dry anti-regionalist lot if they aren't of a mind to lend him their support, which for the most part they are not.

For once, it was possible to feel sympathy for Jaime Martínez, the chief pretender to the Bauzá anti-regionalist throne. The ex-tourism minister, probably thinking he was off for a pleasant chinwag at Carlos Delgado's gaff, discovered to his horror that a) all the paella had gone by the time he arrived and b) J.R. was there and announcing his Phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the Balearics PP that he had left smouldering after being annihilated at last year's regional election.

Jaime was none too impressed by all of this, and things might have turned ugly. Let's face it, Jaime does a passable impression of a bouncer at a Magalluf nighttime establishment. You wouldn't want to get on his wrong side, especially if he hasn't eaten. Jaime, to his credit, didn't bounce Bauzá around the walls of Casa Carlos, but instead let it be known that he still intends putting himself forward as candidate to be president of the party.

This was all good news for the wet and liberal lot, now sensing a clear split among the vote for the dry and anti-regionalist lot, assuming it does ever get as far as J.R. being on the ballot paper at the regional congress to decide the winner, whenever this might take place. And it was the fact that no PP congress in the Balearics or indeed any other region has been called that caused PP High Command in Madrid to apparently get into a blind flap.

Fernando Martínez Maíllo, no great mate of J.R.'s anyway and the organisational vice-secretary of the party, received a message from Bauzá announcing his intentions, i.e. of standing for the presidency of the party at the next congress. The only congress which has been firmed up is the national one, at which Super Mariano will be formally anointed again. Maíllo, it would seem, went into a panic as he thought Bauzá was going to be putting himself up against Mariano. He wasn't, though on current form you really wouldn't put it past him.

The Noises Of Debate: Rajoy's Investiture

In the space of almost eight months I have watched six investiture debates. At the sixth time of asking there was a result, if you can call forming a government with a minority just shy of forty per cent a result. At the sixth attempt, therefore, something finally gave. The mould was broken, although it had been cast differently for debates five and six. There was an alternative cast member. PSOE's Antonio Hernando had moved along one seat. By the sixth debate, two days after the fifth, there was an empty seat. Tearfully, Pedro Sánchez had decided it was best not to turn up. How things had changed. At the start of the eight months - for debates one and two - he would have been crowned, if only in his dreams. 

The lachrymose Sánchez was the prelude to debate six. It might have overshadowed what was to follow, had it not been pre-destined for Mariano Rajoy to be reinstalled as prime minister. Debate six was the big noise in town. Sánchez was a weepy diversion, he insisting that he is not finished, that he will seek the recuperation of PSOE. If he does, it will be a tough ask. There's life still in the body socialist but it's in intensive care not knowing if it will emerge intact or be permanently fractured.

There were big noises and bigger noises. Several thousand had gathered to surround Congress. The protest was allowed. Not even Rajoy's wretched law could prevent it being given clearance. That law, the gagging one, was just one reason for the thousands to have gathered. Other reasons ... . Well, by now we all know the reasons, while the several thousands were having none of the carve-up by the "mafias" inside Congress. Alas for Cuidadanos, ten years young, it has been branded thus alongside the much older mafias of the PP and PSOE. It was politicians from the C's for whom the greatest jeers were reserved.

Inside Congress there were various bursts of big noise. Cheers, heckles, one of the biggest came at half-time, prior to the actual vote, when the stewards looked as if they might have been required to keep the factions apart. The PP's Rafael Hernando, who had upset Podemos so much during debate five with his four million dollar Venezuelan accusation, was in discussion with Iglesias and Errejón. Surprisingly, it didn't look as unfriendly as might have been expected.

There again, Iglesias came out of debate six with an enormous amount of credit. His speech obliterated all others. Its passion was exceptional. Iglesias is enormously impressive, and when he spoke about the need for a young and new Spain, one couldn't help but contrast the informality of Podemos (in their attire) and the stiffness of the suit-wearing ranks of the PP and indeed PSOE. What was most impressive was that he didn't resort to name-calling. His was a speech for the future, of a politician growing in stature. There may be differences within his party, but Iglesias and Podemos are not going away. Indeed, they will believe their role is ever more crucial now.

