Barceló: If The Boot Were On The Other Foot

Biel Barceló is the vice-president of the Balearic government as well as the tourism minister. He enjoys his position of vice-president because of the political arrangement between his party, Més, and PSOE to act as the government with Podemos lending its support. This position was the consequence of having gained a 13.8% share of the vote in 2015. That's PR for you.

Barceló has been around the block for many years. He was within the Bloc of 2007 to 2011, a grouping of left-wing parties that were part of the government of that period. The Bloc predated Més.

Given the fluctuations of electoral fortune, he has found himself in opposition as well as in government. And as a member of the opposition, he made a virtue of attacking corruption - that of the Partido Popular or others - at every opportunity. In a different life, he would now be leading the charge in demanding his resignation.

The contracts affair, as stated previously, doesn't bear the same hallmarks of the outlandish corruption of the past. No one has actually been found guilty of anything, and whatever guilt there might be, it would perhaps lie with a manipulation of the rules as opposed to outright abuse. Contracts were supposedly divided up into different companies in order to get round the maximum limits of contract value at which point the rules say that they must be open to public competition.

The amounts aren't vast. But the whole affair has more than a whiff of favouritism - that shown to the one-time Més campaign manager, Jaume Garau, a friend of Barceló's. It has principally been the contracts affair that has led the opposition (and Podemos) to call for Barceló's head.

Pilar Carbonell, the now ex-tourism director-general, was a later arrival. But even within Més there will be those who are content to wish her on her way. She was not a member of Més. She was in fact firmly a creature of the business association environment, selected mainly, it seemed, because she had confronted the hoteliers on many an occasion as president of the restaurants' association. She was given the post of director-general because Garau supposedly didn't want it.

Give people positions of political power, then they will either abuse them or they will mutate in some form or another. With Carbonell, she has had to involve herself in the rentals' legislation. As a one-time representative of the restaurant sector, an undoubted beneficiary of holiday rentals, this has been an about-face, one caused by her position. Her dealings with Cursach, whatever they may really have been, need to be considered in terms of her role before she was given a political position. It's not an excuse for her, but Cursach, regardless of the charges he and Tolo Sbert face, was a figure from the same "complementary" sector as Carbonell.

Barceló, not cited by any judge, can take this as reason not to resign. But he was the boss of both Carbonell and Pere Muñoz, who was obliged to fall on his sword at the tourism agency because of the contracts affair. As the most senior and recognisable face in Més, he may not have been directly responsible for contracts awarded by the transparency and culture ministry, but this was a ministry of his doing, of his creation. Més control it.

If the boot were on the other foot, he would be calling for heads to roll. His own. But political power alters the perceptions and the steadfast desire to root out corruption, even at a comparatively minor level. The current opposition are demanding that President Armengol sacks him immediately, if he doesn't resign. Bizarrely, because Armengol was unwell, Barceló chaired yesterday's cabinet meeting. One wonders what they spoke about.

The Curse Of The Balearic Tourism Ministry

Francesc Buils and Miquel Nadal. They were the tourism ministers during the 2007-2011 government who were sent to prison and who are currently still in prison. Things really aren't as bad as they were in those days of unfettered Unió Mallorquina (UM) corruption that wrote its name into the core of the ministry. But they are bad enough. To lose one director may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose a second just a few weeks later looks like the wheels are coming off.

Pere Muñoz, the director of the Balearic Tourism Agency, resigned because of his implication in the Més contracts affair. Pilar Carbonell, the tourism director-general, has now resigned because she is under investigation for alleged corruption related to Cursach Group businesses. The tourism minister, Biel Barceló, is said to be experiencing some bad luck. The bad luck is misfortune turning into ministerial meltdown. History is repeating itself at the ministry, even if the scale of the allegations is not as it was with the UM.