Although Iglesias and his Podemos colleagues were to applaud his intervention, the speech of the Catalonia Republican Left's Gabriel Rufián was deserving of none. It was not as if he didn't have valid points, but it was the language he used that set him well apart from Iglesias. This was the oafishness of a students' union activist not the discourse of a Congress politician. His walk to the lectern spoke volumes. He passed the ranks of the PP glowering and with the swagger of a football hooligan. At the end, he even argued with the referee - the president of the house (speaker), Ana Pastor - who switched off his mike because he had gone over time. Before doing so, though, he had reprimanded PSOE for their kowtowing to a "cacique", for their being traitors to socialism. They should be ashamed. Yes, he had valid points, but the delivery was odious. Antonio Hernando, scandalised, said that Rufián had spoken with "odio" - hate. Rufián had lived up to more than just his name. He was a disgrace.

It was a minor player who was to offer the strongest rebuke to Rufián. The diminutive Ana Oramas from the Canaries was not easy to understand - the accent is pronounced - but there was no mistaking her distaste for the disrespect Rufián had shown the house as well as PSOE. He shouldn't behave in such a juvenile way. There was big noise of applause.

And finally, when the voting was over and the result was announced, there was no big noise from PSOE. They didn't applaud Rajoy. He had won the day but there are many other days to come. He needs to show magnanimity, he needs to prove that he is capable of dialogue. If he can't, debates seven and eight might occur sooner than he would hope.


Index for October 2016

Agriculture and tourism - 11 October 2016
Airbnb and hoteliers - 1 October 2016
All-inclusives - 8 October 2015
Balearic government - 10 October 2016
Bullying - 21 October 2016
Caso Gürtel - 7 October 2016
Ecotourism and sustainability - 18 October 2016
Fornalutx and prettiest villages - 28 October 2016
Havaneres - 9 October 2016
Hiking and the history of excursions - 3 October 2016
Holiday prices - 5 October 2016, 29 October 2016
Imserso holidays - 15 October 2016
Land plans in Mallorca - 25 October 2016
Museum of Water - 6 October 2016
Pebre bord pepper - 23 October 2016
Pep v. Pepsi - 14 October 2016
PSOE crisis - 2 October 2016, 4 October 2016
Rajoy investiture - 19 October 2016, 31 October 2016
Rock music in Mallorca - 30 October 2016
Saturation, sustainability and employment - 22 October 2016, 26 October 2016
Spain's National Day - 13 October 2016
Theatres - 16 October 2016
Tourism minister for Spain - 20 October 2016. 24 October 2016
Tramuntana fairs - 12 October 2016
UFOs - 27 October 2016
Xelo Huertas in Rome - 17 October 2016

Andalusia's Gambit: Investiture Or Not

Andalusia. A region apart but a region very much a part. Where would Spain have been without Andalusia? Arguments can rage about the origins of flamenco - and they do - but it is Andalusia which takes the honour. The vibrancy of the dance and music helped to make Spain. In the eyes of the world, it was Andalusia which captured the essence of the new tourism. The Costa del Sol, curiously enough, wasn't a focus for the first wave, but Andalusia had exported its vivaciousness, its difference, and it changed Spain forever.

Andalusia may be on the point of changing Spain again. Or is it that it will put it back together? The most that Andalusia might do is reshape Spain's politics. That mould has already been undergoing manipulation, being twisted and distorted by new hands ready to render the old hands redundant. There is further manufacture afoot or in hand. This is breaking the mould of PSOE. Or is it that the mould returns to its original factory settings, not those of times long ago but of times more recent.  These were contented times before the new hands started making light work of the outmoded shape PSOE had contorted itself into in peculiar antagonistic alliance with the Partido Popular.

This coming Sunday may well prove to be a defining moment. PSOE's federal committee will meet. It has a choice. It can agree to facilitate the investiture of Mariano Rajoy as prime minister or it can say no to Rajoy. Which way will it go? Andalusia will be all important in the decision.

Andalusia is apart because it is the only region in Spain to have been socialist since democratic regional governments were established. Here is one aspect of its difference, a seemingly curious one, for this is a region of great culture and great cities, apparently overwhelmed by richness to match the richness of that culture. Yet it is comparatively poor. Where would Andalusia be without Spain? It does well from the regional financing system. Very well.

It has a legacy. This is the region where liberalism was born, where the Cadiz Constitution envisaged a new Spain, a more egalitarian Spain, where the fight against Bonaparte was fostered, and where there was the consequent fight against the treacherous Ferdinand VII, who destroyed that movement and condemned Spain to decades of self-destruction. The omens may not sound good.

The new liberalism is one cloaked with conservatism. Andalusia, the nation's power base for PSOE, will decide. The broker of the power is its president, Susana Díaz. Her number two, Juan Cornejo, might just have uttered a statement that will pass into common use as an aphorism. "To govern is as important as leading an opposition." It can be taken to have a double meaning, but the intent is clear. The task of governing will fall to Mariano Rajoy. The opposition, the PSOE opposition, will be empowered by this. It can facilitate investiture, but it holds the power to influence policy. It hopes. Unless it falls apart, shattered by a region apart.

Díaz and Andalusia are determined that their vision and version of PSOE continues. It is the conservative version, the cosily close to the PP version, one in the name of the nation that it (Andalusia) did so much to bring to the world's attention. The nation is important to Andalusia. Apart but a part, it needs the unity of the nation, not least the greater riches in relative terms that exist elsewhere: Catalonia, the Balearics, for instance.

PSOE in Catalonia, via its first secretary Miquel Iceta, has said that a third election would be preferable to Rajoy. He doesn't, though, see that facilitating Rajoy's investiture will rupture the party and force it apart. The Balearics' Francina Armengol, trapped by the government of her making, thinks otherwise: possibly, or even probably. Tensions could erupt into revolution on Sunday.

Andalusia and its compatriots elsewhere, such as the "managing" leader Javier Fernández of Asturias, have a cunning plan. They will allow the investiture, but it will be support-lite. Eleven deputies in Congress will be put up as the sacrificial lambs. Rajoy would therefore stagger over the finishing-line, ten months after the race started. Who could have ever thought that they might hatch such a plan? Far be it from me, but it was me. I suggested several weeks ago that Pedro Sánchez could have done just that.

But whichever way Sánchez had chosen - and it now seems as if he backed the loser - it was wrong. Or right. He was caught in the vice of his party's enfeeblement. Andalusia, if it indeed plays its eleven-hand gambit, will trust that this will be reversed by the empowerment of highly scrutinising opposition. It will trust and it will hope, but might the consequence be that there is more which is apart? PSOE itself, and never forget Catalonia.

Justice On Trial: Caso Gürtel

There's a major trial taking place. One into corruption. Remarkably enough, it isn't taking place in Mallorca. Even more remarkably, there aren't any Mallorcan politicians in the dock. This isn't to say, however, that there are not Mallorcan implications. One of them may involve former president Jaume Matas (when doesn't it?)

This is the first major trial to do with caso Gürtel, a corruption investigation that has taken so long and is so complicated that it defies any simple explanation. Even the name of the case isn't straightforward. Gürtel is German. It means belt. The choice of name disguised the individual at the heart of the network that spawned the case: Francisco Correa - Frank Belt, if you like.

To say that Gürtel is just about kickbacks would be way too simplistic. This was a web that was woven around the business affairs of Francisco Correa, who had long cultivated links with - who else - the Partido Popular. Gürtel covers illegal funding of the PP and the favourable awarding of contracts (different public authorities are implicated, including both the regional community of Madrid and the Madrid town hall). Money laundering, tax havens and tax evasion, bribery - they're all there.

If this sounds familiar - one can think of the Nóos trial, for instance - it is, but while Nóos and the alleged activities of the husband of Princess Cristina and his associate embraced some six million euros, that was chicken feed compared with Gürtel. The exact amounts have never accurately been established. The total has been put at as much as 120,000,000 euros.

Gürtel isn't simply (what am I saying - simply?) about massive corruption. It is a trial that has also placed the Spanish judicial system in the dock because of that system's potential for manipulation by political forces. In order to understand this, one has to go back to the origins of the investigations and who launched them. The investigating judge in 2009 - yes, that's when the legal ball started to roll - was Baltasar Garzón. He was to be suspended the following year. Not because of Gürtel but because it was argued that he had exceeded his powers in investigating war crimes committed by the Franco regime.

Garzón had his enemies in the legal profession, but he also had them in the Partido Popular. The Franco angle did somewhat obscure the motives for having him suspended. He was readmitted, only to be suspended again because he had ordered recordings of suspects and lawyers involved in Gürtel. All the while, there was the unmistakable influence of the PP.

But getting Garzón removed didn't end the investigation. Even more life was to be breathed into it when the revelations came about the so-called B accounts that had been operated by former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas (one of those now on trial). These too pointed to illegal party funding. Gürtel and Bárcenas are intimately linked.