The bad luck might not even have arisen in the Carbonell case, if it hadn't been for the name Cursach. Once the press exposed her apparent willingness in having expedited proceedings for work at MegaPark in record time compared with the normal ministerial bureaucratic tardiness, her days were numbered. The police went looking, and the police suggest that she was a virtual Cursach employee. Bad luck, Pilar. Bad luck, Biel. The tentacles of Tolo Cursach reach out from his prison cell (he's back in Palma now) and they touch with poison anyone whose name is said in the same breath as the fallen King of the Night.

Barceló is hanging on. Just. A motion of censure brought by the Partido Popular and stemming from the contracts affair very nearly succeeded. The vote was a tie. The media enjoyed pointing out that Biel might have been censured had the PP's Álvaro Gijón been in the parliamentary house. What irony. Gijón, up to his neck in the Cursach case, symbolises the enduring reputation of PP corruption but was not there to deliver a fateful blow. It needs saying, however, that President Armengol was also absent. She was unwell. A full house and it would still have been a tie.

Carbonell has been replaced by Antoni Sansó, chief advisor to the tourism ministry. He has been photographed periodically with Barceló or Carbonell. A dour-looking, unsmiling sort of character, he was apparently the brains behind the holiday rentals legislation. Amidst this ministerial musical chairs, the only real thing to be said for Barceló is that opinion polls seem to give him local support for his stellar items of legislation - the rentals and the tourist tax. But as Més see their support in general ebb in other polls, this is unlikely to count for much. He and his party are in something of a crisis.

Barceló has said that he won't be staying on after the next election. He might in any event not have had any choice in the matter. But with his disappearance from the scene, Més are casting around for someone who can assume his figurehead role. And this isn't easy. Prime possibilities either don't want the job of running for president (Miquel Ensenyat at the Council of Mallorca wants to stay put), are needed elsewhere (Antoni Noguera in Palma) or are not products of the PSM Mallorca Socialist party.

Més, a left coalition, has prominent one-time members of the communist United Left. Social services minister Fina Santiago is one. Parliamentary spokesperson and principal advocate of independence for the Balearics, David Abril, is another. Santiago might be advanced as presidential candidate, but it would be with reluctance by the solid PSM faction. Quite how appealing she would be to the electorate is another matter. Not especially, one would fancy.

The party can just hope that Barceló keeps his head down for the remainder of this government and doesn't get his head chopped off. Podemos want him to go, but couldn't bring themselves to have voted with the PP on the censure motion. They will seize whatever chance comes along to force his resignation or dismissal. Such are the workings of this government and the power behind the throne that is Podemos.

Bad luck for Pilar, bad luck for Biel, bad luck for Més, which might go into electoral freefall. The bad luck was having charge of the tourism ministry. That bad luck has passed to many, such as those paying the tourist tax. Bad luck all round. It's the curse of the Balearic tourism ministry.

Always The Tourism Ministry

During the PSOE-led government between 2007 and 2011, there were four tourism ministers. Three of them were with the now defunct Unió Mallorquina, which was brought down by corruption scandals. Two of the three - Francesc Buils and Miquel Nadal - were sent to prison. They are still there.

The tourism ministry was at the heart of much the corruption that engulfed that government. The UM was ultimately thrown out of the coalition by PSOE. Two agencies within the ministry - Ibatur (tourism promotion) and Inestur (tourism research) - were wound up as a result of the corruption. They were replaced by one new body - the Balearic Tourism Agency. Its current director, Pere Muñoz, now faces criminal proceedings. He is one of five people to be cited in the case of the Més contracts that were awarded to Jaume Garau, the party's campaign manager and "guru" for the 2015 elections. The tourism ministry is not the only one affected, as the other three officials (Garau is the fifth person to be cited) were from the transparency and culture ministry. But in the case of Muñoz, he is the only one still holding his position. He may not be for much longer.

The contracts affair, in terms of the money involved, is not in the same league as what the UM used to get up to. One has felt that rather too much has been made of it, but the political climate being as it is, any whiff of corruption is now pounced upon. And that brings the tourism minister and government vice-president, Biel Barceló, firmly into the equation. He hasn't been cited. Had he been, then all hell would have been let loose. But there are those who will now be gunning for him again - Podemos and the Partido Popular in particular.