If the PP had hoped that Gürtel would go away along with Gárzon, it was very much mistaken, and Gürtel, given its sheer scale, gave political momentum to others - Podemos most obviously. Pablo Iglesias's party and indeed the C's of Albert Rivera had corruption firmly in their sights. Yet despite this momentum and therefore the political situation that currently exists, what do we get? The trial has opened with legal challenges. They have come from defence lawyers, but giving these lawyers support is the PP. It almost beggars belief but the PP, via its lawyer, agrees that there is a list of reasons for having the whole trial process stopped in its tracks. And what might these reasons include? Baltasar Garzón. The investigating judge and those recordings.

The irregularities that surrounded Garzón were also said to have related to his having been designated as investigating judge. In other words, it is claimed that his was a political appointment (he has never disguised being sympathetic to PSOE).

So, it can be said that there were politics on both sides; that the judicial system was open to differing political influences. Where Garzón was concerned, there was probably also his own self-view. He was a celebrated judge by then, but this fame is another facet in suggesting that the judicial system is on trial. Investigating judges become famous. Mallorca has a couple of very well-known ones: José Castro, as much a people's hero as Garzón was to many, for his pursuit of Jaume Matas and Iñaki Urdangarin; Manuel Penalva, heading the investigation into Palma police corruption.

The system therefore creates celebrities out of judges, and much though they would always seek to remain impartial and within the rules, there can also be human fallibility. And political leanings are occasionally exposed. Take Juan Pedro Yllanes, now a Podemos deputy in Congress, who had originally been due to preside over Nóos.

Justice must be seen to be done. With Gürtel, whether it will or will be allowed to is another matter.

Matas And The Scandals That Won't Go Away

So, Jaume Matas may escape a further term in prison if he spills the beans. He would know that he potentially faces a far longer stretch than the nine months he spent in Segovia prison for peddling influence in arranging illegal payments to a journalistic cheerleader. The Son Espases Hospital affair eclipses even the Palma Arena case in terms of the money that was involved in the project. The cost of the contract is almost incidental, however. The links to alleged illegal funding of the Partido Popular are most certainly not.

Reaction from politicians with parties other than the PP (from which little or nothing is being heard) ranges from the phlegmatic to the apoplectic. While all this reaction suggests that Matas shouldn't avoid doing time, there is an acceptance that Matas holds a key - possibly the key - to revealing the secrets of this funding. These politicians won't know exactly what Matas knows. They will be capable of hazarding shrewd guesses, but the knowledge resides with the justice system and the anti-corruption prosecution service in particular.

While Matas was in prison, he appeared by videoconference link at a hearing into Son Espases. This was the bizarre occasion when his head was bandaged. He apparently had an ear infirmity and was therefore unable to hear the questions being put to him. Before he left prison, he was visited by the chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Pedro Horrach. It was said at the time that he exercised his right not to say anything. It now appears that things were rather different and that Matas was all ears. The origin of a deal to spill the beans was during that meeting with Horrach.

Why is Son Espases so important, and important enough for the national anti-corruption prosecution service to back the regional service and so Horrach's deal? It has everything to do with funding of the PP and with work on a remodelling of its headquarters building in the calle Génova in Madrid. The allegation is that the award of the contract for the construction of Son Espases was rigged in favour of the company OHL, the president of which is Juan Miguel Villar Mir, a long-ago minister of finance (in the period immediately after Franco's death) and the recipient of a marquis title from the former king in 2011.

The charge is that it was Matas who rigged the award. In the end, OHL didn't get the contract. This was after suspicions about the contract appeared in the press. Matas intervened and the award ultimately went to the rival consortium. But Matas, it is said, didn't act independently. He was under instruction from the PP nationally.

A famous envelope containing instructions that the tender board was to follow has been referred to often during investigations. The then health minister, Aina Castillo, has testified that she was given this envelope - without knowing its contents - to be passed on. Matas was the one who gave her the envelope, but he - the allegation is - was given it by the formal national treasurer of the PP, Alvaro Lapuerta. Matas, it is understood, is prepared to state this in court.

OHL and Villar Mir come into the story because Luis Barcenas, another former treasurer, has testified that Villar Mir was a major funder of the PP. He gave the party a significant sum - 300,000 euros - for its 2011 election campaign, but he has also come under investigation for payments in cash amounting to two million euros. An implication is that he paid for work at the headquarters.

Barcenas is also crucial to this whole affair. The infamous "B" accounts which he supposedly operated - undeclared income and payments - have been the subject of investigation by the national high court. A judge, Pablo Ruz, concluded eighteen months ago that the PP had used this "B" system between 1990 and 2008. Both Barcenas and Lapuerta were cited by the judge. Moreover, the judge said that according to Barcenas's accounts, Villar Mir had delivered over half a million euros between 2004 and 2008.

Whatever the rights or wrongs of Matas avoiding prison, the revelation that he might do comes at a bad time for the PP. While Matas was involved in corruption from several years go - it is now nine years since his second and final period as Balearic president ended - there are more up-to-date scandals surrounding the party, not least in Valencia, where Rita Barberá, the former mayor of Valencia, is facing allegations of money laundering that relate to the time just before the elections in spring 2015.

The additional backdrop of course is the ongoing uncertainty with the national government. A reason for this uncertainty has been the rise of Podemos and Ciudadanos, both of them taking firm aim against corruption. The PP's moral authority for government takes a constant battering. Matas, and what he might have to say, diminishes that authority ever more.

An Agreement For Prominence

It was the Sunday of the last big summer weekend. Everyone should have been at the beach or preparing to head home. Mariano Rajoy and Albert Rivera were not. They watched as the parliamentary spokespeople for their parties - the Partido Popular and Ciudadanos (C's) - put pen to paper and signed an agreement under which Rajoy is assured of the support of the 32 C's deputies in Congress for the investiture votes this week. It was a curious ritual. Neither leader had wanted to give his signature.

Maybe neither wanted to bind himself to anything long-term. The agreement is short-term as it is. If Rajoy fails to gain the support of 176 deputies in either of the two votes (one tomorrow, the other on Friday), the agreement will be ripped up. Albert Rivera will be free to come to an accord with someone else. He's making a habit of this. He had one with PSOE's Pedro Sánchez until Sánchez failed so drastically with the two investiture votes in March.

Added to the PP's 137 deputies, the 32 C's deputies give a total of 169, to which one more can be added - the vote of Ana Oramas of the Coalición Canaria. She had given Sánchez her backing in March. Like Rivera she has switched sides. Where will the remaining six come from? Anywhere? If they do not, it looks like a Christmas Day election.

Rummaging around among other regional parties might produce something. The conservative nationalists in Catalonia and the Basque Country have thirteen seats between them. While there wouldn't be formal support for Rajoy, could there be abstentions? Given Rajoy and the PP's attitudes towards Catalonia in particular, it might seem odd that this could even be a possibility. But the C's Inés Arrimadas was aware enough of it to have warned Rajoy last week that the C's could withdraw their support if there were nationalists' abstentions "in exchange for something".

Rajoy was talking to Sánchez yesterday, trying to convince him to get PSOE deputies to at least abstain. The painful truth for PSOE is that whichever way it goes, it cannot win. To be seen to be allowing Rajoy in would bring accusations of the "casta" at work - the two-party system of the PP and PSOE, so despised by Podemos (and once upon a time by the C's). Sánchez would receive nothing in return. His party could lose a lot if he did. President Armengol in the Balearics will have been reminding him of this; Podemos have been making warning noises about the Balearic pact of government if PSOE enables a Rajoy investiture.

None of the four main parties, with the possible exception of the PP, can afford to have a third election. PSOE lost seats in June, so did the C's. Podemos in effect stayed as they were, regardless of the alliance with the United Left. Who's to say that the PP wouldn't add to the fourteen seats it gained in June? A third election might just make it even more inevitable that the PP will finally carry on, though the C's cannot guarantee losing more than the eight seats they did in June.

The left, unless there were to be an unexpected rebound by PSOE and a leap for Podemos (also unlikely), would not be able to form a government, just as they were unable to after the December and June elections. Rajoy and the PP are, in truth, the only game in town. Sánchez may as well select six sacrificial names at random and get them to say sí rather than no.

If Rajoy were able to somehow drum up the 176 votes, what would it mean for Rivera and for the C's? The point to be made is that the agreement does not mean that there would be a coalition; it is only one to facilitate the investiture. It is possible that there might be a coalition, though this seems unlikely. Rajoy and Rivera don't like each other; the chemistry would be all wrong.