To make matters worse, there are the accusations that the tourism director-general, Pilar Carbonell, acted in a favourable manner towards the Cursach Group. The versions of events differ. The tourism ministry offers one, the judge investigating Cursach and police corruption suggests that there is another. The ministry, and to therefore be fair to Carbonell, is right when it says that there are typically communications with businesses over the winter months regarding the expediting of building work. In this respect, it would have been no particular surprise that Carbonell was in contact with Tolo Sbert from Cursach. 

As Cursach is involved, the case has inevitably been blown up, especially as the court account appears to suggest that a processing on behalf of Cursach (work at MegaPark) took only two weeks over a Christmas period from the time of contact between Sbert and Carbonell. The conversation between the two, reproduced in the media, is also somewhat damning insofar as it suggests how compliant Carbonell was. Més are themselves investigating what happened. And then there is also the fact that Carbonell has been summoned to appear in court later this month in a case involving a petrol station on the Son Bugadelles industrial estate in Santa Ponsa. This refers to a time when she didn't have any public office.

All of this is now circling around Biel Barceló. Muñoz is an old friend and political sparring partner. Carbonell wasn't his first choice as director-general; Garau was. He needs all of this like a hole in the head, given what he has on his plate in tourism policy terms and that he is due to be in London next month for the World Travel Market. Meanwhile, the knives are being sharpened.

Subsidising OAPs With The Tourist Tax

Pilar Carbonell is the director-general of Balearic tourism. In other words, and despite not being an elected official, she is the islands' tourism number two behind the minister, Biel Barceló. Tourism director-generals have been known to get promoted: Jaime Martínez, the previous minister, was a DG under Carlos Delgado. So, they're pretty important people.

I've met Carbonell. She seems attentive and sensible enough, so what was she doing coming out with yet another proposal as to how tourist tax revenues should be spent? As a DG she's in a reasonable position to have a view, but it was the purpose that didn't seem wholly reasonable. She was proposing that some of the revenue should go towards a type of Balearic senior citizens' winter-season tourism programme. This was not the Imserso programme that is statewide but one based on it and seemingly for Balearic OAPs only.

As Imserso provides subsidised winter breaks for Spanish pensioners, Pilar's version presumably entails tax revenue being used for subsidies. To be fair, it isn't in principle such a mad idea. Tackling seasonality is supposedly a key objective of the sustainable tourism tax law (it's in the draft legislation at any event). And seniors' winter tourism fits that particular bill. However, there are flaws to her scheme.

The first is: why should tourists from other countries help to foot the bill for tourists in the Balearics to have a winter break? The demands being made on foreign tourist altruism via the tax are high enough as it is. I'm unsure that this altruism stretches to subsidised OAP holidays. But if it does, then why not include tourists from other countries? Holidaymakers might not find it such a bad proposition if they knew that their tax payments were to go on helping to fund a winter's holiday for mum and dad or gran and grandad. It won't though, which thus raises the potential for discrimination. Europe's lawyers would be all over the proposal like a rash.

The second is: where do these senior citizen tourists typically stay? Hotels. In fact, they only stay in hotels. The Imserso scheme is a decent means of allowing some hotels to keep open in the winter and to keep people gainfully employed. In this regard, the scheme might be thought to be useful. But aren't the hoteliers supposed to be some sort of devil incarnate when it comes to the government and the tourist tax? 

Thirdly: if the holidays were to be subsidised, would the tax be as well? Ah, actually not, because the government's draft legislation makes an exemption for Imserso tourists. Yes, if you're Spanish, you're on a pension and you're on an Imserso scheme, you don't have to pay. Another one for the discrimination seekers.

Fourthly: while hotels might be able to fill some rooms and keep some people in jobs, what about other businesses? One of the failings of Imserso is that, typically, the Spanish OAPs spend virtually nothing outside their hotel. The main additional beneficiaries are coach operators who ferry the pensioners around on excursions. Bars, restaurants and others are rarely beneficiaries.