The PP would therefore form a minority government, with policies determined by the agreement. The C's have pressed for and obtained acceptance in respect of, for example, social policies, but Rivera has not got all that he wanted regarding anti-corruption measures: both the C's and Podemos have these at the heart of their respective agendas.

For Rivera, the agreement is designed to show the electorate that the C's are the only party capable of and willing to negotiate with both the left and the right. It might also demonstrate they are a party of vacillators; Rivera will prefer the positive spin. And he badly needs to get that across. The slump in the C's vote in June made it imperative that the party was not sidelined and so might undergo a decline as rapid as its rise. Prominence, more than anything, is what Rivera gets.

The Language Of Tourism

Formentera is a small island. With a surface mass of some 83 square kilometres it is a little over two per cent the size of Mallorca. Because it is tiny, when there are noises about it being inundated with tourists and cars, one is intuitively inclined to accept that it is: more so than with the constant laments that Mallorca is overrun. In addition to its size, it has a disadvantage in not having an airport. Tourists mainly arrive with their cars on the ferries.

The largest tourist groups, it is said, are mainland Spanish and Italian. These tourists, of whatever nationality, are being confronted with publicity urging them to become aware of Formentera's environmental delicacy. The key aims of the campaign are the promotion of water-saving, of keeping beaches clean and of "sustainable mobility": traffic and transport.

Understandable though this is, less understandable is the fact that the campaign is being conducted in Catalan with some English. While Catalan, or at least the Formenterenc dialect, is of course common, the people who visit the island are not typically Catalan speakers (or even English speakers). Why, therefore, is there a campaign directed at tourists that's in Catalan?

Among those asking this question are Catalan speakers. They recognise that visitors will not necessarily be au fait. Use Catalan in the campaign but also use other languages, and not just English. And use one language in particular: Castellano.

The Council of Formentera is bossed by the Gent per Formentera party. This is a grouping described variously as being socialist, eco-socialist, Catalan nationalist and simply left. As such, therefore, it is inclined to butt heads with the right, i.e. the Partido Popular. The president of the PP in Formentera has described the campaign as being "one of those absurd things that our Council does".

The PP, one feels, does have a point. There again, it is, or was under Bauzá certainly, the great defender of Castellano. So, it would seem duty bound to offer an assault on the non-use of the other co-official language, just as it can now rely on the support of Ciudadanos (C's) in doing likewise.

However, there is a perceptible shift in language emphasis among the upper echelons of the PP at present. This may in part be as a means of distinguishing itself from the C's, with whom it does share some generally similar policies. Language is one; Catalan nationalism is another.

But more important is the leadership's wish to distance itself from the Bauzá era. In this regard the PP in the Balearics is basically returning to what it used to be: more sympathetic towards regionalism and so a regional identity and so also more sympathetic towards Catalan.

This is a style that helped to make the PP (and what was the forerunner of the PP from the time of regional government in 1983 until 1989 when the PP was formally founded) the dominant political power in the Balearics, a position it has never lost in the sense that it has always polled better than other parties. While the party is still led by an interim president - Miquel Vidal - when it is finally allowed to have a regional congress to elect a permanent leader, it is anticipated that the regionalist faction will win. (There was meant to have been this congress after the general election in December last year, but the indeterminate nature of the election result put that off.)

Vidal is not a contender as permanent leader. The most likely one comes from the regionalist camp - Biel Company, who was environment minister under Bauzá and who also led the revolt against Bauzá following the disastrous performance at the 2015 regional election (though the PP did still gain more seats than others). Two more of those rebels were the mayors of Campos and Santanyi, Sebastià Sagreras and Llorenç Galmés. They are now, respectively, the general-secretary and spokesperson for the PP, indicating the direction that the party has been going and is likely to continue to go.

Coming back to the Formentera affair, both have been asked why, if the PP has been critical of the Council of Formentera, their town halls have issued tourist publicity material without Castellano. This isn't wholly the case, says Galmés, pointing to dual-language use for Cala d'Or's fiestas. In Campos, there isn't much tourism from the mainland, unlike in Formentera. Both can perhaps refute any accusations of hypocrisy, but underlining situations in their respective municipalities is surely the renewed alignment with Catalan as part of a general policy reversal. In Campos, with its comparatively little tourism and greater agricultural tradition, it might be said that here is a municipality that is typical of that former PP regionalist style.

Language can so often be a determining factor in Mallorcan political success or failure. The PP leadership is not about to repeat the mistakes that Bauzá made.

The Imploding Socialists: Spain's election

There's an election on Sunday. If it seems as if it's only yesterday since the last election, that's because it was: well, six months ago anyway. But elections come around so often, you can be forgiven for losing track: Spain appears to nowadays operate on the basis of regular election rather than actual government.

So, what has happened in the intervening months? Not a lot. There was of course the farcical failure to arrive at any accord between the parties that would have allowed someone to be permanent prime minister rather than an acting one. Other than that, however, little has changed. Podemos have acquired a new best friend in the form of the United Left and appear destined to take number two spot in the electors' affections. Otherwise, things are more or less as they were. Chaotic.

Will they be any different after Sunday? No. The chaos will remain but it may be diluted somewhat. That will be if PSOE and Pedro Sánchez decide to let the PP and Mariano Rajoy officially continue. The chances are that this would be as a minority government rather than as a coalition, but who knows for sure? Sánchez doesn't, and he may well be out of the equation anyway. PSOE barons are sharpening their knives, unimpressed by the failure to make any headway in the polls.

But Sánchez is a bit like an England football manager. It makes little or no difference who's in charge. Getting anywhere is bound to end in failure. This wasn't once the case with PSOE, but it has never recovered from having been the party that presided over the start of the economic crisis.

Going into the election, everything is so familiar. What was said before the December election still holds true. There are four main parties, two of whom have disrupted the two-party system and another two who too few people like or trust. The PP and PSOE behemoths have been reduced by the dual thrusts of crisis and corruption, to which can be added some all-round nastiness by the PP as well as the A-word: austerity.

But that, you might think, has shifted somewhat. Isn't Spain all the better economically now? Better even than it was six months ago? Maybe, but there are too many voters who are seeing nothing of the recovery and too many who have come to despise the PP for austerity and have thus been seduced by the promised land of Podemos or by the mini-me PP of Ciudadanos.

That isn't wholly accurate of course. The C's are a shiny, bright vehicle compared with the rusting heap that the PP is contriving to just about keep on the road. The C's are also all for the "citizens" - they couldn't be anything else, given that their name means that - and so against corruption. They have some bright young stars, such as their leader, Albert Rivera. Yet somehow they seem to have got stuck. Contrast them with Podemos, who keep managing to move forward: there are some clever bastards in the Podemos ranks, and they have even managed to disguise the disagreements that exist in those ranks.

Alas for Podemos, Pablo Iglesias will not emerge as prime minister. Or it would take a seismic event for him to become so. Perhaps the defenestration of Sánchez might be it. He surely won't survive this second election and another farcical failure to become premier, but would a successor look upon Podemos with any more positive light? Very doubtful. PSOE have been totally humiliated and continue to be. The ultimate humiliation would be to serve in a government under Iglesias. It won't happen.

Closer to home, i.e. Mallorca and the Balearics, there is further humiliation to come. Francina Armengol, head of an unstable government for all that she insists that it is the opposite, must know that the fates are conspiring against her. PSOE in the Balearics seem destined to come third, just as PSOE nationally will. Podemos will become the major force in the "pact". There will be a reappraisal and an even more vicious one if Sánchez allows Rajoy to stop acting and start being premier again.

So what will happen to Francina? Possibly nothing. It may well suit Podemos to carry on with how things are. They can happily continue to dictate policy: even more so, if the election goes the way it is expected to. Francina would therefore seek to assure the "citizens" that there is "normality" and "stability". Though she might not believe it, others in PSOE do. For all her brave talk, it is PSOE that Podemos have been attacking all along, wishing to destroy wishy-washy socialism with the real thing. Podemos can bide their time, believing that Sánchez support for the PP will lead PSOE to completely implode.

Boy And Girl Bands: Podemos and friends

The brotherhood, sisterhood and infanthood descended on Palma en masse during the week. There they all were, Podemos, Més and friends, as though they were about to engage in a benefit gig for the regional electoral amalgamation of You-Nits-Podemés. It was the head mikes that did it of course, making the collective appear as though it were a boy/girl band about to break out with a chorus of Take That's "Everything Changes". In truth, only the Infant Errejón (who was replete with cool, One-D-style, Harry Styles shades but no ponytail) can pass as a member of a boy band. Some, such as Here Come Da Judge, most definitely cannot. As has been remarked previously, Da Judge bears more than a passing resemblance to Jim Bowen in his "Bullseye" heyday, and Jim was certainly not one for indulging in frivolities like being a member of a boy band: "Super, smashing, great."