All in all, therefore, the Pilar proposal doesn't sound that good. But then she was doing what everyone else is, and that is seeking to find ways of claiming the tax revenues. Palma wants a 10% cut of it (the PP in Palma do at any rate). Calvia wants its slice. Always Palma, always Calvia: the rest can go hang. The government, though, is trying to avoid there being any divvying-up by location. The revenue will be spent project by project, though the terms of reference for this are unknown. This hasn't stopped the Council of Mallorca coming out with its own demand: 74% of tax revenue should be spent on Mallorca, it says.

Men And Women Of The Tourism Ministry

New Balearic vice-president and minister for tourism, Biel Barceló, has certainly not lost any time in making statements of intent. He is clearly going to be a highly proactive tourism minister, which might be construed as being both good and bad, but you can't knock him for having placed tourism firmly on the front pages. Of moves he has made, a potentially significant one is his appointment as director-general for tourism. This was the position that Jaime Martínez held in the last government before he was promoted to minister when Carlos Delgado resigned. It is a key role as it is the one which deals with the implementation of policy as much as with its drafting.

Barceló's choice is Pilar Carbonell. The owner of a chain of restaurants, she is the former president of the restaurants association within the broader framework of the Balearic business confederation. The significance of the appointment is clear - she isn't a hotelier - while this appointment comes soon after Inma de Benito was promoted to the presidency of the Mallorcan hoteliers' federation. Here are two high-powered women in whose hands a great deal of Mallorca's tourism destiny lies. It says a lot for equality.

Given their competing backgrounds, there might be potential for the two women to clash. I fancy this won't be the case. Rather, they will be more inclined to work towards accommodation, towards an improved deal for the non-hotel complementary offer with which Carbonell is intimately associated. It's a smart move by Barceló, an astute appointment, the guy is showing promise.

It is an appointment that has to be seen in the wider context of what Barceló has been saying over the past days regarding all-inclusives. Regulation would be designed to help the complementary sector, so Carbonell will be a firm supporter without adopting an antagonistic attitude towards the hoteliers. Indeed, there seems ever less reason why this might be necessary when it comes to all-inclusives. There is a distinct sense of a shift in this regard, with certain hotel chains, regardless of political change, having initiated moves to drop all-inclusive from their portfolios as and when contractual obligations with tour operators permit: Eix Hotels in the bay of Alcúdia is an example; Meliá in Magalluf have already done so.

Barceló hasn't as yet fleshed out what the regulation of all-inclusives would entail, but he has dropped enough hints to be able to understand that it would be regulation aimed at improvements to standards of quality. The previous administration, via its tourism law, alluded to similar improvements without identifying how these would be effected. Barceló now has the opportunity to make them absolutely clear. One simple way would be to remove the all-inclusive offer from any hotel with fewer than four stars. Another way would be to, finally, insist on levels of service that would eliminate the nonsense of, for example, lengthy queuing for inferior quality drinks and monotonous food. Hotels would have to guarantee staff:customer ratios which, at a stroke, would make it nigh on impossible for certain ones to operate all-inclusive. These might be options for Barceló, but he might also then need an army of inspectors to ensure compliance.

If Carbonell's appointment is a significant one that has grabbed headlines because she is a familiar figure in the Balearic tourism industry, just as significant is the introduction of Benjamí Villoslada. And who is he? The co-founder, along with Ricardo Galli from the university in Palma, of the Menéame social network. He is to be the director-general of technological development at the ministry. He is a technology expert. At last, at long last, Balearics and Mallorca could be on the verge of a social media and web-based revolution that has been too long delayed. It is an inspired appointment. Indeed, it is a coup to have attracted someone with such a background who won't necessarily be doing the job because he needs the money. Villoslada has been a fierce critic of the Partido Popular for a variety of reasons. He now has the chance to address the lamentable inaction of the tourism ministry under the PP with regard to the exploitation of social media and new technologies. Excellent news.