They all appeared before a banner declaring "The Smile of the Mediterranean". Perhaps they were in fact a Beach Boys trib. What would they sing from the "Smile" album? "Heroes And Villains"? And who would be the villains? Were you watching, Mariano? Alas no. Instead we got, and inter alia, Pablo Iglesias (the sort of Brian Wilson of the band) informing the citizens that "democracy is incompatible with hotel lobbyists who determine political power, some of them having accounts in Panama". Who on Earth could he have possibly been referring to?

The Infant called for there to be an "intergenerational pact", which wasn't quite as alarming as it sounded; it was a pact of votes from different generations, and if anyone was capable of referring to intergenerations, then it was the Infant.

Throughout all of this, there was no mention by Pablo of PSOE. Not that they would have been on the stage anyway, given that You-Nits-Podemés are going to relegate them to the bronze medal on 26 June. And it was well that they weren't. Imagine if Palma's Smiler had been there: mayor Hila who can smile from parts believed unimaginable by mere mortals.

This all took place on Thursday, three days after the Great Debate on Spanish telly. This was notable for the fact that each of the four prime ministerial (presidential) candidates wore a white shirt, the key differences having been that Pablo sported neither tie nor jacket, while Al Rivera of the C's had the whistle on but no Peckham (as in Peckham Rye - tie, if it needs explaining).

The absence of Al's neckwear was presumably designed as a further means of distinguishing him from his double-act partner, Pedro Sánchez of PSOE. True to form, this Ant and Dec duo were arranged with Ant to the left, so that the audience could figure out which one was which.

Amidst all the grimacing and stony looks of the Great Debate - accusations of corruption, all the normal carry-on - there was a spot of smiling too. Mariano doesn't really do smiling. Or not convincingly. His smiling on this occasion was the befuddled grin of a dad back from the pub who comes in to find junior (which one would that be?) entertaining his two chums with the latest Metallica album. When Mazza wasn't trying his hardest to smile, he was letting it be known, among other things, that Ant (Pedro) would be a "dreadful president (prime minister)". Not, it is becoming clearer, that Ant will ever be either.

The (Spanish) Governmental Ménage à Trois

So, as the big day looms ever closer and the fateful votes will be cast - and I'm talking not of 23-J but of 26-J - the bookies (were there such a thing) are reporting good money going on a threesome forming the next government. Yes, after one failed election and an even greater failure by Pedro Sánchez to oust Super Mariano, 26-J looks destined to unite Pedro and Mazza. Possibly.

Pedro and Albert, Ant and Dec of PSOE and the C's, are still determined to continue their unconvincing double act and make it even less convincing by inviting Mazza into the political celebrity jungle. Or maybe it's the other way round. Or maybe Super Mariano won't be there at all. That's something else the bookies are laying odds on. Which is hardly surprising. Through all the faffing around after last December's election, it was clear to everyone, except Mariano, that if only he had stepped aside, the grand coalition could have been formed.

As we know, however, Mariano doesn't believe that he has a natural successor. Super Mariano would rule forever if he had his way. But the time is now coming when he will have to give way to an unnatural successor. Who might it be? The bookies are reckoning on the Dancing Queen, María Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría Antón Etc.

None of this will of course go down well with the advocates of governments of change and progressive politics. How would either Ant or Dec be able to spin a cosying up to the PP as representing change or progression? Only if Mariano goes, but even then they would be barely credible. For Ant, meantime, the possibility exists that if PSOE gets a further stuffing, he might no longer be around in any event. I'm a failed politician, get me out of here.

The likelihood of this coalition ménage à trois stems not from any genuine belief among the three parties that it is what any of them wants but from Pedro's fear (or the fear of any successor to him) that he could well find himself forced into being a number two behind Pablo. Podemos have been talking up Iglesias as being the next president, and it most certainly would be president. None of this Anglicised prime minister lark. Pablo, a prime minister serving a Bourbon king? You have to be joking. President it would be.

There is a further reason to believe that there will be this three-in-a-bed liaison. The citizens. They won't accept any more arsing around. They won't want a December election to sort out the mess of 26-J. Something will have to give. And Super Mariano is what will have to give. He can't be like Arsène Wenger, arsing around forever and ever ... .